christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(1), summer 2010 i hoksbergen, editor’s introduction: our mission in trying times roland hoksbergen the accord network of christ-centered relief and development organizations holds that christians are called to witness to the integral love of god and be agents in the transforming power of that love in the parts of the world community where poverty reigns. accord members work to overcome, defeat, and abolish the individual, spiritual, structural, and relational barriers that keep people from living the lives that god desires for them. anyone who looks around will have no trouble discerning the presence of such barriers. right now, we are in the midst of a global pandemic that has already resulted in almost 700,000 confirmed deaths globally, a lower-than-true figure due to what is surely serious undercounting. other evils, of which racism, violence, corruption, disease, violation of human rights, raw poverty, abuse of power, environmental destruction, and gendercide are but a few, intersect with the pandemic in these trying days to create serious threats to global peace, justice, security, and general well-being. as the accord network’s fifth principle of integral mission says, in the midst of all this, faithful christfollowers labor to “address immediate needs and the long-term systemic causes of the problem” and show the way toward a better way of life in a better world. at christian relief, development, and advocacy, the editorial team is dedicated to playing our part in carrying this mission forward. our hope is to cultivate a forum where thoughtful christ-followers can share their research, reflections, and analyses and discuss and critique all this in community as we work to learn all we can in the broad areas of relief, development, and advocacy. in this issue of the journal, and in the heat of these pandemic times, we learn how four organizations are responding to the present realities by changing how they go about their work, especially the way they monitor, evaluate, research, and learn (merl). the article by rosie fyfe wonders how christian development workers are affected by their almost total immersion in the waters of secular development theory, practice, and general culture. as an alternative, she illustrates how christian liturgy might mark the way toward a different consciousness and different patterns of life and work that are more in keeping with christ’s call on our lives. a third article, by long-time development worker, jaisankar sarma, discusses how important it is for development organizations to empower their frontline fieldworkers, not so much with marching orders, but with an ability (and permission) to discern, process, and make decisions in relationship with their co-workers from partner organizations. these three articles are followed by insightful reviews of four excellent recent books that are worth our time and attention. if you have done research or reflected upon any of the areas listed above and want to join the conversation with other thoughtful and experienced people who, like you, want to be faithful to their calling to be salt and light in a broken world, please consider submitting something for these pages. if you have an idea you would like to explore, please contact crda editor-in-chief, roland hoksbergen, at crda@accordnetwork.org. mailto:crda@accordnetwork.org christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(1), summer 2019 miller, book review 115 book review protestants abroad: how missionaries tried to change the world but changed america by david a. hollinger reviewed by daniel miller princeton and oxford: princeton university press, 2017. $22.95 from james michener’s hawaii to barbara kingsolver’s poisonwood bible, we have become accustomed to images of foreign missionaries as cultural imperialists. david hollinger offers a very different portrait, in part because he focuses on the impact of missionaries from mainline protestant denominations rather than those from more conservative evangelical or fundamentalist churches. what he finds is that these missionaries and their children and the mission agencies that supported them became more respectful of non-western and nonchristian people and cultures as a result of their experiences in the global south and less tied to denominational distinctives or even christian orthodoxy. having begun with the aim of proselytizing, most of these missionaries shifted their efforts to promoting economic development and providing social services such as health care and education. and instead of touting the superiority of protestant christianity and western culture, they ended up challenging their sending churches to abandon denominational provincialism and encouraging all americans to show greater respect for non-western people. using a wealth of biographical detail, hollinger follows the careers of scores of missionaries and missions-influenced protestants to show how widespread their influence was. because many were well versed in foreign languages and cultures, they were sought after as o.s.s. officers, state department diplomats, and university professors. several acted as interrogators of japanese prisoners during world war ii where they urged humane treatment and effectively used non-coercive techniques to obtain valuable intelligence. a number of prestigious asian studies departments were established with staff consisting mostly of former missionaries and their children. as official and unofficial advisors to the u.s. government, many showed remarkable prescience in warning against looming problems such as the antagonism of palestinian arabs to jewish immigration in the 1920s. and it was a missionary organization—the international voluntary services—that provided the model for president kennedy’s peace corps. unfortunately, their eagerness to provide services to the u.s. government sometimes got them into trouble. some of the “china hands” who warned of corruption in chiang kai shek’s government (the author uses the older spellings of chinese leaders) were branded as communist sympathizers during the red scare of the 1950s. and a number of ivs workers in vietnam were killed by the viet cong. but mostly they were just ignored by administrations that mouthed moral pieties while engaging in realpolitik. hollinger also highlights the contributions of women to the story. pearl buck not only encouraged public support for china during the japanese invasion, she advocated for numerous progressive causes such as reproductive rights for women, civil rights for african americans, and mixed-race adoptions. perhaps because of the obstacles they themselves had overcome to be heard, missions-associated women and organizations played key roles in the black civil rights movement, including the writing of the landmark truman era white paper “to secure these rights.” at the heart of hollinger’s narrative is “contact theory,” the idea that exposure to previously unfamiliar christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(1), summer 2019 miller, book review 116 people and cultures encourages empathy toward them. it was close contact with non-western individuals that gave these “missionary cosmopolitans” their deep convictions that americans should be more respectful of foreigners and more critical of their own nation and religion. unfortunately, they found it difficult to transfer their new-found convictions to those who had not shared their experiences. their push for ecumenism was rejected by most american churchgoers who clung to their familiar denominational patterns. their promotion of progressive causes led conservative believers to abandon mainline denominations for evangelical mega churches. the missionaries themselves and their children often followed their new perspectives to their logical ends: religious universalism or progressive secularism. for anyone who believes christian faith can and should be wedded to progressive causes, hollinger’s account is sobering. while hollinger covers an immense terrain with admirable detail, he does leave important topics unexplored. he focuses on american missions that were supported by mainline denominations. he deliberately ignores the role and impact of evangelical and fundamentalist missions and passes over african american missionaries as well. in fact, nearly all his subjects were associated with the far east, with lesser attention given to india and the middle east, and virtually none to african or latin american missions. on a minor note, the author omits some important names from the index such as chiang kai shek and mao zedong. caveats aside, this is an essential book for anyone interested in the paradoxical role christian missions have had on america. references kingsolver, barbara m. 1998. the poisonwood bible. new york: harpercollins. michener, james a. 1959. hawaii : a novel. new york: random house. daniel miller is an emeritus professor of history at calvin university. his research and writing focus on protestantism in latin america and he also taught in calvin's international development studies program. author email: drmilleringr@gmail.com mailto:drmilleringr@gmail.com christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(1), summer 2019 williams, book review 53 book review engaging globalization: the poor, christian mission, and our hyperconnected world by bryant l. myers reviewed by dan williams grand rapids: baker academic, 2017. $28.00 three months ago, when i received my copy of bryant myers’ engaging globalization, i immediately flipped to the title page to see when it had been published. at the time, i wondered if the content would still be relevant. after all, in the 18 months between the book’s publication and my reading there had been a jolt to a previously consistent trend of increasing global connectivity. nationalistic concern led many nations to exit old alliances, raise tariffs, strengthen border security, and increase scrutiny of asylum seekers. was this book published just in time to become irrelevant? as i began to read, i learned quickly that my skepticism was unwarranted. in the same way that myers’ earlier work, walking with the poor, digs beneath surface issues of poverty to build a framework for understanding and addressing it, engaging globalization goes beyond obvious trends in technology, economics, politics, and culture to build a framework for the church to address what myers identifies as globalization’s most important question: “are we and is the world becoming what god intends?” (4). the church asks this question far too infrequently, indicative of how shallow our engagement with globalization’s challenges has been, and how much we need myers’ work. to answer this critical question, the book opens by establishing a set of theological assumptions, focusing on the biblical concepts most essential to the topic of globalization. these assumptions may seem tame at first, affirming such things as the relational nature of god and the value god puts on human choice. however, because god’s word is sharper than any twoedged sword, myers does not shy away from addressing how these affirmations should cut deeply into how we engage globalization. for example, how should god’s relational nature shape our view of capitalism, and how should god’s value of individual choice shape our view of socialism? the first section issues a much-needed challenge to consider more fully how our beliefs should influence the way we engage these questions. the next two sections walk through the history of globalization and its impact. while many of the important milestones in globalization’s history may seem familiar (colonial empires, the industrial revolution, world war ii, the cold war, etc.), myers’ unique contribution is pointing out the church’s influence on each one. to shift the tides guiding modern-day globalization, he challenges us to consider the church’s past and future role. the current societal relegation of the church to spiritual matters was not always the case. historical examples such as william wilberforce and victorian evangelicals in britain show how god’s people were active, albeit imperfect, in seeking to sway social, political, and economic trends to line up with their understanding of god’s design. for believers and practitioners of integral mission, this is important history for the church, and for the accord community, to understand as we seek to engage beyond our siloed existence in the spiritual realm. in his historical overview of globalization, myers notes a rising tide of compassion and concern for human development following world war ii. he zooms in on this trend to understand how those living in poverty are being affected by globalization, and to explore contemporary thinking around development. this section exhorts the christian development community to rediscover the unique value we offer to a growing secular development community. it’s a mustchristian relief, development, and advocacy 1(1), summer 2019 williams, book review 54 read for anyone participating in international relief and development, whether as supporters or practitioners. and yet, it is here that myers’ humility gets in his own way. while he highlights how secular thinkers approach the problem of poverty, he fails to mention his own previous work in walking with the poor that has been so formative for christian relief and development practitioners. the omission results in an incomplete picture of the prevailing paradigms for understanding poverty, even as his call to re-engage rings true. the book concludes by considering how the church might best shape the future of globalization. myers offers no forecast as to how current global trends will affect the future trajectory of globalization. he does not prescribe a single specific recommendation for how the church should engage. true to his vocation as a professor, he provides multiple and differing viewpoints, allowing the reader to wrestle with the alternatives. myers only insists that we engage. he makes it clear that, left alone, secular forces guiding globalization will not inevitably lead to a brighter future, and they will certainly fall short of god’s design. resisting globalization’s progress or ignoring globalization’s effects would be abdicating the church’s role in ushering in god’s kingdom. are we and is the world becoming what god intends? to wrestle faithfully with this question, i highly recommend engaging globalization to the accord community as essential reading. because it is written as a summary of a seminary course, buckle up for a dense read. the style may be heavy for a general audience, but it’s worth the effort. how to respond to globalization may well be, as myers suggests, the most important missiological question of our day. as international relief and development practitioners, we are often asked by churches for perspectives on how to engage the world. we have the opportunity to play a unique role in encouraging the church to better understand globalization’s chief questions, and to prayerfully seek a faithful response. dan williams is the director of spiritual integration for hope international. he has been working in international missions and development for the past 11 years, living in niger, haiti, and the dominican republic for the first 4 years. author email: dwilliams@hopeinternational.org mailto:dwilliams@hopeinternational.org christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(1), summer 2019 clapp, book review 55 book review holy humanitarians: american evangelicals and global aid by heather d. curtiss reviewed by rebekah r.s. clapp cambridge, ma: harvard university press, 2018. $29.95 heather curtiss’ holy humanitarians analyzes the impact of american evangelicals on global aid during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries through the lens of a christian periodical and the efforts of its founders. her work focuses on louis klopsch and rev. thomas de witt talmage who, together, founded the christian herald in an effort to establish evangelical christians as the preeminent source of american philanthropy, especially globally. curtiss’ telling of the christian herald ’s history demonstrates the ways in which power and privilege are intertwined with development efforts, as these wealthy, white, american men decided how and to whom aid should be given, influencing the perspectives of the american evangelical community through their newspaper. curtiss expresses how the christian herald rallied theologically and socioeconomically diverse communities to support a common cause, championing a unified american christian identity that uplifts the needy around the globe. she cites the ways in which the christian herald’s processes for distribution of aid were ahead of their time, as they worked closely with local leaders in the contexts they were seeking to help; this was in contrast to the methodology of the red cross at the time, who sent their own employees to distribute aid in foreign locations (141). curtiss also notes the progressive nature of the arguments made by the periodical to encourage americans to extend generosity to non-christian, non-american, and potentially even the “unworthy” poor (45). at the same time, she recognizes that the christian herald 's convictions were subject to change with the shifting political climate. curtiss highlights the ways in which self-interest and politicking influenced the work of the christian herald. throughout her work there is an unfolding narrative of klopsch’s contentious relationship with clara barton and the red cross. rather than being effective in working together, klopsch fought for control so that the christian herald and therefore the evangelical movement would be central and foremost in american global aid. also, in an effort to maintain unity among their constituents, klopsch and talmage did little to address the racial contentions in the united states, especially in regard to the practice of lynching occurring in communities across the southern united states. so, while the christian herald did address racism on a global scale, encouraging evangelicals to send financial support around the world by citing the parable of the good samaritan to indicate the borderless nature of christian love, this charitable attitude was not extended internally to the african american community (149). klopsch and talmage’s arguments for diversity as a part of the american ideal, encouragement of accepting immigrants, and rejection of exclusively aiding the deserving and the christian, were supported by biblical arguments. however, the herald’s arguments shifted with the country’s changing political or social perspectives. curtiss’ stated purpose in writing holy humanitarians was to offer a corrective of the historical scholarship which indicates that the early twentieth century philanthropic efforts were marked by secularization (5). it is clear in curtiss’ narrative of the christian herald that a faith-based organization was not only successful, but led the nation’s efforts in philanthropy during this time. yet, curtiss shares the herald’s story alongside of other contemporary efforts christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(1), summer 2019 clapp, book review 56 in global aid by wealthy donors and the governmentfunded red cross. these secular forms of aid continued to increase in the early twentieth century, even as the christian herald moved from the center of american foreign aid efforts and transitioned to focusing on evangelistic efforts (267). rather than a corrective against the narrative of secularization, holy humanitarians offers important insight into the influence of american evangelicals in the history of global aid. demonstrating the influence of evangelicals in twentieth century global aid is one of curtiss’ stated purposes (293). she is explicit in outlining the theological and religious commitments that contributed to the push for charitable giving by the christian herald. however, curtiss’ definition of “evangelical” is less explicit. curtiss is diligent in connecting the christian herald’s narrative within the broader religious movements in the united states at the time, such as christian socialism, biblical criticism, darwinian evolution, fundamentalism, and the charismatic revivals. while curtiss makes note of the influence of these movements or ideas on klopsch and talmage, she is less clear on how evangelical identity changed as a result of them. while she recognizes that the rifts in evangelicalism that occurred during this time period led to the question of whether christian charity was central to evangelical faith and identity, she nevertheless concludes her book by demonstrating that grassroots evangelical charity continues to have a significant influence around the world (262, 282). curtiss is successful in demonstrating the important historical link between american global aid and christian charity. her choice of klopsch and talmage’s newspaper as the subject of her narrative is key in detailing the christian influence and centrality in american philanthropic history. this historical account also provides historical and theological foundations for christian development work today. curtiss is careful to highlight the herald’s forward-thinking in areas such as valuing global diversity, addressing structural issues, and uplifting indigenous leadership, while also drawing attention to their blind-spots such as the shifting of their commitments based on social perspectives, ignoring the plight of african americans, and vying for position and power within american philanthropic efforts. though providing an american-centric narrative, curtiss is intentional in giving space to the work of pandita ramabai, whose efforts offer a contrasting philanthropic and developmental approach to that of klopsch and talmage. overall, curtiss offers a wellbalanced narrative, refusing to shy away from the competing motivators of compassion and self-interest, politics and generosity. rebekah r.s. clapp is a united methodist minister and coordinator of the center for hispanic/latino ministries at united theological seminary in dayton, oh. she is also a phd student at asbury theological seminary, wilmore, ky. author email: rebekah.clapp@asburyseminary.edu mailto:rebekah.clapp@asburyseminary.edu christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(1), summer 2020 esayas, book review 33 book review the end of hunger: renewed hope for feeding the world eds: jenny eaton dyer and cathleen falsani reviewed by yacob esayas downers gove, il: intervarsity press, 2019. $16.99 by taking an eclectic approach that includes inspiring and interconnected stories interwoven throughout the book, the end of hunger aims to illustrate that chronic food insecurity has potentially debilitating impacts on society as a whole. the book is divided into three parts: “an overview of the problem of hunger;” “the first one thousand days: young women, mothers, and children;” and “the way forward.” it provides a startling description of hunger and the physical, psychological, and spiritual impacts of malnutrition and food insecurity. the vehemently clear message is that the lack/shortage of food stunts people today, and also affects future generations. a telling depiction of hunger is presented to the reader. mike mchargue states that “more than 700 million people worldwide are hungry, starving, or malnourished” (10). he continues, “we already grow enough food to feed every person living on earth. what we are lacking is not the capacity to produce food, but the will to make sure the food we grow makes it into hungry bellies everywhere” (10). what we lack is not food, but rather the heart to give. editors dyer and falsani believe that it behooves everyone in society to think of the hundreds of millions of people who go to bed hungry. the stories included throughout the book aim to put a human face on statistics. these stories are very personal and often heart-wrenching. william frist narrates a story of a mother who was too weak to carry both of her children, which forced her to make the heart-breaking decision to leave one behind in hopes of saving the other (22). part two of the book expounds on the importance of feeding children for the first one thousand days of their lives and all the multifaceted impacts food security has on their growth. the inhumane and demoralizing effects of lack of food are made real through selected stories from around the world. vasco, from malawi, was born to poor parents who were not able to sustain him. both his parents died before vasco was five. nighty is a poor mother from uganda. abandoned by two husbands, she struggles mightily to feed her five children, a struggle that continues to this day. her story highlights the family’s experience of such terrible hunger that they all vomit when they finally get something to eat. beyond these individual stories, the book also zooms out to a macro-level, persuasively explaining how hunger affects the peace and stability of nations. it argues that most countries that have fallen into social and political conflicts already suffer from severe food insecurity. the authors make a case that the centrality of food security in stabilizing a country is unequivocal. as david beasley states, “working toward the global goal of zero hunger truly is the best defense for the nations of the world, because it creates stability that reduces the risk of conflict” (62). in addressing the problem of hunger, beasley argues that food could be used as a “weapon of peace” (60). helene gayle explains that, while the quantity of food is essential, the nutritional quality of the food is equally important. contributors helene gayle, cathleen falsani and mark k. shriver emphasize the need to give special attention to women, particularly mothers. the nutritional status of mothers impacts the child's well-being since the nutrition cycle crosses generations. the mother’s malnourishment impacts her child's physical and cognitive development before and after birth. ultimately, child malnourishment at early stages of life leads to poor school performance, negatively influences people’s income-earning potential, and traps individuals in a vicious poverty cycle. therefore, focusing on child and maternal christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(1), summer 2020 esayas, book review 34 nutrition can break the link between intergenerational poverty and malnutrition (121-122). one of the main purposes of the book is to argue that the problem of access to food is undoubtedly solvable, if there is enough social and political will. dyer and falsani marshal some striking success stories that encourage people to support organizations that ensure food provision, combat malnutrition, and work to overcome poverty. indeed, if we can change the mindset of all people, young and old, global hunger could end. as evidence, will moore highlights work over the last 25 years to end extreme poverty. organized efforts have resulted in lifting over one billion people out of poverty, and cutting hunger in half. according to moore, the progress made thus far is reason to hope for a better future in dealing with hunger, malnutrition, and poverty. jonathan martin makes a compelling argument that christians should be at the forefront of leadership in feeding the hungry, who are clearly among “the least of these.” unfortunately, the end of hunger is silent in its critique of the aid industry. it would have been worthwhile to discuss some of the failures of humanitarian organizations, despite their good intentions. the editors could have addressed the impacts of various strategies and investment of billions of dollars to solve hunger throughout the world as the results of this massive investment have been mixed. this book is meant to inspire people to join the cause of eradicating hunger, but it lacks scientific analysis and does not include much of the existing academic literature to support this cause. even so, dyer and falsani have assembled some profound success stories of individuals and shown us a way forward. the book consistently echoes a clear message: it is possible to end hunger. though the current covid pandemic increases the probability of a rise in global food insecurity, we can turn to decades-long humanitarian efforts that exemplify the possibility of ending world hunger, and sooner than we once thought possible. in sum, the human stories in the end of hunger make the reader feel emotionally connected to the issue and provoke a heartfelt call to action. this is a book that will inspire christian readers to do more for the poor and vulnerable. it challenges an often-complacent church to live up to the scripture's central theme to help “the least of these.” it also rouses those who are silent in the face of the misery of millions, if not billions, and seeks to inspire us to engage in the noble cause of creating a better future for all. yacob esayas is a regional director of program support for compassion international, africa region. his academic background includes engineering, environmental sciences and project management. he has a diverse work experience in food security, wash, engineering, and climate change response in several african countries. author email: yesayas@et.ci.org mailto:yesayas@et.ci.org christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(1), summer 2020 hampton, book review 31 book review conversionary sites: transforming medical aid and global christianity from madagascar to minnesota... by britt halvorson reviewed by thomas hampton chicago: university of chicago press. 2018. $35.00. as internationally networked christian aid organizations struggle with the implications of colonial legacies that shaped them, there is a common trend toward partnership with an emphasis on local leadership. less comfortable sending people, some organizations in the post-colonial era send only aid and equipment. this model leaves the sent objects to acquire and transform their meaning in less controlled ways that secular anthropological theories can help christian relief and development organizations to understand. conversionary sites is a comparative ethnography of lutherans in minnesota and lutheran-run hospitals in madagascar, as together they manage a church-based surplus medical equipment supply chain. in its six chapters, this book follows donated medical equipment through six “conversionary sites” – semiotic systems that restructure the value and meaning of the donations. the value conversions arise because the international ngo is located at the intersection of multiple economic systems. the transfer of expired medical equipment from the u.s. to madagascar generates the value that stimulates the exchange. volunteers sort the equipment in minnesota, while medical practitioners in madagascar decide for themselves what has value and what should be discarded as would have been required in america. halvorson shows that, fundamentally, this decision comes down to risk calculations, though christian language of redemption is frequently used throughout the process (134). halvorson notes that volunteers often turn to religious language, especially in complex moments of cognitive dissonance (216-217). because supply chain management involves nurturing relationships, there is also a question about which relationships should be given priority. because the equipment imported from minnesota is not intended to fully supply the lutheran hospital, hospital administrators need to maintain relationships with their lutheran partners as well as suppliers in india and china. people who are key to maintaining positive partnerships are highly regarded by all involved. halvorson describes the role of one white doctor living in madagascar who picks up on the legacies of david livingstone and albert schweitzer (175), rising to an almost mythical status through the constructed narratives. the description of certain doctors as heroes derives from the fact that they are rare and seen as having taken on a large amount of risk. it also implies that their position may be out of reach for many. halvorson helpfully points out that relying on a few hero doctors is not ideal. it would be better for welltrained doctors with international connections to be common. halverson argues that accountability structures in international ngos are often one-sided, and they betray who really has power in a partnership. if only one side can call for an audit and then enforce it, then there is still hierarchy and debt – with david graber’s theoretical work on the difficulty of reconciling asymmetrical debts featuring heavily in this book. american workers located in minnesota and madagascar say that god is ultimately the judge of them christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(1), summer 2020 hampton, book review 32 all as a way to assume equality, but halverson argues that, organizationally and practically, there is imbalance in a one-sided audit culture. importantly, the necessity for aid exists precisely because of inequality in the relationship, so ignoring it is unhelpful to understanding the relationship’s dynamics. because of historical colonial relationships there are varying financial and moral debts expressed between the us aid workers and the recipients of aid in madagascar, but of course aid today cannot fully cancel out the effects of earlier colonialism. while halvorson draws largely from secular anthropological theories to support her observations, there are several valuable takeaways in this book specifically for the christian relief, development, and advocacy community. one is that while missionary agencies often try to embody post-colonial processes and may be uncomfortable with the legacies of their own history, it is important to acknowledge that partners in the global south will continue to see their historical colonizers as strategic partners, because a connection is already formed. they can see how the individuals who continue the relationships personally benefit. as halvorson states in her concluding sentence: “…it [a colonial era relationship] seems somewhat like a muscle memory, reigniting a bodily connection” (246). the most interesting practical implications are presented in the concluding chapter titled “aid’s end times,” which acts as a sort of postscript to the extensive research. likely due to misunderstanding surrounding madagascar’s decision to increase taxes on imported goods (239-240), the american lutherans were unable to understand why their export cost were increasing above the rate of the shipping costs. a volatile political situation, including a 2009 coup, a financial crisis, the hospital’s difficulty in applying for non-profit status, and the discontent around audit practices led to the dissolution of the partnership. surprisingly, at least to me, people involved in the aid partnership were generally ok with this. agency leaders in minnesota had long said that aid partnerships were not supposed to last forever, so there was little emphasis on developing a sustainable business strategy (242). imported discount medical equipment undercut local manufacturing efforts, and when the aid partnership ended, alternative supply chains from china and india were prioritized. doctors in madagascar, especially the ones who did not have direct relationships with the americans, described this transition as a part of god’s plan. they saw their selfreliance as a positive outcome resulting from decreased inequalities. like many books with six chapters, conversionary sites is based on a well-researched doctoral dissertation. the fieldwork providing its content stretches from 2003 to 2014, including two years of direct participant observation in minnesota and madagascar. this volume is a well-edited culmination of conference presentations and chapter iterations, with much credit given to the university of chicago editors in the footnotes. this book is for graduate level academics and practitioners willing to wade through citation-filled, 36-page chapters with long paragraphs. for those who take it on, they will be rewarded with a strong understanding of secular anthropological theory applied in the field of christian medical relief and to the ways anthropology conceptualizes the changes in world christianity. thomas hampton is a phd student in intercultural studies at asbury theological seminary researching christian missionary hospitals. he is also the founder of parallax hearing company (parallaxhearing.com), and is a student at the global center for advanced studies. author email: thomas.hampton@asburyseminary.edu mailto:thomas.hampton@asburyseminary.edu christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(2), winter 2020 fyfe, book review 113 book review becoming whole: why the opposite of poverty isn’t the american dream by brian fikkert and kelly m. kapic reviewed by rosie fyfe chicago: moody publishers, 2019. $12.79 i first read brian fikkert’s earlier work, when helping hurts (2014, and co-authored with steve corbett), when working as a community development practitioner in the middle east. while the critiques outlined in that book challenged me and influenced my work, i was left wanting more constructive solutions. becoming whole, designed to be a companion book to when helping hurts, fulfils this purpose and provides a more systematic treatment of the same underlying concepts. drawing on christian theology, the book articulates an overarching framework designed to help readers develop more effective poverty alleviation initiatives. brian fikkert, a professor of economics and community development at covenant college in the united states, co-wrote the book with his colleague kelly kapic, professor of theological studies. the book is a worthwhile read for anyone working in the field of community development who wants to engage their christian faith in their work. becoming whole argues that addressing poverty is fundamentally about fostering change. therefore, the story of change believed by those implementing poverty alleviation initiatives affects the way projects are designed and carried out. underlying these stories of change are people’s understanding of the nature of god, humanity, and human flourishing. fikkert and kapic argue that initiatives enacted by western christians are often rooted in false metanarratives that are more influenced by worldviews from the surrounding culture than a biblical understanding of the world. they first critique “western naturalism,” which holds that there is no god. the authors argue that the false god of society thus becomes “a purely material, individualistic, self-interested, consuming machine” (74). they use the term “evangelical gnosticism” to describe another false story that bifurcates spiritual and physical life, separating out sunday worship from the way life is lived the rest of the week. the subtitle of the book “why the opposite of poverty isn’t the american dream” points to the destructive nature of these two stories. fikkert and kapic argue that these false metanarratives not only result in poverty alleviation efforts that do not reflect the wholeness of human flourishing described in scripture, but also spread the “virus” of these false stories to those they are purporting to help in the developing world. the book concludes with a section on how the story of scripture shapes the way christians should properly understand human flourishing, and how this could be enacted in poverty alleviation initiatives. becoming whole is a helpful contribution to a growing field of christian practitioners and academics wrestling with the question of how to do community development work in ways that are faithful to scripture. drawing on james k. a. smith’s hypothesis that people are ultimately shaped by what they desire and their vision of the good life, this book reminds community development practitioners to be careful about taking on the assumptions and false visions of their surrounding culture. fikkert and kapic challenge christians to instead design their “ministries in ways that people end up worshipping the one reality worthy of praise: the triune god” (54). the book also usefully draws on charles taylor’s work to emphasize the role of spiritual forces in community development work. using the christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(2), winter 2020 fyfe, book review 114 metaphor of the toronto skydome to describe taylor’s concept of the “porous self,” they argue that western christians often live as if the roof is closed. this means that poverty alleviation ministries are designed in ways that assume that the spiritual world does not enter the material world, rather than with the understanding that the world is “enchanted,” meaning that the spiritual and material are intertwined. the final section of the book is effective in connecting the biblical narrative of creation, fall, christ’s redemptive work, and new creation, with poverty alleviation initiatives. the examples provided are valuable in illustrating what this looks like in practice; for example, the impact of a program that teaches a biblical view of human agency. navigating the interactions between two fields, theology and community development, is necessarily complex. and though commendable in explicitly working through these connections, the book’s approach to theology comes across at times as overly formulaic, reifying complex topics into sharp categories. for example, the diagrams of a “community that embodies god’s kingdom” and a “biblical view of a human being” seem overly simplistic, and the latter does not do justice to the two biblical texts used to validate this model. throughout the book there is also a tendency towards simplistic analysis that does a disservice to the complexities of actual practice. it is not helpful, or accurate, to propose that there are only three metanarratives in the world, and that every other worldview held by cultures the world over sits under one of these umbrellas. finally, the attempt to arrive at the one ideal christian model of working in poverty alleviation is based on an erasure of christian difference, whether on denominational, theological, or cultural grounds, and misguided in its ambitions. there may be a range of ways to live faithfully as christians in the practical outworking of community development. becoming whole provides an excellent starting point for christians working or studying in the areas of relief, development, and advocacy, and wanting to integrate their faith in their work. there has been an identified need for christians working in community development to engage theologically. brian fikkert and kelly kapic make a solid contribution in this space, especially in their engagement with the narrative of scripture, and the difference this makes to poverty alleviation efforts. the focus on wholeness depicted in scripture, and ultimately displayed by jesus christ, is a refreshing and necessary corrective for the ngo arena as well as for parts of the church. becoming whole is not purely an academic exercise, but a calling for christians to live as new creations in the fullness of god’s mission in the world: “preaching the word and digging wells, starting schools and administering the sacraments, offering prayers and dispensing penicillin, fellowship with christ’s body and financing microenterprises” (265). references corbett, steve and fikkert, brian. 2014. when helping hurts: how to alleviate poverty without hurting the poor . . . and yourself. chicago: moody publishers. rosie fyfe is the national director of the new zealand church missionary society. she previously worked in a community development role in north africa, before studying for a master’s at trinity school for ministry in the usa and writing a thesis on a practical theology of international development. author email: rosie.fyfe@gmail.com mailto:rosie.fyfe@gmail.com christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(1), summer 2019 kuperus, book review 57 book review rooting for rivals: how collaboration and generosity increase the impact of leaders, charities, and churches by peter greer and chris horst with jill heisey reviewed by tracy kuperus minneapolis, mn: bethany house, 2018. $16.99 in this engaging, well-written book, peter greer and chris horst do just what the title of their book states, viz. encourage leaders of faith-based charities and churches to replace competition with collaboration in the pursuit of kingdom work. greer and horst are excellent storytellers. they draw on a wealth of examples from faith-based organizations to illustrate the point that “rooting for rivals” is possible and that partnership and radical generosity among like-minded organizations are freeing in the advance of god’s kingdom. greer and horst begin their book by setting the stage. the landscape facing faith-based organizations in the united states includes a short shelf-life for the majority of non-profits, a competitive, dog-eat-dog culture, and declining trust in churches and organized religion. these trends together contribute to faith-based organizations often viewing each other as rivals. but greer and horst argue that partnership (and radical generosity) is not only the correct posture for faithbased organizations as it mimics christ’s call for unity among believers, it is also beneficial for faith-based organizations. when collaborating, these partnerships “leverage each other’s respective strengths and fulfill their mission more effectively than they ever could” (24) if they worked independently. most of the book is spent on contrasting generous, open-handed leaders with those who are lone rangers. greer and horst argue that leaders who root for their rivals believe in a world of abundance and focus on the kingdom, as opposed to leaders who believe in a world of scarcity and focus on clan (67). a two-by-two matrix is presented and four quadrants delineated with the seven spiritual virtues and vices displaying themselves in faith-based organizations based on how they view the world (in terms of scarcity/abundance) and their primary focus (clan/kingdom) (78). for example, the vice of greed displays itself when leaders adopt a scarcity and clan-based worldview. leaders of this mindset convince the staff of their faithbased organizations that there are simply not enough resources, time, workers, and so forth to go around. the scarcity mindset runs rife among faith-based leaders as organizations seek to secure more for their clan, even when leaders know, deep down, that other organizations have greater needs (111). faith-based leaders, in such circumstances, mimic the rich fool in luke 12, who continuously lays up treasures for himself. so how should leaders of faith-based organizations respond to other faith-based organizations? with generosity of time, praise, and ‘best practices’ strategies. greer and horst go on to provide examples of organizations that have embraced ‘open sourcing’ with their rivals and the unexpected benefits in doing so. the third focus of the book is its plethora of advice to leaders of faith-based organizations interested in turning vices into virtues. among the bits of wisdom woven throughout the book are the advice that faithbased organizations should be willing to publish failed reports (to nurture the virtue of humility, 102) and to thank donors seven times for every ‘ask’ (to build the virtue of contentment, 168). in a chapter on pride and humility, greer and horst pose five questions that are worthwhile for leaders and staff members, perhaps even board members, of every faith-based organization to answer as they relate to the vice of pride. christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(1), summer 2019 kuperus, book review 58 this book is most valuable for practitioners working as leaders of faith-based non-profits and churches. although we are told that the latter is the audience for the book, in truth, the audience is narrower. evangelical (mainly white) leaders of nonprofits based in the united states will find much that resonates in this book, but those who are outside this demographic might find portions of the book to be judgmental. for example, references to “an unreached country half-way around the world” (12) can be just as jarring as the phrase ‘undiscovered lands founded by european explorers’. if we have steered away from the latter phrase, shouldn’t we also eliminate the former? moreover, readers might wonder why the authors don’t highlight organizations like the accord network or ccda, the ultimate team players in the field of faithbased global development and community development. sharing time, resources and ‘best practices’ epitomizes these organizations – rivalry is not the only story among faith-based organizations. or what about the book downplaying (overlooking?) the issue of duplication? generosity and partnership among rival organizations are radical, but what if consolidation among the numerous micro-enterprise organizations serving the global south occurred? true, unnecessary duplication is hardly the mark of faith-based organizations alone. secular non-profits working domestically and internationally are also burdened by this reality. the wheels of advancing god’s kingdom as it pertains to organizational duplication turn slowly. despite these shortcomings, rooting for rivals offers plenty of insight for leaders of faith-based organizations in the united states. pursuing kingdom success, not just organizational success, is the calling that greer and horst outline for their readers. is it hard work? absolutely, but a focus on collaboration and generosity is an affirmative response to christ’s call for unity. it also leads to healthier faith-based organizations in the long run – a direction that many faith-based organizations would do well to embrace. tracy kuperus is a professor of political science at calvin college and the director of calvin’s international development studies program. most of her research focuses on southern africa. author email: tlk5@calvin.edu mailto:tlk5@calvin.edu christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(2), winter 2020 vroegindewey, book review 117 book review god’s internationalists: world vision and the age of evangelical humanitarianism by david king reviewed by ryan vroegindewey philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press, 2019. $39.95 whether or not we realize it fully, our convictions and patterns of behavior are profoundly shaped by institutions and cultural forces around us and preceding us. while not unique in this fact, christians may be especially prone to overlook it given that we strive to center our worldviews on scripture. arguably, nowhere is such honest introspection more critical than in our engagement with the world’s most vulnerable. david king’s god’s internationalists is a book fit for this purpose. it chronicles the origins and history of world vision international, one of the world’s largest faith-based relief and development organizations. given the significant role that world vision has played in christian, u.s., and international spheres, king utilizes world vision’s story to tell a broader one about the critical role that global events and engagement have played in the formation of the post-world war ii evangelical identity. king structures his book chronologically, with each chapter capturing a different period of growth and challenges in world vision’s history. the first few chapters focus heavily on the story of founder bob pierce, a globe-trotting entrepreneurial evangelist. pierce first created world vision as a missionary organization in 1950 and set the organization on its trajectory of expansion and eventual professionalization as a major relief and development agency. as king tells how world vision’s story unfolded in the following decades, he shows how many of the founder’s personal values and traits would become key organizational capabilities. among these are a readiness to go to the frontlines of material need and adaptability and innovativeness in fundraising, partnerships, development practice, and communications. one primary audience for this book is scholars interested in the history of american evangelicalism, to which king contributes a novel internationalist lens. another includes those interested in the underresearched nexus of religion and the international relief and development system. this audience will appreciate king’s balanced analysis of both the strengths and shortcomings of world vision and its founder, as well as the rich historical and cultural detail he provides. these readers, king’s academic peers, may be disappointed by the fairly weak framing he provides in the introduction, which lacks any discussion of research methods or motivation. there is another gap worth noting, although it is more an inevitable limitation of the book’s scope than a core weakness: the role that host national believers—namely, local churches and national offices—have played in shaping world vision. we get hints of this important dynamic and these important voices throughout the book. as king finally acknowledges in the epilogue, however, his focus is world vision’s u.s. office. as a result, king notes that more research is required to “to paint a full picture of the organization” (246). i heartily agree with this last point. those wishing to better understand the complex but deeply formative relationships between an international christian agency and its host national stakeholders might start with barbara cooper’s evangelical christians in the muslim sahel, an excellent study of the experience of the sudan interior mission in southern niger. while academic in nature, king’s book also has value for many international relief and development practitioners—leaders and young professionals alike— christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(2), winter 2020 vroegindewey, book review 118 who have the patience to pause and reflect on the forces that shape their sense of calling, worldview, and the organizations and industry in which they work out their vocation. in my own particular case, as i read king’s description of the evolving evangelical social conscience during the past three decades—of which world vision was both a product and determinant—i could identify cultural forces that helped shape my own convictions and experiences. for example, growing up in the 90s, one of my first windows on the world was reading letters from a child in rwanda who our family sponsored. my first college text on international development was walking with the poor by bryant myers, a former vp of world vision. years later, while working in west africa, numerous other personal connections with world vision inevitably emerged: it was a major partner to the secular development agency i worked for, employed many members of my local church, and gave micro-loans to a good friend who was trying to grow his business. by the end of king’s book, the reader walks away with an appreciation for the particular and complex task that international faith-based organizations face—that of operating, building bridges, and maintaining consistency across disparate places, cultures, and stakeholders. in the case of world vision, this has meant operating within “an american evangelical subculture, a collection of missionary agencies, a global evangelicalism, large-scale fund-raising non-profit organizations, and secular development ingo network” (14). in 2011, while working in mali, i was able to meet a boy my parents had been sponsoring through world vision. i met him and his family, walked around his village, and chatted with local world vision staff. afterwards, i remember trying to sort through the kinds of issues and tensions that king describes in his book. for example, i understood world vision’s area development program model—which allowed for longterm presence and planning in a given community—to be the organization’s effort to do good development work. yet the realities of the approach—e.g., its focus on a community rather than the individual child within it, or its ways of contextualizing in a muslim context— felt removed from the child sponsorship model that was marketed in the u.s. and from the assumptions that were probably held by many u.s. sponsors (world vision’s largest source of funding). following my visit, my reflections gravitated towards these tensions because they resonated with many of my own challenges as a christian development practitioner. my vocation was the same broader one that bob pierce, as an individual, and world vision as an organization, had tried earnestly to live out. for this reason, there is a lot to learn from the seventy or so years of experience—mistakes, successes, and all—that king so meticulously recounts in his book. references cooper, barbara m. 2006. evangelical christians in the sahel. bloomington, in: indiana university press. myers, bryant l. 2011. walking with the poor: principles and practices of transformational development. maryknoll, ny: orbis books. ryan vroegindewey is a supply chain sustainability and development specialist, focusing on agri-food industry in africa and the u.s. he holds a ph.d. and m.s. in sustainability and agricultural economics from michigan state university, and a b.s. from covenant college. author email: vroegindewey@gmail.com mailto:vroegindewey@gmail.com christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(2), winter 2020 dykema, book review 111 book review a walking disaster: what surviving katrina and cancer taught me about faith and resilience by jamie aten reviewed by eugene dykema west conshohocken, pa: templeton press, 2019. $15.95 some stories are immediately compelling, such as “doctor becomes ill, experiences being a patient, and learns the other side of the story.” jamie aten’s story has a plot like that. jamie aten is an academic disaster relief researcher and the founder of a disaster relief research institute. if the academic pattern formed his disposition toward disasters—and there are at least hints that it did— things changed on the day he received the news of his own personal disaster: stage 4 colon cancer. aten was 35 at the time. his job was now to make sense of his own disaster and its suffering. he tells the story in his memoir, a walking disaster. at much of its core, jamie aten’s memoir is not about disaster relief. it is about what happens when relief doesn’t come, at least not on hoped-for terms. it is also about the how of making sense of disaster. how can one make meaning out of radically altered circumstances? he tells his struggle in often excruciating detail. in shock at his circumstances, he nevertheless feels somewhat prepared. after all, as a disaster researcher, he “had a box with which i could organize my experience.” he would discover he needed a bigger box. fatigue and discouragement would require that he change his mental and emotional models of how to cope with disaster. one problem is that his disaster doesn’t follow script. most of the disasters he was familiar with pass quickly, blow over, if you will. he is not prepared for the protracted suffering he will have to endure. neither his personal strengths nor much of the received wisdom about how to cope with disaster are up to the challenge. he finds that optimism is not enough, that resilience can’t go the distance, and that many of the concepts he learned don’t work. on the latter, he already knows to avoid “critical incident debriefing” and the “just world hypothesis.” but when he tries to apply “second wave cognitive behavioral therapy,” he finds it useless. and awareness of survivor guilt does not prepare him to recognize it when it occurs. “…implementing best practices while weathering a disaster was easier said than done,” he concludes. he is aware that suffering is far worse if it appears meaningless. the struggle to find meaning, however, is fraught. if gone about the wrong way, the abyss yawns. to seek and fail to find meaning is to be set up for true despair. the path matters. his story walks the edge of that abyss. his reliance on his strength at the outset means that it is difficult to let go of the role of helper and accept being helped. he finds all gifts to be mixed blessings. he easily becomes indignant over what, in his opinion, is the insensitivity of others. all the usual types of questions occur to him: where is god? what is he doing? should i ask god for healing? does he intervene? but other implicit questions shadow his path. what should i ask for other than relief? what is the greatest asset for recovering from disaster, strength or weakness? perhaps above all: where is the meaning in the suffering that disaster brings? it seems that the how of finding meaning in suffering is the central issue here. aten’s story is up close and personal and the detached, academic pattern of making sense doesn’t fare well. instead, it is the human touch, sometimes literally, that really matters. it is the subjective, not the objective, that rescues him. he christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(2), winter 2020 dykema, book review 112 admits that the strength of his lifetime religious path went from emotion, to intellect, and then back toward emotion. by the end of the story, it transcends both. the book does not finally answer his big questions about suffering. it doesn’t really try. in short, he doesn’t find answers; he finds god. god gives him not answers, but himself, and it is enough. at both the transcendent and the human level, it is not learning, technique, or strength that answer. it is relationship, as is said, “all the way down,” though here “all the way up” might serve better. and the thing that seems to prepare us for relationship is more likely to be weakness than strength. on a personal level, the story ends relatively well for jamie aten. saddled with a permanent colostomy, he is daily reminded of his wounds. but he is a better person for his experience, and he knows it. he celebrates this with gratitude. and he even celebrates the struggle, in fact lauds it, as the thing that reconciles for us our sometimes-grim reality with hope stretched from now to eternity. in this light, ironically, relief is not the highest good and can potentially come too soon. but what about professionally? as a researcher he wants to build on what he learned from his own experience. he rediscovers the christian virtue of fortitude, names it spiritual fortitude, and makes an index number out of it so that “scientific language” can be applied. is an index number the best way to carry his experience back into his research? i am skeptical. the pattern of the formation of spiritual fortitude in jamie aten’s life looks radically different to me than can be described in scientific language. i wonder if research can be conducted on a basis that is more faithful to the holistic, formative process that aten went through. formation of his spiritual fortitude was dynamic and evolving, embedded in a context of communal belief and practice. investigation of what this looks like on a broader scale cannot be contained by an index number approach. if i were attempting this, i would begin by looking in a direction involving the tendencies of both sides of the brain, such as suggested by ian mcgilchrist’s the master and his emissary (2011). i would also seek to retain more of the contextual and relational such as suggested in esther meek’s loving to know (2014). meek refers to her approach to knowing as covenant epistemology, expressing the depth of the knowing relationship. as the title suggests, love is seen as central to knowing, a proposition that seems to echo aten’s experience. through a horrifying experience, jamie aten found a path toward what we all seek: the reconciliation of reality with hope. he came away with greater knowledge of god, of himself, of the importance of community, and of the spiritual meaning of disaster. as a memoir, it is a deeply personal account of his journey, but everyone can benefit from looking over his shoulder. references mcgilchrist, ian. 2014. the master and his emissary: the divided brain and the making of the western world. new haven: yale university press. meek, esther lightcap. 2011. loving to know: covenant epistemology. eugene: cascade books. eugene dykema taught economics at calvin college for eighteen years, then started an mba program at george fox university. he is currently retired and writing on economic methodology. he has survived cancer and attempted murder. he is familiar with suffering and with grace. author email: gene@dykema.net mailto:gene@dykema.net christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 timaná kure, book review 95 book review integral human development. challenges to sustainability and democracy by jacquineau azetsop sj (editor) reviewed by carlos timaná kure eugene, or: pickwick publications, 2019. $29.00 the king will reply, ‘truly i tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ (matthew 25: 40) how do christians, when undertaking any social initiative, ensure that they do the most possible good for others? such an ethical question, one that embraces the practical behavior of any follower of jesus christ, requires deep reflection, based partly on one’s own tradition and personal experiences, but also on the contributions from other religious and thought traditions. for example, there is much similarity in abraham kuyper’s argument for ”soevereiniteit in eigen kring” (sphere sovereignty), as formulated in 1880 in his speech at the opening of the free university of amsterdam and the papal encyclical, laudato si, written by pope francis in 2015. both traditions, reformed and roman catholic, argue for social engagement and human development. integral human development is rooted in the roman catholic tradition and asks: what is integral human development and how can we achieve it in this third decade of the 21st century? that is the main question editor jacquineau azétsop, sj seeks to address in its twelve chapters, most of which address some key aspect of catholic social teaching. each chapter has a different author, while azétsop, sj, dean of the faculty of social sciences at the pontifical gregorian university, writes the introduction. chapters are organized into three main sections, the first providing an anthropological framework for integral human development in light of the most relevant challenges of our time. the second section focuses on the problems of integral human development with respect to democracy and governance. and the third section emphasizes the social, political, and cultural issues that make sustainability so difficult. the impetus behind the book is to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of saint paul vi’s encyclical populurum progressio (on the development of peoples) in 1967. this seminal encyclical introduced the concept of development in the magisterium of the catholic church with the wellknown formula “of each person and of the whole person” (14). the book revisits many of integral human development’s key themes as they develop over time, up until the publication of pope francis’ encyclical laudato si (praise be to you). this most recent contribution to catholic social thought’s thinking on development argues for the inclusion of an integral ecology that invites everyone to a lifestyle that sustainable with the entirety of god’s creation. one of the most important elements the book addresses is the diversity of contexts in which integral human development can take place and the challenges it faces in each one of them. for example, considering some different national contexts, silvana sciarra addresses the relationship between governance and democracy in a sustainable european union, ludovic lado, sj presents an historical and conceptual analysis of governance, leadership, and social justice in africa, and anthony dias, sj wrestles with india´s cultural diversity and the principal issues that affect political culture on the subcontinent. taking a more historical approach, simona beretta shows how the idea of development has christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 timaná kure, book review 96 changed from the end of the second world war up through the millennium’s second decade. fausto gianfreda, sj offers a conceptual analysis of how integral human development relates to integral ecology, focusing especially on the relationship between governance and sustainability. jeffrey sachs, professor and director of the center for sustainable development at columbia university, presents linkages between the sustainable development goals and integral human development. and monica romano builds off of previous fieldwork experiences to illustrate how rural poverty can be reduced and integral human development promoted through bottom-up efforts and grassroots institutions-building initiatives. the most interesting contribution is by stefano zamagni, professor of ethics and markets at the university of bologna. in his chapter on “the ethical challenge of convergent technologies,” he argues for a model of integral human development based in a multiplicative relation rather than an additive one. for three key dimensions of integral human development, economic, socio-relational, and spiritual well-being, if one dimension comes to zero, the whole result comes to zero. zamagni also points to different kinds of new challenges for integral human development in the present and in the near future as the fourth industrial revolution unfolds. these challenges include transhumanism, the gradual transformation of the educator into the reduced role of a facilitator or mediator in self-learning processes, the transition from an “internet of things” to an “internet of beings,” and cyber-physical systems, among others. overall, the book is provocative for those who want to delve into a christian anthropology for the 21st century. this book will be a valuable contribution for those seeking to respond to various challenges in a society that is constantly changing and always demands thoughtful engagement illuminated by the gospel. carlos timaná kure is msc. in government and public policy from universidad externado de colombia and university of columbia. he is also director of center of government josé luis bustamante y rivero at universidad católica san pablo (arequipa – peru). author email: ctimana@ucsp.edu.pe christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 butler, book review 91 book review faith-based development: how christian organizations can make a difference by bob mitchell reviewed by tiffany butler maryknoll, ny: orbis press, 2017. $26.00 for the second half of the 20th century, christians working in humanitarian relief and development experienced a shrinking space within the development sector. throughout this era, the secular approach— primarily, but not solely—motivated by modernity and the enlightenment, became increasingly hostile toward faith-based organizations (fbos). in response, many christian fbos felt compelled to conform to a secular humanitarian approach in order to continue participating in the sector, particularly when seeking government funding. more recently, however, the mood seems to be changing. though secular development agencies and agendas largely quarantined fbos from serious consideration as respectable ngos for many years, there is now a growing awareness, even among secular humanitarian actors, that faith should no longer be relegated to the sidelines of development work. in light of this important change, the book by bob mitchell, faith-based development: how christian organizations can make a difference, encourages christians to recapture their vocation to work faithfully as humanitarian workers. they should not conform secular worldviews in their practice, but rather allow their christian worldview to empower and sustain their work in development. the purpose of the book is to examine the devaluation of fbos in international development and to attempt to redress this imbalance through an examination of the religious motifs that undergird christian orthopraxy, which studies show resonate with the poor and marginalized in the majority world (155-156). to showcase the relevance of fbos, mitchell utilizes internally produced reports and interviews from world vision australia, which examine the role of faith in development work. while largely targeted at christian relief, development, and advocacy groups, mitchell’s intended audience also includes secular ngos, governments, academics, and other faith-based practitioners of other faiths. the book is divided into three main sections. part one, “christian heart, secular profession,” explores the value of the christian approach in development. mitchell gives a brief but powerful history lesson in the secularization of development work and the resurgence of a serious examination of the role of faith in relief, development, and advocacy in recent years. humanitarian workers across the spectrum have come to realize that multi-dimensional problems necessitate multi-dimensional solutions. fbos have a responsibility to articulate for themselves the distinctives of their faith identity in the humanitarian sphere. as they confidently stand in this faith identity, they should also faithfully live out their vocation among partner communities and the secular humanitarian entities they interact with. part two, “christian motifs and their impact on development work,” constitutes the meat of the book and begins with an exploration of four theories of change humanitarian workers have typically utilized in international development. mitchell argues that while theories of change have been critiqued from a christian faith perspective, they do not pose a fundamental conflict with fbo faith commitments. he posits that the difference between a faith-based approach and a secular approach to development does not depend on their selection of a theory of change, but on other factors that lead to distinctive praxes (37). as fbos christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 butler, book review 92 nuance or reframe theories of change within their own understanding of christian theology and scripture, case studies reveal fbos produce praxes that are especially effective in development work. in order to develop these distinctive praxes, mitchell urges christian organizations thoughtfully to examine the christian meta-narrative that informs their vocation. when this vocational identity is matched with sector excellence, the fbo has a distinct advantage in development work; this is primarily due to a theistic worldview that is shared by the majority world. mitchell argues that ‘neutrality’ in development work does not exist. he presents data that reveal theistic societies have more affinity with fbos, even those of different faiths, than they do with secular entities. this is an important revelation, as it flies in the face of standard arguments deployed by secular development agencies that religion is intrinsically divisive and that religious neutrality is desirable (48, 58). true, religion has too often been weaponized as a tool of division, but new data shows that christian humanitarian workers can be assets rather than liabilities in some contexts. when fbos operate faithfully in their field, they are often seen as devout adherents, and a mutual respect is fostered with other theistic societies, as seen among christian faith workers in moderate sunni contexts (48) secular organization that do not share a theistic affinity with communities, then, are automatically seen as outsiders and their ‘neutrality’ is at times perceived as a form of insensitive imperialism (83). part three, “faith, development, and accountability,” adds some practical considerations for fbo practitioners, particularly chapter 15, which discusses “accountability for crosscutting themes.” this section examines crosscutting issues like disability and inclusion, gender equality, care for the environment, and child protection. mitchell considers each issue in turn, followed by a thoughtful christian reflection and pragmatic response for each theme. he concludes the book by exposing the false divide between professionalism and faith. mitchell writes, “professional skills and love of god are not incongruous. they go hand-in-hand and enter their proper relationship when the former serve the latter” (166). in other words, christian organizations are encouraged to hold to the distinctives of their faith, even as they consider the professional and sectoral tools they will deploy in their own authentic way. does mitchell accomplish his goal to examine the devaluation of fbos in international development and to attempt to redress this imbalance through an examination of the religious motifs that undergird christian orthopraxy? yes, he accomplishes this beautifully. through an examination of specific faithbased reflections (theology) and practices (orthopraxy) that produce real-world transformation, mitchell convincingly argues for the necessity of fbos and their invaluable impact on international development. depending on who is reading the book, some may desire further specificity about case studies referenced in the main body of the text, as these are often discussed without a lot of detail. such an audience might benefit from an appendix with a deeper study of at least some of the world vision evaluation reports. as it is, however, mitchell’s review of these studies, as discussed throughout the book, do raise the book’s appeal to a wider audience, which aligns with mitchell’s explicit intention—that the book is written with multiple audiences in mind (xvi). thankfully, there are other books that take up this challenge to go into further detail on the specifics of transformational development case studies. a prime example is walking with the poor by bryant myers, who also happens to write a glowing foreword to mitchell’s book. myers notes that mitchell’s faithbased development addresses the need of the hour— explaining why christian development agencies have been successful at professionalizing without secularizing, and also providing a roadmap for how that might be accomplished. mitchell, indeed, accomplishes this in his inspirational and approachable book. his clarion call is to exhort fbos to recover, or perhaps discover, confidence in their faith tradition and how that makes a world of difference for humanitarian practitioners. tiffany butler is the ethics & accountability officer for world concern. tiffany holds an mdiv from fuller theological seminary, and is a researcher for the orthodox church in america and the anglican church in north america (oca/acna) ecumenical dialogue task force. author email: tiffanyb@worldconcern.org christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(1), summer 2020 padilla deborst, book review 35 book review facing west: american evangelicals in an age of world christianity by david swartz reviewed by ruth padilla deborst new york: oxford university press, 2020. $34.95 i begin this review with a warning based on the old adage, “there are none so blind as those who will not see.” regardless of where you are sitting, in the global east or west, south or north, if you would rather not be forced to question your assumptions or challenged to see the world and the christian movement within it afresh, you had better keep this david swartz’ book at arm’s length. facing west: american evangelicals in an age of world christianity ambitiously spans five continents and some 100 years of history, unveiling influences, currents and crosscurrents in world christianity that do not fit into the categories constructed in the west, and revealing alternative stories that upend traditional scripts regarding the direction of mission and evangelical influence. these stories challenge and complexify the assumed movement of mission “from the west to the rest.” the book first portrays the symbiosis between us patriotism and evangelistic fervor in billy graham campaigns, exemplary of a christian americanism that sought to propagate spiritual liberty along with political and capitalist economic liberty across the world during the cold war era. against this backdrop, swartz then narrates one same story --the founding and first years of world vision, the christian humanitarian organization,-through two vastly contrasting lenses. according to the us version, fiery us american bob pierce is the star protagonist and us american evangelicals are the moral benefactors of “his” orphanages. meanwhile, the korean version retells how kyung-chik han, a respected korean pastor, welcomed an unexperienced pierce to korea and built on his own long and proven trajectory of humanitarian work and political activism to co-found world vision. this case study sets the ground for the other chapters by demonstrating that, while christian americanism influenced global expressions of evangelical christianity, us american evangelicals also received significant pushback and were impacted by global christians. “global encounters” is the natural part ii, which, in consecutive chapters, carries readers to india; lausanne, switzerland; mindoro, the philippines; almolonga, guatemala; and uganda, portraying how global evangelical expressions not only resist being boxed into us american categories, but also challenge the very construct of evangelicalism, as well as reverse the traditional direction of mission. readers first witness e. stanley jones’ missional conversion to contextual sensitivity and to social and racial justice as he encountered india’s caste system and eventually grew to advocate prophetically for these concerns in his home country. the 1974 lausanne congress on world evangelization became the forum for what swartz terms “a latin american challenge to north american missiology,” a strong and theologically articulate challenge to christian americanism and the cultural trappings imposed on others by its adherents, in the voices of samuel escobar and rené padilla, from the fraternidad teológica latinoamericana. chapter 4 details how, in spite of much initial reticence, the postcolonial move towards contextualization, and the broadening of the evangelical agenda to include social concerns made inroads in north atlantic christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(1), summer 2020 padilla deborst, book review 36 evangelicalism. chapter 5 describes the progressive “de-americanization” and internationalization of world vision, thanks to the experiments of deep indigenous popular education and empowerment in the philippines, and how personnel in the majority world prompted the re-focusing of evangelicals’ vision from emergency relief to holistic, transformational development both abroad and in the us. chapter 6 delves into the realm of the supernatural and portrays the often ambiguous but increasingly welcoming reception given in the us to demonstrations of pentecostal faith around the world. the section ends with a chapter titled “an east african critique of american sexuality,” which depicts the conflicts and unexpected east-west allegiances within the anglican communion in relation to the ordination of same-sex clergy. the detailed account of bishop orombi’s actions, a nuanced integration of a conservative sexual ethic with progressive stances on economics and politics, serves to highlight how the rest of the world cannot be forced to fit into us american categories. the final section, “disorientations,” first carries readers abroad, into slums, brothels, and the underworld of human trafficking. it focuses particularly on the human rights work of the international justice mission. it parses out the complexities of cross-cultural encounter and the need for indigeneity, the challenge of structural injustice, the lessons learned in thailand and beyond regarding protection, prosecution, prevention, partnership and policy, and highlights the disjoint between the holistic understanding of the ngos on the ground and the “raid and rescue triumphalism” of donors of their us-based constituency. the section is completed with a portrayal of christian communities in new england, and especially in boston, as examples of how christian immigrants are “re-christianizing” the us and changing the face of evangelicalism by gifting it with renewed concern for the poor, and a focus on the relational dimension of the gospel, communal prayer and holistic indigeneity. “reverse mission” is, in some cases, the fruit of intentional “missionizing” on the part of global christians and, in many others, a natural result of the increasingly diverse ethnic make-up of the cities. swartz concludes that “faith moves in disorienting directions.” by portraying global and diverse evangelicals as agents rather than passive receptors he showcases a reversal of the assumed direction of mission from the rest to the west. the new subjects, he affirms, see the us as the new ends of the earth that must be reached with the good news. in addition to recommending this engaging book, as one of those many subjects from outside us evangelicalism, i propose one significant editorial change. one of the assumptions constitutive of christendom is that greater power naturally confers on its representatives the right to be heard and to shape the forms of religious observance, culture, and values of peoples with less power. swartz helpfully unearths stories of resistance and reverse-influence that push against that assumption. he does so by effectively centering the voices from outside what he terms “christian americanism.” in my estimation, his terminology is helpful in as far as it reflects the association between faith (christian) and nationalism (americanism) so a-critically assumed in christendom. as perceptive readers might have noted, in this review, however, i push terminology a step further. the term “american,” for many millions of people, alludes to all the inhabitants of north, central, and south america, ranging from alaska to the patagonia. since thorough resistance to colonialism requires sensitivity to how language acknowledges or invisibilizes people, i propose that if future editions employed the rather clunky but more respectfully humble term “christian us-americanism,” the post-colonial turn which underlies schwartz’ work would be yet more powerfully effected. it is my hope that this bird’s eye view of facing west… will have piqued readers’ curiosity enough for them to pick up the book and allow themselves the opportunity to revise their positions if these included the commonly held assumption that christian mission and influence moves exclusively from greater to lesser power. yet better, they might choose to humbly recognize that their categories to explain faith and its outworking in the world are anything but universal and to re-consider how they, personally and communally, might acknowledge and open space for the valuable contributions from corners of the world other than theirs. ruth padilla deborst is a theologian, missiologist, educator, and storyteller. she serves with resonate global mission, leading the comunidad de estudios teológicos interdisciplinarios (ceti), the international fellowship for mission as transformation, and leadership development initiatives of the christian reformed church. she has been involved in theological formation for integral mission in her native latin america and beyond for several decades. author email: rpadilladeborst@yahoo.com christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(2), winter 2010 i hoksbergen, editor’s introduction to the winter 2020 issue: a call for papers roland hoksbergen the editors of crda will continue to consider all contributions on the many and varied topics of interest to the christian rda community (relief, development, and advocacy), but there are two topics we encourage you to consider for the near future. first, the opening article in this issue tackles the question of how to be faithful in our practices of monitoring and evaluation (m&e). while a great start, the article only scratches the surface of what needs to become a mutually enriching conversation on how christian faith impacts our practices of m&e. many christians in the rda community are involved with m&e. the authors of this article and the editors of crda invite m&e practitioners and theorists to share their experiences and reflections. such topics as theological paradigms, objectives, indicators, methods, strategies, and case studies are all on the table. contributions on the topic may generally agree with the framework presented in the article, but that is not required. the overall goal is for us to learn from each other in a process that helps us be faithful to god in our efforts to serve our vulnerable neighbors and ultimately to honor, love, and serve god. if your organization is working with something innovative or especially helpful in m&e, please share it with the rest of us. second, in these early days of the journal, we’d like to hear from you on what you see as the leading edges in rda for christian research and reflection in coming years. put simply, what particular theories, topics, and/or issues should christian rda academics and practitioners be thinking about, researching, discussing, or commenting on? the general idea would be to 1) identify the issues you think christians should be addressing in the contemporary context, 2) explain why these need our attention, both in terms of what’s happening in the world (or in the rda professional community) and what christians are called to care about, and 3) give some sense of what christians might have to say about these issues and what new research we might engage. not meant to be an exhaustive list, here are some questions that come to mind: • how do christians approach rda differently than others, and how or why does that matter? • what rda theories need to be addressed or critiqued explicitly from a christian perspective? • what methods and practices in rda need to be evaluated from a christian perspective? • do christians need their own rda theories and practices? • to borrow a turn of phrase from dena freeman, does the world need christians doing development or should we be doing christian development? • what questions or issues have contemporary rda theories and practices not addressed as well as christians might be able to? • on what controversial issues or world trends have christian views, especially as they relate to rda, not been adequately shaped or voiced (e.g. race and ethnicity, gender, climate, citizenship, religious diversity, spirituality, global health, sexuality and family, immigration, urbanization, democracy, and many more) • what wisdom do christians have on what some have called “the development enterprise?” papers in this category, what we’ve been calling “mini white papers,” can be anywhere from 2000 to 6000 words. they can be submitted through normal online channels at the website. if you’d like to consult with the editor about your ideas, please send an email to roland hoksbergen at hoksro@calvin.edu. mailto:hoksro@calvin.edu christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(1), summer 2019 oladimeji, book review 59 book review you welcomed me: loving refugees and immigrants because god first loved us by kent annan reviewed by babatunde oladimeji downers grove, il: intervarsity press, 2018. $13.50 in this troubling and challenging book, kent annan explains that the united states has for many years granted legal residency to roughly one million immigrants a year, of which 75,000 have typically been refugees. now, however, the number of refugees accepted into the us has fallen to only 22,000 a year. meanwhile, small countries like turkey, pakistan, lebanon, iran, ethiopia, and jordan, have taken in between 650,000 and 2.5 million refugees (7). annan helps christians see how important this issue is and how we must respond to it in love and charity. beginning with a vivid and yet frequently ignored picture of the misery refugees and immigrants often face, annan points out that no one enjoys fleeing their homes and leaving their dreams behind. refugees flee their homes only because they face grave danger. in light of this reality, annan argues that we should welcome refugees and immigrants. he insists that, as children of abraham by faith, we have joined into the story in which, in a sense, we, too, are foreigners. we should therefore be sensitive to those who are displaced and must seek a new home. if we manage to see refugees as children of god who are in need, we must necessarily treat them with empathy and love. unfortunately, too often we do not treat refugees and immigrants the way god wants us to. annan explains that one key reason at the heart of our mistreatment of refugees and immigrants is the prejudice that leads us to think of others as less than human. such dehumanization begins when we absorb media characterizations that speak unkindly and unfairly about foreigners. these views often lead people to refer to others with derogatory slurs that go uncorrected. we then vote in elections in ways that make our vulnerable neighbors even more vulnerable. gradually, we no longer see immigrants and refugees as people made in the image of god (19). annan takes the position that christians must counter these pressures and recognize the personhood of refugees. such a stance leads us to take the time to empathize with their circumstances, and to follow that up by seeking tangible ways to connect with refugees and immigrants on a human level. such connections allow us to live into a new understanding of our neighbors. annan points out that people cross national borders to come to the united states, and he strongly believes that “when we move toward them, we have to cross our kinds of borders to genuinely welcome them” (28). one of annan’s important accomplishments is his discussion of the major concerns people raise when confronted with helping refugees and immigrants, like fears that they will take our jobs, dangers of higher crime and compromised security, undesirable changes to our cities and neighborhoods, and many more (30– 45). one after the other, annan debunks each point. he concludes by saying, “our hope is strong enough to overcome the fears and vulnerabilities” (43). in his words, “our challenge is to find the solidarity that we need by belonging to tribes in our communities, churches, and nations, while also welcoming others who have, as immigrants or refugees, been forced to flee their own tribes and are now disconnected” (34). knowing our own stories and becoming part of the stories of others help us become part of the magnificent story of god (60). annan encourages us to spend time with refugees and immigrants to listen to their stories. christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(1), summer 2019 oladimeji, book review 60 he concludes the book by offering practical suggestions on how christians can become more welcoming to refugees and immigrants, noting that, as we get to know and care for each other, we become partners with people whom once we didn’t trust, but with whom we now build trusting relationships. he is thus surely right in his assertion that our “philosophy should be to partner with people and not for them” (74). annan’s experiences and interactions with many churches that welcomed refugees are encouraging. he explores different organizations that reach out to refugees and immigrants, in the process presenting some great examples of welcome. you welcomed me is not perfect. for example, i question some of annan’s biblical interpretations, and he is occasionally guilty of proof texting, like when he cites galatians 3:28 and uses it to conclude that “there is no longer american or syrian, no longer documented or undocumented” (17). he also relies on the story of jesus’ flight to egypt to support a policy of open borders, a policy with which some readers who consider geo-political contexts of the biblical text may strongly disagree. annan argues passionately and appropriately for christians to love diversity, because the kingdom of god is diverse with people of every kind (35). yet he fails to address the issue of people who break immigration laws by crossing borders illegally or overstaying their visas. many among annan’s readers may actually welcome diversity, but they nevertheless worry about an influx of newcomers who may change their culture and cities and impact the future of their children. annan needs to address such concerns and make an effort to allay people’s fears and point the way to a hopeful future. i also find myself concerned when annan says, “we aren’t called to first defend our country’s border or honor, but to seek the kingdom of god” (39). it is not clear to whom he is referring. is he thinking of “we” as americans or as christians? clarity here is important, because annan seems at times to conflate the role of government with the role of the church. notwithstanding these shortcomings, the book has many strengths. one of its key contributions is the practical steps readers are encouraged to take so they can move beyond the cognitive/intellectual domain into affective and psychomotor domains. this involves feelings and actions that could help readers begin to put the truths and concepts into practice in their daily lives. annan provides an important, easy-to-read christian defense for welcoming immigrants and refugees. his style is free of theological and sociological jargon that often accompanies these themes. he nevertheless provides an instructive trinitarian view for dealing with strangers. if we see in the immigrant and the refugee another person and a fellow human in distress, we also realize we could be in the same position. through the mystery of the other, we meet the divine (16). you welcomed me will be an asset to a variety of audiences. within congregations it can be used for small group studies and more generally by pastors encouraging the faithful to engage in such issues. outside church walls, social workers presently involved with refugees and immigrants will find it useful, as will anyone working in relief, development, and advocacy. the challenge of how to respond to immigrants and refugees has become a global conversation, all the more because the rate of displacement of people continues to grow. you welcomed me provides an excellent lens through which to examine this challenge and envision a christian paradigm for engaging the problem. this is a very good and stimulating read. babatunde oladimeji is an anglican priest from nigeria and presently pastors with the united methodist church in nebraska. he holds multiple master’s degrees from nigeria as well as a dmin in leadership and a phd in intercultural studies, both from asbury theological seminary. he has been involved in pastoral leadership and community development for over 27 years. author email: tunde.oladimeji@asburyseminary.edu mailto:tunde.oladimeji@asburyseminary.edu christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 gross and paltzer, effects of a virtual … 85 effects of a virtual church-based wellness circle program in chile during covid-19 elise gross and jason paltzer the christian non-profit kingdom workers began a wellness circle program in linares, chile, two months before covid-19 restricted most in-person activities. this article describes why the program began, how it was intended to operate, and how the kingdom worker chile (kw chile) team adapted to continue the program virtually, while maintaining its core mission of partnering with christians to share the gospel message through a health and wellness support program. the forced adaptation of the wellness circles to a virtual format contributed to an increase in the number of program participants from the community as well as from neighboring cities and countries. there was also an increase in the number of volunteers who were able to offer additional supplementary activities. while the wellness circle program is new and small, it is a valued non-profit ministry and lessons can be learned from analyzing its experiences during the pandemic. overall, the positive effects of the program’s transition online have permanently altered its structure for the foreseeable future and kw chile plans to continue offering virtual wellness circles to involve volunteers and participants whose engagement is no longer hindered by travel, location, or time restraints. introduction the global covid-19 pandemic brought many faith-based non-profit organizations either to a standstill or to the realization that their planned activities had to be drastically modified in order to continue operating under new government and health guidelines. while community health holds the utmost importance, especially during a pandemic, the administration and delivery of health programs in communities became an additional threat as traditional methods often rely on inperson interactions that could further the spread of covid-19. as programs quickly confronted new realities, they were also faced with the degree to which changes should be implemented. small faith-based organizations operate on minimal field budgets with small local teams. decisions need to be made about making temporary quick fixes or permanent changes that would alter how programs operate. in a situation like the covid-19 pandemic, field teams had to decide how to move forward with supporting existing health programs within an altered context. kingdom workers is categorized as a smallto medium-sized faith-based organization. often, the experiences of such organizations are not represented in the dialogue of evidence-based strategies including those needed to respond to covid-19. the purpose of this article is to share the experience of a local field team and the lessons learned transitioning from a traditional face-to-face wellness circle program to a virtual format, while maintaining a focus on authentic communication around faith and health. it is important to understand the situation and available resources of small faith-based organizations and the opportunities they have in being flexible and responsive to environmental changes and emergencies. background the chilean ministry of social and family development revealed in 2017 that 75% of adults and 51.58% of children in chile are obese and that 66.2% of the population is inactive (ministry of health 2017). chile is sixth among countries in the organization for economic cooperation and development (oecd) in the prevalence of diabetes in south america (galaz 2017). according to the international diabetes foundation (malanda et al. 2019), 9.8% of chile’s adult population were diagnosed with diabetes. this does not include the number undiagnosed and those with prediabetes. based on a community assessment survey conducted by kw chile in 2019, people are generally aware of the risk of obesity and diabetes and value preventive care strategies, but do not apply the strategies christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 gross and paltzer, effects of a virtual … 86 to their everyday lives. there is an overall high level of stress given the 44-hour work week, low wages, and transportation challenges that lead to even longer workdays with uncertain pay for those with contract work. this influences the eating and exercise habits of many chileans. in addition, the culture of the maule region where the wellness circle program is located places a high value on food and the sharing of traditional food such as many types of bread. eating what is provided is a sign of respect and trust. these habits and conditions lead many to believe that they do not have control over their health. the chilean government recognizes obesity and diabetes as nation-wide problems and has put into effect health campaigns in schools and in food packaging industries; unfortunately, chilean individuals and families do not have easy access to general education regarding preventive care or support in making healthy habits a reality. community health experts and christian volunteer coaches of wellness circles can be a source of support and strength for those who desire or need a healthier life. program description the mission of kingdom workers is to advance the gospel by partnering with local churches and their communities to discover and overcome their greatest obstacles together. kingdom workers believes that god’s love is holistic, impacting a person’s life here and now, physically and spiritually, and that true and lasting healing is the result of gospel testimony interwoven with human care. every kingdom workers program is founded on the following three principles: meaningful local relationships, christian welfare, and gospel proclamation. a team composed of kw representatives, lutheran church members, and community members completed a formal community assessment in linares in 2019 resulting in the creation of kw chile and the wellness circle program. this program centers on partnering with community leaders to coach small groups of people to achieve habit-change in nutrition and fitness in order to prevent chronic diseases such as obesity and diabetes. the theory of change utilized in the program is based on a social ecological model of change that focuses on the individual, family, and community supports such as the local church and healthcare experts (bronfenbrenner 1994). the goal is to address issues related to social, family, and spiritual health because these domains are influential to the motivation not only to change behaviors around healthy eating and exercise but also to sustain those behaviors. in addition, the wellness circle program integrates biblical insights into every session, providing the motivation for behavior change based on jesus’ love for his children and their desire to be good stewards of his blessings for them and their families. individuals with a good faith-based support system in place can navigate prioritizing healthy preventive habits to counter negative behaviors (grim & grim 2019; vanderweele 2017). sharing jesus’ love and redemption is at the center of every interaction at kw chile. figure 1 displays the structure of the program from kw chile program staff, the local church and community partners, to individual wellness circles. kw chile organizes volunteers from the local church and community to create a space for smaller wellness circles. the wellness circles are groups of individuals who agree to grow in their health and faith while holding each other accountable to small incremental behavioral change goals. figure 1: kw chile wellness circle structure the wellness circle program includes three areas, including preventive care community workshops, wellness circles, and volunteer coach training. preventive care community workshops are led by local professional doctors, nurses, nutritionists, and counselors who share evidence-based preventive care strategies. these community workshops and seminars intend to close the health literacy gap in linares and feed into opportunities for participants to join faithbased peer wellness circles based on geography, life phase, age, and gender. wellness circles provide a space for participants to be a part of a trusted community that shares best practices, provides accountability, positive social pressure, and ongoing support. wellness circles meet regularly in forms that best suit their members – in homes, kw offices, coffee shops, workspaces – and members stay in touch regularly through their team whatsapp group. each wellness circle is led by a christian volunteer (coach) who is a source of support and strength for individuals and families in their circle who are facing stressors that impact their health. in wellness circle sessions, coaches elicit behavior change conversation addressing barriers related to social pressure, culture, personal behaviors and beliefs, and the environment. faith and the role of jesus in the lives of the participants is integrated through kw chile local church wellness circle wellness circle community partners wellness circle christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 gross and paltzer, effects of a virtual … 87 the coaches in a way that emphasizes the god of grace in everyday living. kw chile trains and assists christian volunteer coaches to establish wellness circles by carrying out the following steps: 1. increasing the awareness of the issue in the community through free, community-based health workshops. 2. connecting interested volunteers with the kw chile wellness circle coordinator who… a. collaborates with community health experts using participatory strategies to create curricula. b. trains volunteer coaches in facilitating small group discussions and behavior change theory. c. provides ongoing support to volunteer coaches through seminars and additional training. figure 2 shows the structure of the model following a socio-ecological framework. each level incorporates individuals respective of their society: 1) christian volunteers from the local church and community; 2) individuals and families who desire knowledge and support in combating obesity and diabetes; 3) community health experts. the diagram also demonstrates that trained volunteer coaches are the foundation of the program, because they are the ones who found and lead wellness circles. preventive care workshops are supplementary resources that serve the community and allow kw chile to invite members of the community to join wellness circles. figure 2: kw chile wellness circle program structure program structure the pilot wellness circle began in the city of linares in january 2020. the pilot was projected to last 18 weeks, with the participants meeting weekly, either in-person or through whatsapp communications. the circle was intentionally kept small since the ideal size for a wellness circle is between six-to-ten people in order to foster trust and authentic communication amongst its members. participants were encouraged to attend monthly preventive care community workshops hosted by kw chile. the main objectives of the pilot group were to: 1. receive feedback on the wellness circle curriculum. 2. gather data to determine participant growth in developing and implementing healthy habits to their everyday lives. 3. encourage and recruit several participants to become volunteer coaches. the pilot wellness circle operated as planned for 1.5 months with an initial group of ten individuals. in early march, however, covid-19 came to chile and drastically altered the way of life. since then and until the present-day (december 2020), schools have remained closed. the country remains under state of emergency which includes nation-wide laws obligating all residents to wear masks in public areas and to respect curfew and gathering restrictions. depending on statistics, communities fluctuate between lock-down quarantine and reentry protocols. socially, many chileans respect the covid-19 restrictions and follow self-imposed quarantine measures for as long as possible. the arrival of covid-19 to chile forced the pilot wellness circle to pivot. kw chile suspended its inperson activities following the lead of other community health, education, and faith groups. while communication within the pilot group was still maintained through whatsapp, the team now had to figure out how to continue meeting together in a way that would continue to develop a supportive community and provide for authentic, faith-driven conversation. in addition, the program’s supplementary activities like group exercise opportunities, partnering with local health professionals, and community workshops could no longer take place as had been previously planned. of the initial ten individuals in the pilot group, four dropped out due to covid-19, scheduling conflicts, or a decision to not continue, resulting in a group of only six people completing the pilot program in the city of linares. adaptation strategy during the program planning, the kw chile team had never considered online elements as a part of the program apart from an informative social media presence. chileans in the region where linares is located greatly value relationships and quality time spent face-to-face. because of this, all program activities were planned to be held in-person. yet,covid-19 ushered in a unique opportunity when chileans continued to desire face-to-face time, but were physically restricted. while previously technology might have been viewed as a cold or unreal way to 3. preventive care workshops 2. wellness circles 1. volunteer coach training •community health experts •individuals/families who desire knowledge and support in combating obesity and diabetes •christian volunteers from the local church •christian volunteers from the community christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 gross and paltzer, effects of a virtual … 88 gather in community, it suddenly became a blessing sought by many. most chileans in linares have access to a web accessible cell phone or to a computer in their homes. within a week, the kw chile team decided to transition the pilot group to a virtual zoom platform. initially, the team used the free version of zoom. with many phone calls, practices, and initial delays in starting due to participants learning the login process with audio and video, everyone finally got online for the first virtual session. while not all the planned content was delivered, participants were thrilled to see each other and to pray together as the unknowns of covid-19 were heavy. after a couple sessions, participants were comfortable with the platform and were especially thankful to be able to continue meeting from the safety of their own homes. in fact, the most common comment written on each session’s exit survey was “we need to meet more!” zoom suddenly made the idea of additional gatherings feasible in everyone’s schedules. as the weeks of restrictions continued, kw chile bought a professional zoom account and began to realize other opportunities that the platform brought. the team began meeting again with local healthcare professionals, collaborating, or presenting on the program and completing interviews through zoom. a fitness instructor from santiago, 3.5 hours away from linares, began volunteering with the program by leading modified workouts through zoom for interested wellness circle participants. in addition to zoom, the program’s facebook page became essential. community healthcare partners volunteered to create short preventive care videos. the videos not only increased the online audience, but also the number of potential community partnerships. a health clinic in a neighboring city reached out desiring to learn more about the program in order implement a wellness circle in their area. a restaurant with healthy food delivery options shared recipes and cooking tips through kw chile. additional healthcare professionals contacted kw chile to see how they could volunteer. facebook is widely accessible and easy to stream. because of this, in-person community workshops became facebook live sessions. together with healthcare professionals, staff members crafted sessions that pushed audience members to interact with the messages being shared. as adaptations ushered in more opportunities, kw chile remained focused on maintaining their mission of building meaningful local relationships, proclaiming the gospel, and serving the needs of the community related to preventive care. partnering with the local church and christians remained of primary importance. those who expressed the desire to become coaches were asked to experience a wellness circle first to ensure their commitment to the program’s ministry and values. when enrollment opened for the next round of wellness circles, there were 30 spaces that filled quickly since there were three trained christian coaches and each group was capped at ten members. results and discussion the positive impact of many of the virtual modifications that were made during the pilot wellness circle was quickly noticed by the kw chile team as well as by the participants. while changes had been made from necessity and a desire for the program to simply survive the covid-19 climate, they fostered greater interest in the program and opportunities for expansion. by july, the team had completely restructured the original model of the wellness circle to permanently include many virtual features recently adapted. kw chile is a new and small non-profit program that mobilizes believers to serve their neighbors in their own communities. while the pilot wellness circle was small, it is of value not only to kingdom workers but to other small-to-medium christian non-profit organizations that operate under similar circumstances of limited staffing, technology, and budgets. while the information from the pilot group is tentative and in need of confirmation over extended time, it is still beneficial in that it provides directional insights that allow for improvement in future programming. in addition, sharing the experiences of kw chile could potentially foster discussions on best practices and adaptations during covid-19 amongst smaller christian non-profit ministries. an initial look at the impact of the first wellness circle showed overall positive movement and growth. kw chile observed positive movement on the following key outcomes: 1. participants became more comfortable sharing their faith with others. 2. participants reported eating more fruits and vegetables, especially those who previously ate 0-1 servings a day. 3. participants reported an increase in exercise, especially among those who previously exercised 020 minutes per week. 4. participants were more likely to believe that they have control over the health of their bodies after the support group than before it. throughout the program, and during the final celebratory gathering, participants were encouraged to share their opinions on the experience. one participant shared his joy in gathering with others regularly and his love of being encouraged by a christian community, “the more i am in the word, the more i want to live it and to share it.” another commented on her realization christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 gross and paltzer, effects of a virtual … 89 that her personal health often took the backburner in her life, “i have made improvements! i still have more to improve, but i know that i have grown and will continue to grow.” “there is no doubt that being a part of this initiative has helped me improve my wellness both physically and spiritually. i am thankful for each reflection in the word of god. i felt accompanied in the process, strengthened by god.” even those unable to complete the circle due to other obligations and meeting changes were supportive of the program, “thank you so much for allowing me to get to know you. the program seemed excellent to me even though i was not able to fully participate. i began positive changes in my eating habits, and i have continued them.” of the six participants who completed the pilot wellness circle, two officially trained with kw chile to become coaches and are now continuing their own wellness growth while encouraging others. the kw chile team saw drastic changes to their operations once moving online. growth in online activities encouraged growth in community engagement and knowledge of the program as seen through interactions on the program’s facebook page. whereas previously the team had to recruit volunteers and participants, now more people were seeking information about kingdom workers themselves. upon posting a volunteer job application online for a nutritionist, the program received twelve applications from all over chile. a psychologist contacted the program, desiring to know how she could be a part of it. by far, the greatest impact of moving online has been the accessibility to the program. people tuned into the community healthcare workshops from all over chile. as of december 2020, one online workshop has 8,100 partial or complete views and approximately twenty-five individuals actively participated in each of the four online workshops. upon opening the registration for the next round of wellness circles, the program received applicants from cities throughout chile as well as applicants from countries where the program has sister churches in colombia and the dominican republic. by simply moving the program online, interest grew, volunteer and participant interest grew, and the potential scope of the program grew as well. limitations the online adaption has several limitations. first, some elderly community members have expressed interest in participating in wellness circles, but they would prefer to do it in-person to feel more comfortable. second, internet complications cause some participants to drop out of wellness circles especially during periods of quarantine when more people are at home and online causing the internet to be slow or to fail regularly. third, coaches must be able easily to navigate technology and learn how to facilitate sessions and build relationships virtually. conclusion experiencing the pilot wellness circle during a global pandemic forced kw chile to make immediate changes to the program. while the intent of the program did not change, the implementation and some of the supporting activities and content did. the following are the key takeaways and subsequent next steps: 1. small wellness circles led by christian coaches allow for the gospel to be proclaimed not only by coaches, but also by participants, some of whom go on to serve as coaches themselves. circles will continue to be small and led by volunteers who are passionate about the kw chile ministry of gospel proclamation and loving one’s neighbors. 2. certain online elements will remain a permanent part of the program. a. supplementary activities like fitness accountability groups. b. facebook live sound bites featuring wellness habits with community healthcare experts. 3. wellness circles will now meet weekly to encourage more accountability and subsequent habit growth. kw chile program staff will facilitate bi-weekly zoom theory sessions where numerous wellness circle groups will gather to learn together. in the weeks in between, kw volunteer coaches will meet with their individual wellness circles either virtually or in-person for practice sessions focused on building community and accountability. 4. a completely virtual option for distant participants with the hopes of developing coaches and circles in other areas and countries will be implemented. coaches can continue to be trained and supported by kw chile through zoom. the impact of forced changes to the wellness circle program brought on by covid-19 introduced many new opportunities that improved the program’s effectiveness and taught the kw chile team some valuable lessons. regardless of the continued instability of covid-19, the program has continued and now provides more benefits to participants and volunteers than was originally hoped. christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 gross and paltzer, effects of a virtual … 90 references bronfenbrenner, u. 1994. “ecological models of human development.” international encyclopedia of education, vol. 3, 2 nd ed. oxford: elsevier. reprinted in: gauvain, m. & cole, m. (eds.), reading on the development of children, 2 nd ed. (1993, pp. 37-43). ny: freeman. galaz, oscar. 2017. “chile is the 6 th country with the highest prevalence of diabetes in oecd.” university of san sebastian institute of public policy and health. accessed on 14 th september 2020. http://www.ipsuss.cl/ipsuss/analisis-yestudios/financiamiento/chile-el-6-pais-con-mayorprevalencia-de-diabetes-de-la-ocde/2017-1201/153048.html. grim, b.j. & grim, m.e. 2019. “belief, behavior, and belonging: how faith is indispensable in preventing and recovering from substance abuse.” journal of religion and health, published online 29 july 2019. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-019-00876-w. malanda, b., karuranga, s., pouya, s., & salpea, p. 2019. “idf diabetes atlas, 9th ed. 2019.” international diabetes foundation. accessed on 14th september 2020: https://www.diabetesatlas.org/upload/resources/2019/i df_atlas_9th_edition_2019.pdf. ministry of health government of chile. 2017. “national diabetes day.” last modified november 14 th . accessed on 14 th of september 2020. https://www.minsal.cl/dia-mundial-de-la-diabetes/. ministry of health government of chile. 2017. “national health survey results 2016-2017.” last modified november. accessed on 14 th september 2020. https://www.minsal.cl/wpcontent/uploads/2017/11/ens-201617_primeros-resultados.pdf. vanderweele, t. 2017. “religious communities and human flourishing.” current directions in psychological science, 26(5):476-481. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721417721526. elise gross author email: egross@kingdomworkers.com jason paltzer author email: jason_paltzer@baylor.edu http://www.ipsuss.cl/ipsuss/analisis-y-estudios/financiamiento/chile-el-6-pais-con-mayor-prevalencia-de-diabetes-de-la-ocde/2017-12-01/153048.html http://www.ipsuss.cl/ipsuss/analisis-y-estudios/financiamiento/chile-el-6-pais-con-mayor-prevalencia-de-diabetes-de-la-ocde/2017-12-01/153048.html http://www.ipsuss.cl/ipsuss/analisis-y-estudios/financiamiento/chile-el-6-pais-con-mayor-prevalencia-de-diabetes-de-la-ocde/2017-12-01/153048.html http://www.ipsuss.cl/ipsuss/analisis-y-estudios/financiamiento/chile-el-6-pais-con-mayor-prevalencia-de-diabetes-de-la-ocde/2017-12-01/153048.html https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-019-00876-w https://www.diabetesatlas.org/upload/resources/2019/idf_atlas_9th_edition_2019.pdf https://www.diabetesatlas.org/upload/resources/2019/idf_atlas_9th_edition_2019.pdf https://www.minsal.cl/dia-mundial-de-la-diabetes/ https://www.minsal.cl/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/ens-2016-17_primeros-resultados.pdf https://www.minsal.cl/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/ens-2016-17_primeros-resultados.pdf https://www.minsal.cl/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/ens-2016-17_primeros-resultados.pdf https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721417721526 mailto:egross@kingdomworkers.com mailto:jason_paltzer@baylor.edu christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(2), winter 2020 109 bloem, book review book review shrewd samaritan: faith, economics, and the road to loving our global neighbor by bruce wydick reviewed by jeffrey r. bloem nashville: w. publishing group, thomas nelson, 2019. $26.99 being a shrewd samaritan means living in the tension of a paradox. on the one hand, we are called to be compassionate, as highlighted in the parable of the good samaritan in luke 10:25-37. on the other hand, we are called to be responsible managers of material resources, as suggested in the parable of the shrewd manager just a few chapters later in luke 16:1-9. what does it mean to live out this paradox as christians who aim to serve and love our global neighbors? this is the question at the core of bruce wydick’s latest book. the first two chapters of the book introduce the concept of a “shrewd samaritan.” the first describes shrewd samaritans as people who “are motivated by feelings of compassion and a yearning for justice, but their actions are guided by careful reflection that is centered on the well-being of the other” (16). the second chapter introduces six stages on the “road” to loving our global neighbors as people in progress from ignorance about global poverty to effective service. the six stages, or “six i’s,” are (1) ignorance, being unaware of the needs of our neighbors, (2) indifference, becoming aware but not responding in any way, (3) idealism, responding to needs in ways that obscure complexities, (4) investigation, humbly reflecting on assumptions and actions, (5) introspection, learning from inevitable mistakes, and (6) impact, making a meaningful and cost effective difference in the lives of our neighbors. although the title of the book suggests this is a “road,” in practice, movement between each of these stages can be fluid and non-linear—for example, by repeatedly responding to idealism with investigation, introspection, and efforts to achieve impact. the second part of the book presents a sort of crash-course in understanding the causes and consequences of poverty, in both lowand high-income countries. these three chapters cover topics such as the role of geography, culture, and institutions in causing poverty, distinguishing between inequality and poverty, and discussing various factors that can lead to the presence of poverty traps. this part of the book could be well used in an introductory undergraduate course in international development studies. the third part of the book summarizes the latest research on the effectiveness of various popular international development interventions. for development practitioners, this is perhaps one of the most helpful contributions of the book. wydick distills technical jargon and econometrics, and presents the most credible empirical findings in a clear and engaging way. wydick’s review of the latest evidence might be controversial—out of a five-star ranking system, microcredit gets two stars, business training programs get three, and early childhood education and health initiatives get four—but the discussion is supported by some of the best research in development economics. the referenced research could contribute to a wonderful syllabus for an advanced undergraduate or graduate development studies course. the final part of the book lays out a framework for becoming a shrewd samaritan. the discussion in this section could pair well with roland hoksbergen’s book serving god globally: finding your place in international development (2012), as they both express the need for a diverse group of people with a diverse set of skills to effectively serve and love our global neighbors. wydick defines six different roles, in no christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(2), winter 2020 110 bloem, book review particular order: investigator, giver, advocate, creator, director, and practitioner. none of these roles is mutually exclusive, of course, but describing the work and responsibilities of each is a helpful reminder that it is not only through our jobs that we can love and serve others. we each have gifts and are most effective when we work together. the concluding chapter, entitled “the seventh i,” presents the crucial last step in becoming a shrewd samaritan. the first six i’s, beginning with ignorance and ending with impact, could be quite indistinguishable from a secular model of effective and evidence-based international development. in fact, the core tenets of the so-called effective altruism movement—championed by avowed atheist peter singer (singer 2016)—seem to align well with the first six i’s of the shrewd samaritan. effective altruism can be characterized as an unsentimental view of charitable giving, seeking to maximize social benefits in the most cost-effective ways. the seventh step, identification, diverges from effective altruism and, in some cases, runs in the opposite direction. this final step occurs when we shift from a perspective of sympathy to one of empathy when engaging with our global neighbors. this break from a philosophy that could be characterized as effective altruism is, in my view, the core contribution of the book. it sets the book apart from what already exists and defines the parameters that drive the tension of being a shrewd samaritan. for the christian development community, the book calls us to be appreciative of the work of researchers in elite research universities and institutions. for the secular development community, the book calls for increased appreciation for the role of relationships that support the god-given dignity of all people, no matter their country of origin, socio-economic status, or academic pedigree. for investigators, being a shrewd samaritan may lead to intentionally praying for the individuals and families represented in the data files stored on my computer. although i may never meet many of the individuals who make up the data points, they are more than dots on a plot or cells in a spreadsheet. they are children of god, created in his image. for a giver, being a shrewd samaritan could mean partnering with an organization. wydick has done research on compassion international and offers it as one example. this partnership could aim at both making a meaningful impact (see wydick, glewwe, and rutledge 2013) and building relationships through letter writing and perhaps even traveling to spend time together. for an advocate, creator, director, or practitioner, being a shrewd samaritan may imply spending time reading the best research about what works and what doesn’t work in improving outcomes of interest. it may even encourage the investment of resources into evaluating the effectiveness of a specific organizational approach to addressing a given development outcome. there are many cases where impact and identification work well together, but these concepts can also conflict with each other. if the book does have a weakness it might be that it lacks practical advice about managing the implied trade-offs between impact and identification. when these principles conflict, how should a shrewd samaritan act? although specific answers to this question will almost certainly be contextdependent, this broad tension is at the heart of the book. the gospel calls christians not only to be aware of this tension, but to live it fully. this means christians should be motivated by feelings of compassion and longing for justice, but we also need to reflect on our actions, learn from mistakes, and support effective partnerships. said differently, “… to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with you god” (micah 6:8, emphasis added). this is the paradox of being a shrewd samaritan. references hoksbergen, roland. 2012. serving god globally: finding your place in international development. grand rapids, mi: baker academic. singer, peter. 2016. the most good you can do: how effective altruism is changing ideas about living ethically. new haven: yale university press. wydick, bruce, paul glewwe, and laine rutledge. 2013. “does international child sponsorship work? a six country study of impacts on adult life outcomes.” journal of political economy 121(2) 393-436. jeffrey r. bloem is a ph.d. candidate at the university of minnesota in the department of applied economics. as part of his research, jeff works with christian development organizations by supporting the evaluation of a variety of programs. author email: bloem.jeff@gmail.com mailto:bloem.jeff@gmail.com christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(1), summer 2020 moncivaiz, book review 29 book review call for justice: from practice to theory and back. by kurt ver beek and nicholas p. wolterstorff reviewed by benji moncivaiz eugene, oregon: cascade books, 2019. $26.00 in an exchange of letters between practitioner kurt ver beek, co-founder of the association for a more just society (asj), and philosopher nicholas p. wolterstorff, call for justice unpacks what it means to pursue justice by balancing examples of people doing justice work with the theoretical and theological frameworks that support it. the book primarily uses the work of asj in honduras as its case study. ver beek presents the work of asj, and wolterstorff comments on the philosophical and theological aspects of that work. overall, the book makes a case to build up government systems, rather than simply pointing fingers or addressing brief episodes of need. the book is divided into five sections. though the concept of power is not directly acknowledged by the authors, it is the fundamental issue explored in the opening section about the role of missionaries, government, politics, and corruption in asj’s work. the authors note that government is established as a gift from god to secure justice for its people. understanding the fundamental identity of government as being good, ver beek explains three distinct roles present in asj’s work with the honduran government: prophet, priest, and king. any christian organization that works closely with government needs to be carefully inspected, and the trio of roles helps readers appreciate the delicate, multi-faceted balance asj strikes. by leaning on powerful, data-driven research, asj mobilizes public pressure on the government by bringing injustices into the light, often critiquing the government’s policies and/or behaviors. asj then stands alongside relevant government institutions to address these critiques, making no distinction or discrimination among political parties. this dual role of auditor and assistant to whichever party is in power is a unique approach to justice work that makes asj’s model both confusing and special. asj helps the government perform its job better and create a stronger and more just honduras. unlike many christian ngos’ approaches to development that focus on specific sectors of need, like economic empowerment, agriculture, education, or health, this book, and asj itself, begins by focusing on the deeper issues in a country, like the uses and abuses of political power. the book moves on to consider the interaction between justice, love, and forgiveness. how can someone love their neighbor, one of our two greatest commandments, while at the same time demanding that people be punished for their wrongs, and simultaneously valuing the need for forgiveness? to walk us through this complex conundrum, wolterstorff helpfully explains the difference between first-order justice – when we are in ordinary right relations to each other – and second-order justice – when an action is taken to address a violation of first-order justice. he goes on to explore the various ways to understand punishment’s role within second-order justice – in retribution, reform, deterrence, protection, and as a public proclamation of what is right and wrong. coupled with ver beek’s follow up examples of when asj has simultaneously sought forgiveness and punishment, this discussion about justice and punishment helps readers better understand the relationship between punishment and forgiveness. the authors add that an emotional response is required for justice work. empathy toward the person wronged is the first emotion required, but this alone is insufficient. if we are to be stirred to action, empathy must be accompanied by anger. anger toward injustice is not only acceptable, but is actually as necessary as empathy. ver beek unpacks some of the nuances of these emotions and the role of forgiveness by sharing his own response to the murder of one of his friends and fellow christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(1), summer 2020 moncivaiz, book review 30 staff members, dionisio. in a book about justice, it makes sense to include the role of emotion, but it is also a topic about which i wish the authors had taken more time to answer a few more questions: for example, where in scripture do we see the necessity for, and limitations of, emotion? can god use someone to fight for justice even if they are not angry? the third section explores various theoretical pillars that support asj’s approach and its on-theground strategies. coalitions create credibility, strength, and a larger voice for diverse stakeholders who are then unified under a common goal. wolterstorff argues that understanding justice through the lens and language of “rights” enables us to explain the aims of justice in more specific terms and explain why people become angry when they are linked with injustice. the section ends with an encouragement to maintain our vision of shalom – of peace and flourishing. the fourth section explores asj’s christian identity, the church, and its relationship to social justice. asj’s vision is rooted in bringing about god’s desire for shalom in the world. asj’s staff and programs model the values that jesus lived and taught. ver beek and wolterstorff take turns exploring why the pursuit of justice has been met with resistance in the church – reasons that stem from different translations of the greek word as “righteousness” rather than “justice,” the perception that justice is supplanted in the new testament by a different love and righteousness, and a conservative aversion to talking about people’s rights, which seem to have liberal connotations. for those wellversed in philosophy and theology, the discussion here might seem overly simplistic, but for me, not having such a foundation, i found these chapters illuminating, because i learned how the church should and can present a unified front in fighting for social justice. the final section discusses how the asj model applies elsewhere, outside of honduras. in some countries, a populism fueled by suspicion and resentment creates division between people and prevents a working relationship with government agencies. this challenges the asj model, which intends to strengthen and improve government bodies. the authors explain that while each context will demand modification of the model, one common feature in many countries is the likelihood of distrust in public institutions that leads to instability and weak systems of justice. it is thus possible generally to apply asj’s basic model of gathering good evidence, publicizing it, holding government accountable, and also walking alongside government institutions to help them implement change. the book ends with a final call to build up and improve public institutions, rather than limiting ourselves to criticizing and tearing them down. ver beek notes that government employees are influenced by their environment and the nudges they encounter every day; under certain conditions, many can be influenced to behave either ethically or corruptly. asj tries to create conditions that bring out the best in people. by so doing, it works to rebuild institutions to be healthier so that people have more reason to do the right thing, which ultimately leads to better government systems that are better able to care for everyone in the country. while most books focus on either theory or reallife practice, this book does both. the authors’ personal experiences with justice work, the breakdown of the asj model into its key parts, and integration of asj’s work into larger global concepts of justice, rights, and other global movements successfully make a way for the lessons learned at asj to be applied on the global stage and in christians’ personal lives. the simultaneous exploration of the theory and practice of justice is useful for readers who want to become better informed on the promotion of justice from a christian perspective. while the book’s treatment of complex topics of punishment, rights, populism, and social justice is focused on the particulars of asjs work in honduras, it nevertheless provides a general and helpful narrative that integrates these important christian themes into a powerful analysis, thus providing readers with encouragement and a sense of direction. benji moncivaiz coordinates the faith and public integrity network. he consults for new and growing christian nonprofits that work towards deeper discipleship of the church and widespread change in society. author email: benji@cardumenconsulting.com mailto:benji@cardumenconsulting.com christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(1), summer 2020 fyfe, liturgies of development: formation for working among the poor 13 liturgies of development: formation for working among the poor rosie fyfe mainstream discourses of international development are deeply rooted in secular ways of imagining the world, enclosed within an immanent frame. therefore, as christians engage in the development field, they will face tensions between the embedded secular assumptions of the field and their faith commitment. some theorists have sought to resolve this dissonance through articulating ideal christian models of development. in practice, however, christians who work in the field operate within the synergies and tensions emerging from these different underlying assumptions. christian development practitioners are at risk of becoming formed by the rituals and practices of the field and thus inculcated into secular ways of viewing their work. based on a practical theology approach, this article argues that christians should be formed for their work in development through participating in corporate worship and illustrates this by outlining how one expression of liturgical worship can be formational for christian development practitioners. in his book walking with the poor, bryant myers argues that christians working in the field of international development are at risk of becoming “functional atheists” in their work (myers 2014, 222). the reason for this is that mainstream development discourses are rooted in a secular understanding of the world, where humanity is assumed to be enclosed within the material world without reference to the divine. as christians engage in the field of development, they are in danger of adopting these secular assumptions, or at least encountering a fraught tension between their work and their faith. the goal of this paper is to articulate a practical theology for christian development practitioners. i do not attempt to conceptualize a singular christian approach to international development that can be directly compared to secular approaches. rather, i argue that christian development work takes places within the synergies and tensions emerging from these differences. as christians engage in the field of development, they can become formed by its rituals and practices, and inculcated into secular ways of viewing their work. i describe these practices as “developmentalist liturgies,” and argue that christian development practitioners should resist this formation by making explicit the secular assumptions underlying these practices. additionally, christians are called to see their participation in regular corporate worship as forming them to work as development practitioners in a way that is aligned with their faith. tensions experienced by christian development practitioners i personally experienced tensions between the assumptions of the development field and christian faith when writing funding proposals for church-based development projects in the middle east. in order to be successful in fundraising, project proposals must be targeted to meet the priorities of the donor organizations. therefore, for the same project i would write multiple versions to ensure that the proposal matched the ethos and criteria of each funding organization. for example, one funding proposal i wrote for the construction of a new clinic at a christian hospital emphasized the quality and accessibility of medical care. a separate proposal written for a christian organization was framed in a different way, with an emphasis both on the medical care and the christian witness to the patients at the hospital. while both proposals accurately reflected the hospital’s ethos and practice, the act of creating different proposals exemplifies the sense of dissonance christian practitioners may encounter as they engage in development work. this requirement to be fluent in the languages of secular development and one’s own faith tradition can feel at times to border on a kind of cultural schizophrenia. tensions also surfaced for me in a subsequent decision about post-graduate study. my motivation for pursuing study was to be equipped for future roles in development, and i was presented with the choice between studying either international development or christian theology. because i felt drawn to continue christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(1), summer 2020 fyfe, liturgies of development: formation for working among the poor 14 working at a grassroots level, rather than roles designing development projects from a distant office, i chose to study theology at a residential seminary. studying theology seemed to offer a better opportunity to address the deeper questions i had around poverty and suffering, and i hoped the spiritual formation would equip me to work in challenging places without feeling overwhelmed or experiencing burn-out. as soon as i started studying, however, i experienced doubts about this choice. at times, western academic theology felt distant and abstracted from the contexts i had been working in. conversely, i felt sure that if i had studied international development, i would have felt frustrated with the secular assumptions of the field and the lack of engagement with the theological questions i wanted to address. i explored this tension through writing a thesis using the lens of practical theology (swinton and mowat 2016). this paper builds on that initial work, which reflects on how theology both affirms and subverts mainstream development discourses and how christians can seek to faithfully engage in the field (fyfe 2018). assumptions of mainstream development discourses the field of international development is so comprehensive that it may be constitutive of a social imaginary (taylor 2007, 171-172). development has become a lens through which societies and individuals have come to define themselves and others. while development is often imagined to be a neutral moral good, the discourses of the field carry within them implicit assumptions about human flourishing, and the telos, or better future, that development activities seek to achieve. for example, while some discourses focus on increasing overall gdp or meeting individual’s basic needs, recent approaches emphasize increasing people’s freedom and capacity to choose. development discourses also carry within them assumptions about the pathways to a better future. in theological terms, these questions relate to eschatology: what is our final hope and how do we get there? in what or whom do we place our trust? the assumptions of mainstream development discourses are consonant with the inventive notion of the secular. in his book a secular age, charles taylor defines a particular usage of the term secular to describe this current period in the west in which the conditions of belief have changed (taylor 2007). religious belief is now one of many options and is therefore both contestable and contested (berger 1980). this context 1 smith argues that liturgies, whether “sacred” or “secular” shape and constitute our identities by forming our most fundamental desires and our most basic attunement to the world. he defines liturgies as “rituals of ultimate concern: makes exclusive humanism possible, a social imaginary that accounts for meaning and significance without any appeal to the divine. development discourses are secular in this sense; they inhabit an immanent frame that limits the scope of reality to the material world closed to the possibility of transcendence. this social imaginary profoundly impacts the way that humans are viewed: the self is seen as contained to the natural order and closed off to the transcendent. the telos towards which development discourses are therefore oriented is limited within an immanent frame, and humans are consequently viewed as only material beings with no reference to the transcendent. furthermore, development discourses carry within them a secularized eschatology; they hold an implicit belief in the ability of human agency to end global poverty (anderson 1999, 110). this social construction of the immanent frame contrasts with a biblical view of the world and the role of humanity. the world described in scripture is enchanted; there is a porous boundary between the spiritual and material (taylor 2007). the better future, or telos, revealed in scripture is the kingdom of god. rather than defining our own telos, humanity receives a telos from outside of ourselves, a better future that ultimately comes about through god’s agency. although we have a mandate to bring about signs of god’s kingdom on earth, it is god who ushers in his kingdom when jesus christ returns to earth. thus, the implicit telos within predominant ideologies of international development run counter to the teleological orientation given in scripture. an implication of this is that christians working in the field of international development can become inculcated into secular ways of imaging the world; catechized into an understanding of the world and the role of humanity therein, which runs counter to the reality of the kingdom of god. shaped by developmentalist liturgies one means by which development practitioners can come to adopt the secular assumptions of mainstream discourses is through participating in the liturgies of development practices. liturgies are rituals and practices that shape and form us. all liturgy, whether sacred or secular, is identity forming (harrison warren 2019, 28–29). as congregants gather for sunday worship, they are shaped and formed according the telos of god’s kingdom. liturgies can also form us for a telos antithetical to the kingdom of god, which james k. a. smith labels as “secular liturgies” (2009). 1 christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(1), summer 2020 fyfe, liturgies of development: formation for working among the poor 15 smith argues that humans are essentially teleological creatures, formed and shaped by their vision of the good life. each person carries a vision of what human flourishing looks like, and one’s actions and decisions flow out of this: “we begin to live into this vision of the good life and start to look like the citizens who inhabit the world that we picture” (smith 2009, 54). smith maintains that people’s affective desires influence their actions more than cognitive thought; “we are what we love,” he says (smith 2009, 40). therefore, people are formed by their visions of the good life, and the kingdoms that they desire, more than they are by ideas or theories (schmemann 1963, 15). 2 people’s visions of the good life are profoundly shaped by the liturgies, the everyday rituals and practices, which they participate in. the liturgies of many mainstream development practices, which i refer to as “developmentalist liturgies,” fit into smith’s category of secular liturgies. they are rooted within secular ways of imagining the world, and with a telos other than the kingdom of god. when christian practitioners engage in developmentalist liturgies they are at risk of adopting the teleological orientation and the view of humanity implicit within them. they can be influenced to see the world as limited within an immanent frame and forget the porous boundary between the natural and supernatural world. christian development organizations, or christians working within secular organizations, cannot avoid participating in these practices. one christian ngo leader claims that “to gain credibility, legitimacy, or funding in the secular development world, faith based organizations must operate in a way that is consistent with its secular discourse” (mitchell 2017, 5). 3 an example of a developmentalist liturgy, described in the introduction, is the act of writing funding proposals to meet particular sets of criteria. if these criteria are embedded in secular ways of imagining the world, then writing proposals can inculcate development practitioners with visions of human flourishing limited within an immanent frame. engaging in development work can lead practitioners to assume that human agency can ultimately solve the problem of poverty. this can be contrasted with the rituals that are formative for identity, that inculcate particular visions of the good life, and do so in a way that means to trump other ritual formations.” 2 schmemann similarly argues that homo sapiens are “first of all, homo adorans,” that is primarily humanity was created to worship. 3 mitchell describes the purpose of reporting as merely “to report quantifiable results in industry approved language,” and argues that the “result is a mechanistic and perfunctory exercise that has the effect of excluding any deeper consideration of the interplay between religious beliefs and development practice or outcomes.” 4 logical framework analysis (logframe) is a measurement tool which sets out program activities, short term outputs, medium term outcomes, and long-term goals in a table. the goal is to show the logic of how the activities will lead to the outputs, which in turn lead to the outcomes, and ultimately the long-term goals. transcendent eschatology described in scripture, where ultimately poverty and suffering will cease when god ushers in his kingdom and the effects of sin and death are finally ended. another example of a developmentalist liturgy are the tools used to assess the effectiveness of development projects. reporting becomes a way of defining what development is, and invariably excludes any spiritual impacts (mitchell 2017, 5). additionally, while tools such as logframes 4 are effective in measuring if projects have met their predefined outcomes and outputs, they can be used in an overly mechanistic way. for example, if they are used as the sole arbiter of whether or not projects are successful, particularly in the absence of relationships between donor organizations and project implementers, these tools fail to describe the full picture. abstracted metrics cannot convey the complexity of implementing projects. for example, for a project i worked on in ethiopia, the western donor organization outsourced the evaluation process to a third party in the united states which had no relationship to those implementing the project. while this process was designed to ensure neutrality, the results did not adequately consider the complexities on the ground, which included ethnic violence, the influx of refugees and shortages of materials. such a reductionist approach, which places sole value on measurement tools, stands in contrast to normative assumptions about giving and the nature of the church found in scripture. the apostle paul describes the church as the body of christ, united in the holy spirit. this unity of belonging means that if one part of the body suffers then all suffer (1 cor 12: 26). christian partnership is deeper than donor/donee relationships governed by measurable goals and indicators but rooted in our shared identity that we are part of the same body. this does not exclude the use of measurement tools, but for christians they should be used in the context of partnerships rooted in a familial unity under the headship of christ. i have argued that christian practitioners working within international development systems and organizations are at risk of being shaped by the secular liturgies of the field. the augustinian distinction of the christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(1), summer 2020 fyfe, liturgies of development: formation for working among the poor 16 earthly city and the heavenly city, based on new testament writings, provides a helpful framework for christian development practitioners who want to live out their faith in their work. 5 while christians live their earthly lives in what is known as “the saeculum,” the time between the fall and the coming kingdom in which the church and the world live intermingled together, they live as resident aliens. they reside in the earthly city, but live out their citizenship of the heavenly city (smith 2017). this means that even while engaging in international development practices, christians should resist being shaped by the secular assumptions of the field. they should live with a posture of hope; not a futile hope formed from within humanity, but a hope in god’s kingdom. one way of resisting the formational influence of cultural liturgies is to make explicit the secular visions of human flourishing embedded in the practices of the field. alongside resistance and critique, christians are called to participate in corporate worship and be formed for all their life and work in the world (schmemann 1963, 11-17). 6 the following section describes how church liturgies form christian development practitioners and compares these with assumptions embedded within developmentalist liturgies. christian liturgy: for the life of the world christian worship is an act of allegiance that forms citizens of the kingdom of god to live their lives in obedience to the one true king. christian worship is an act of defiance to the spirit of this age, as christians instead focus their worship and hope on the spirit who is ageless (iddings bell 1944). instead of seeking kingdoms created by human hands and imagined within the human mind, christian worship orients people toward the kingdom of god. participating in liturgy shapes identity. liturgies used in sunday worship at churches shape worshippers into alternative social imaginaries, based on the assumptions of scripture (smith 2009, 134). the worship enacted by christians on a weekly basis shapes the lens through which all the world is seen. all church worship is liturgical, regardless of whether formal written liturgy is used. the underlying question is what kind of people is the liturgy forming us to be (harrison warren 2019, 30). this section suggests how the liturgy of sunday worship forms christians working in the field of 5 for example, philippians 3:20; hebrews 12:22-24. 6 in this seminal work, orthodox theologian alexander schmemann highlights that christians are in danger of either becoming ‘spiritualists,’ where the spiritual life is place as solely important, or ‘activists’ who focus on social action. he highlights the importance of liturgy in forming christians for their life in the world. 7 ekklēsia is the greek work translated as “church” in most english translations of scripture. international development, and counteracts the formative power of secular liturgies (the episcopal church 1979). this is based on my own tradition within the anglican church, specifically i examine the liturgy of the holy eucharist from the 1979 book of common prayer, according to the use of the episcopal church of the usa. christian liturgy is enacted by the ekklēsia, the called-out ones: people who have been called out of the world in order to live according to a different telos shaped by scripture. 7 the congregation gathers together to become the body of christ, a transformed community engaged in the redemptive task of christ in the world. the purpose of gathering at church is to be shaped for the life of the world: to see the reality of the world more clearly, in the light of christ, and to be sent back into the world as witnesses to that light. the liturgy can be understood as a journey that brings those gathered into the life of the triune god. the destination of this journey is announced at the beginning of the service: “blessed be god: father, son and holy spirit. and blessed be his kingdom, now and for ever. amen” (the episcopal church 1979, 355). the church is the gathering of those to whom the destination of all life has been revealed, and who choose to re-orient their lives toward the kingdom of god. the kingdom is not a utopian vision derived from within humanity; it is a telos imparted by god and accepted by humanity as a gift. for those working in international development, this declaration signifies an acceptance of the kingdom of god as the master discourse that trumps the teleological claims of all other ideologies. after declaring the telos of the kingdom, the congregation kneels in repentance, confessing individual and corporate failures to live in alignment with god’s kingdom. mainstream development discourses have an inadequate explanation of the human condition, as they do not recognize the power of sin. this results in an underestimation of the brokenness of the world, and an over-reliance on systems and techniques to bring about solutions. the confession is a reminder that even if the best possible system or program is implemented, the human condition remains broken and under the power of sin and death. therefore, confession of sin counters secular liturgies of self-reliance and human progress. through confession, there is an acknowledgement that the problem lies within the human heart, which is christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(1), summer 2020 fyfe, liturgies of development: formation for working among the poor 17 deceitful above all things (jer 17:9). the sin of the congregation is absolved through the declaration that all sins are forgiven “through our lord jesus christ” (the episcopal church 1979, 353. sin is met by grace, because jesus christ absorbed all of human brokenness in himself, and defeated the powers of sin and death. christ did not come to offer a program for a world gone wrong, but offered his own body as a sacrifice for sin, and his transformative presence to create new hearts. confession and absolution remind the congregation both of their own complicity in the brokenness of the world, and the promise of the transforming power of christ, given through the holy spirit. during the prayers of the people, the congregation intercedes for the church and for the whole world. through the act of prayer, god’s people acknowledge that they cannot fix all the problems of the world, let alone their own selves, and thus place themselves and the world into the hands of the almighty god. the lord’s prayer, the prayer taught by jesus to his disciples, guides the life of christians in the world. the petition “your kingdom come. your will be done, on earth as in heaven” undermines the activist mentality that human agency can save the world. the lord’s prayer also undermines an over-spiritualized view of the world, as the congregation are asking god for his kingdom and his reign to come “on earth as in heaven.” the central part of the liturgy is the eucharistic prayers, which bring the congregation both to look back to christ’s death and resurrection, and look forward to the marriage supper of the lamb, the eschatological feast that will take place at the consummation of god’s kingdom (rev 19). the eucharistic prayer begins with the sursum corda: the celebrant declares “lift up your hearts,” and the congregation responds “we lift them to the lord” (the episcopal church, 361). in the lifting up of their hearts to the lord, the congregation are “stretched out of the comforts of immanence” (smith 2009, 298). they acknowledge that communion with the transcendent god is possible, because the transcendent has already entered the material world. this liturgical action counters development ideologies, which enclose humanity within the immanent frame of the material world. the prayer of anamnesis, “we celebrate the memorial of our redemption, o father, in this sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving,” recalls christ’s command and invitation to eat the bread and drink the cup “in remembrance of me” (luke 22:19) (the episcopal church 1979 363). looking back to christ’s death, resurrection and ascension, frames the next part of the liturgy where worshippers offer up the gifts of bread and wine, and their whole lives, to god. as the worshippers offer up themselves, they remember that christ has already offered all. the myth that humans can save the world, or that the end of poverty will come about through human agency alone, is shattered in the remembrance that jesus christ has already won the victory. this puts any engagement in the field of development within a framework that in an ultimate sense the suffering of poverty will be resolved when god ushers in his kingdom at the eschaton. the eucharistic liturgy continues with the prayer of epiclesis: “sanctify them [the bread and wine] by your holy spirit to be for your people the body and blood of your son, the holy food and drink of new and unending life in him” (the episcopal church 1979 363). the invocation of the holy spirit underscores the eschatological nature of the sacrament. the holy spirit is a sign that the powers of the age to come have broken into the present age (heb 6:5). the celebrant then calls down the holy spirit on the gathered people: “sanctify us also that we may faithfully receive this holy sacrament, and serve you in unity, constancy and peace” (the episcopal church 1979 363). they now invite the holy spirit to empower their life in the world so as to be used in service to god. while development ideologies place their hope in technocratic programs and systems to transform the world, the promise given in the liturgy is that all suffering will end when god ushers in his kingdom. in this present time, christians are given the holy spirit, a sign of new creation, to empower them as they engage in god’s work in the world. at the eucharistic table, the congregation is invited to partake in the bread and wine, the body and blood of christ. in consuming the elements, communicants are in fact being consumed by god (cavanaugh 2009). they are taken up into the life of the triune god, united with christ through his spirit, and united with each other, transformed into the body of christ. the individual self is decentred and put in context of a much wider community of participation with others in the divine life (cavanaugh 2009, 54). aquinas argued that in the consumption of the eucharist, god’s people cease to become “other” to each other. pope john paul ii described the eucharist as “the school of active love for neighbour”: the eucharist both requires and affects reconciliation, painting a normative picture of how the world should be (pope john paul ii 1980). the eucharist proclaims that in god’s kingdom none will go hungry, and none will have surplus; it is a feast where all are filled, a feast of forgiveness and reconciliation. after partaking in the life of the risen christ in the eucharist, members of the congregation are sent to witness to that light. the congregation petitions god: “send us now into the world in peace, and grant us strength and courage to love and serve you with gladness and singleness of heart through christ our lord” (the episcopal church 1979, 365). participation in the eucharist is not an end in itself, but it forms people to engage in the redemptive task of bringing christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(1), summer 2020 fyfe, liturgies of development: formation for working among the poor 18 signs of god’s kingdom in the world. after the congregation shares the broken body of christ, participants are then sent out to be broken for others. they are blessed to be a blessing to others. monika hellwig argues that a person cannot be one with jesus in the eucharist and then ignore the cries of the poor: “to accept the bread of the eucharist is to accept to be bread and sustenance for the poor of the world.” (hellwig 1976, 78). the eucharist undermines the notion that “the world is ours to save,” as communicants are reminded that the world has already been saved by jesus christ. the eucharist also challenges an overspiritualized understanding of the world, as the eucharist forms believers for the life of the world, not to escape from it. conclusions the goal of this paper is to offer a practical theology for christians working in the field of international development. i have not sought to create a tidy conceptual model for what christian development should ideally look like. i have argued instead that christians engaged in the field, whether they work for christian or secular organizations, inevitably face tension. these tensions arise from the differences between a biblical view of the world, and the secular assumptions underlying mainstream development discourses. as christian development practitioners engage in the discourses and practices of the field, they are at risk of adopting these underlying assumptions. one way to resist this formation is by exposing and naming these tensions. there is great value in christians participating in conversations which identify both the synergies and the dissonances that arise from being people of faith engaging in a field governed by secular assumptions. forums like this journal provide valuable places for a community of practitioners and theorists to wrestle with these tensions. these conversations help to build both critical analysis of mainstream discourses and encourage christians towards faithful participation in their development work. in addition to resisting malformation through naming and describing the dissonances, christian development practitioners are called to see their participation in corporate worship as formational for their vocation. christians can sometimes see sunday corporate worship as separate from their vocation, while i argue that participation in corporate worship forms christians as an alternate people with a specific calling to live out in the world. it offers a reminder of the missional calling of every christian and shapes the desires of worshippers towards god’s kingdom. the final section of the paper illustrates how a particular form of liturgical worship shapes christians to engage in the field of international development. i describe how the liturgy forms worshippers with an alternative telos and understanding of our role in the world, a naming which counteracts the formative power of developmentalist liturgies. it is important to note that enacting liturgy does not automatically lead to transformation. ultimately it is the holy spirit that transforms our hearts and minds as we worship, forming us as christ’s ambassadors tasked with bringing signs of god’s kingdom into a broken world. the question this paper has sought to address is how christians can engage in the field of international development in a way that is aligned with their faith. i have argued that in the complexity of actual practice, it is not possible to follow a singular idealistic model of christian development. yet christians should also be careful not to adopt wholesale the discourses and practices of mainstream development, because they are rooted in secular ways of imagining the world. rather, christians can acknowledge that as they engage with the tools, practices, and discourses of the field, they inevitably face tension. christians are called both to participate whole-heartedly in the goals of international development of decreasing poverty in the world, but also, as they engage in the field, to remain at a critical and subversive distance and work in a way that is faithful to their faith. this is not easy, but this is in fact the call of every follower of jesus christ, as we wait for christ to return and god’s kingdom to come in its fullness. as we live in the midst of a broken world, in the earthly city, we are called to faithfulness to live out our calling as citizens of the kingdom of god, and to let our hearts and vocations be shaped by this calling. references anderson, kenneth. 1999. “secular eschatologies and class interests of the internationalized new class,” in peter h. juviler and carrie gustafson, eds. religion and human rights: competing claims? armonk, n.y., london: m.e. sharpe. iddings bell, bernard. 1944. the altar and the world; social implications of the liturgy. new york: harper & bros. berger, peter l. 1980. the heretical imperative: contemporary possibilities of religious affirmation. london: collins. cavanaugh, william t. 2009. being consumed: economics and christian desire. grand rapids, mi: william b. eerdmans. the episcopal church (usa). 1979. the book of common prayer and administration of the sacraments and other rites and ceremonies of the church: together with the psalter or psalms of david according to the use of the episcopal church. new york: seabury press. christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(1), summer 2020 fyfe, liturgies of development: formation for working among the poor 19 fyfe, rosie. 2018. the immanency of the eschaton: international development as secular eschatology [unpublished master’s thesis]. trinity school for ministry. harrison warren, tish. 2019. liturgy of the ordinary: sacred practices in everyday life. downers grove: ivp books. hellwig, monika. 1976. the eucharist and the hunger of the world. new york: paulist press. mitchell, bob. 2017. faith-based development: how christian organizations can make a difference? maryknoll, ny: orbis books. myers, bryant l. 2014, second edition. walking with the poor: principles and practices of transformational development. maryknoll, n.y.: orbis books. pope john paul ii. february 24, 1980. dominicae cenae. https://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paulii/en/letters/1980/documents/hf_jpii_let_19800224_dominicae-cenae.html. schmemann, alexander. 1963. for the life of the world. new york: national student christian federation. smith, james k. a. 2009. desiring the kingdom: worship, worldview, and cultural formation. grand rapids, mi: baker academic. smith, james k. a. 2017. awaiting the king: reforming public theology. grand rapids, mi: baker academic. swinton, john and mowat, harriet. 2016. practical theology and qualitative research. london: scm press. taylor, charles. 2007. a secular age. cambridge, ma: belknap press of harvard university. rosie fyfe is the national director of the new zealand church missionary society. she previously worked in a community development role in north africa, before studying for a master’s at trinity school for ministry in the usa and writing a thesis on a practical theology of international development. author email: rosie.fyfe@gmail.com https://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/letters/1980/documents/hf_jp-ii_let_19800224_dominicae-cenae.html https://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/letters/1980/documents/hf_jp-ii_let_19800224_dominicae-cenae.html https://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/letters/1980/documents/hf_jp-ii_let_19800224_dominicae-cenae.html mailto:rosie.fyfe@gmail.com christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(2), winter 2020 check, green, and kumar, towards laying a foundation for christ-centered monitoring & evaluation 61 towards laying a foundation for christcentered monitoring & evaluation kristen check, rodney green, subodh kumar this paper challenges monitoring & evaluation (m&e) or monitoring, evaluation, accountability and learning (meal) 1 practitioners in christ-centered organizations (ccos) to critically reflect on their organizational framework for m&e/meal. throughout this paper, the authors encourage m&e practitioners in ccos to consider and reflect upon six proposed foundational layers the authors identify in an effort to make the case for a new kind of “christ-centered m&e” in ccos: 1) the m&e profession, 2) the kingdom of god, 3), the christ-centered organization; 4) m&e within ccos; 5) christ-centered m&e and the wider m&e profession; and 6) a proposed framework for christcentered m&e. a m&e/meal approach helps organizations improve operational decision-making and allows adjustments, course-corrections, and the ability to refine program implementation. a christ-centered m&e/meal approach includes the opportunity to listen to what god is doing to build his kingdom in the communities where ccos work. when the m&e/meal team in a cco seizes this opportunity to “listen,” they can come to better love god, self, neighbor, and creation in deeper and more meaningful ways. through deepening this relationship, they can bring stakeholders along this journey with them, ultimately furthering the kingdom of god here on earth through christcentered m&e/meal. introduction we argue that a christ-centered m&e/meal approach helps improve operational decision-making and allows adjustments, course-corrections, and the ability to refine program implementation for christcentered organizations (cco). it also means christian m&e practitioners, through the collection, analysis, and use of data, can listen to what god is doing to build his kingdom. when the m&e/meal team in a cco seize this opportunity to “listen,” they can come to better love god, self, neighbor, and creation in deep and meaningful ways. through deepening this commitment to christ-centered m&e/meal, they can bring stakeholders along on this journey, and ultimately further the kingdom of god here on earth. to make a case for a working framework for christ-centered m&e, we argue the christ-centered m&e practitioner must consider and understand six foundational layers: layer 1: the m&e profession layer 2: the kingdom of god layer 3: the christ-centered organization 1 m&e and meal will be used throughout the paper to represent the range of approaches and considerations for inclusion of monitoring, evaluation, learning, research, and accountability to stakeholders etc. that organizations use to measure their programs and respond accordingly. layer 4: m&e in christ-centered organizations layer 5: christ-centered m&e within the wider m&e landscape layer 6: a framework for christ-centered m&e layer 1: the m&e profession monitoring and evaluation (m&e), or monitoring evaluation accountability and learning (meal), is a process that helps improve performance and achieve results. monitoring is the collection and analysis of data to learn whether an organization is doing what it says it is doing and doing it efficiently. monitoring data helps to identify faults in program implementation, when x activity did not produce an intended output. evaluation is the validation of an organization’s “theory of change” and asks the question of whether the program brought about the change it intended. it is ultimately an assessment of whether the intervention is based on good ideas and actually works. monitoring and evaluation form the basis for modifying programs and assessing the quality of activities being conducted. it is an essential process in helping managers, planners, implementers, policy makers, and donors acquire the christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(2), winter 2020 check, green, and kumar, towards laying a foundation for christ-centered monitoring & evaluation 62 information and understanding they need to make informed decisions about program operations. monitoring and evaluation help to reinforce the mission and vision of the organization and provide the necessary data to guide strategic planning, to design and implement programs and projects, and to allocate and reallocate resources in better, more effective, ways. layer 2: the kingdom of god it is important to recognize that the m&e profession assumes that organization, whether from public, private, or civil society sectors, are embedded in wider environments, and can influence or even cause change in individuals and communities through their programs and/or interventions. for followers of christ, however, there is a different foundational understanding of what truly causes such changes. for christians, it is christ who brings about good and lasting fruit in the world, for, apart from him, the house is built in vain (john 15:5, psalm 127:1). while followers of christ can utilize the best professional methods to identify causation in programs, the foundation still arises from faith and from abiding in christ, who is actively at work in the world. this faith includes a recognition that there is a trinitarian center to the universe, an unshakable reality and person that is both the beginning and end of all things (revelation 22:13). jesus used the language of accessing and living in “the kingdom of god” as a way to describe what it means to build on this true foundation. kenneth bailey (2008) defines the kingdom of god as “the rule of god in the lives of individuals and societies.” what does the rule of god look like? jesus modeled it to look like sacrificial love, forgiveness, and liberation for all things to be as they were meant to be – full of abundant life. as christian development theorists bryant myers, steve corbett and brian fikkert argue, the kingdom of god is about the restoration of the four key relationships: the self with god, the self with others, the self with the self, and the self with creation (myers 1999, 2011; corbett and fikkert 2009). 2 as quoted by bryant myers, e. stanley jones, a theologian and missionary in india, writes that “the kingdom is the father’s, jesus is the embodiment of god’s kingdom, and the holy spirit is the first fruit of god’s kingdom on earth…the one who helps us discover the truth and fullness of the kingdom”. bryant myers continues, “when it is at its best, the church is the sign, a witness, to the kingdom of god breaking into the world. god brings the kingdom; it is neither our task nor that of our [programs]” (myers 1999, 48). 2 myers (1999) argues that creation is also a relationship fundamental to human flourishing in the transformational paradigm. 3 78% of organizations that identified as christian who participated in the “christian ideas on development” survey in 2017 indicated that they believed faith integration with activities was very important (offutt and reynolds 2019, 5) therefore, christ-centered m&e is built upon a different foundation, one that recognizes that it is god who brings his kingdom with positive and lasting change in broken lives and communities. that said, it is important to recognize that christ-centered m&e cannot operate divorced from christ-centered action, which flows from a christ-centered organization as it seeks collectively to follow and abide in christ. this is the topic of the next layer. layer 3: the christ-centered organization according to the united nations population fund, faith-based organizations (fbos) are “religious, faithbased, and/or faith-inspired groups, which operate as registered or unregistered non-profit institutions” (unfpa 2009, 12). christ-centered organizations fit within this broader definition but are distinct in a variety of ways. to differentiate ccos, we propose the following operational definition: christ-centered organizations prioritize the integration of christian faith into an integral mission or transformational paradigm that seeks to partner with god as he establishes his kingdom on earth, where relationships with god, self, others, and creation are restored to flourishing at individual, familial, and systemic ecosystem levels. a 2017 survey of christian ngos that were, for the most part, members of the accord network, a convening body of christian non-profits working in disaster relief and international development, revealed that “the transformational paradigm is the unrivaled framing of christian development for ngo leaders participating in the survey.” 3 while missions movements from the past typically emphasized a dualistic understanding between evangelism and social programs, recent decades have seen the development of a more holistic understanding of the gospel, in which sharing the good news of god’s love is encouraged in both word and deed (myers 2011, stearns 2009). this holistic understanding is predominant among accord network organizations, so the definition for christcentered organizations offered here should resonate with most accord members. a shared understanding of what sets christ-centered organizations apart from other faith-based organizations is important for underlining the need for m&e within ccos, and the unique contributions it can make to the m&e field at large. christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(2), winter 2020 check, green, and kumar, towards laying a foundation for christ-centered monitoring & evaluation 63 layer 4: m&e in christ-centered organizations across the development community, the drive for better m&e is expanding, as exemplified by the 2019 nobel prize in economics being awarded to three scientists who apply rigorous methods to the study of impacts of poverty reduction programs evidence that good, high quality research is being used to fight poverty far and wide (ziady 2019). the same trend is happening in the christian community seeking to hold ccos more accountable for their development work. donors, for example, are increasingly interested in program effectiveness (goldseker and moody 2017). according to some estimates, fbos (which includes ccos) utilize over $8.5 billion annually of privately contributed funds (unhcr 2016) on a global level. as eve smith points out, new generations of donors (gen xers and millennials) demand more control of their charity than the boomer generation (smith 2018). despite ccos being increasingly held to account to demonstrate their effectiveness, a gap remains for many. in 2001, the first director of the white house initiative for faith-based and community initiatives, john dilulio, identified a knowledge gap that many next-generation donors probably still struggle with today: he noted that the lack of impact evidence from ccos makes it difficult to draw comparisons with their secular counterparts. dilulio said “we do not really know whether these faith-based programs, or others like them, outperform their secular counterparts, how they compare to one another or whether, in any case, it is the ‘faith’ in faith-based, that mainly determines any observed difference” (dilulio 2002)” indeed, ccos still struggle to provide the proper evidence that their programs do indeed work. in 2002, the institute for studies of religion at baylor university conducted a systematic review of nearly 800 studies that documented the effectiveness of fbos (johnson et al. 2008). the study concluded that research on effectiveness of faith-based organizations has been largely neglected. for ccos to meet the challenges of measuring impact and closing the evidence gap around faith-based impact, systematic and effective methods of monitoring and evaluation are needed. these will also allow for learning and continuous improvement in the organization. the good news is that in recent years rigorous research within ccos is increasing. one example is the research bruce wydick, an econometrician at university of san francisco, conducted on compassion international, a christ 4 see more information on the accord research alliance. https://www.accordnetwork.org/member-alliances. centered holistic child development and sponsorship organization (wydick 2013). wydick found that compassion’s programs had large and statistically significant impacts on educational, employment, and leadership outcomes of children later in life. another recent example is the 2018 study carried out by international care ministries (icm), a cco in the philippines that partners with innovations for poverty action (ipa), a research and policy non-profit organization. the study sought to test the causal impacts of religiosity via a randomized evaluation of icm’s christian values and theology education program. the study found significant increases in religiosity and income due to the program intervention (gharad 2018). in other words, the study not only isolated the impact of faith, but also both faith and the program together. in addition to partnerships with large research consortiums or academic institutions, ccos are carrying out investigations of their own on the effectiveness of their programs and approaches, and they are increasingly making their findings more available to the broader public. this is evidenced in the content shared at the recent meetings of the accord research alliance, which for more than a decade has cultivated a learning community around best practices in christ-centered monitoring, evaluation, and research. 4 the growing demand for documenting effectiveness, learning, and impact is a challenge for all relief and development organizations, but ccos are faced with an additional challenge. in addition to meeting the standards of scientific rigor, ccos seek to capture the essence of the transformative/integral mission paradigm, or evidence of the kingdom of god. facing and overcoming this larger challenge and achieving these goals calls for a radical shift in the cco’s approach towards m&e. before developing a christ-centered framework for m&e on their own, ccos should start by first recognizing that m&e is a professional field from which they have much to learn from and invest in it accordingly. understanding how the values embedded in the wider sector of m&e compare with principles for christ-centered relief and development is a first step to developing a christcentered framework for m&e. layer 5: christ-centered m&e within the wider m&e landscape the american evaluation association (aea) is one of the leading institutions guiding practitioners in the field of monitoring and evaluation. in 2018 the aea issued updated guiding principles in an effort to https://www.compassion.com/ https://www.accordnetwork.org/member-alliances https://www.caremin.com/ https://www.poverty-action.org/ https://www.poverty-action.org/ christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(2), winter 2020 check, green, and kumar, towards laying a foundation for christ-centered monitoring & evaluation 64 provide standards for the conduct of professional evaluators. these principles and standards are intended to provide common ground for sound practices in evaluation and are regarded as foundational for how professional evaluators should go about their work (american evaluation association 2018). 5 a drive to develop standards of excellence also exists among networks of christ-centered organizations. the accord network is a convening body of christian non-profits working in disaster relief and international development for the purpose of learning, collaborating, and building christ-centered unity around the shared vision of poverty elimination. to guide member organizations, the network has created eight “principles of excellence in integral mission,” with which member organizations agree and uphold. principle 7 elevates the importance of m&e by stating: “we support local communities and churches in measuring all that matters.” while other principles do not directly relate to m&e as a system of thought or practice, they nevertheless apply to m&e as an integral part of any community engagement. christian m&e professionals who seek to ascribe to sector-wide best practices (e.g. aea), can also apply the principles that guide christcentered organizations that seek to alleviate poverty in jesus’ name. table 1 below notes areas of overlap and joint application between aea and the accord principles. internal boxes describe how the principles of excellence in integral mission are applied to the aea principles. empty boxes indicate areas of no obvious overlap. the integration of the principles of excellence in integral mission with the principles of excellence in the m&e profession provides a starting point for what it 5 see https://www.eval.org/p/cm/ld/fid=51 for updated 2018 guiding principles. means to do christ-centered m&e. the next step is to explain what a christ-centered approach to m&e entails. table 1: areas of overlap and joint applications between american evaluation association guiding principles for evaluators and accord network principles of excellence in integral mission. https://www.accordnetwork.org/ https://www.accordnetwork.org/integral https://www.accordnetwork.org/integral https://www.eval.org/p/cm/ld/fid=51 christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(2), winter 2020 check, green, and kumar, towards laying a foundation for christ-centered monitoring & evaluation 65 layer 6: towards a framework for christcentered m&e there are many passages from the bible that can inform thinking about monitoring and evaluation from a christ-centered perspective. two such passages come from the books of romans and colossians. do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. then you will be able to test and approve what god's will is his good, pleasing and perfect will. (rom 12:2) …so that they may have the full riches of complete understanding, in order that they may know the mystery of god, namely, christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge… (col. 2: 2-8) in an effort to apply these principles in scripture and building upon the previous foundational layers, we propose the following framework for christ-centered monitoring and evaluation: a proposed framework for christ-centered monitoring and evaluation christ-centered monitoring and evaluation upholds principles and methods which: 1. are standard practice from within the m&e profession and align with the kingdom of god; 2. transcend and transform standard m&e principles and practices in the light of the kingdom of god; and 3. promote documentation of evidence of the manifestation of the kingdom of god… i. with the purpose of seeking the transformation of all stakeholders ii. in a way that leads to knowing and loving god, self, neighbor, and creation (luke 10:27 and myers 2011). the question to ponder is not only what development gains or outcomes the cco has achieved in the local community, but also what god is already doing in that community. christ-centered m&e is a process of knowing and discerning god personally and through program data, with the purpose of following his love and leadership and, in the process, glorifying him. to try and discern what god is doing through program data involves a holistic range of inter-connected approaches and measures, including spiritual and/or religious measures (joint learning initiative n.d.). a christ-centered m&e framework should be guided by the “why”, “what”, and “how” of measurement in order to chart an evolutionary analytical process that progressively delivers more evidence on the organization’s contribution to the growth of the kingdom. in his famous book, celebration of discipline, richard foster, a christian theologian and founder of renovare advises that this kind of evolutionary analytical process should have an experimental component for continual learning: let me suggest that we take an experiential attitude toward spiritual realities. like any other scientific endeavor, we form a hypothesis and experiment with it to see if it is true or not. if our first experiment fails, we do not despair or label the whole business fraudulent. we re-examine our procedure, perhaps adjust our hypothesis, and try again. we should at least have the honesty to persevere in this work to the same degree we would in any field of science. the fact that so many are unwilling to do so betrays not their intelligence but their prejudice (foster 1998, 23) an experimental attitude elevates the importance of a posture of learning for ccos. collectively following christ as he meets both physical and spiritual needs in the world requires a listening-oriented and humble attitude. in a culture that overvalues “knowing” or “telling” others what to do, the challenge is to listen in order to ask the right questions and learn the way to better alternatives for flourishing (schein 2013). in addition, listening and learning leads to mutual transformation according to development practitioners and thinkers quarles van ufford and giri (2003), who argue that “international development is an opportunity for learning, self-development and self-transformation, for the subject and object of development.” returning to scripture, consider how the interaction between jesus and john the baptizer highlights how data collection and analysis can play a role in experiencing the signs of god’s kingdom. matthew 11:2-5 john the baptizer hears about the works of jesus and sends two of his disciples to ask him this question: “‘are you the one who was to come, or should we look for someone else?’” jesus replies, “go back and report to john what you hear and see: the blind receive sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor. blessed is the one who does not fall away on account of me.” christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(2), winter 2020 check, green, and kumar, towards laying a foundation for christ-centered monitoring & evaluation 66 when matthew tells this story, john is imprisoned by the regional kingdom of herod, but he believes in the arrival of a new kind of king bringing a new kind of kingdom; a new kind of king who leads through love and service not military power; a new kind of kingdom with forgiveness instead of violence as its driving force. john wants to know if jesus is the “one who was to come,” or in other words, the new king. rather than answering john’s question directly, jesus mentions only the signs or indicators of what happens in a kingdom under his reign. these indicators revolve around the liberation of people and bringing new life, and point to the one ushering in this new reality in the midst of this world. the data and results tracked across the indicators, and the indicators themselves, tell us something about who god is, what he is like, what he is doing, how we can join him. for jesus, his qualitative testimony around these indicators is sufficient data to be collected by john’s disciples (or data collectors in our m&e framework) and shared with their stakeholder john the baptizer. he says to john that he should be able to discern the presence of the new and true king by recognizing the data across the indicators of his kingdom unfolding in the midst of this world. if jesus were to say this in the language of the modern-day international development organization, it might have sounded something like this: “please collect activity monitoring and outcome data on the following indicators (% of increased mobility for people with disabilities, etc.), then condense your findings in a report to share with your stakeholders and ceo.” jesus ends the exchange with a provocative statement that the manifestation of his kingdom will disrupt and threaten the status quo, especially of the regional and global kingdoms that put people like john in prison. the person who is not offended at this is truly blessed to witness and participate in the unfolding of god’s kingdom. this exchange between jesus and john has much to teach us about how christ-centered relief and development organizations are different from secular international development organizations. what differentiates ccos is that they seek to join the king as he advances his kingdom, rather than trying by human efforts alone to serve and empower others. therefore, it is essential that christ-centered organizations be able to discern the presence and leadership of the king and to abide in him. one way to discern the presence and leadership of the king is through data, like jesus shared with the disciples of john. jesus appears to be communicating that data across life-affirming and liberating indicators can help the church and christcentered organizations discern the manifestation of the kingdom. at the same time, we must acknowledge that it is difficult to discern the kingdom of god or the presence of the king. it is difficult to accurately collect or analyze the data, fruits, or results around life-affirming and liberating indicators even with the best methods, instruments, and spiritual discernment. there is a strong possibility of getting it wrong. to complicate matters further, a lack of evidence or results does not necessarily mean that god’s kingdom is not advancing. as michael woolcock, lead social scientist for the world bank asked at the 2019 accord research alliance (ara) intensive workshop: “are we in the sunflower seed business or the oak tree business? after six months it would appear the sunflower is more successful according to the metric of height. however, return thirty years later and the evaluation would look very different” (woolcock 2019). while it is important to seek to discern evidence of the kingdom of god in the journey to follow christ to serve those who are vulnerable, there may be times when it is important to simply be faithful to kingdom values and practices in the midst of a lack of evidence of fruit at the present. in his same talk at the ara 2019 intensive, woolcock referenced the journey of nelson mandela: “if you evaluated the fruit of nelson mandela’s work and life in his twentieth year in prison, with apartheid alive and well, what would you have found? if you evaluated the fruit of his work and life ten years after that, when he was the president of a democratic south africa, what would you have found?” these stories encourage christ-centered m&e practitioners to recognize that god doesn’t move within the typical project life cycle timeframe. to abide in christ (john 15:5), to wait patiently, to pray, to engage scripture, to learn continuously, and to seek faithfulness are necessary parts of the journey. in addition, it is important to remember god’s eternal perspective and that our attempts to understand and discern his movement and his reign are to be held with humility, to remember that we are not in the sunflower business. it is in this posture of humility that the bible should be engaged as part of christ-centered m&e, because the bible is the “only true and unbiased source of guidance to the goals and means of human transformation” (myers 1999). as myers points out, “the bible speaks of human life in the context of cosmic history from creation to consummation.” in the bible we find a storyteller, a father, who tells a story that encompasses our stories. it is a story of goodness, brokenness, and redemption, often existing simultaneously, with a cosmic arc towards reconciliation and justice; a story that witnesses to jesus’ embodiment of the kingdom of god, through word, deed and sign; a story that witnesses the holy spirit always present to illuminate scripture and to spark christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(2), winter 2020 check, green, and kumar, towards laying a foundation for christ-centered monitoring & evaluation 67 transforming work of forgiveness and love in our lives; a story that reminds us of the importance of prayer, contemplation, and action in joining what god is doingin everyday life. christ-centered m&e can play a role in telling that story for organizations and communities. “the biblical frame provides a coherent and consistent framework for creating meaning in and providing explanation about the world in which we live” in a way that “celebrates life and resists anti-life” (myers 1999). even so, engagement with scripture must not be done in isolation. it must be engaged as a christcentered organization with mutual ownership with individuals and communities being served. scripture must be allowed to speak truth and grace to all—bringing opportunities for mutual transformation. from catholic social teaching (cst) comes a helpful guide on how to engage with scripture together as organizations and communities within the realm of m&e. cst’s “pastoral circle” has four elements: insertion, social analysis, theological reflection, and action. insertion: becoming part of the community and building relationships social analysis: work the community does in analyzing and making sense out of its own reality theological reflection: the community is encouraged to think theologically about what it has learned about its situation and its social, political, and economic context. action: the community acts on its theology 6 as m&e is a discipline of reflection, with the right foundation and perspective on the kingdom of god, with prayer and the bible as companions for the journey, christ-centered m&e can be a process of transformation for all stakeholders involved. example: applying christ-centered m&e to indicator selection food for the hungry (fh) is an accord network member organization and christ-centered organization (cco) working in 20 countries in africa, asia, and latin america and the caribbean since 1971 and responding to human suffering through a christian approach to relief and development. for nearly five decades, fh has embraced several schools of thought that have shaped its theology and vocation to serve the most vulnerable people in the world (food for the hungry 2017, 4). in 2011, fh launched “child focused community transformation” (cfct) as its 6 the pastoral circle is explained by myers (2011). primary programmatic model. the goal of the cfct model is to enable the world’s most vulnerable children and communities to thrive through a transformational process intended to end all forms of human poverty (food for the hungry 2017, 9). as part of the cfct rollout process in 2013, fh’s monitoring and evaluation (m&e) team helped define transformation and clarified goals, articulated desired results, and developed frameworks for monitoring progress. to accomplish this, the team needed to identify a holistic set of indicators. to prioritize indicators effectively, the team first investigated indicators that were widely used in the international development and m&e professional community. one indicator considered to monitor program implementation was intimate partner violence. the fh m&e team understood that indicators like these have been developed by large multilateral agencies or survey firms and had been scientifically proven to be effective in collecting, analyzing, and using information cross-culturally. the indicator in question seeks to capture the attitudes of both men and women around what circumstances justify beating a woman. fh acknowledged that information provided by this indicator could help inform norm-shifting behavior change interventions to ensure that women are protected from domestic violence, a change they were interested in measuring. the fh m&e team sought to discern whether intimate partner violence was a quality measure and whether it aligned with the kingdom of god. since it takes significant time and resources to develop these indicators and measures, fh agreed it would be good stewardship in this case to not develop its own indicator lest it be in danger of “re-inventing the wheel.” the team reflected on their beliefs that women being beaten within families violates the biblical truth of image bearing and jesus’ teachings to love one’s neighbor as oneself, and thus concluded that the measure is in alignment with the kingdom of god and aligned with their theological view of community transformation (demonstrating the principles of christian faith and systematic inquiry). in addition, they further articulated to stakeholders their rationale for utilizing this measure and why this was so important in relationship with god’s kingdom (demonstrating the principles of integrity and transparency). they explained that the measure captures beliefs and attitudes about when violence against women is acceptable and will help fh confront those beliefs with alternative, kingdom-honoring beliefs (demonstrating the principles of christian faith and respect for all people). for a cco like fh, intimate partner violence has proven to be an indicator that https://www.fh.org/ christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(2), winter 2020 check, green, and kumar, towards laying a foundation for christ-centered monitoring & evaluation 68 narrates the organization’s involvement in god’s story of creation, fall, redemption, and restoration. conclusion the calling of christ-centered m&e/meal is to collect, analyze, and use data to help stakeholders discern and document evidence of the expression of the kingdom and the presence of the king to the glory of god (not the cco). christ-centered m&e involves digging into data in relation to god’s word to discover what he has revealed about himself. when the m&e team in a cco is equipped to do this, they can come to know and love god, self, neighbor, and creation in even deeper ways, and bring stakeholders along with them on this journey to realizing god’s kingdom here on earth. editor’s post-script this article only scratches the surface of what can become a mutually enriching conversation on how our christian faith comes to bear on the vital practices of m&e. the authors of this article and the editors of crda invite other m&e practitioners and theorists to share their experiences and reflections in these pages. such topics as theological paradigms, objectives, indicators, methods, strategies, case studies, and more, are all on the table. such contributions may generally agree with the framework presented here, but that is not necessary. the overall goal is for us to learn from each other in a process that helps us be faithful to god in our efforts to serve our vulnerable neighbors and ultimately to honor, love, and serve him. references american evaluation association. 2018. “guiding principles.” updated august 2018. https://www.eval.org/p/cm/ld/fid=51 bailey, kenneth. 2008. jesus through middle eastern eyes: cultural studies in the gospels. downers grove: intervarsity press. corbett, steve and brian fikkert. 2009. when helping hurts: how to alleviate poverty without hurting the poor… and yourself. chicago: moody publishers. dilulio, john. 2002. “the three faith actors.” brookings. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-three-faithfactors/ food for the hungry. 2017. god's story: the foundation for fh's work in relief and development. phoenix, az. food for the hungry. 2017. fh cfct toolkit #7a: cfct monitoring and evaluation manual, a toolkit for implementing fh’s child-focused community transformation (cfct) model. washington, d.c. foster, richard j. 1998. celebration of discipline: the path to spiritual growth. san francisco: harper. gharad, bryan t., james j. choi, and dean karlan. randomizing religion: the impact of protestant evangelism on economic outcomes. nber working paper no. 24278, february 2018. goldseker, sharna and michael moody. “show me the impact.” stanford social innovation review. november 13, 2017. https://ssir.org/books/excerpts/entry/show_me_th e_impact. greer, peter et al. 2014. mission drift, the unspoken crisis facing the leaders, charities and the churches, minneapolis: bethany house publishers. gugerty, mary kay and dean karlan. 2018. the golidlocks challenge: right-fit evidence for the social sector. oxford: oxford university press. johnson, byron r, et. al. 2008. objective hope: assessing the effectiveness of faith-based organizations: a review of the literature (isr report). center for research on religion and urban civil society. joint learning initiative for faith and local communities. “faith-based measurement and metrics.” https://jliflc.com/faith-basedmeasurement-metrics/. myers, bryant l. 1999. walking with the poor, principles and practices of transformational development. maryknoll: orbis books. ______________. 2011. walking with the poor, revised and updated edition. new york: orbis books. office of the united nations high commissioner for refugees, 2016. the state of the world’s refugees, oxford university press, oxford. offutt, stephen, and amy reynolds. 2019. “christian ideas of development.” christian relief, development, and advocacy: the journal of the accord network 1(1): 1-14. payne, jennifer. 2005. looking at evaluation of your faith-based intervention/ program: what's the big deal? grand rapids, michigan. quarles van ufford, philip and a.k. giri. 2003. a moral critique of development: in search of global responsibilities. london: routledge. schein, e. 2013. humble inquiry: the gentle art of asking instead of telling. berrett-koehler publishers. smith, eve. 2018. “are you ready for the nextgeneration donors?” nonprofitpro https://www.nonprofitpro.com/post/are-you-readyfor-the-next-generation-donors/. https://www.eval.org/p/cm/ld/fid=51 https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-three-faith-factors/ https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-three-faith-factors/ https://ssir.org/books/excerpts/entry/show_me_the_impact https://ssir.org/books/excerpts/entry/show_me_the_impact https://jliflc.com/faith-based-measurement-metrics/ https://jliflc.com/faith-based-measurement-metrics/ https://www.nonprofitpro.com/post/are-you-ready-for-the-next-generation-donors/ https://www.nonprofitpro.com/post/are-you-ready-for-the-next-generation-donors/ christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(2), winter 2020 check, green, and kumar, towards laying a foundation for christ-centered monitoring & evaluation 69 stanford social innovation review. 2017. “show me the impact”. https://ssir.org/books/excerpts/entry/show_me_th e_impact stearns, richard. 2009. the hole in our gospel. nashville: thomas nelson. woolcock, michael. 2019. keynote address at the accord research alliance intensive on october 1. world health organization. 2019. “understanding and addressing violence against women: intimate partner violence.” https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/7743 2/who_rhr_12.36_eng.pdf;jsessionid=6f677 aedca43e997acf4bb29a6af030e?sequenc e=1 wydick, bruce et al. 2013. “does international child sponsorship work? a six-country study of impacts on adult life outcomes.” journal of political economy 121(2): 393-436. unfpa. 2009. global forum of faith-based organizations for population and development. https://www.faithtoactionetwork.org/resources/pdf /global%20forum%20of%20faithbased%20organizations%20on%20population%2 0and%20development.pdf. ziady, h. 2019. “nobel prize in economics awarded to trio for work on poverty. one is the youngest winner ever.” cnn. https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/14/business/nobelprize-economics. kristen check is a senior program effectiveness research specialist with compassion international and owner of edessa research, llc. she holds an ma in anthropology and is the co-chair of the accord research alliance steering committee with over 10 years of experience in international development. author email: kcheck@us.ci.org rodney green is a monitoring, evaluation and listening specialist with compassion international, and holds a msc in development management. he is the co-chair of the accord research alliance steering committee with 10 years of experience in international development. author email: rgreen@us.ci.org subodh kumar is a global director of m&e with food for the hungry with 25 years of experience in international development and holds doctorates in statistics and missiology. he has conducted over 100 evaluations and authored several papers on m&e, and is a steering committee member for the accord research alliance. author email: skumar@fh.org https://ssir.org/books/excerpts/entry/show_me_the_impact https://ssir.org/books/excerpts/entry/show_me_the_impact https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/77432/who_rhr_12.36_eng.pdf;jsessionid=6f677aedca43e997acf4bb29a6af030e?sequence= https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/77432/who_rhr_12.36_eng.pdf;jsessionid=6f677aedca43e997acf4bb29a6af030e?sequence= https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/77432/who_rhr_12.36_eng.pdf;jsessionid=6f677aedca43e997acf4bb29a6af030e?sequence= https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/77432/who_rhr_12.36_eng.pdf;jsessionid=6f677aedca43e997acf4bb29a6af030e?sequence= https://www.faithtoactionetwork.org/resources/pdf/global%20forum%20of%20faith-based%20organizations%20on%20population%20and%20development.pdf https://www.faithtoactionetwork.org/resources/pdf/global%20forum%20of%20faith-based%20organizations%20on%20population%20and%20development.pdf https://www.faithtoactionetwork.org/resources/pdf/global%20forum%20of%20faith-based%20organizations%20on%20population%20and%20development.pdf https://www.faithtoactionetwork.org/resources/pdf/global%20forum%20of%20faith-based%20organizations%20on%20population%20and%20development.pdf https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/14/business/nobel-prize-economics https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/14/business/nobel-prize-economics mailto:kcheck@us.ci.org mailto:rgreen@us.ci.org mailto:skumar@fh.org christian relief, development, and advocacy 3(2), winter 2022 dean, book review 53 book review religion and the rise of capitalism by benjamin m. friedman reviewed by judith m. dean new york: alfred a. knopf, 2021. $17.60 would any of us consider an african farmer that provides for her own family and sells her output in the local market selfish? i doubt it. most of us would see that she is acting not only in her own self-interest by being a productive farmer, but she is also providing for her family. in addition, her sales to others benefit them, while allowing her to purchase other goods she and her family need. yet there was a time when this issue was a centerpiece of religious controversy in europe and the us. and such religious controversy was influential in shaping economic thinking. benjamin friedman, a renowned economist at harvard, dives deep into such controversies in his 2020 book, religion and the rise of capitalism. he begins with adam smith, and his groundbreaking 1776 book, the wealth of nations. this book “marked a fundamental ground shift in thinking about what underlies economic behavior, what consequences follow from it, and how governments might therefore act to foster the prosperity of their peoples and the vitality of nations” (4). that ground shift provided the foundation of economic thinking today. from the 18th century onwards, it has helped shift countries from “centuries of top-down direction of economic activity to more individually propelled, competitive enterprise” (4). but where did these transformational ideas come from? friedman argues that one powerful influence was religious thinking of the english-speaking protestant world. in fact, religious thinking has continued to have a strong influence on economic thinking. friedman’s book is a sweeping exploration of the inter-relationship between christian protestant faith and economics. he takes us from the 18th to the 21st century, and from europe to america. the first four chapters explore the development of smith’s thinking and the major philosophical debates that were influential during smith’s lifetime. in the next four chapters, friedman presents his own analysis of key religious debates, focusing mainly on predestination and depravity, and preand post-millennialism. the final seven chapters focus largely on the economic development of the united states and the role of protestant thinking in that development. the author is an eminent scholar and the book reflects this, in both its depth and quality. friedman makes clear that he is an economist—not a theologian or philosopher--and that he is not of the christian faith. yet he believes that worldview matters for the development of ideas, and that religion has profoundly shaped worldviews. economics, he reminds us, was originally taught as part of moral philosophy. friedman gives the reader a unique perspective on the question of how religion has influenced economics. his exploration is fascinating, illuminating, and sometimes disturbing. economic development to smith, economic development was of fundamental importance. he saw the very low standards of living in his own scotland, particularly in comparison to england. he was distressed by high rates of child mortality—apparently as high as 50% for children under the age of 4 in some regions (14). as friedman notes, smith wrote, “no society can surely be flourishing and happy of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable” (35). one of smith’s fundamental contributions that fueled development was the idea that actions done out of self-interest could indeed have beneficial “unintended” consequences for society as a whole. hence, the view we take of the work by the african farmer mentioned above. yet the idea of anything good christian relief, development, and advocacy 3(2), winter 2022 dean, book review 54 from self-interested actions had been fraught with controversy. certainly, both jewish and christian scriptures condemned selfishness. even david hume, smith’s friend, wrote of the fear of economic selfinterest: “this avidity alone, of acquiring goods and possessions for ourselves and our nearest friends, is insatiable, perpetual, universal and directly destructive of society” (43). friedman describes in great detail the religious and philosophical views that saw “self-interest” as a vice. yet at the same time he acknowledges others who recognized christ’s command to love thy neighbor as thyself, and that self-interest need not be selfishness. another of smith’s contributions was the idea that people could improve their circumstances by specializing in what they do best, and voluntarily exchanging their output with others. specialization would allow people to be more productive, and machinery and raw materials to be used more efficiently. in competitive markets, prices would help allocate scarce resources efficiently, to best meet the needs of the people. at the same time, smith foresaw that specialization could lead to repetitive work that could deprive people of opportunities for creativity and innovation. hence, he made the case for publicly funded universal education (94). a third critical contribution was smith’s argument that such voluntary exchange was not limited to individuals within the same country. instead, specialization and exchange across countries would not only allow each country to prosper economically, but would also promote peace between countries. interestingly, these ideas were echoed in the 19th century by some (though not all) prominent american clergy who were also economists. advocates such as john mcvickar and francis wayland based their arguments on “their perception of the will of a benevolent god, who had structured the world in such a way that meeting man’s basic economic needs brought nations together in commerce and thereby fostered peaceful relations among them” (262). friedman argues that a major factor propelling the development of these ideas was the belief that human beings could indeed improve their well-being through their own efforts. in his view, this belief was attributable to a dramatic change in protestant thinking in the years between the reformation and the 18th century. “at the heart of this new thinking was a more expansive concept of human agency than under strict calvinist precepts, implying a more optimistic view of the possibilities for the choices and actions taken by everyday people. at the same time, long-standing debates about the ultimate fate … of the world as a whole also took new forms” (5). though friedman does not claim that smith adopted these new views, he argues that many of the clergy in smith’s day had. “competing gospels” friedman engages in an extensive discussion of reformation theology, with a specific focus on the understanding of human depravity, god’s sovereignty, and predestination. following this, he describes the development of opposing views, focused on the goodness of human beings, the limited sovereignty of god, and people’s ability to bring about their own salvation. finally, he tackles differing views of the end times, contrasting preand post-millennialism. the author goes to great lengths to understand and accurately describe these doctrines and debates. his presentation of the historical changes in thinking and their context is very insightful. still, the characterizations of both the calvinist and anti-calvinist views fall short. the former view emerges as one where human beings are puppets, incapable of doing good, and at the mercy of a god who chooses arbitrarily who will be saved and who will not. the latter view emerges as one where human beings are inherently good, are able to better themselves, and are looked upon by a benevolent god whose only goal is their ultimate happiness. this latter characterization-which departs in many ways from historic christianity— is seen as the fuel behind ideas for economic improvement. in a similar way, the millennial view that human effort can bring about the kingdom on earth, is seen as underlying much of the push for economic prosperity in the 19th century and onwards. conspicuous by its absence is discussion of the historic protestant belief that through faith in christ, people are made new. they are enabled to love god, and desire to live for him. and they are given the ability to live that out, honoring god, and loving their neighbors. this religious thinking would also explain efforts to improve our own and others’ economic wellbeing, as well as much of the charitable work that has characterized the christian church. interestingly, friedman’s chapter entitled “competing gospels” might be viewed as a poignant picture of the results of a major shift away from the historic faith. the author describes the amazing technological change and economic prosperity taking place in the us after the civil war and into the 20th century. a few pages earlier, he has described the movement of north american churches away from historic christianity, documenting the rise of unitarianism, and the widespread adoption of a “millennial role for america.” as some individuals amass great wealth, we see evidence that the church is succumbing to what christians today would call the prosperity gospel. prominent minister henry ward beecher, in a sermon on “the tendencies of american progress,” states “…the country’s increasingly evident prosperity was welcome not just for its own sake, but as a necessary underpinning to a morally christian relief, development, and advocacy 3(2), winter 2022 dean, book review 55 sound society. there must be prosperity in material things, he told his congregation, if there is to be prosperity in moral things” (292). not surprisingly, poverty is seen as sinful (292). this is a hard history to read. some in the church do oppose these views, and call the church back to the scriptures and the responsibility to care for the poor. friedman takes us through these decades, through the social gospel, to the fundamentalist and evangelical movements. worldview matters as practitioners and academics today, we are still focused on improving economic development and human flourishing. can we partner with that african farmer to help her save and invest? empower her decision-making within her household? improve her access to education? all of these are economic goals. but are they not shaped by our faith? underlying them are beliefs in the dignity and worth of each person, in equity and justice, in good stewardship of resources— and a belief that “we are god’s workmanship, created in christ jesus for good works, which god prepared in advance for us to do” (eph. 2:10). religion and the rise of capitalism challenges us to see the powerful influence religious faith has had on modern economics. the design of a modern economy emerges amid debates about god’s concern for peoples’ happiness, individuals’ concern for fellow human beings, the ability to improve one’s material well-being, and the consequences of human brokenness. friedman has given us a marvelous opportunity to explore these debates in depth, and to see how they influenced ideas about markets, competition, trade, technological development, and many other aspects of economics. at the same time, the conclusion is troubling. friedman argues that positive developments in economic thinking occurred as religious thinking became “more expansive.” yet, “expansive” seems to be equated with thinking that departs from much of the core of historic christianity. based on the evidence that friedman himself presents, one might argue that a closer adherence to the historic faith is what really lies behind those positive developments. judith m. dean (phd, cornell university) is professor of international economics at brandeis university. she has served on the board of world relief, and is currently on the editorial boards of crda and faith and economics, the journal of the association of christian economists. author email: judydean@brandeis.edu about:blank christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(2), winter 2023 hoksbergen and bronkema, editors’ introduction i editors’ introduction roland hoksbergen and david bronkema – crda co-editors the main question that motivates the entirety of this journal is how the christian faith can, does, and should influence our inquiries and interventions in the promotion of thriving communities, both locally and globally. this question stands behind all the articles, essays, opinion pieces, interviews, book reviews, and whatever else finds its way into this journal. make no mistake. the answer to this question is not simple, and in fact raises many more questions, but that does not mean we should not address it. instead, as richard slimbach reminds us at the outset of his essay on “asking tough questions…,” we must learn to “love the questions,” and, over time, live into them. slimbach opens this issue by asking three sets of tough questions about the theory and practices of transformational development, inviting dialogue at every step. the first set has to do with whether and to what extent conversion to christianity is the underpinning of morality and optimal human development. we generally say that it is, but does this assertion actually hold up when we look at our practices, our theories, and the world at large? the second set questions whether christians have taken seriously the global forces that have led to such astounding economic inequality and environmental calamity, much of which christians have themselves perpetrated and seem even now to discount. and the third set of questions asks which groups christian ngos do and/or should work with in partnership. transformational development theory puts a premium on partnering with churches in the global south. is this the best approach? the editors are conscious of the fact that slimbach’s essay will likely be provocative and controversial. that is fine, because, as slimbach says, we need to talk about hard things. for that reason, we invite you, actually we urge you, to respond to any or all parts of his reflections. if you indeed do feel moved and led to share your thoughts and reactions, whether in support, opposition, or simply in dialogue, please let us know and we will work with you as you prepare a response that contributes to a vigorous, thoughtful, and constructive conversation in the next issue of this journal following slimbach’s essay is an engaging piece by katie toop of world concern. toop shares the story of a field exercise that helped world concern and its partners in africa live into the question of what kind of a partner they are and want to be with the local church, and why. and, in sharing how for world concern, even though they work with other partners, their partnerships with the local church hold a special place in their hearts and in their programming, she takes on one of slimbach’s tough questions. this issue also includes a synopsis of the oneaccord 2022 conference held at ridgecrest, north carolina in october of last year, and three book reviews, each of them living into the tough questions in different ways: • the first is on the role of conversion in our work among the poor – dwight mutonono’s review of rupen das’s book, the god that the poor seek: conversion, context, and the world of the vulnerable. carlisle, cumbria, uk: langham global library 2022. • the second addresses the theology of living faithfully in this world – gregory leffel’s review of mark r. teasdale’s participating in abundant life: holistic salvation for a secular age. downers grove, il: ivp academic 2022. • and the third is on the history of one christian ngo’s efforts to be faithful throughout its over one-hundred-year history – katerina parson’s review of alain epp weaver’s service and the ministry of reconciliation: a missiological history of mennonite central committee. newton, ks: bethel college 2021. resources and upcoming events 1. check out the synopsis of oneaccord 2022 in the pages below for highlights from last year’s conference and consider attending this year’s oneaccord 2023, october 17-19, once again in ridgecrest, nc. 2. the christian economic development network will hold their next summit, ced summit 2023, on april 25-26 in arlington, va (in the greater washington dc area). the theme will be “cultivating resilience in transformative economic development.” https://www.cednetwork.org/2023summit.html christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(2), winter 2023 hoksbergen and bronkema, editors’ introduction ii 3. check out the meros center, “a research and training community for christian health ministry” that is strengthening research in faith-based organizations. it is a site “where faith-based health organizations, researchers, and learners can find the support they need to measure, innovate, and share their impact” (https://meroscenter.org/) 4. the accord research alliance podcasts continue to be a great source for additional information on christian relief, development, and advocacy issues. two recent podcasts are a. decolonizing the data journey: a conversation with dr. drew hart b. using the net promoter score for listening: an interview with emilie jackson if you would like to discuss an article you are working on or anything else related to the journal, please contact the editors at crda@accordnetwork.org. https://meroscenter.org/ https://accordnetwork.org/ara/ https://soundcloud.com/user-666881060/46-drew-hart https://soundcloud.com/user-666881060/46-drew-hart https://soundcloud.com/user-666881060/45-emilie-jackson https://soundcloud.com/user-666881060/45-emilie-jackson about:blank christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 dejean and kurlberg, book review 97 book review tearfund and the quest for faith-based development by dena freeman reviewed by catriona dejean and nina kurlberg new york: routledge, 2019, ny: orbis press. $26.00 in 2018 tearfund celebrated its 50-year anniversary. to celebrate this significant milestone since its birth from the evangelical alliance in 1968, tearfund committed to an organizational sabbath and embarked upon a year of reflection and introspection on its rich history. from responding to the humanitarian needs of the biafra war in nigeria, to being a leading voice on climate change, tearfund has been on a journey of adaptation, learning, and spiritual exploration. dr. dena freeman was commissioned in 2017 to look back over the 50-year history and explore how faith has formed and shaped the organization and its practice. the research was taken further by freeman into this book. the book is rich and does well to draw out some of the tensions and complexity surrounding tearfund’s journey to outwork its faith in practice over the years. yet this review suggests that the author has misunderstood what is at the heart of these tensions, which has ultimately influenced her analysis. tearfund has always been faith-based, so it is less about a quest with an end destination, and more about a journey; one that has enabled the organization to navigate the complex space between mission and development. through the course of the book freeman narrates a history of tearfund, with a particular focus on the ways in which faith is evidenced in its activities “on the ground” (13). academically, freeman has situated the book within the field of religion and development. as such, her analysis of tearfund is guided by the three themes most prevalent within the existing body of literature in this field: work that seeks to categorize faithbased organizations (fbos) to enable comparison in relation both to each other and to so-called secular organizations; studies that explore the role of faith in faith-based development organizations (fbdos); and research that examines the role of religion in development. freeman aims to “speak into” a gap within this body of academic literature by offering an indepth analysis of tearfund as one particular fbdo (3). it is one of the first books of its kind within the field of religion and development. to lay the foundations for her analysis, freeman first provides a brief history of humanitarian and development organizations in the uk from as early as the nineteenth century leading up to tearfund’s establishment in 1968. she highlights the complex dynamics between “christian social engagement, overseas missionary activity, and the growth of secular humanitarianism,” noting that these foreshadow many of the internal debates that have arisen within the organization over the years (19). the following chapter surveys tearfund’s early years, focusing particularly on the evolution of its identity through this period from being a missionary organization that supported relief and development work to becoming the uk’s largest evangelical charity. as well as sending personnel overseas, by the early 1990s tearfund was awarding grants to missionaries and partner organizations through both an overseas relief and development department and an evangelism and christian education department (52). yet freeman highlights the growing discomfort within the organization during this time regarding the separation between the “spiritual” and the “material” in its work (57), a theme that continues throughout the book. freeman then explores what she sees as the next season of the organization’s existence, during which its relief and development work underwent a major process of professionalization, leading to tearfund gaining increasing respect and recognition within the sector. secularization consequently became its greatest risk and from the early 2000s was at the top of the board’s risk register (78). during this period, tearfund christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 dejean and kurlberg, book review 98 also established its advocacy and campaigning work, recruited its first theology advisor and adopted the framework of integral mission. the final chapters of the book describe tearfund’s efforts to develop and mainstream church-centered approaches that empowered the local church as the “central actor in community development” (138). freeman views the initiatives developed during this time as among the more innovative aspects of tearfund’s work. yet she challenges the extent to which it has been possible to implement this approach throughout the organization, arguing that it is still wrestling with “fundamental questions about how to effectively combine evangelism and development, whether it is possible to be a mainstream ngo and yet still retain an evangelical identity, and what it means to do faith-based development” (157). throughout her research and analysis, freeman has brought an “outsider” perspective to tearfund and its work (merton 1972). this has been incredibly valuable and enriching for the organization. not only has it been insightful to get a glimpse of how tearfund is perceived from the outside, and more specifically among the academic community, but it has also illuminated areas for growth and learning. for example, freeman has shed light on some of the organization’s internal narratives, such as how to continue to demonstrate impact, balancing risks as an fbdo within restricted contexts, and how to leverage church and community mobilization processes given they are different compared with other development processes. nevertheless, freeman’s understanding of the insider perspective is weak, which has impacted her analysis. for example, she does not fully appreciate the distinction between “faith” and “religion” and the significance of this for an fbo such as tearfund. although freeman’s use of these terms within the book is referred to in a footnote (17), it is surprising that this is not given deeper treatment within the main body of the text, particularly bearing in mind the book’s emphasis on faith. she seems to have misunderstood the question at the root of the internal debates and tensions within the organization, which are not at their core about how to combine development with evangelism, but rather about how the organization can more truly express its faith through its work. this might appear to be a subtle difference, but it has implications for freeman’s analysis. as is clear from her framing of the book, freeman views the dominant feature of tearfund’s most recent decade as being its efforts to become a distinctively evangelical fbo, having been established as a missionary organization and gradually evolving to become a well-respected development ngo. from freeman’s perspective, tearfund’s struggle to combine evangelism and development, noted above, has been the common thread running through each of these three stages. yet from tearfund’s perspective, the common thread has been the question of how to live out its faith as an organization. this journey has led to the adoption of “integral mission.” while freeman views integral mission as the organization’s attempt to combine “evangelism and development into one integrated activity” (156), tearfund understands it in this way: mission is more than just verbal evangelism plus social action. it does not just bring two types of missional activity together. rather mission is our participation in god’s mission to redeem and restore the world, seeking the kingdom and its justice in all spheres of life. in our mission we take jesus christ as our example, understanding that his incarnation reveals the father’s love, justice and kingdom to us in every aspect of his life and ministry – in his words, his deeds and his character. we also believe that by becoming a part of the body of christ and being shaped by this relationship we learn how to follow in his footsteps and participate in the mission of god. (tearfund 2016) in other words, integral mission should lead to a focus on “being,” from which all “doing” flows, and on a move away from a body-spirit dualism that categorizes activities as either “material” or “spiritual.” through the lens of integral mission, it is not possible to isolate activities from the beliefs and motivations that underpin them. indeed, tearfund’s participation in god’s mission to seek justice in all spheres of life might result in the organization carrying out the same activities as socalled secular organizations, since from this perspective working to enable communities to access clean water is not simply a social or material action, but one that is deeply spiritual (c.f. 139). while the outsider perspective is valuable, deeper interaction between the outsider and insider perspectives would have strengthened the analysis within the book. one of the questions that freeman sets out to address concerns whether and how tearfund’s faith impacts its practice. yet what is distinctive about tearfund’s practice is the nature of the questions underlying its decision-making, which are rooted in its faith. it is this continual, faith-based questioning and wrestling that has brought into being those aspects of the organization’s work that freeman has assessed as innovative, while at the same time enabling it to continue carrying out aspects she would label “secular.” it is faith that has enabled the organization to hold those two supposedly contradictory elements of its work in tension – although this has not always been easy. christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 dejean and kurlberg, book review 99 the critique is but minor, for this is a well-written book and an excellent addition to the literature within the field. one of its main contributions lies in the questions it raises, both for tearfund and for other fbos. it also brings a challenge to the academic community in relation to the focus of its research on fbdos; as freeman notes, academia needs to be more in tune with their reality. she writes: “as the detailed historical and contextual analysis of this book has shown, many of the questions and assumptions of this literature have little to do with the reality of actual faithbased development organizations” (163). tearfund was born out of evangelical christian roots, with faith being part of its dna from the start. as an organization it has continued to grapple with what it means to be a biblically and christ-centered organization. to assume that there is an end goal to the quest, as the title would imply, is misleading. tearfund’s journey has seen global and local expressions and outworkings of faith with churches, partners and networks. if the organization had not, and does not continue to grapple with its faith identity, then it could risk becoming irrelevant in a dynamic and everchanging world. tearfund’s difference lies in its ability to sit in the gap between mission and development; and for that it must continue to learn, grow, and adapt. references merton, robert k. 1972. “insiders and outsiders: a chapter in the sociology of knowledge.” american journal of sociology 78(1): 9-47. tearfund. 2016. tearfund’s theology of mission. tearfund internal document. catriona dejean is the strategy and impact director for tearfund. she has also worked on strategy and development programs for world vision, as a social enterprise consultant, and as an environmental consultant in the private sector. she is a board member of the joint learning initiative on local faith communities, and intrac, both in the uk. author email: catriona.dejean@tearfund.org nina kurlberg is tearfund’s theology development officer, with a focus on diversity and inclusion. she is in the final year of a phd at the university of edinburgh (school of divinity / business school), where she also works as a senior tutor in research methods at the school of social and political science. author email: nina.kurlberg@tearfund.org about:blank christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(1), summer 2019 i editors’ introduction to christian relief, development, and advocacy: the journal of the accord network roland hoksbergen and stephen offutt is christian faith relevant to how we address global poverty, imagine a better life, and work together to ensure that everyone enjoys the opportunity to thrive in the world we share together? does our faith have anything to say about economic inequality, ethnic conflict, gender discrimination, corruption, environmental management, disaster preparedness, children’s well-being, health care, social justice, or good government? how about political/economic systems and political engagement? how important is faith to human development itself? is it true that spiritual development is part of human development? for the editors and editorial board of this new journal, as well as to many others, the answer to these questions is an emphatic yes. if our christian faith is indeed relevant, many additional questions come to mind. for example, in terms of practice, what does our faith say about how we should work to fight global ills and promote the global good? what ethical guidance does scripture offer? what values should underpin and infuse our work? should we work to transform individuals or institutional structures? how should christian ngos relate to governments, and should they accept government money? how important is advocacy, and how should we go about it? what kinds of partnerships should we work in? how do we work together with christians from other theological traditions? how do we work well across cultures and with people of other faiths, or no faith? all of these admittedly complex questions, as well as many more, cry out for thoughtful people of faith to take them up, research them, reflect on them as practitioners, and converse about them with likeminded people so that we can all grow in our knowledge, practice, and, ultimately, our faithfulness. true, there is already a huge literature in the field of relief, development, and advocacy, but it is rare for this literature to take up issues from explicitly faith-based perspectives. the existence of this large secular literature and its associated professional establishment raises another set of questions for christians. how do we interact with the relief, development, and advocacy (rda) world at large? what are the pros and cons of different theoretical paradigms, like modernization, the capability approach, or postdevelopment? how should christians relate to theories and explanations built on philosophical foundations different from those of christianity? to ask a similar question, as dena freeman does, are we “christians doing development” or are we actually “doing christian development?” (see offutt and reynolds in this journal, 2) a professional conversation about all these things and more, one that engages both scholars and practitioners, is what christian relief, development, and advocacy (crda) hopes to facilitate. the idea for this journal arose several years ago when one of those small groups of “thoughtful, committed citizens” that margaret mead famously told us about got together to talk things over. the group wondered how we might bring about some positive change in helping christian practitioners and scholars how to care for and help people in need around the world. led especially by david bronkema of eastern university, members of the group had all experienced how hard it was hard to get explicitly faith-based work published in secular journals. we were also aware of how committed faith-based organizations were to integrating christian faith into their work, but we also knew that the conversation about how to do that needed to grow. so, we hatched the basic plan for this journal. since those first conversations, we have joined up with the accord network to be their official journal, organized an editorial board of a dozen knowledgeable and experienced christian rda professionals, and figured out (no small thing) the software we’re using to publish crda as a semi-annual, online journal. this is our inaugural issue. it has two articles, one study of best practices, one perspective on how we should work together, and five book reviews. we think it is a promising start, and hope for a lively, rich, faithcentered discourse in years ahead. we believe the questions raised above require rigorous thought and https://www.accordnetwork.org/ christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(1), summer 2019 ii scholarship. we also believe that christians working in the trenches to implement rda projects and programs need answers to these questions that are accessible and meaningful in their vocational contexts. our goal is to strike the delicate balance of practical yet rigorous scholarship. we thus welcome contributions from practitioners in the field, leaders in home offices, scholars in universities, and fellow travelers everywhere. we also acknowledge that there are areas where we need to stretch and grow. for one thing, we need to cultivate the diversity of our board, our contributors, and our readers, because we know how much identity, experience, and perspective matter to how we think about faith and all the issues of global relevance that need to be addressed. if you are doing research on issues in rda, engaging in serious reflection, or working with strategies that work well, and if a central part of your work and reflections revolves around issues related to the christian faith, then crda may be the ideal vehicle to get your work to the people with whom it will have the most influence. hopefully, crda will put your research and reflections into a public discourse that contributes to making the world more like the one god wants us to have. we invite you to join us, to submit your work to crda, to read the work of other contributors, and thus to join the conversation. christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 huff and bueno, building community capacity during a crisis 75 building community capacity during a crisis: the response of ngos, local churches, and cbos to covid-19 in el salvador james g. huff jr. and ronald todd bueno in the middle of a compounding health and hunger crisis in el salvador, church and community leaders have catalyzed their relationships of trust and previous experience in community development to care for the most vulnerable families in their communities. the following paper discusses how staff from a salvadoran, faith-based, non-governmental organization (ngo) have responded to and worked with leaders from 56 local churches and 92 community-based organizations (cbos) in el salvador to manage the complicated and dynamic conditions generated by covid-19. the paper draws on monitoring data, including surveys of church and community leaders, stakeholder meetings, and staff field visits, to describe the exercise of community capacity by local leaders. the discussion uses robert chaskin's operational model of community capacity to identify how local leaders build upon and generate new capacities in the midst of a protracted crisis. there is emerging evidence that the relief and recovery efforts directed by church and community organizations have served to strengthen community capacity in a number of critical areas. the paper closes by describing how ngos and other third-party organizations can direct programs to strengthen community capacity in the short-term in order to support church and community leaders’ efforts for long-term holistic change. introduction the covid-19 pandemic in el salvador has significantly altered the routine activities and plans of life and work in a very short period of time. the abrupt change has required organizations involved in the longterm work of holistic transformation to temporarily shelve pre-existing annual plans and to refocus their energies on addressing the critical needs of salvadorans whose vulnerabilities have been exacerbated by the crisis. for enlace, a salvadoran faith-based, nongovernment organization (ngo), this has meant suspending all community development projects, such as water and sanitation projects and housing and economic development initiatives, to help church and community leaders identify and care for the growing number of families experiencing food insecurity and health issues. it has been a moment of significant 1 enlace staff trained church and community leaders to collect survey data through digital questionnaires that were collected, processed, and analyzed at the enlace offices from april to june 2020. survey data included sociodemographic, employment, food security, and health-related questions, along with multiple items related to the impacts of the pandemic on participating households. a total of 112 surveys were completed and processed. reorientation as well as an opportunity to evaluate whether the community development work carried out prior to march 12, 2020, has enabled enlace staff and community stakeholders to capably address the novel and difficult challenges that have emerged due to the crisis. the following discussion describes what is occurring in real time as enlace’s key stakeholders, which consists of leaders from 56 churches and 92 community-based organizations (cbos), manage the complicated and dynamic conditions generated by covid-19. the information we present is drawn from participation in weekly staff meetings, from conversations with enlace staff about the dynamics of relief efforts, and from a recent survey of church and community stakeholders engaged in the work.1 the reflections we offer here are not the outcome of a christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 huff and bueno, building community capacity during a crisis 76 formal process of program assessment. rather, they are observations generated in the short-term that form part of the regular practice of “causal link monitoring,” which directs community development practitioners to pay attention to, identify, and note the processes and contextual factors that shape how a program or project actually develops over time (britt, hummelbrunner, and greene 2017, 8; huff 2020). the emerging evidence we discuss in this paper is the result of our inductive review of monitoring data that has been collected by enlace staff since march 2020. notably, this paper is one outcome of a long-term, practitioner-scholar collaborative research project on pentecostal congregations and community development in el salvador. ron bueno is co-founder and executive director of enlace and james huff has consulted with enlace’s research and evaluation program since 2008. maintaining a long-term and systematic research project that blends organizational insider know-how and evaluation consulting experience has proven beneficial. for example, our status as insiders has made it possible to quickly obtain quality information about the dynamic and changing conditions generated by the pandemic in many different communities across el salvador. we have also been able to regularly consult with and receive informative feedback from staff and community leaders about the findings explored in this paper. working as researchers with insider status, however, also implies various limitations. for example, the monitoring data generated by enlace staff provides real-time information on how approximately sixty different churches are addressing problems caused by the pandemic. the findings we discuss, however, are not necessarily representative of how most pentecostal churches in el salvador are presently responding to the crisis. we acknowledge, therefore, that reporting on a relatively small subset of churches limits the external validity of the preliminary findings discussed in this paper. we also recognize that the ongoing and close interpersonal relationships we maintain with staff and community stakeholders (and most notably for ron bueno) is both ethnographically productive and ethically challenging (bornstein 2011).2 our review of the monitoring and survey data was guided by two central questions. first, is there any evidence that local church and community leaders are leveraging community capacity to respond to the disruptive changes caused by the covid-19 crisis? 2 as two anthropologists who are working for (as is the case for ron bueno) or with (as is the case for james huff) enlace, we remain aware that our positionality provides us with easy access to observing and documenting internal organizational dynamics that are often unknown or inaccessible to outside researchers. this same positionality also complicates the relationships we create with stakeholders, many of whom are enlace employees or participants in enlace-supported initiatives. see lewis and schuller (2017:639-641) for a helpful discussion about the ethical tensions and methodological challenges posed for researchers who work either for or with ngos like enlace. second, and relatedly, how has enlace as a thirdparty organization adapted its community development efforts to support local leaders’ community capacity as the crisis has unfolded? our initial, inductive examination suggests that many of enlace’s key stakeholders are, in fact, drawing on existing community capacity to work creatively and effectively to mitigate some of the adverse impacts of covid-19 in their communities. the paper is organized into four primary sections. the opening section summarizes some basic ideas from the literature on community capacity and community-capacity building. it focuses specifically on robert chaskin’s (2001) conceptualization of community capacity. the building of local community capacity is a stated core outcome of enlace’s theory of change, and chaskin’s model provides a helpful framework for identifying the key assumptions embedded within the organization’s work with church and community leaders. the short section that follows summarizes the core elements of enlace’s approach to community transformation. next, we describe the spread and impact of the pandemic in el salvador and the government’s response since march 2020. the main body of the article utilizes chaskin’s model to consider how community capacity is being formed and utilized by church and community leaders as they look for practical ways to respond to the needs of vulnerable neighbors. community capacities are always exercised in complex and changing circumstances, and the pandemic has created unique challenges for local stakeholders who were already managing different development initiatives prior to march. to conclude the paper, we provide three initial learnings that can be applied to the design of relief and recovery initiatives by third-party organizations that could enhance community capacity during a prolonged crisis like covid 19. what is community capacity? both community capacity and community capacity-building are concepts that have been embraced and promoted by scholars and practitioners working in diverse fields, including public health, urban housing and community development, rural economic development, and social work, to name a few (beckley, martz, nadeau, wall, and reimer 2008; simmons, reynolds, and swinburn 2011). scholars and christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 huff and bueno, building community capacity during a crisis 77 practitioners often discuss and debate various definitions and operationalizations of the concepts within their own guild. the development of comprehensive and accessible concepts that can be readily used by practitioners working in diverse fields of social change remains an important goal to achieve. simmons, reynolds, and swinburn (2011) identified fifteen different definitions of community capacity-building in their systematic review of public health research. they observed three features shared by various definitions of the concept -it is understood to be a process, it is not “one definitive thing but a collection of . . . domains, characteristics, aspects, capabilities or dimensions” and, finally, it assumes an “end point, an outcome, or rationale” (simmons, et al. 2011, 196-197). for many scholars the concept of community capacity is grounded in the question: “the capacity to do what?” (beckley, et al 2008, 61). the question suggests that the process of capacity building generates or enhances characteristics or capabilities that are also generative phenomena. for example, programs that focus on strengthening the ability of local leaders to collectively address shared problems could increase access to local health care services, catalyze rural economic growth, or bolster watershed conservation efforts, to name a few common examples. chaskin (2001) has developed a comprehensive and accessible definition that can be more readily operationalized by practitioners (see also chaskin et al. 2001). he describes it as “the interaction of human capital, organizational resources, and social capital existing within a given community that can be leveraged to solve collective problems and improve or maintain the well-being of a given community (2001, 295). such interactions, for chaskin, can function as part of “informal social processes” or as part of an “organized effort” of change (chaskin 2001, 295). moreover, his use of the term “leverage” to characterize the interactive process of capacity-building is one that incorporates the strengths that already exist within a given community (see also simmons, et al. 2011, 198). chaskin’s operational model identifies four fundamental characteristics that comprise community capacity. these include: “(1) a sense of community, (2) a level of commitment among community members, (3) the ability to solve problems, and (4) access to resources” (2001, 295-296). he defines a sense of community as a “degree of connectedness” that members share, which can be expressed affectively or 3 chaskin’s operational model also assumes that interactions that occur within multiple, interrelated dimensions. one of these dimensions is especially germane to our discussion. it concerns the domains and social contexts where the characteristics of community capacity (e.g., sense of community, etc.) are embedded. the model identifies three different and interrelated “levels of social agency” within which these characteristics emerge and develop, including the individual, organizational, and network levels (chaskin, 2001, 297-298). our focus in this paper is on the individual and organizational levels. instrumentally, and that enables them to work together towards common goals (chaskin 2001, 296). how much responsibility “individuals, groups, or organizations take for what happens in the community” describes the level of commitment characteristic (chaskin 2001, 296). commitment level implies that there are people who in fact consider themselves to be stakeholders in the “collective well-being” of the community and who embody a willingness to “participate actively in that role” (2001, 296). the third characteristic, the ability to solve problems, simply refers to the process by which community members turn “commitment into action,” which can be exercised through “formal or informal means, spontaneously or through planned action” (chaskin 2001, 297). the final characteristic of community capacity concerns the level of access that community members have to economic, human, physical, and political resources, both within and beyond their immediate place of residence (chaskin 2001, 297).3 in this paper, we utilize these four primary characteristics to analyze and evaluate the dynamics of community capacity observed in our work with church and community leaders during their response to the pandemic. to be sure, chaskin’s definition incorporates terms that also warrant further clarification (e.g., social capital). nevertheless, we find his operationalization to be especially useful, due to his development of a relational and multidimensional model that makes it possible for organizations like enlace to better clarify and articulate the theory of change that guides their strategic choices and investment of resources. enlace’s approach of community capacity-building enlace is a faith based, non-profit organization established in el salvador in 1993. the organization’s stated mission is to train and resource local evangelical and pentecostal congregations to partner effectively with community-based organizations to alleviate spiritual and physical poverty. enlace staff train and coach church leaders for seven to ten years to envision and mobilize church members to engage in community transformation. staff spend multiple hours two to three times per month with leaders from each church, facilitating bible studies, conducting workshops on how to interview or work with cbos and leaders, christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 huff and bueno, building community capacity during a crisis 78 participating in community meetings with church and community leaders, and helping the church and community identify, design and oversee local development projects. enlace’s theory of change incorporates key elements of chaskin’s model. namely, it assumes that enhancing local leaders’ community capacity to define community problems, identify local resources, and design and implement initiatives is fundamental to improving the socioeconomic, health, and environmental conditions of the communities they inhabit. enlace’s approach focuses on training church leaders to partner effectively with community-based organizations to strengthen community capacity to address multidimensional poverty. enlace staff train church leaders on how to approach, strengthen, and work with community leaders and cbos, such as an asociación de desarrollo comunitario (community development association, adesco), local water boards, parent-teacher organizations (ptos), and health committees. the staff focus on building leaders’ capacities in various areas, including the identification of community problems through baseline research; the design, implementation, and evaluation of communityled initiatives; and the mobilization of local and external resources from private and public sources. at the time of the research, enlace was working with 63 churches who were partnering with over 200 cbos in 224 different communities in el salvador. these church partners have been working with local cbos to strengthen their sense of community, to exercise a joint commitment to community well-being, and to mobilize resources to address shared problems prior to the onset of the pandemic. this ongoing work was abruptly interrupted in march with the onset of the covid-19 crisis, leading us to ask the central question of this paper: how would previous processes of community capacity-building develop in the changing and disruptive conditions created by the pandemic? compounding health and economic crisis in el salvador el salvador is one of the poorest countries in the western hemisphere. 36.5 percent of its population of 6.1 million people live in extreme poverty. seventy-five percent of salvadorans are unor underemployed working in the informal sector. more than half of all households in el salvador experience some level of food shortages. seventy percent of the population only have access to public health services, which are limited and primarily provide first-level medical attention. as of september 2020, the total number of recorded covid-19 cases in el salvador was just under 27,000, and 774 salvadorans had died because of the virus (johns hopkins coronavirus resource center 2020). obtaining reliable morbidity and mortality figures for the virus in el salvador has proven difficult. ministry of health officials, for example, acknowledged that deaths caused by the virus were very likely being undercounted (calderon, june 1, 2020). the number of hospital beds is far less than is required, so the vast number of patients are being treated or are in recovery at home. the national government’s response to the pandemic, and specifically the directives issued from president nayib bukele’s administration, has been described by one observer as an “improvised strategy” (el salvador perspectives, june 28, 2020). the administration’s aggressive approach was officially enacted with an executive order (estado de emergencia nacional, estado de calamidad pública y desastre nacional) on march 11, which mandated a national quarantine consisting of airport and border closures, the suspension of all educational activities, and the establishment of quarantine centers for people who had been exposed to the virus or who had violated stay-athome orders (“at 100-day mark,” june 28, 2020). by early april, the national government unveiled a plan to mitigate the negative economic impacts of the national quarantine. this included a subsidy payment of $300 per household, and a temporary suspension on mortgage and utilities payments and on loans and tax obligations (“el salvador under quarantine,” april 3, 2020). although the initial rollout of the subsidy payment did not occur smoothly, and there were widespread reports of households not receiving the payment, the government eventually delivered the subsidy to approximately 480,000 households for a total of nearly $144 million (“el salvador under quarantine,” april 3, 2020). when covid-19 cases began to steadily increase, president bukele announced the implementation of more aggressive lockdown measures to prevent its spread. these included stay-athome restrictions that allowed salvadorans to only leave their homes twice weekly to purchase food and medicine (“lockdown,” may 5, 2020). as lockdown measures remained in place, the government also attempted to address the increase in food insecurity. it eventually distributed 2.7 million baskets of basic foodstuffs to salvadoran households. the impacts of the pandemic, along with the effects generated by measures to prevent the spread of the virus, are significant for all salvadorans, and especially for families residing in the rural and semirural communities where enlace’s church and community partners work. a preliminary report generated by enlace staff, which draws on interview data with 83 church and community leaders from 34 rural, semi-rural, and urban communities, makes clear the acute difficulties that many salvadorans presently face. christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 huff and bueno, building community capacity during a crisis 79 interview participants identified five primary economic problems generated by the crisis. first, there has been a significant loss of income for many households. this has been especially the case for communities located near industrial zones, where many residents ordinarily receive an income through formal sector employment. members of these same households have not been able to supplement the household economy though work in other incomegenerating activities (e.g., working temporarily in the agricultural sector). second, quarantine-related restrictions have made it very difficult, and in many cases entirely impossible, for people in informal sectors to carry out the work that ordinarily sustains their families. this impact is especially important given that 47% of the salvadoran economy operates in the informal sector, and is expected to grow significantly over the next 15 months. the implementation of social distancing protocols required the closure of commercial centers, of industrial parks, and of most service-oriented worksites across the country. a third problem that was reported was that many families have been unable to obtain basic foodstuffs. in some cases, interviewees explained that this was caused by lack of supply (e.g., in local stores supplies in some locales are not adequately stocked due to supply chain interruptions); in other cases, families reported not having adequate income to purchase the foods that are needed by household members. fourth, some families in rural areas reported that they have not been able to carry out the ordinary routines of agricultural work. farmers have reported that the planting season has been disrupted because government-supplied inputs have not arrived and, therefore, crops could not be planted. finally, interview participants noted reports of declines in financial support (e.g., remittances) coming from family members living in places like the u.s. responding to the crisis: leveraging community capacity within a few days of the borders being closed, church and community leaders were reaching out to enlace staff to explore how to respond to the growing crisis. local leaders stated that the number of families in need of basic food supplies was increasing daily. they were worried that the needs were too big for them to address without excluding families and damaging relationships. enlace staff’s initial response was to work with local leaders to design a new set of tools to identify and prioritize the most vulnerable families in their communities. enlace developed google forms, for example, that could be completed online by local leaders. enlace also staff gathered and organized the data into lists of families by levels of priority. local leaders then verified and used the lists to solicit resources and food supplies from mayors’ offices, ngos, and other private sources. enlace staff also provided food and hygiene aid for local leaders to distribute to identified families. enlace staff have also created several other virtual tools for local leaders to identify and respond to subsequent areas of need during the initial months of the crisis. one tool was created, for example, to identify families with members who are chronically ill or have other issues that make them more vulnerable. interview schedules were created for leaders to survey how public and private organizations were responding to the crisis in order to solicit funds. tools were also created for local leaders to identify the needs of subsistence farmers, micro and small business owners, and other emotional and spiritual needs. the use of the tools by local leaders along with their collective action fostered a sense of community, strengthened their commitment to engage and lead the relief effort, increased their capacity to identify and address community problems, and contributed to their ability to mobilize local and external resources. sense of community this first characteristic of community capacity recognizes that the existence of strong relational bonds between members of a particular community is an important factor in enabling the work of collective problem-solving. each of the rural and semi-urban communities where enlace works has their own unique set of local relationships and histories, which are shaped by the diverse and changing environments they inhabit. enlace’s approach to community capacitybuilding affirms the unique attributes of each local community. it also recognizes that these attributes will shape the process of capacity-building in such a way that each community will have its own unique experience of change over time. at the same time, enlace staff have observed several general patterns in the structure and organization of local communities that influence how the process of building a sense of community unfolds across all communities. first, in both rural and semiurban areas, residents usually possess a shared understanding of the geographic and territorial boundaries that define the particular community space they inhabit (smith 1986). nevertheless, they vary considerably in how they define a shared sense of place and in how they see themselves in relationship to other neighbors who reside within those same territorial boundaries. second, communities located in rural areas are frequently composed of a few extended family groups. members of each extended family network often maintain a sense of community belonging (i.e. christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 huff and bueno, building community capacity during a crisis 80 their family), even though the strength of relationship that exists between each family member varies considerably. this feeling of belonging is not necessarily shared with other community residents who are not a part of the extended family network, however. finally, residents in rural and semi-urban communities can, and often do, share a general sense of mutual circumstance and recognition of shared needs. at the same time, they vary in their perspectives on the causes and effects of shared problems. moreover, they often have very different ideas about the scope or incidence level of a given problem. even when residents demonstrate a shared understanding of community needs this only occasionally corresponds with a shared commitment or capacity to act collectively to address or solve such problems. such patterns simply remind us that local responses to the pandemic developed within diverse communities wherein residents develop and sustain different stocks and threshold levels of their sense of community (bueno 2019). local leaders have responded in diverse ways to the changes generated by the pandemic and by the federal government’s executive order on march 11. in some communities, local churches and community leaders have waited to see what resources will be allocated to them by other congregations, ngos, and local and federal governments. other church leaders have focused on mobilizing relief services for church members or for non-members with whom they had an existing relationship. a smaller number of church and community leaders have worked quickly to meet virtually in order to discuss community needs and identify ways to address them collectively. in these communities, local leaders began to mobilize their own resources to respond to the most vulnerable families. in a few of these cases church and community leaders also reached out to local mayor’s offices and to ngos, such as enlace, from the outset to mobilize assistance. church leaders reached out to local leaders from various cbos, including local adescos, water boards, or pto boards, with varying levels of success to respond collectively to the pandemic. in most churches the coordination proceeded accordingly: a few leaders within the church reached out to a small number of community leaders with whom they had built some level of trust. these already existing forms of bridging capital, which connected individual leaders from different church and community networks, were first accessed by leaders to identify the most vulnerable families. they then leveraged relationships within their respective networks (e.g. bonding capital with other church members or among other community leaders) to distribute food and agricultural supplies to vulnerable households (huff 2020; bueno 2019). notably, many of the ordinary practices that leaders previously used to meet, organize, and discuss project plans could not be exercised because of lockdown mandates and social distancing requirements. nevertheless, church and community leaders have built on their already existing relationships to adapt to changing conditions and create new ways to meet and maintain contact with one another (e.g. through cell phones and facebook group pages). they have also met while standing outside of each other's homes, in outdoor spaces, and even while sitting in their cars with the windows closed. conversations that enlace staff have had with various church and community leaders since the beginning of the national quarantine are suggestive of some patterns that are worth highlighting. for example, leaders have indicated that the work of organizing a collective response to the pandemic has cultivated a new sense of community. church leaders have noted that they have befriended families that they did not previously know. several have also indicated that they became more aware of the scope of needs that exist within their community. others have expressed that the experience has enabled them to better understand and, to some degree, better empathize with the situations and circumstances of their vulnerable neighbors. similar observations have also been shared by community leaders. altogether, such emerging patterns suggest that leaders are actively building on an already existing sense of “connectedness” to develop a more robust and shared “recognition of mutuality of circumstance” (chaskin 2001). this observation is not meant to understate the very real challenges that local leaders and their fellow community residents continue to confront, of course. but we are discovering that the work the leaders are doing in response to the crisis has contributed to a perceived increase in a shared sense of community. commitment this second characteristic of community capacity indicates that community members understand themselves as vested stakeholders in the well-being of the community and, correspondingly, work towards achieving and sustaining community well-being. the preceding section makes clear that various church and community leaders have worked together to identify and provide aid to the most vulnerable households in their community. in some cases, their coordinated efforts were already underway before receiving assistance from enlace; other leaders moved forward with a collaborative response upon receiving support from enlace. in either case, such patterns of response suggest that leaders see themselves as community stakeholders who are willing to work on behalf of the well-being of other community residents. since mid-march enlace staff have noted various patterns of local leader engagement that christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 huff and bueno, building community capacity during a crisis 81 demonstrate a significant level of commitment to community well-being. for example, leaders have attempted to learn more about the incidence and patterning of local needs by interviewing families by phone or through home visits. they worked with enlace staff to process the results of their interviews and to generate lists that prioritize families by the following criteria: age, marital status, dependency ratio, and employment. these lists were then used by leader groups to approach mayor’s offices, ngos, and local businesses to mobilize resources; they were also used to ensure that provisions (e.g. food and hygiene aid) supplied by external sources were getting to the most vulnerable families in the community. in addition to advocating on behalf of the needs of vulnerable households to local governments and external ngos, church and community leaders have also mobilized resources and raised funds at the local level. one group of leaders, for example, reported that they fished in local ponds and included their catch in food aid distributions. others reached out to raise funds from salvadoran family members and friends living in the usa; these leaders also noted that they sent pictures and copies of receipts to their expat contacts. in april and may, local leaders started to work with enlace to create mid-term plans in order to address problems related to food insecurity and poor health. as we note in the next section, some local leaders are looking beyond immediate relief efforts in order to identify the mediumand long-term needs of neighbors whose livelihoods depend on subsistence farming. in may, some leaders began to work with farmers to access agricultural inputs, and, by doing so, recognized the need to draft 15-month, agricultural development plans.4 ability to solve problems and mobilize resources to conclude this section, we consider both of the remaining characteristics of community capacity, including the ability to problem-solve and the mobilization of resources. the ability to translate commitment into problem-solving action is often expressed in local leaders’ capacity to assess and analyze a particular community problem (or opportunity) and to take concrete steps to work for the well-being of community residents (chaskin, 2001). since midmarch local church and community leaders have demonstrated their ability to problem-solve and to identify and mobilize aid resources in new and creative ways. their efforts are especially notable given that 4 in all but three communities, community leaders had not prioritized economic development nor food security plans in previous years. they were not seen as a “project” that could be worked on by the community. as food insecurity becomes more pronounced in el salvador, church and community leaders are exploring new ways to assist farmers through sustainable agriculture and other initiatives such as home gardens and chicken coops. access to important aid resources has been greatly complicated by the pandemic. the process of identifying and mobilizing aid resources to vulnerable households was complicated from the outset by various factors. as we have noted, leaders could not meet together as they were accustomed to doing because of the lockdown and social distancing requirements. the spread of disinformation about covid-19, along with the lack of reliable public health information, also made some leaders uncertain about how to best respond. upon recognizing the limitations of their existing problemsolving strategies, they worked together (and with enlace’s assistance) to devise new solutions for gathering information that was needed for effective aid distribution. local leaders utilized the new tools that were created in consultation with enlace staff to interview local families and mobilize resources for over 20,000 families. church and community leaders recognized early on that the supply of local resources they were mobilizing to support and aid vulnerable neighbors was decreasing quickly. most leaders, moreover, were experiencing the same economic problems as the families they were trying to assist. many were furloughed or lost their jobs; others were unable to farm or be hired on by neighboring farms. to address these problems, many leaders sought out food aid from local mayors' offices and non-profit organizations. they were also able to secure resources through external relationships and networks, including from private sources (e.g., gifts from family or friends in the u.s.) and external ngos, to offer additional assistance to families in need. local leaders' problem-solving efforts were further complicated by the sometimes limited or uneven responses of federal and local government agencies. some local government officials opted to work with local leaders in the selection and distribution of aid. the majority of local and federal government agencies, however, provided aid directly to communities through the military or other national departments without consulting local leaders. when federal agencies provided aid directly, it became difficult for local leaders to verify whether aid reached the most vulnerable households. in the cases where local leaders were included in the distribution process by local mayors’ offices, they were able to ensure that families of greatest need were served first. as of september 22, 2020, 56 churches had worked with 92 cbos from 170 different communities christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 huff and bueno, building community capacity during a crisis 82 to identify and serve over 20,000 families with food, hygiene and agricultural inputs. this effort has involved 238 church leaders and 224 community leaders who worked together to provide food and hygiene aid supplies to 20,339 families across el salvador. a total of 3,050,850 meals were distributed to families over six months. notably, leaders mobilized and utilized local resources for 14,875 of these families (73% of total meals), and used external resources, which were supplied and administered by enlace, for the remaining 5,464 families (27% of the total meals). local leaders were also able to provide agricultural inputs to 1,157 families to support the restarting of local farming activities and agricultural production. initial learnings for community capacity-building practice it has been observed that community capacity is not something that “simply happen[s]... rather, it is developed or formed, or diminished and lost through response to changing conditions” (beckley, et al 2008, 63). the adverse effects of covid-19, along with the various restrictions induced by lockdown measures, have created a unique set of dynamic and difficult conditions for all salvadorans. a basic aim of the preceding discussion has been to examine how community capacity is being “developed or formed, or diminished and lost” as enlace’s church and community stakeholders attempt to respond to these uniquely challenging circumstances. drawing on chaskin’s operational model of community capacity, we have detailed how local stakeholders are accessing existing networks and drawing on emerging forms of social connectedness to problem-solve and mobilize resources to address the immediate needs of their vulnerable neighbors. the data discussed in this paper are the initial results of reviewing monitoring data and informal interviews with stakeholders since march, 2020. this data has generated valuable inductive findings that are important to helping enlace and its church and community partners respond capably and adaptively to the changing conditions created by the covid-19 pandemic. the data also highlights the need for additional empirical research to examine whether enlace’s investments into training local church and community leaders contributes to strengthening community capacity as conceptualized by chaskin’s model. what the preceding observations demonstrate is the value of sustaining a good practice of “causal link monitoring,” which directs community development practitioners to pay attention to the processes and contextual factors that actually shape how a project or program actually develops in real time (britt, hummelbrunner, and greene 2017, 8). by being attentive to how local leaders are exercising different aspects of community capacity in the present crisis, we can learn how to best support their efforts in ways that reinforce and enhance those same capacities. what have we learned along the way? responding to local community leaders in a time of crisis or humanitarian disaster, thirdparty organizations, including ngos like enlace, often acquire and provide immediate assistance through local networks. the observations we offer in this paper suggest that a vital role for third party organizations in such situations is to listen and respond to local leaders as they design and implement relief and recovery initiatives. this can be a challenge for ngos because relief efforts tend to be a set of standard technical responses that require urgent action. moreover, when communities have been decimated physically, organizationally, and socially, it can be difficult to identify and coordinate responses with local leaders. it obviously helps if the organization has built these types of relationships with local leaders prior to the crisis. nevertheless, if those relationships do not exist, it becomes imperative to develop clear and efficient processes and tools to identify and evaluate local leaders and organizations that are committed and capable of responding collectively to implement relief efforts. listening to and responding to local leaders can serve to strengthen community capacity during and after the response to the crisis. even in a prolonged crisis like the covid-19 pandemic, where information is limited, confusing, and uncertain, third party organizations can work together with local leaders to develop tools to understand emerging problems and to identify resources for the response. tools should be clear and user-friendly; most importantly, they should be designed so that local leaders are able to drive the process of collecting and analyzing data on community needs. third party organizations can assist in the technical aspects of collecting, analyzing, and reporting of data. however, data should be reported quickly and in ways that are accessible to local leaders. in the specific case of enlace’s response, it was important that the tools be created and approved by both church and community leaders so that they could divide up the work of gathering the data in order to collectively understand and respond to the crisis. facilitating community plans the final product of listening, gathering, and analyzing data should be a shortto mid-term community plan that guides collective action and resource mobilization. the creation of community plans made it possible for church and community leaders to identify and prioritize the needs of the most christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 huff and bueno, building community capacity during a crisis 83 vulnerable families. community plan documents also served as a tool for guiding discussion among church and community leaders and they helped to facilitate consensus-building regarding which families to help first. leaders quickly realized that the situation of many families would change as the months of lockdown continued; they recognized the importance of having a tool that could regularly be utilized over time in order to validate and update the lists of people in need and to make adjustments to their relief efforts along the way. community plans also provided local leaders with a transparent and fair way of communicating their collective response to the needs of vulnerable families. since the plan documented the shared discussion that leaders had, and it described the commitments they shared, it made it possible to sustain a response by a relatively large and diverse group of leaders. notably, the use of a community plan has encouraged leaders to remain engaged in the recovery process without becoming discouraged or frustrated by the hard work of sustaining consensus and managing conflict in the middle of a prolonged crisis. each community plan has also been instrumental in mobilizing internal and external resources. many church and community leaders turned the plan into verbal or written requests for assistance and help, which were then shared with people and organizations from both inside and outside the community. local leaders presented the plans to local mayors’ offices, ngos, businesses, and expats. in several cases, the mayors’ offices actually used the community plans generated by enlace’s church and community leaders to coordinate and provide aid. for some leaders, the plan was also used to track resources that were being raised along the way; others also utilized the community plan to identify additional fundraising needs. in these cases, the use of the community plan strengthened local leaders’ sense of ownership and control over the process of leading the pandemic response in their communities. local leaders not only used their plan to identify which families would need immediate assistance for shorter periods of time; they also employed it to designate households that would need food and hygiene supplies for an extended period. the plan also helped them to identify families that needed immediate help with agricultural inputs for their final cultivation cycle of the season, and they used it to determine the ongoing need of farmers for the next planting season. many local leaders, with assistance from enlace, have already started to create longer term agricultural plans for 2021. finally, the research processes that corresponded with the development of community plans have also encouraged new discussions regarding long-term economic development solutions. in many of these same communities, leaders had not yet identified economic development as a community problem that could be addressed collectively. notably, the planning process in the short-term has encouraged new conversations between church and community leaders on what kinds of businesses exist in the community, how best to help them grow, and how to identify new businesses that could be introduced. a few local leaders recently started to create mid-term plans to help micro and small-scale businesses restart or grow. reporting to enhance community capacity longterm every organization struggles to monitor and report during a crisis. many organizations suspend or reduce reporting requirements to a number of key outputs such as meals served, houses rebuilt, and families served. understandably, such reports are often generated to comply with criteria delineated by external funders or are used to communicate with donors. and yet, the direct participation of leaders in the monitoring and reporting process can serve to gather more accurate information and enhance community ownership over and capacity for reporting processes. in the case of enlace, staff created user-friendly tools for leaders to use to update information in real time. running totals of key outputs were available to leaders at all times through access to google sheets. nevertheless, fewer than 20 percent of church and community leaders accessed the data regularly due to limited access to the internet. for those leaders that did not access the forms online, enlace staff provided them with weekly and monthly reports via text or phone call. this practice of weekly reporting kept the leaders engaged and committed to the recovery and reconstruction process. the enlace staff also asked leaders to gather impact stories. gathering stories, pictures, and videos is a common request from ngos. and in many cases, it can be an awkward and difficult request for community leaders who do not have ongoing relationships with the neighbors and community residents they serve. it can also be a challenge if local leaders cannot read or write proficiently, or do not have equipment to take the picture or record videos. third party organizations can provide valuable resources and support to local leaders to gather impact stories. however, it is important to keep in mind that the primary reason for gathering such material should go beyond institutional and donor communication. although grant compliance is an important motivating factor for story collection, local leaders also appreciate the gathering of stories as an important opportunity to develop a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the needs of neighboring families. such stories often provide a chance to reflect critically on whether local initiatives and interventions have been effective. moreover, they often serve to christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 huff and bueno, building community capacity during a crisis 84 inspire leaders and their local partners to continue to the long-term, collective work of community transformation. monitoring and reporting, if done in ongoing partnership with local leaders, should ultimately serve to enhance a sense of community and to strengthen the commitment of local leaders to collectively address the needs of their neighbors, both in the shortand the long-term. references “at 100-day mark, el salvador has a new hospital and increasing covd-19 numbers.” june 28, 2020. el salvador perspectives. http://www.elsalvadorperspectives.com/2020/06/at-100-daymark-el-salvador-has-new.html. beckley, thomas m., dianne martz, solange nadeau, bill reimer, and emily wall. 2008. “multiple capacities, multiple outcomes: delving deeper in the meaning of community capacity.” journal of rural and community development 3(3): 56-75. bornstein, erica. 2011. “harmonic dissonance: reflections on dwelling in the field.” ethnos 72 (4): 483-508. britt, heather, richard hummelbrunner, and jacqueline greene. 2017. causal link monitoring. https://www.betterevaluation.org/sites/default/files/clm %20brief_20170615_1528%20final.pdf bueno, ron. 2019. community engagement as a new and contested ritual: an ethnographic study of five pentecostal congregations in el salvador (doctoral dissertation, middlesex university, london, uk.) calderon, beatriz. 2020. “hay un ‘subregistro’ de muertos sospechosos por covid-19 en el salvador, aparte de las 46 confirmadas, dice ministro de salud.” la prensa gráfica. june 1. https://www.laprensagrafica.com/elsalvador/hay-unsubregistro-de-muertes-sospechosas-por-covid-19-en-elsalvador-aparte-de-las-46-confirmadas-dice-ministro-desalud-20200601-0037.html. chaskin, robert j. 2001. “building community capacity: a definitional framework and case studies from a comprehensive community initiative.” urban affairs review 36(3): 291-323. chaskin, robert j., et al. 2001. building community capacity. new york: walter de gruyter. “el salvador under quarantine.” april 3, 2020. el salvador perspectives. http://www.elsalvadorperspectives.com/2020/04/el-salvadorunder-quarantine.html. “lockdown.” may 5, 2020. el salvador perspectives. http://www.elsalvadorperspectives.com/2020/05/lockdown.ht ml. huff, james g. 2020a. “enhancing evaluation capacity: lessons from faith-based community development in el salvador.” in rhonda phillips, eric trevan, and patsy kraeger, eds. the research handbook on community development. edward elgar publishing. 204-210. huff, james g. 2020b. “bonds of faith for community change: new actors in rural community development in el salvador.” in paul lachapelle, isabel gutierrezmontes, and cornelia butler flora. eds. community capacity and resilience in latin america. new york: routledge. 74-93. “lockdown.” may 5, 2020. el salvador perspectives. http://www.elsalvadorperspectives.com/2020/05/lockdown.ht ml. smith, gavin. 1986. culture and class in anthropology and history: a newfoundland illustration. new york: cambridge university press. simmons, annie, rebecca reynolds, and boyd swinburn. 2011. “defining community capacity building: is it possible? preventive medicine 52(3-4): 194-199. james (jamie) g. huff jr. is associate professor of human needs and global resources and anthropology at wheaton college (illinois). since 2008 he has regularly conducted ethnographic fieldwork in el salvador where he has documented the involvement of pentecostal churches in community-based development projects. author email: james.huff@wheaton.edu ronald t. bueno is founder/co-founder and executive director of two organizations in el salvador: enlace, a community development organization, and credatec, a microfinance institution. he holds a phd from the university of middlesex, london. his research and writing focus on faith and development. author email: ron.bueno@enlaceonline.org about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(1), summer 2022 editors, accord research alliance intensives… 37 accord research alliance intensives and sessions 2020 and 2021: a synopsis crda editors a brief overview of the “intensive” meetings held in conjunction with the accord network’s annual summits. this synopsis highlights the intensives from 2020 and 2021, the former on learning how to listen effectively, and the latter on the special place of evidence in christ-centered organizations. introduction this journal, christian relief, development, and advocacy, is the official journal of the accord network, which was born in 1978 out of a need among christian ngos to do a better job of practicing holistic ministry and to increase their effectiveness by learning and working together. for more than forty years, accord has held annual conferences to connect, raise issues, share ideas, and learn from each other. one outcome of these annual summits has been to bring academics and practitioners into the same space to cultivate and benefit from the synergy that comes from working together. that synergy has spawned several research and learning alliances that seek to provide a venue for the ongoing conversation necessary for continued growth. one of those alliances is the accord research alliance (ara), created in 2012 under the leadership of beth birmingham. its specific mission is to “facilitate a professional community that collectively improves how to measure what matters in christ-centered relief, development and advocacy through platforms for idea sharing that encourage, connect, equip and inspire” (accord research alliance, n.d.). since 2013, it has carried out day-long intensive workshops in coordination with accord network annual summits. to that end, the ara has created forty-three podcast episodes and has spawned three articles published in the crda journal. it has just over 500 subscribers by e-mail and over 300 subscribers in its linkedin group. all of these resources and connections, as well as the presentations described below, can be accessed through the ara’s website at https://accordnetwork.org/ara/. what follows is a brief synopsis of the highlights of the ara’s 2020 and 2021 intensives and sessions. this provides an overview of the themes that run through the intensives, as well as a record of the rich conversation enjoyed by the participants. themes and overview of the 2020 and 2021 accord research alliance intensives the main topic of the completely online ara intensive of 2020 was “cultivating a christ-centered, data-informed, and responsive organization: listening in your m&e practice.” there were four subtopics, one for each of its days’ virtual presentations and asynchronous discussions; these were “listening as a discipline: foundational concepts for your listening practice;” “listening first during covid-19: why listening is now more important;” “listening to community stakeholders: equity in listening;” and “listening at your organization: creating a responsive m&e practice.” the 2021 ara addressed the question “how should christ-followers think about evidence?” the ara also facilitated two workshop sessions during the 2021 accord network summit, one on “christcentered monitoring and evaluation” and the other on “spiritual metrics: practices for christ-centered planning, monitoring, & evaluation.” in both 2020 and 2021 there were a total of twenty presentations, with 381 people representing over 140 groups and some fifty countries registering for the virtual 2020 ara intensive, and a little over fifty people attending the 2021 intensive in person. cross-cutting themes the three main cross-cutting themes throughout these two intensives were theological foundations, power sharing, and concrete methods, each of which engaged and sometimes challenged participants at the heart of their faith-based convictions. about:blank christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(1), summer 2022 editors, accord research alliance intensives… 38 theological foundations what is it that distinguishes christ-centered development organizations (ccos) from their secular counterparts? much of the answer to this core question is found in the emphasis on the theological foundations that inform cco praxis. toward that end, these two intensives were underpinned by theologies of listening and evidence-building that provided guidelines and challenged participants to discern how they might apply them in their own work. these theologies stressed the following: 1. if the persons of the trinity listen to each other, then the act of listening is both relational and holy, for we are all made in the image of god, and listening involves not only hearing what is said, but understanding the intended meaning of the communication and its significance. moreover, with scripture showing that god speaks through all kinds of people, we must listen to all, and especially those we initially think might not have much to say, like the poor, women, children, migrants, people from the “wrong” ethnic group, and anyone marginalized by those holding power. scripture also shows that we are to listen prayerfully, intentionally, lovingly, and with wonder; that we should listen at all times; and that god commands us to listen. because listening is a key source of knowledge, understanding, and wisdom, it helps build up the kingdom of god, grow in our processes of discipleship, be witnesses, and live life abundantly. in monitoring and evaluation activities, listening well is thus a central concern. 2. listening is a ministry that should be more relational than transactional, rooted in humility, and in which we should seek to honor those with whom we work by considering the types of questions we ask and how much time we are asking of them. a critical element in this ministry is the dimension of power. we must be intentional about whose voice is heard, which voices are elevated over others, and always working to ensure that we steward our influence and power to create inclusive listening systems and processes that reflect the fullness of our god, his kingdom, and his people. this involves sharing any knowledge gleaned with all participants. all stories and perspectives need to be respected and stewarded with utmost care and consideration, as well as with conscious awareness of opportunities for collaboration and co-creation. 3. as raw data are processed into information, it is key to listen with discernment based on the word and to be open to the leading of the holy spirit to knowledge that is actionable in terms of decisions. it is important to be on guard against the wellcrafted arguments and customs of the world (col. 2:2-8, romans 12:2). 4. finally, the process of listening and generating evidence during impact evaluation efforts must be based on what scripture says about evidence and why it matters in the kingdom. any evidence collected should be about the kingdom and building the kingdom. evidence gathering should also comprehend the reality of sin. this means planning for and measuring what delights god, like healing the marred image of the poor, dealing with the god-complexes that ensnare poor and nonpoor alike, counteracting deceptions by principalities and powers, overcoming inadequacies in worldviews, restoring just and peaceful relationships, using christian missional practices, and forming agents of transformation. we need to assess whether and how our desire to be in control reflects rebellion against instead of submission to god’s unfolding plan for redemption and what other aspects of sin keep us and others in bondage. the very generation of evidence, then, enables confession and repentance as well as kingdom visioning. the generation of data and evidence thus becomes an instrument of spiritual discernment about what god is doing in and through us and those we work with. through it all, we witness god in action. power sharing the second major cross-cutting theme was the question of sharing power in research, monitoring, and evaluation efforts. as seen above, this is specifically a part of the theology of listening. the word most commonly used in conjunction with this theme was “equity.” there is no disagreement that power should be equitably shared. what is harder is to identify strategies for learning how to share power and then actually doing it. one approach is to challenge the audience with generative questions about their work and then to allow them to find power sharing strategies in their own contexts: such generative questions include the following: 1. if we are trying to listen…who gets the chance to speak? 2. who is listening to the data, and how is that listening transformed into action? 3. who decides what counts as action and what actions to take? 4. who decides what counts as valid and reliable evidence? 5. who decides whose and what benefits and costs should be considered? christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(1), summer 2022 editors, accord research alliance intensives… 39 6. who decides whose and what knowledge and learning counts most? 7. who decides whose and what theory of change is emphasized? another strategy is to offer answers to these and other questions of power, and then allow people to reflect on the proposed answers. here is a sample of such answers: 1. genuine listening is about one’s attitude and how to let go of power, which of course takes courage. 2. the key is to regard participants as experts, to see their inherent dignity, and to learn from them. if we are curious about each other, we can create spaces where people can unfold who they are. 3. stakeholders represent different cultures and thus bring different perspectives on context, feedback, principles, applications, relationships, trust, confrontation, and more. navigating and managing power dynamics thus require attentiveness and intentionality in meetings, including intentionally handing over power. this may include praying in native tongues, asking for the opinion of those on the margins, and ensuring that the right people are invited to a seat at the table. 4. while staff and researchers may be posited as the primary listeners, the community leaders have to be co-listeners, which means that they must be listened to in the creation of data collection tools, be provided listening roles during the data collection process, and be invited to participate in the making plans that use the data. concrete methods the third cross-cutting theme in ara intensives was the practical, or concrete, methods for implementing such basic principles as listening and power sharing. these included the following ideas, as shared by both presenters and participants: 1. apply design and improvisational (improv) tools to break down and understand problems, create openness to new possibilities and information, and thus equip and empower stakeholders. 2. design surveys and create protocols that ensure all voices are heard, not just the loudest, with sample requirements for age, gender, geography, and leadership roles. also, audio-record the surveys in the local language and administer it on screens so that the data can be aggregated and analyzed immediately, with the results printed out and discussed and interpreted the same day with the community. 3. conduct regular organizational audits of the team’s data listening habits to ensure the development of organizational listening habits. 4. create systems so that local leaders have access to data from their communities and can help the organization listen to the data. 5. clarify intentions and biases and make sure to talk with people who are different in order to create spaces to genuinely listen to the community. 6. adopt research perspectives that are not extractive and that create joint spaces where participants talk, interpret, and make decisions throughout the project so that their practice-based knowledge provides the key evidence. 7. develop an intentional focus on spiritual aspects of programs, including how to measure them, in conjunction with partners. 8. develop a visual conceptual and practical planning, monitoring, and evaluation framework with indicators. one such example is tearfund’s light wheel, summarized visually in an image of a wheel with nine spokes that represent total wellbeing: social connections, personal relationships, emotional and mental well-being, physical health, participation & influence, environmental stewardship, material assets and resources, capabilities, living faith. use community focus groups to self-assess their own situation, priorities and vision for the future based on levels of accomplishment of the indicators. 9. shoot for “right-fit evidence,” so that the right amount and type of impact evaluation evidence is collected based on the organizational and situational context in which it is occurring. a useful way of doing this is to create a strategy based on three questions: how to measure impact, what evidence is there for impact and learning, and how to center equity in this process, and focus on collecting evidence that is credible, actionable, responsible, and transportable (cart), crosscutting this with an eye towards equity. 10. employ pragmatic mixed methods approaches as opposed to simply quantitative ones such as randomized control trials (rcts). rcts are useful, but have limitations in that they do not help identify what parts of the program to improve. christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(1), summer 2022 editors, accord research alliance intensives… 40 11. consider and understand six foundational layers: the m&e profession, the kingdom of god, the christ-centered organization, m&e in christcentered organizations, christ-centered m&e within the wider m&e landscape, and a resulting framework for christ-centered m&e. focus on discerning what god is already doing in the community, and acquire evidence for how the organization is being used to contribute to the growth of the kingdom, and be faithful to your calling even in the midst of a lack of such evidence, because at times that evidence is hard to detect. 12. follow a three-step process in measuring spiritual impact, always in dialogue with the people with whom you are working: ask yourselves, and ensure clarity on, what the spiritual impact is that you are all trying to achieve; then ensure that relevant activities are specifically designed to achieve that spiritual impact; and finally carry out a process of discernment about the best way to go about assessing whether and to what extent that spiritual impact is being achieved. again, the presentations and comments that contain all that is in this synopsis are available through the ara’s website at https://accordnetwork.org/ara. a continued discussion and deepening of these points and examples of practices will continue in the next ara intensive under the theme of “nothing about us without us: a kingdom perspective for sharing love & power in evaluation and research practice,” taking place on tuesday, october 11, starting at 9 am, just before the start of the accord network summit. references accord research alliance. https://accordnetwork.org/ara/ about:blank about:blank christian relief, development, and advocacy 3(1), summer 2021 bloem, review 15 review being light: navigating the blogosphere for faith-based development professionals by jeffrey bloem consider lighthouses. they communicate knowledge to the public, preventing potentially deadly accidents while safely guiding travelers. they are easy to see from afar. without lighthouses, ship captains would have to sail tentatively, constantly worrying about making a potentially deadly mistake. blogs and podcasts are a bit like lighthouses. they communicate knowledge to the public. they are easy for many to access. without blogs we would not have as much access to the knowledge we need to perform our work effectively. but what if there are too many lighthouses, or, more to the point, too many blogs and podcasts? some might argue that they are now so numerous and varied that it has become difficult to identify quality sources that provide reliable and relevant information. this is why reason, learning from others, and triangulating information from multiple sources are so important. lighthouses are not the only resource of value to ship captains. maps, compasses, gps systems, and reason are also of great value for sailing safely. in the world of relief, development, and advocacy work, we too can use reason and other tools, including blogs and podcasts, to access the knowledge we need. in this short review, i provide a brief overview of some of my favorite blogs and podcasts that i have engaged with over the last ten years. some of these resources are relatively new and currently active, while others are less active but contain a treasure-trove of useful information. i hope you will find something helpful. the discussion is organized into three categories: (i) faith-based blogs, (ii) non-faith-based blogs, and (iii) podcasts. best faith-based blogs this first category focuses on blogs that write about development and humanitarian action from an explicitly faith-based perspective. this category is likely the most familiar to crda readers and members of the accord network. in fact, the two blogs featured here are both managed by members of the crda editorial board. there are other excellent and worthwhile blogs—such as those by richard stearns, peter greer, ron sider, or shared justice by the center for public justice—but the two blogs below are more rigorous, active, and focused on relief, development, or advocacy. 1) the better samaritan, by kent annan and jamie aten (https://www.christianitytoday.com/bettersamaritan/) annan and aten help run the humanitarian disaster institute (hdi) at wheaton college. hosted by christianity today, their blog, the better samaritan, represents an accessible extension of their work with hdi. the blog features the ideas of both annan and aten, as well as those of frequent guests who specialize in christian theology, missions, african studies, development, humanitarian assistance, refugee resettlement, philanthropy, and more. two recent posts from the better samarian blog highlight this variety in content. in “what standard should we use for loving our neighbors in crisis?” annan and aten argue that serving others in their most vulnerable moments is a holy and sacred task. therefore, we had better be good at it. in “5 tips for getting a job in humanitarian aid,” guest contributor sarah wilcox provides job advice for folks who want to work in relief, development, and advocacy. blogs are particularly helpful in providing space for individuals to write about their experiences finding meaningful and effective work in our field. later on, i mention several other blogs that aim to provide career guidance. 2) the shrewd samaritan, by bruce wydick (http://www.acrosstwoworlds.net/) bruce wydick is a development economist and professor at the university of san francisco. his blog, across two worlds, aims to bridge the perceived gap between academics and development practitioners. the core theme running through every one of wydick’s posts is that each of these “worlds” can benefit from listening and engaging more with the other. https://www.christianitytoday.com/better-samaritan/ https://www.christianitytoday.com/better-samaritan/ http://www.acrosstwoworlds.net/ christian relief, development, and advocacy 3(1), summer 2021 bloem, review 16 this theme is displayed well in a post from 2015 entitled “what secular academics can learn from the faith-based development community.” in this post, wydick argues that secular academics should adopt the view that humans are multidimensional and complex social individuals. particularly in a discipline like economics, secular academics too easily reduce humans to being simple, selfish, profit maximizing computers, which can lead to misguided policy recommendations. wydick also pushes back in the other direction by highlighting that the faith-based development community would do well to adopt the commitment of secular academics to rigorous program evaluation and research in understanding what works best to serve the poor. another excellent post in the shrewd samaritan is a set of reflections on 24 hours of being homeless in san francisco, something wydick did to get a flavor of what being homeless is like. the post reads like an hour-by-hour diary. although wydick is careful to point out that “being homeless” for only 24 hours is not really comparable to the true, day-in-day-out grind of being homeless, the experience led him to reflections about how global poverty compares and contrasts with poverty in the united states. best non-faith-based blogs christians can also learn from non-faith-based blogs. these blogs will likely be the familiar to crda readers and members of the accord network. again, i highlight two excellent blogs, but some others worth your time include: jeffrey paller’s this week in africa newsletter (providing links on a weekly basis on all things related to africa), rachel strohm’s blog (where rachel aims to amplify african voices in research and policymaking), and martin ravallion’s blog (ravallion writes from a career of experience measuring poverty and informing poverty-alleviation policy). 1) development impact, by the world bank (https://blogs.worldbank.org/impactevaluations) the world bank’s development impact blog is a highly active and consistent resource for news, insights on new research, and discussions about research methodology curated by some of the most well-known development economists in the world, such as berk ozler, david mckenzie, jed friedman, florence kondylis, kathleen beegle, marcus goldstein, and dave evans. the blog also holds an extensive history of over 1,500 posts from the past ten years. a recent post summarizes the blog’s history and asks, “did our blog posts age well?” a classic post is david mckenzie’s 2011 discussion of the millennium villages project. in this post mckenzie engages with an ongoing (at the time) debate among development professionals about the effectiveness of the millennium villages project led by jeffrey sachs. a key theme in this specific post is an aim to tie public commentary together with academic research in an effort to break down barriers between development practitioners and researchers. 2) chris blattman’s blog (https://chrisblattman.com/) between 2012 and 2016, chris blattman created one of the most active and widely read blogs in international development, economics, and policy. currently, blattman posts much less frequently and his blog has been largely taken over by jeff mosenkis on behalf of innovations for poverty action, with a “weekly links” post that summarizes the past week of news in international development, economics, and policy. these weekly links are worth subscribing to, but the most valuable content is still blattman’s archived blog posts. blattman’s archived posts are a treasure-trove of excellent advice. for example, “getting a job in international development,” and “what ma, mpa, or mia program is for you?” and “how to get a phd *and* save the world,” all helped me, along with so many others, to navigate the early part of our post-undergraduate career. in addition, i made his 2010 post on “how to write an essay” required reading in my international economics class this past semester. blattman often writes about development policy, based on his own research. some of my favorite posts include his 2017 post, “do sweatshops lift workers out of poverty? this experiment might surprise you.” and his 2014 post “cash transfers: the index fund of international development.” blattman’s informal writing style may take some getting used to, but his commentary remains surprisingly useful today. best podcasts podcasts are another medium that has grown substantially in recent years. there are many podcasts that are both well-known and worth listening to. for example, kent annan and jamie aten have their own podcast linked to the better samaritan blog. but i will once again highlight two podcasts that are relatively new and may be of particular interest to crda readers. https://blogs.worldbank.org/impactevaluations https://chrisblattman.com/ christian relief, development, and advocacy 3(1), summer 2021 bloem, review 17 1) the accord research alliance podcast, by the accord network (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/theaccord-research-alliance-podcast/id1292714350) nathan mallonee, kristen check, and rodney green from the accord research alliance produce a podcast that features conversations with leaders working in christian international relief, development, and advocacy. the podcast provides insights and opportunities for shared learning from within the accord community. this podcast is really a must-follow for crda readers. these conversations not only provide interesting discussions of the work of specific individuals—such as michael woolcock, mary kay gugerty, jamie aten, and bruce wydick—but they also provide introductions on topics such as the importance of a theory of change, measuring spiritual metrics, implementing randomized control trials, and partnerships between implementing organizations and universities. i am looking forward to seeing this podcast grow and develop in the future. for example, it may be an excellent outlet for authors of crda articles to discuss and share their findings in an alternative medium. 2) faithful economy, by steven mcmullen (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/faithfuleconomy/id1533993289) steven mcmullen is an associate professor of economics at hope college and the host of faithful economy, a podcast launched in late 2020 and sponsored by the association of christian economists. the podcast focuses on facilitating thoughtful conversations at the intersection of morality, theology, and economics. so far, the podcast has included conversations with many economists—such as scott cunningham from baylor university, bruce wydick from the university of san francisco, denise daniels from wheaton college, art carden from samford university, rob tatum from the university of north carolina ashville, stephen smith from hope college, and edd noell from westmont college. economists are most commonly featured, but sprinkled into the field are philosophers and theologians, like greg forster from trinity international university and jordan ballor from the acton institute. these conversations often take the form of long conversations that aim to dig deep into the granular aspects of the guest’s work. each episode generally focuses on either the moral or spiritual implications of economics or the economic implications of moral thinking. these conversations may not directly relate to relief, development, or advocacy, but most apply indirectly. be a lighthouse the challenge in taking full advantage of blogs and podcasts is that almost anyone can write a blog or record a podcast. this is, perhaps, the biggest strength of blogs and podcasts, but also their biggest weakness. on the one hand, anyone can contribute, so blogs and podcasts can provide relatively unfiltered and honest discussions. contributors do not need to convince an editor or an anonymous group of peer-reviewers to get their ideas and perspectives out. this is helpful because sometimes the information we consume in formal outlets has been vetted and edited so thoroughly that the true voice of the author hardly survives in the finished product. on the other hand, anyone can contribute, so blogs and podcasts can be misleading and unpolished. contributors may not have discussed these ideas and perspectives with others. this can be harmful because the information may not be trustworthy or rigorous. here is where we can all play a role. as consumers of blogs and podcasts, we can play an active role in shining a light on the resources that we find helpful, reliable, and relevant. this does not mean that we all should go out and start our own blog or podcast (although some should do that!). it does mean that we can all share useful blogs and podcasts within our sphere of influence. we can also provide feedback to authors and hosts, telling them what sort of topics we would like them to cover. this will help enhance the ability of blogs and podcasts we appreciate to shine a bit brighter in sharing knowledge with a wide audience. jeffrey r. bloem (ph.d., university of minnesota) currently works as a research economist with the us department of agriculture's economic research service. jeff also serves as the book review editor at faith & economics, a peer-reviewed economics journal published by the association of christian economists. author email: bloem.jeff@gmail.com https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-accord-research-alliance-podcast/id1292714350 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-accord-research-alliance-podcast/id1292714350 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/faithful-economy/id1533993289 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/faithful-economy/id1533993289 mailto:bloem.jeff@gmail.com christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(1), summer 2019 44 together: a collaborative approach to christian relief, development, and advocacy peter greer against a backdrop of division in our world today, followers of christ are invited to engage in relief, development, and advocacy efforts together. there is a new movement of organizations and leaders abandoning an individualistic approach for a collaborative one, and this kind of cross-sector teamwork is radically changing the landscape of international development. from christ’s prayer for our unity to his exhortation for us to seek first the kingdom of god, we are invited to participate in a mission greater than anything we could ever accomplish on our own. introduction years ago, i had two simple charts on my wall—one for fundraising revenue and another for the families served. by 2010, i was focused on ensuring that hope international was serving one hundred thousand families and had annual fundraising revenue exceeding $10 million. with clarity, i saw the annual growth rates we’d need in these two categories over the next five years to achieve that goal. in setting these goals, my thinking was rather simple: growth is good; ambitious growth is even better. besides, $10 million and one hundred thousand families served by 2010 sounded catchy. there wasn’t detailed deliberation in setting these goals, and although they were established rather arbitrarily, they quickly became my obsession. it didn’t take long to realize that growing at a measured, incremental pace would not get us to these ambitious targets. so, i began to dream of other ways to boost our growth. on a trip with a group of supporters, i excitedly pitched a new initiative that had the potential to help us reach our goal of one hundred thousand families and $10 million of revenue: apricots in uzbekistan. through a connection, i had learned of a partnership opportunity for an apricot farm in the former soviet union. it would require a significant investment, but it would create opportunities to serve thousands of families and hopefully raise additional funds. mentally, i said yes to this opportunity almost immediately and began exploring ways to raise the funds. i could almost see the growth charts moving up and to the right and could almost taste the apricots. did i mention i love apricots? after my pitch to the group of supporters, wil, a friend and investor, asked me something that knocked me right out of my apricot trance. “what is the current unmet demand for what you’re currently doing?” roughly speaking, at the time, microfinance institutions and savings groups were at best serving 25 percent of the global market. and christian organizations were meeting less than 1 percent of the global demand. his second question was even more pointed: “what expertise does your team have in apricots and farming?” his message was clear: why would we expand to apricots when there is so much unmet demand for our core mission? what was the compelling reason to expand programmatically? wil challenged me to remember our organizational limits and reconsider if this type of expansion was the right choice for us. his questions forced me to realize i just wanted more. by god’s design we are limited. to leaders with insatiable appetites for growth, these limitations chafe. but temperate leaders know there is beauty in embracing our limits. the truth wil helped me discover is that an insatiable or gluttonous approach to leadership will lead our organization astray. apricots in uzbekistan wouldn’t have been an area of strength for us. moreover, shimmying our way into the apricot market could very well have taken business away from our “rival” organizations like partners worldwide, christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(1), summer 2019 45 sovereign’s capital, and other christian ministries equipped to serve entrepreneurs with these types of businesses. in retrospect, my initial response when hearing about an apricot farm should have been, “that’s outside of our area of expertise, but i would be honored to introduce you to people who are doing terrific work and might be able to help” (greer and horst 2018, 131132). this approach is powerfully captured in a speech about the future of charity by baroness stowell, the chair of charity commission in the united kingdom. she shared that she recently met with the leader of a well-known charity and described: under their leadership, the charity will not compete to deliver a contract if that service is already being provided well by another local charity. why? because that leader understands that the charity’s purpose is to help their beneficiaries, not to grow bigger and stronger for the sake of it – or worse, at the expense of another, smaller charity. and because they are aware that as a leader of a charitable organisation, they have a wider responsibility towards the flourishing of charity as a whole, so more people benefit. to making society a bit better, a bit kinder (gov.uk 2018). 1 as leaders and organizations grow to understand their limits, and their role in a bigger mission, the entire world benefits. of course, recognizing that others are more qualified for a job requires a modest amount of humility, but it leads to far greater outcomes. what if would-be “competitors” recognized and validated one another’s strengths, deferring opportunities to the most qualified player? imagine the kingdom impact if this attitude were common. in time, hope grew. perhaps not at the rate i had hoped when setting my short-sighted goals, but, thanks in large part to wil’s courage in questioning my motivations, our growth was measured and mostly healthy. it did not compromise the quality of our services nor the heart of who god called us to be. we aren’t purveyors of the fine fruit, but we are honored that god has chosen to work through us—in our limitedness—to provide financial services and discipleship to impact families around the world. the truth is that we don’t have to be experts in everything; in fact, we’re far better off if we’re not. specializing in one mission gives us the opportunity to 1 quoted verbatim from baronness stowell’s speech, the future of charity, as presented by gov.uk. please forgive any grammatical inconsistencies. focus on building our strengths while, at the same time, empowering others to do the work that they do best. followers of christ are invited to engage in relief, development, and advocacy together to fulfill the mission god has given us. we were never meant to do this work alone. already, god is on the move as we work, share, and partner together to advance the kingdom. leaving egos and organizational logos behind, christ-centered leaders and organizations are moving the needle in relief, development, and advocacy work like never before, growing our reach and furthering our impact. wind at our backs to effectively capture a kingdom vision and not just hawk our individual organizational agendas, christian leaders need to better understand the transformational work god is doing through all of us together. collectively, christ-centered organizations play an enormous role in alleviating suffering and advancing the common good in our world today. this is not based on conjecture but on research done both here and abroad. where christian faith-based organizations abound, communities flourish. for example, in american cities where there are more faith-based homeless shelters, there is a smaller homeless population (goodrich 2017). in american cities, the average church contributes approximately $150,000 of social services to their communities annually (brookings 2016). forty percent of the top fifty american charities are faith-based (grim 2016). across all sectors, churches and faith-based organizations create $1.2 trillion in economic value annually in the united states alone (faithcounts 2017). faith-based urban mentoring organizations, christian schools, pregnancy resource centers, prison ministries, refugee settlement agencies, job training organizations, and all sorts of other creative endeavors dot street corners across the country. and when disasters hit, it is often christians who lead the response. according to the federal emergency management agency (fema), 80 percent of hurricane and other disaster recovery happens because of nonprofits. and 75 percent of the nonprofits doing the recovery work are faith-based (singer 2017). but the effect beyond our borders is perhaps even more striking. over a dozen studies confirm political scientist robert woodberry’s findings that countries in which “’protestant missionaries had a significant presence in the past are on average more economically developed christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(1), summer 2019 46 today, with comparatively better health, lower infant mortality, lower corruption, greater literacy, and higher educational attainment (especially for women)’” (dilley 2014). beyond protestantism, the catholic church has made a colossal impact in the world—specifically within the health care system. rachel leinyuy kahnyuy, of the norwegian school of theology notes, “the catholic church is the largest single non-governmental provider of health care services in the world” (kahnyuy 2017, 24). in addition to providing health care services, catholic ministries have engaged in disaster relief, conflict resolution, education, and more throughout africa, asia, and latin america. “in an age where there’s a growing belief that religion is not a positive for american society, adding up the numbers is a tangible reminder of the impact of religion,” said dr. brian grim, scholar at the religious liberty project at georgetown university. “every single day individuals and organizations of faith quietly serve their communities as part of religious congregations, faith-based charities, and businesses inspired by religion” (faithcounts 2016). the pew research center reports that 85% of men and women across the world consider themselves “religious.” therefore, faithbased organizations have the important opportunity to provide a tangible expression of their faith through their service. from leading initiatives on clean water, bible translation, job creation, and literacy to fighting human trafficking and hunger, christians are actively responding to material, spiritual, and social needs in communities around the world. god is at work through the church. and this remarkable work gives our neighbors a glimpse into the kingdom of god. moving the needle “no single organization is responsible for any major social problem, nor can any single organization cure it,” wrote john kania and mark kramer on the collective impact trend in the stanford social innovation review. “large-scale social change requires broad cross-sector coordination” (kania and kramer 2011, 38). for faith-based leaders and organizations, we are small players in a much more significant story. take poverty alleviation, for example. global poverty is multi-dimensional in nature, affecting an individual not only physically, but also personally, socially, and spiritually. because of this, the solution to poverty cannot be one-dimensional. it requires a holistic approach. we are abundantly grateful for the wide variety of specializations and connections that so many organizations provide to help fuel our mission at hope to invest in the dreams of families in the world’s underserved communities as we proclaim and live the gospel: curriculum the chalmers center has poured time and resources into listening to and learning from those living in poverty, answering the question: how can our poverty alleviation efforts truly help our brothers and sisters rather than continue an unhealthy cycle of dependency? through their resources and curriculum, chalmers empowers the church to address poverty holistically. they have a host of resources for individuals, organizations, and churches who seek to learn how to care for those in poverty biblically and effectively. we have benefited from their expertise in savings group curriculum and consider them allies and friends in this mission. partnerships we cannot hope to alleviate the injustices in our world on our own, but partnerships with like-minded, missionally-aligned organizations and churches are a powerful force for the kingdom. while formal partnerships aren’t always the right answer, organizations can support each other by sharing resources, knowledge, and connections. most recently, we have been fortunate to partner with compassion international in training their staff in implementing church-based savings groups to positively impact the families of the children they serve. (there also are many opportunities to collaborate with secular, and even other-faith, organizations. when determining how to respond, we might consider the advice of dr. barry corey, president of biola university, who shares the significance of developing a firm center and soft edges in his book love kindness. when you know your identity, you have the freedom to pursue different partnerships with care and intentionality, even if you don’t see eye-to-eye on everything.) church mobilization organizations like world relief are mobilizing the global church to care for the most marginalized and the least reached. their commitment to going into the hard places to spread the love of christ has paved the way for organizations who follow in their footsteps. these organizations have rallied the church to seek justice, love mercy, and walk humbly alongside brothers and sisters in countries around the globe. partnering with them in joint programs has made both of us stronger and better able to implement our missions—especially in emergency or fragile contexts. we could keep adding to this list as we consider the growing number of organizations around the world bringing relief to war-torn areas, combatting human trafficking, establishing property rights, eradicating christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(1), summer 2019 47 homelessness, reconciling racial differences, and advocating for refugees. poverty alleviation, specifically, relies on the success of many of these individual missions. truly, we need all in the body of christ in order to see the kingdom of god advance. what would it look like if we regularly recognized other organizations in our space and celebrated what we were all doing together? what if celebration and collaboration, rather than rivalry and competition, were our default approaches? or at the very least, what if we could all take small but important steps towards greater unity and deeper relationships in this work? what would change? already, this is beginning to happen around the globe as organizations pool together resources, knowledge, and ideas. rooting for rivals case study: esperanza international led by alex nunez, esperanza international is a christ-centered nonprofit organization in the dominican republic with a comprehensive approach to poverty alleviation. over 40 percent of the men and women living in the dominican republic live below the poverty line, making between $2-4 each day (esperanza 2017). esperanza restores dignity and hope to these men and women by offering financial and holistic services to lift themselves out of poverty. but they aren’t doing it alone. “people need a lot more than just money,” nunez notes. “they not only need capital to start a business, but they also need other services like health screenings and education trainings. most importantly, they need to know that there’s a god who loves them and who came to give them life in abundance” (greer 2018). esperanza specializes in financial training and access to capital, but they partner with other organizations to care for the physical and spiritual needs of their associates as well. for example, esperanza partners with the crown council and smiles for life to provide routine dental care services for their associates. twice per year, esperanza takes the smiles for life dentists to the rural communities they serve in the dominican republic. men and women who typically can’t access dental services now receive high-quality services—cleanings, extractions, fillings, reconstructive surgeries, and more—through esperanza’s partnership. not only that, but in biweekly health trainings esperanza educates associates and their communities about the importance of oral health. “we are not the dental experts,” nunez shares. “but we partner with a group that is not only amazing at what they do, but they have the resources to do it well. this leads to beautiful results for the people we serve” (greer 2018). dental hygiene aside, esperanza has made an intentional effort to care for their associates’ spiritual health by establishing alliances with local churches of different denominations, groups who may traditionally have been defined as competitors. esperanza’s team meets with pastors who want to serve their community outside of the four walls of their organization, but don’t know where or how to start. instead of jumping into church partnerships with their own ideas and plans, the esperanza team asks local pastors: “what are the needs in your community? how can we support you?” since learning the pastors’ desires and the community’s needs, esperanza staff have given local pastors the opportunity to join loan meetings and share the gospel. many of esperanza’s associates may not want to step foot inside of a church, but this provides a way for pastors to address spiritual hunger without anyone showing up for a church service. esperanza may visit the groups only twice per month, but because the pastors are regularly available, they’re able to serve the needs of the community, even without esperanza staff present. it’s not just these formal partnerships that define esperanza’s spirit of unity. their entire organization— from their earliest beginnings to their operations today— is bathed in collaboration and a christ-centered mindset. esperanza exists to glorify god with their entire organization. they serve with an underlying belief that these are not our resources, our people, or our mission. the resources belong to god and we are simply stewards of all that he has given to us. this is not our mission, but rather god’s mission that we have been invited to join. out of this emerges an upside-down, kingdom perspective on partnership. instead of “what can i get,” they ask, “what can we achieve together?” instead of “how can i be served,” they ask “how can we serve?” instead of seeking to win points with donors, they seek to celebrate all that god is doing through a united front with a variety of organizations. it’s about playing a smaller role in the bigger kingdom. it's about less repetition and more cooperation. “we could work alone,” nunez says, “but together our work is better” (greer 2018). as esperanza works with other organizations and churches around the world, their associates not only receive remarkable services, but they are empowered to lift themselves out of poverty and truly understand the truth of jesus christ. esperanza is but one example of the numerous organizations around the world who are seeing transformation in international justice through cooperation. christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(1), summer 2019 48 assessing impact but how do we know if collaboration is really making a difference? let’s take a look at extreme poverty again: just two hundred years ago, nearly the whole world lived in extreme poverty. today, less than 10 percent do. in the past forty years alone, the percent of people living in extreme poverty has dropped by over 30 percent (roser and ortiz-ospina 2017). there is no one approach or organization that can claim credit for this massive movement. many factors have contributed to this trend, and we celebrate that poverty is on the decline as businesses, investors, organizations, leaders, and churches work together to transform the landscape of international development. across the world, everything from bible translation to college ministries has seen rapid acceleration simply because a few leaders said yes to cooperation. the men and women pioneering this “rooting-for-rivals” approach are not weighed down by trivial disagreements nor concerned with who gets the credit. more important than being recognized for good deeds, they understand, is the ability to together move the needle of relief, development, missions, and advocacy in a way that we haven’t been able to do on our own. as cutting-edge thinkers on organizational collaboration, hanleybrown, kania, and kramer state, “there is no other way society will achieve large-scale progress against urgent and complex problems, unless a collective approach becomes the accepted way of doing business” (2012, 2). intentional, christ-centered collaboration allows us to participate in more significant initiatives with far greater impact. seek first in john 17, jesus, in his longest recorded prayer in scripture, prays “that [we] may become perfectly one” (jn 17:23), 2 so that the world may know the father’s love the implication is that our witness to the world hinges on our unity. “christ’s prayer for unity and endurance is formed, uttered, and accomplished at the greatest hour of trial in all redemptive history,” writes k.a. ellis. “at this critical juncture there is one relationship on his mind, and it is ours” (2015). jesus says that our oneness is the way that others will identify us as his followers: “by this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (jn 13:35). 2 all biblical passages are taken from the english standard version. in matthew 6:33, jesus reminds us in clear language to “seek first the kingdom of god and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” our hope is that we might all be encouraged and equipped to keep looking up and to keep seeking first the kingdom of god. to choose to serve with open hands instead of clenched fists and be reminded that “our mission” is so much greater than “my mission.” the beauty and joy of what god is doing through us working together is far more compelling to the world around us than anything we can do alone. first steps collaboration accelerates transformation as we focus on our shared goal of living out the two greatest commandments—as we take our focus off “what’s in this for me?” and instead ask how to fully love god “with all [our] heart and with all [our] soul and with all [our] mind and with all [our] strength” and to “love [our] neighbor as [ourselves]” (mk 12:30-31). once leaders understand their “why”—and establish interest and vision for collaborating—what are some practical first steps to working together in relief, development, and advocacy to see the kingdom of god advance? focus on a kingdom mission we acutely feel the gravitational pull toward selfpreoccupation. when we wake up in the morning and go to work, our vision rarely extends beyond the walls of our own organization. there are urgent issues clamoring for our attention, looming deadlines, fundraising constraints, and a variety of other organizational challenges (greer and horst 2018, 5354). but what if we first focused on the kingdom of god? dream about what it could look like if the kingdom came fully to your areas of influence. submit your dreams, plans, ideas, and missions to this grander mission. identify what we have been given in exodus 4:2, god asks moses what he has in his hand. little did moses realize that the staff he held would be used by god to give powerful signs to pharaoh, to split the red sea in two, and to deliver the israelites to the land god had promised to them. what is in your hand? what resources, connections, and knowledge do you carry to bring about god’s plans and purposes? is there curriculum that you could give to another organization for free? is there time you could christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(1), summer 2019 49 invest in building stronger relationships with leaders from other organizations? what is the unique role you could play in a kingdom mission? enlist collaborators “the size of your dreams must always exceed your current capacity to achieve them,” writes ellen johnson sirleaf—the first female head of state in africa—in her memoir, this child will be great (“if your dreams…” 2011). who do you need to help you achieve the mission god has called you to? what (or whose) skills or gifts might be missing? make a list of the names of potential leaders and organizations already doing great, like-minded work. how can you spend time prioritizing these relationships and dreaming together? serve with humility seize opportunities to serve and love—and do it often. look for the tasks that receive little recognition and be the first to jump in. find your area of expertise and serve with excellence. clothing ourselves with humility means rejecting comparison games, “how am i different?” language, and subtle critiques that elevate us at the expense of others. celebrate together take steps to intentionally remember and celebrate god’s goodness together. share the victories—the ways you have seen god on the move as you’ve worked in collaboration instead of competition. how can you integrate gratitude into the daily rhythms of your work? look for ways to highlight other organizations and celebrate shared success. this certainly is not an exhaustive list, but rather the beginning steps of collaboration and openhandedness as we seek to advance god’s kingdom. the invitation as christ’s followers, we have the opportunity to work as one body to bring shalom: peace, flourishing, the world as god created it to be. that is a grand mission and one that will require our unity. we’ve entered a time when the church is no longer associated with love and compassion but rather with judgment, hypocrisy, and infighting. we’re no longer known for the sacrifice or humility jesus modeled but rather for failing to look beyond ourselves and our issues. if we want this to change, we must take hold of the invitation to rediscover our unified mission and prioritize it above our own agendas. we need to look beyond our organizational boundaries to catch a glimpse of a bigger and bolder vision of the kingdom of god. our organizations are small players in a much more significant story. understanding this story and the imperative of unity among followers of christ should help us to do more than just get along. god calls us to engage in relief, development, and advocacy as a unified team, not as fractured and disconnected organizations. he calls us to rediscover our unified purpose and tenaciously pursue a mission that extends beyond any one organization. partnership won’t always be the answer. partnerships are difficult and some can even be unwise. just because two faith-based organizations work in zambia doesn’t always mean they should work together. partnership can be a philosophical, geographical, or strategic impossibility. but even when we decide against partnership in the formal sense, it’s always possible to assist one another by sharing resources, knowledge, or connections. it’s worth investing the time to thoroughly consider opportunities that could help us step more fully into our shared calling of furthering god’s kingdom. when we consider coming alongside others, we can go beyond just fighting extreme poverty to thinking about ending extreme poverty. beyond rescuing young girls and boys from human trafficking to putting traffickers out of business. beyond translating parts of the bible into just a few languages to translating the entire bible into every language. it’s time to reaffirm a higher allegiance than the logo adorning our business cards. we are not just people working for organizations. we are not on rival teams, but, in christ, we are brothers and sisters united for eternity. as we take part in relief, development, and advocacy efforts around the globe, we must remember that we’re not just fulfilling individual missions. our success is not defined by where we stand in relation to our “rivals” or how long our name endures. in that light, rooting for rivals—cheering on those the world sees as our competitors—doesn’t feel all that crazy. hundreds of years from now, our descendants will likely not know our names, nor those of our organizations. but if we successfully embrace the unity jesus taught, our descendants will remember what the church did together. they will remember that this generation continued the work of bringing good news to the poor, proclaiming freedom for the prisoners, and setting the oppressed free. they will remember that the gospel was translated into every language, racial injustice was confronted, and extreme poverty was eradicated. if our descendants talk about us, they will talk about the miraculous ways god worked in and through christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(1), summer 2019 50 the church to bring hope, truth, compassion, and joy to our world (greer and horst 2018, 21). imagine what we could do together. references brookings. 2016. “the halo effect and the economic value of faith-based organizations,” november 29. https://www.brookings.edu/events/the-haloeffect-and-the-economic-value-of-faith-basedorganizations/. dilley, andrea palpant. 2014. “the surprising discovery about those colonialist, proselytizing missionaries.” christianity today, january 8. http://christianitytoday.com/ct/2014/januaryfebruary/world-missionaries-made.html. ellis, k.a. 2015. “standing as one.” the gospel coalition. may 12. https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/standing -as-one/. esperanza international. 2017. “who we serve.” https://esperanza.org/about/who-we-serve/. faith counts. 2016. “new study values faith in america over one trillion dollars.” pr newswire, september 14. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/newstudy-values-faith-in-america-over-one-trilliondollars-300328315.html. faithcounts. 2017. “research: a new study looks at the significant impact of faith and religion in the united states.” accessed october 30, 2017. http://faithcounts.com/report/. goodrich, terry. 2017. “faith-based organizations shoulder majority of crucial services and develop creative solutions for homelessness, new baylor university study says.” baylor, february 1. http://www.baylor.edu/mediacommunications/ne ws.php?action=story&story=176953. gov.uk. 2018. “baroness stowell: the future of charity.” last modified 5 october. https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/barones s-stowell-the-future-of-charity. greer, peter k. 2018. “episode 6: global ministries.” http://www.peterkgreer.com/episode-6-globalministries/. greer, peter, and chris horst. 2018. rooting for rivals: how collaboration and generosity increase the impact of leaders, charities, and churches. bloomington: bethany house. grim, brian and melissa. 2016. “the socio-economic contributions of religion to american society: an empirical analysis.” faith counts. http://faithcounts.com/wpcontent/uploads/summary-sheet.pdf. hanleybrown, fay, kania, john, and kramer, mark. 2012. “channeling change: making collective impact work.” stanford social innovation review. january 26. https://ssir.org/articles/entry/channeling_change_ making_collective_impact_work. “if your dreams do not scare you, they are not big enough.” 2011. harvard magazine. may 26. https://harvardmagazine.com/2011/05/ellenjohnson-sirleaf-commencement-speech. kania, john, and mark kramer. 2011. “collective impact.” stanford social innovation review. https://ssir.org/articles/entry/collective_impact#. kahnyuy, rachel leinyuy. 2017. the contribution of the catholic church to the development of cameroon, and why they are engaged in development works. master’s thesis, norwegian school of theology. roser, max, and esteban ortiz-ospina. 2017. “global extreme poverty.” our world in data, march 27. https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty. singer, paul. 2017. “faith groups provide the bulk of disaster recover, in coordination with fema.” usa today, september 10. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017 /09/10/hurricane-irma-faith-groups-provide-bulkdisaster-recovery-coordination-fema/651007001/. peter greer is president and ceo of hope international, a christ-centered microenterprise development organization serving throughout africa, asia, latin america, and eastern europe. for more information, please visit www.peterkgreer.com. author email: pgreer@hopeinternational.org https://www.brookings.edu/events/the-halo-effect-and-the-economic-value-of-faith-based-organizations/ https://www.brookings.edu/events/the-halo-effect-and-the-economic-value-of-faith-based-organizations/ https://www.brookings.edu/events/the-halo-effect-and-the-economic-value-of-faith-based-organizations/ http://christianitytoday.com/ct/2014/january-february/world-missionaries-made.html http://christianitytoday.com/ct/2014/january-february/world-missionaries-made.html https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/standing-as-one/ https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/standing-as-one/ https://esperanza.org/about/who-we-serve/ https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-study-values-faith-in-america-over-one-trillion-dollars-300328315.html https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-study-values-faith-in-america-over-one-trillion-dollars-300328315.html https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-study-values-faith-in-america-over-one-trillion-dollars-300328315.html http://faithcounts.com/report/ http://www.baylor.edu/mediacommunications/news.php?action=story&story=176953 http://www.baylor.edu/mediacommunications/news.php?action=story&story=176953 https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/baroness-stowell-the-future-of-charity https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/baroness-stowell-the-future-of-charity http://www.peterkgreer.com/episode-6-global-ministries/ http://www.peterkgreer.com/episode-6-global-ministries/ http://faithcounts.com/wp-content/uploads/summary-sheet.pdf http://faithcounts.com/wp-content/uploads/summary-sheet.pdf https://ssir.org/articles/entry/channeling_change_making_collective_impact_work https://ssir.org/articles/entry/channeling_change_making_collective_impact_work https://harvardmagazine.com/2011/05/ellen-johnson-sirleaf-commencement-speech https://harvardmagazine.com/2011/05/ellen-johnson-sirleaf-commencement-speech https://ssir.org/articles/entry/collective_impact https://mfopen.mf.no/mf-xmlui/bitstream/handle/11250/2432792/avh5035-1620-kahnyuy-navn.pdf?sequence=1&isallowed=y https://mfopen.mf.no/mf-xmlui/bitstream/handle/11250/2432792/avh5035-1620-kahnyuy-navn.pdf?sequence=1&isallowed=y https://mfopen.mf.no/mf-xmlui/bitstream/handle/11250/2432792/avh5035-1620-kahnyuy-navn.pdf?sequence=1&isallowed=y https://mfopen.mf.no/mf-xmlui/bitstream/handle/11250/2432792/avh5035-1620-kahnyuy-navn.pdf?sequence=1&isallowed=y https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/09/10/hurricane-irma-faith-groups-provide-bulk-disaster-recovery-coordination-fema/651007001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/09/10/hurricane-irma-faith-groups-provide-bulk-disaster-recovery-coordination-fema/651007001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/09/10/hurricane-irma-faith-groups-provide-bulk-disaster-recovery-coordination-fema/651007001/ http://www.peterkgreer.com/ christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(1), summer 2020 sarma, importance of role and agency of fieldworkers in transformational development work by christian ngos 20 importance of role and agency of fieldworkers in transformational development work by christian ngos jaisankar sarma this article makes the case for the agency and the role of fieldworkers as critical considerations in community development projects of ngos and in transformational development work undertaken by christian ngos. for the latter, the role and agency of fieldworkers become even more important, as inner transformation and transformation of relationships require fieldworkers’ investment through relationships in people and not simply interventions in program population. the article explores the concepts of agency, personhood, social changes, and what they mean for the transformational development work of christian ngos. the paper argues that institutional donor-funded programs that give prominence to external interventions, but pay lip service to actor-oriented approaches, create tensions for frontline workers and instrumentalizes them. the paper closes with recommendations for christian ngos in helping to reconcile fieldworkers’ agency and their role in transformational development, even as ngos work with institutional donor funding in development projects. critical role of ngo fieldworkers in development the pivotal role of the fieldworker at the interface of ngos and communities has been recognized for a long time (e.g. taylor and jenkins, 1989, tilakaratna, 1985). this role has been characterized in many ways: facilitator, change agent, gatekeeper, technical knowledge resource, and relational broker. fieldworkers have also been challenged as ‘modernizing disruptors’ of tradition and culture, and agents of foreign interests. the importance of fieldworkers in ngos doing development work cannot be over-emphasized. they are the ones at the frontlines, representing organizational vision, mission, and values to communities, and planning and implementing programs on behalf of ngos. over a period of time, the cumulative daily interactions of fieldworkers with community members and local partners shape ngo development projects. fieldworkers provide the interface between the ngo and people, interpreting projects to communities, as well as community realities and perspectives to ngos. by virtue of their presence in communities and the intermediary role they play, fieldworkers do not exist as passive instruments, but have the opportunity to actively shape the content and quality of community engagement in programming processes. project designs or plans, when they are developed, reflect the intentions of what the ngo would like to accomplish sometime in the future, but it is the fieldworkers who implement project designs in the reality of any given moment – in contexts that are more complex and dynamic than what can be portrayed in neatly packaged design documents. the fieldworker role is especially critical in the transformational development work of christian faithbased ngos, as noted by bryant myers... ultimately, the effectiveness of transformational development comes down, not to theory, principles, or tools, but to people. transformation is about transforming relationships, and relationships are transformed by people. techniques and programs only fulfill their promise when holistic practitioners use them with the right attitude, the right mindset, and professionalism. when development promoters have made the theory and values of transformational development their own, when they live them out in the real world of development practice, then good things can happen (myers, 2011, 219). there are many theological approaches towards understanding poverty and transformational development within a christian worldview, but this paper makes use of a conceptual framework proposed by myers (2011). according to myers, poverty is understood as the result of broken relationships and christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(1), summer 2020 sarma, importance of role and agency of fieldworkers in transformational development work by christian ngos 21 transformational development as its antidote, is about restoration of relationships with god, self, others, and the environment (myers, 2011, 144, christian, 1999, 72). based on such an understanding, development projects provide the platform to facilitate transformational changes in the identity, vocation, relationships, competency, attitudes, and values of individuals and groups of people that increasingly reflect the kingdom of god. in such a process, the agency and role of fieldworkers in working with people assume great importance when christian ngos undertake development projects. agency of individuals and social change sociologist anthony giddens (1984) says, “to be a human being is to be a purposive agent,” where agency is defined as follows: agency refers not to the intentions people have in doing things, but to their capability of doing those things in the first place, which is why agency implies power…. within the limits of information, uncertainty and other constraints that exist, social actors possess ‘knowledgeability ’and ‘capability’. they attempt to solve problems, learn how to intervene in the flow of social events around them and to a degree monitor their own actions and how others react to them… (giddens, 1984, 9). according to giddens, knowledgeability and capability to take purposeful actions define agency of an individual. knowledgeability involves understanding the roles and rules of the social structure around the actors. capability involves changing those rules towards a purpose. within this framework, agents are cognitive and reflective actors. how actors interact with roles and rules over time leads to changes. to be an agent is to be able to deploy a range of causal powers, including that of influencing those deployed by others. action depends upon the capability of the individual to ‘make a difference’ to a pre-existing state of affairs or course of events. an agent ceases to be such if he or she loses the capability to ‘make a difference’, that is, to exercise some sort of power (giddens, 1984, 14). giddens argues for inclusion of individual motivation and action in considering social change processes. the individual is located within a time and space, but will be able to cause social changes even though it may not be fully predictable at the outset. the social structure changes human beings, but human beings also change the social structure (1984, 27-28). agency is expressed in social relations and can only be effective through them if it must make a difference to a pre-existing state of affairs. the ability to influence others depends essentially on the actions of a sequence of agents, each of whom provides interpretations in accordance with his or her own agenda or perspective. understanding development as a social change process and not merely as time and space bound projects has significant implications for development ngos – the agency of fieldworkers and that of other actors, their relationships, and network patterns become critical considerations in thinking about and planning for development. personhood and transformational development bible verses from genesis 1:26, 27 declare god creating human beings in his image and likeness and have been understood and explained in a variety of ways (grenz, 2007). in the biblical narrative, god grants power and agency to human beings with freedom to relate and communicate with others and even resist god. human beings have great significance because they bear the image of god and have irrevocable dignity and worth that is conferred or bestowed on them by god (kilner, 2015, 250-251). understanding human beings as created in the image of god means that they are co-creators with god, with the power to observe, reason, and act on the common good (myers, 2011, 61). human beings are actors with a purpose and are given gifts and tasks for the wellbeing of others, which means for christian faith-based ngos, human agency and vocation become the basic foundation for doing development work; program plans and financial resources are only tools. this understanding of agency and vocation applies both to community members and fieldworkers who work with them on a daily basis. from the perspective of the new testament, jesus christ is the perfect image of god (colossians 1:15). if christian ngos could consider jesus as a ‘development actor’ who was sent by his father to carry out a mission in the world, did he have the freedom to carry out the mandate given to him? or was he just someone who slavishly carried out detailed instructions from above? how much freedom did he have? the bible says that the divine son of god willingly became a genuine human person. he chose to stand in solidarity with the poor and the needy. he preached good news to the poor and comforted those who mourned. the gospels, which narrate jesus’ words and actions in this world, reflect his agency and relationship with his father through the spirit (so and hardy, 2006, 11-12). in other words, there was no dissonance between jesus’ words, his actions, his identity and his relationship with the father. christian development workers need to have such an ‘incarnational spirituality’ modeled after jesus christ. incarnational spirituality understands that god’s spirit lives in his children and christian fieldworkers are part of the presence of god in communities. it christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(1), summer 2020 sarma, importance of role and agency of fieldworkers in transformational development work by christian ngos 22 requires fieldworkers to live out their christian values among the poor, seeing them as being made in the image of god and thus expecting community members to be the primary actors in their own development (myers, 2011, 232). incarnational spirituality enables us to see the world from the perspective of the kingdom of god and is not confined to an intellectual understanding derived from mere socioeconomic and political analysis of the situation. it draws us near to the poor in order to listen, understand and relate before trying to find solutions. it implies accompanying the poor on their journey rather than planning and implementing programs. myers says that the most important thing a christian development worker can do is to be present with god and the poor – to be open and willing, not controlling, but letting things unfold. understood this way, the investment of the agency of development workers in the lives of the poor is much more important than implementation of well-planned programs and projects in promoting transformational development (ibid., 2011, 233). the idea of transformational development links inner change and personal transformation as part of development work and attributes the work of god’s spirit to inner transformation (mitchell, 2014, 96). the connection between inner transformation and development is seen as the two-fold goals of transformational development; a) changed people who are restoring their identity as children of god and recovering their vocation as productive stewards of god’s creation and b) changed relationships that are just and peaceful (myers, 2011, 190-202). transformational development breaks down the divisions between physical, social, and spiritual aspects of life and sees them as a coherent whole (wilson, 2011, 103). transformational development is always focused on persons and developing personhood and it happens through the actions of communities and community institutions (sugden, 2003, 72-73). in summary, transformational development calls christian faith-based development organizations to a) view individuals and communities as interconnected and whole, b) link inner transformation or radical changes in values, attitudes, and worldviews with external changes or progress, and c) consider the agency of the development worker and community members both as resources and as end goals of development. agency of fieldworkers in different approaches to development community development approaches influenced by paulo freire’s (1970) pedagogy of the oppressed recognize the agency of the fieldworker as fundamental to transformational change. freire states that oppressed people should develop critical consciousness of their situation through dialogical action and learn to think for themselves through a grassroots pedagogical process facilitated by a grassroots educator. freire relates critical consciousness and the resulting synthesis of thought and action as a way to reclaim humanity, to become humanized (ibid., 1970, 47-49). for example, a program on participatory organizations for the rural poor in sri lanka reflects this freirean thinking and states that: …the role of the animator (community facilitator, change agent, catalyst or activist as variously called) is seen as a central factor in the generation of selfreliant grassroots initiatives. the essence of this role is a catalytic one of stimulating the rural poor to a systematic reflection of the causal factors in their poverty and deprivation and of assisting them to realise their self-reliant potentials through their own organized efforts (tilakaratna, 1985, i). what these approaches suggest is that the agency of the fieldworker is essential for the local ownership of social changes and its sustainability. scholars who give importance to actor-oriented approaches to development emphasize essential qualities required for the fieldworkers. myers, for example, states that if transformational development is about transforming relationships, then fieldworkers on the ground should have the right set of attitude, mind-set, and professionalism. they need to live out the principles of transformational development. he goes on to list several essential qualities required in field practitioners (myers, 2011, 221-226). fowler (1997, 84) identifies key character traits such as patience, listening, learning from communities, respectfulness, empathy, perseverance, diplomacy, etc., all of which are crucial for effective fieldworkers. communication and negotiation skills are vital and so are the abilities to diagnose and analyze a situation. effective fieldworkers require a deep understanding of the communities they work with. in addition, it is important to ‘be nice’ to people and show courtesy, respect, patience, generosity, and sensitivity in working with communities (chambers, 1997, 233). ultimately, personal beliefs and values should guide fieldworkers in how they choose to respond to the constraints they face in their organizational work environment and community social contexts. chambers in his aptly titled article on ‘the primacy of the personal’ writes: this is the fact that individual personal choice of what to do and how to do it mediates every action and every change. policy, practice, and performance are all outcomes of personal actions. what is done or not done depends on christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(1), summer 2020 sarma, importance of role and agency of fieldworkers in transformational development work by christian ngos 23 what people choose to do and not to do…. (1996, 246) chambers observes that every person has some room to maneuver, create space for others, form alliances with others, and thereby has the vision and the courage to make changes (1996, 247). this requires fieldworkers to make a personal commitment and resolve, over and above the structure within which they work, and so as to disempower themselves, to hand over the baton to the poor, devolve discretion, encourage the initiatives of others, and promote genuine forms of community participation (chambers, 1997, 237). donor-funded projects and ngo fieldworkers set against such an understanding of agency and personhood of individuals in development approaches, especially in the concept of transformational development, models of development used by official development agencies of donor governments are mostly based on deterministic, linear, and external views of social change. the tendency to view development as a discrete set of interventions within a specific time-space setting leads to a problem-solving approach and promotes the idea that the problems are best solved by dividing up what is complex and integrated by nature into specific sectors or academic disciplines (clay, 1985, 184). there has been progression of understanding of development approaches, such as described by korten in his seminal work, getting to the 21st century, through four types or levels of development responses: a) relief and welfare, b) small-scale, self-reliant local development, c) sustainable system development and d) people’s movements (1990). yet much development practice by ngos is based on the understanding that development happens primarily through externally originated interventions, planned as time-bound projects based on linear and logical planning to problem solving and project cycle management, with an instrumentalist view of fieldworkers. for example, accountability for ngo performance is a key area in which donor preferences and requirements often conflict with, or differ from, community realities, needs, and preferences, as well as with the whole idea of transformational development. official aid is replete with terms such as “measurable outcomes,” “managing for results,” “evidence-based practices,” and “value for money.” the paris declaration of aid effectiveness (oecd, n.d.) and accra agenda for action (oecd, n.d.) are good representations of donor expectations for performance and results, which were developed on the basis of certain principles for promoting effectiveness in development aid. this discourse on management for results is translated into practice through logframes, indicators, targets, baselines, reports, performance reviews, randomized control trials, and evaluations, which eyben calls “artifacts of results and evidence” (2013, 6-8). this donor imperative for results is pervasive throughout the ngo sector including christian ngos and it is usually the responsibility of the fieldworkers to gather data and provide reports bearing evidences for results for any donor-funded projects (eyben 2012, 2). scholars and practitioners have long been aware of the limitations of using planning and monitoring tools such as logframes, indicators and targets in setting goals and measuring them (e.g. eyben, 2010, myers, 2011, mosse, et al. 1998, korten, 1980). nevertheless, they continue to be used because they are deeply institutionalized in aid organizations and they are used even when certain types of donors, such as child sponsors, may not be asking for them to be used. then, like yeast, this desire for planned results and quantitative measures spreads through the organization into senior leadership who want to manage the development process from above, often pushing for more alignment and data to prove effectiveness and impact. part of the problem with this upward accountability to donors is that it relies exclusively on quantification for measurement as quantitative results are seen as more objective and professionally respectable than qualitative results. donors favor certain types of knowledge and skills over and above traditional knowledge of local communities or fieldworkers who would not typically possess competency in quantitative analysis (eyben, 2012, 1, chambers, 1997, 38). quantitative targets measure people as individual entities, whose lives are shaped by actions of others (eyben et al., 2015, 832). quantitative targets reinforce established narratives around a simple and clear causal chain on how to solve development problems and tell uncomplicated stories to senior leaders and donors (ramalingam, 2013, 34). while numbers may tell some aspects of changes that result from development projects, they do not tell the whole story of transformational development or the efforts it takes to achieve it. fieldworker tensions in transformational development projects when we position the fieldworkers at the interface between the ngo organizational context and community reality and compare models of development of official development agencies and the concept of transformational development, the following picture emerges. it is a picture where fieldworkers are caught in the conflict or crossfire of development discourses. christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(1), summer 2020 sarma, importance of role and agency of fieldworkers in transformational development work by christian ngos 24 diagram 1: fieldworker tensions the ngo organizational context emphasizes planning for predictable outcomes and the management design to deliver planned results with clear lines of accountability to the donors. transformational development, which pictures development as rooted in community reality, leads to participatory approaches that are open-ended and locally relevant, with a strong emphasis on learning. while in the participatory approach there might be clarity on the issues to be addressed and some of the directions to be taken, development outcomes are not pre-determined, nor are the exact strategies to achieve them. ngos and their donors simultaneously use the approaches, tools, and techniques without acknowledging or reconciling the tensions that exist between them in terms of conceptual underpinnings and practical implications (wallace et al. 2007, 31). expectations for both a participatory approach in working with the poor and the delivery of pre-determined results based on a managerial approach co-exist in ngos and, to a large extent, achieving these competing goals falls on the shoulders of frontline workers. they are left on their own to manage the tensions that exist between these two discourses. yet the tension to deliver pre-determined results, while also ensuring participation of people, creates moral or ethical dilemmas for fieldworkers. for christian ngos, participation is linked to their understanding of transformational development, while management systems and structures are important to meet donor funding requirements and organizational control over activities. eyben calls the rational approach and managing development for results “substantialism,” which sees development in specific entities such as results, sectors, outcomes, outputs, etc. and the people-centered approach that sees development in terms of processes, patterns, relationships, etc. as “relationalism” (2010, 380-394). being a relationist is not only about focusing on people, but also about a keen interest in processes more than results. her argument is that many staff, especially those in the field, while officially subscribing to the substantialist worldview, function as “closet relationists,” and by doing so unwittingly make the substantialist view of development viable and to appear effective (ibid., 394). yet the relationist approach of the fieldworkers, “below the tip of the iceberg,” could be problematic for being neither transparent nor accountable to others, while at the same time being effective by making the substantialist approach to development viable and producing results. ramalingam mentions that this tendency to simultaneously operate at these two different levels, one at the level of development discourse that is officially subscribed to and another one in terms of relational processes, is christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(1), summer 2020 sarma, importance of role and agency of fieldworkers in transformational development work by christian ngos 25 reinforced by the co-existence of parallel cultures in aid organizations (2013, 86). this problem of two different cultures and two different ways of acting might be even more acute in christian ngos that subscribe to transformational development, for they may not be able to explicitly integrate spiritual and faith aspects into their development work due to restrictions that come with donor-funding. this tendency to operate at two levels can have implications for frontline workers who have a strong commitment to participatory, faith-based, approaches to development. they may end up working long hours of unpaid overtime work due to the need to engage in relational processes that are not articulated or recognized in the managerial approach in order to make it viable. while the concept of transformational development influences how christian ngos understand and articulate their approach to work in communities, much remains to be done even at a conceptual level on the implications of transformational development for ngo organizational development and management practices. like their secular counterparts, christian ngos also make prodigious use of management processes, metrics, and tools for organizational development purposes that enable them to meet the donor expectations. suggestions for way forward here are some suggestions that may help christian faith-based ngos reconcile their understanding of transformational development, based on participatory ideals that leverage the agency and vocation of fieldworkers, and with donor-funded programs defined by clear accountability for results and use of other managerial tools. invest in the agency of fieldworkers ideally, fieldworkers in christian ngos derive their primary motivation and a perceived sense of calling from their faith in god to serve the poor. a strong and consistent relationship between their identity as children of god and their vocation to serve the poor provides the fieldworkers a basis for their engagement with communities and work among the poor. formal corporate spiritual practices, such as staff devotions, family retreats, and prayer times organized by christian ngos, as well as personal spiritual practices and peer support mechanisms, can help fieldworkers nurture their identity as children of god, view their work as ministry, and sustain the ideal notions of their responsibilities for development work. emphasize mutual transformation transformation by its very nature is mutual. as fieldworkers work with the poor and learn from them, they are on their own journey of transformation as their identity and sense of calling get further refined and strengthened. managers and senior leaders, as they support fieldworkers, share in this journey of transformation. our relationships with donors over time should lead to changes in values, giving patterns, and lifestyles that are consistent with christ’s concern for the poor. transformational development assumes that the transformation of donors is fundamental and a pre-requisite to overcoming poverty in sustainable ways. proper use of artifacts of evidence and results from an organizational perspective, setting strategic goals, use of evidence-based practices, logframes, monitoring and evaluation systems, and scale up are all about working in a highly intentional and effective manner. christian ngos do need to use rigorous planning and accountability for results in donor-funded programs as they work within the larger context of aid organizations. these artifacts of results and evidence are useful to bring clarity to planning processes and provide guidance to implementation and monitoring of plans. even so, in using these artifacts, emphasis should be on competency of users who know when and how to use them. these artifacts should be seen as tools and resources, not as ends in themselves. for example, indicators and targets are set up in order for program staff and local partners to learn about implementation, reflect, make adjustments, and take timely corrective actions in response to changing contexts, or when originally planned activities and targets are deemed unrealistic during the course of implementation. but when these measures are used to show that falling short of set targets is a performance failure of fieldworkers, then these artifacts prevent open dialogue, adaptation, learning, and growth. use of descriptive analyses to communicate transformational changes requiring fieldworkers to report only on quantitatively measurable indicators dissuades them from engaging in work that is equally important, but not easily measurable. it also deters them from focusing on the people they serve. yes, donors need accountability, but the need for donor reporting and particular ways of understanding accountability should not be allowed to distort fieldworkers’ engagement with communities and how development work is practiced in communities. it should be the other way around, with fieldworkers encouraged to facilitate participatory and transformational development processes and then to capture and report on consequent changes, using a mix of quantitative and qualitative measures, including descriptive analysis. outcome mapping and the most significant change stories are some examples of such alternative monitoring tools. the need for senior christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(1), summer 2020 sarma, importance of role and agency of fieldworkers in transformational development work by christian ngos 26 leaders to aggregate and summarize changes at the corporate level should not drive the whole approach to monitoring and evaluation. inclusive framework for strategy and program designs in many international ngos, policies, strategies, and designs are developed to speak to the interests and concerns of donors and other senior stakeholders. participation of fieldworkers, if it even exists, is often tokenistic. christian ngos should therefore develop a framework and processes to develop their strategy, policies, program designs, and systems that intentionally include fieldworkers. such an inclusive framework and processes can help reduce the gap between policy and practice and transform the process of their development as an exercise in contributing to organizational development. principles of transformational development in communities need to become principles for organizational development. actor-oriented approaches and agency of fieldworkers need to become part of the strategy and program design rather than merely instruments to implement them. organizational processes that provide space for fieldworkers another helpful measure is to ensure that human resource processes, policies, and performance management systems affirm the discretionary roles of fieldworkers and are responsive to their needs and contexts. this requires organizational space for their voices to be heard, including supervisory discretion to allow fieldworker discretion. performance management needs to take into consideration the congruence of fieldworkers’ values, commitment to the organizational mission, and contributions to intangible aspects of development, such as community participation and the quality of relationships with community members, in addition to meeting tangible performance targets for program implementation. knowledge management and organizational learning christian ngos can intentionally invest in organizational culture that values learning from community members and frontline workers, and that promotes downward accountability. they should put the emphasis on learning by staff members and volunteers, alongside knowledge management, which usually commoditizes knowledge and values certain types of ‘universal’ knowledge over local and particular knowledge. knowledge management also gives a false impression that learning cycles can be shortened for people, with a speedy scale-up of evidence-based practices. in development work, technical interventions based on ‘universal’ knowledge should be applied alongside “contextual” knowledge in order for them to be effective. this requires an enabling institutional environment that includes a clear policy framework, leadership commitment, flexible funding, supportive systems and procedures, integrated and field-based training, and creative management, supported by an organizational culture in which people are encouraged to take risks. relational proximity and not just technical rationality good relationships are critical to the success of organizations and development projects, but ‘relationship’ tends to be a black box that is not readily amenable to analysis or quantification. managerial approaches to development tend to relegate relationships as part of ‘assumptions’ column in project logframes. relationships among development workers, technical specialists, communities, institutions, and others need to be treated both as “means” and “goals” of development work. relational approaches, not just technical rationality, must form the basis for ngo organizational development and working with communities and local partners for transformational development. the “relational proximity framework” by ashcroft et al. is one way of unpacking relationships and better understanding what makes them successful (2016, 32-53). the relational proximity framework applies to nurturing and measuring effective relationships both within the ngo (e.g. between senior leadership and frontline workers; technical specialists and frontline workers) and in relation of fieldworkers to community members (e.g. between frontline workers and vulnerable parts of communities and relationships among different community groups). resist the temptation for big budgets ngos should resist the temptation to pursue large program budgets and instead work with budgets that are sufficient for staff and operational costs and for the minimum required activities. this can be seen as an opportunity rather than as a constraint. it can allow christian ngos and fieldworkers to focus on what is really important, to be externally oriented rather than being busy with implementing pre-planned activities and spending budgets on time. fieldworkers can thus spend their time engaging in relationship-building, developing networks, and facilitating transformational changes that do not necessarily require a lot of money. instead, the emphasis is on time, trust-based relationships, mutual respect, and accountability to communities and local partners among the communities that ngos serve. conclusion this article has described the tensions ngo fieldworkers experience due to policy conflicts, ambiguity, and mismatch of community and organizational expectations. these tensions, significant christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(1), summer 2020 sarma, importance of role and agency of fieldworkers in transformational development work by christian ngos 27 in a broad range of ngos, are amplified yet further in transformational development work funded by institutional donors in christian ngos. fieldworkers exercise discretion to manage these tensions, which are often not visible or recognized by the ngo management. they make use of their personal resourcefulness and invest relationally in communities. fieldworkers should not be seen as mere instruments to implement well-thought-out plans and program designs developed by experts. instead, their agency and role should be considered as critical assets to further the transformational development agenda. references ashcroft, john, roy childs, michael schluter, and alison myers. 2016. the relational lens: understanding, managing and measuring stakeholder relationships. cambridge university press. chambers, robert. 1996. “the primacy of the personal.” in edwards and hulme, eds. beyond the magic bullet. west hartford, cn: kumarian press. 241–53 chambers, robert. 1997. whose reality counts? putting the first last. london: itdg. christian, jayakumar. 1999. god of the emptyhanded: poverty, power, and the kingdom of god. monrovia, ca: marc. clay, edward j. 1985. room for maneuver: an exploration of public policy planning in agricultural and rural development. edited by benjamin bernard schaffer. rutherford n.j.: fairleigh dickinson university press. eyben, rosalind. 2010. “hiding relations: the irony of ‘effective aid.’” european journal of development research 22(3): 382-97. eyben, rosalind. 2012. “‘if they write a cheque today, they want a result tomorrow:’ big push forward in new york 16 october 2012.” big push forward. october 18, 2012. http://bigpushforward.net eyben, rosalind, irene guijt, chris roche, and cathy shutt, eds. 2015. the politics of evidence and results in international development: playing the game to change the rules? rugby, warwickshire: practical action. fowler, alan. 1997. striking a balance: a guide to enhancing the effectiveness of nongovernmental organizations in international development. london: earthscan. freire, paulo. 1970. pedagogy of the oppressed. herder and herder. giddens, anthony. 1984. the constitution of society: outline of the theory of structuration. hoboken, nj: john wiley & sons. grenz, stanley. 2007. the social god and the relational self: a trinitarian theology of the imago dei. 1 edition. louisville, ky: westminster john knox press. kilner, john f. 2015. dignity and destiny: humanity in the image of god. grand rapids, mi: wm. b. eerdmans publishing co. korten, david c. 1980. “community organization and rural development: a learning process approach.” public administration review 40(5), 480. korten, david c. 1990. getting to the 21st century: voluntary action and the global agenda. west hartford, cn: kumarian press. mitchell, robert. 2014. finding meanings for ‘faith in development’: an examination of the applied theology of world vision and its broader implications for the development sector and practice. phd thesis at university of divinity. https://repository.divinity.edu.au/1767/1/mitchell _final_phd_thesis.pdf. mosse, david, john farrington, and alan rew. 1998. development as process: concepts and methods for working with complexity. london: routledge. myers, bryant. 2011. walking with the poor: principles and practices of transformational development. revised edition. maryknoll, n.y: orbis books. oecd. n.d. the paris declaration on aid effectiveness and the accra agenda for action. accessed december 23, 2017. http://www.oecd.org/dac/effectiveness/34428351.p df. ramalingam, ben. 2013. aid on the edge of chaos: rethinking international cooperation in a complex world. oup oxford. so, damon w. k., and daniel w. hardy. 2006. jesus’ revelation of his father: a narrativeconceptual study of the trinity with special reference to karl barth. waynesboro, ga: paternoster. sugden, chris. 2003. “transformational development: current state of understanding and practice.” transformation (02653788) 20(2): 70. taylor, laurie, and peter jenkins. 1989. time to listen: the human aspect in development. london: practical action. tilakaratna, s. 1985. “animator in participatory rural development: some experiences from sri lanka.” ilo working paper 244403. international labour organization. wallace, tina, lisa bornstein, and jennifer chapman. 2007. the aid chain: coercion and http://bigpushforward.net/ https://repository.divinity.edu.au/1767/1/mitchell_final_phd_thesis.pdf https://repository.divinity.edu.au/1767/1/mitchell_final_phd_thesis.pdf http://www.oecd.org/dac/effectiveness/34428351.pdf http://www.oecd.org/dac/effectiveness/34428351.pdf christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(1), summer 2020 sarma, importance of role and agency of fieldworkers in transformational development work by christian ngos 28 commitment in development ngos. practical action pub. wilson, paul n. 2011. “shared learning in and from transformational development programs.” transformation 28(2): 103–13. jaisankar sarma is a holistic transformational development practitioner. he has more than thirty-five years of experience in international development. he has a phd in development studies from the oxford centre for mission studies and the middlesex university in the uk. author email: jsarma2@gmail.com mailto:jsarma2@gmail.com christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 covid, climate change, conflict, and global poverty, interview with michael woolcock 37 covid, climate change, conflict, and global poverty: an interview with michael woolcock, lead social scientist at the world bank michael woolcock interviewed by roland hoksbergen on january 19, 2021 the accord research alliance (ara) teamed up with us at christian relief, development, and advocacy to interview michael woolcock about the recent world bank publication, reversals of fortune: poverty and shared prosperity 2020, that dr. woolcock codirected. the interview was broadcast as a webinar and is presented here in print. dr. michael woolcock grew up in australia and came to the united states for graduate education in sociology at brown university. upon graduation in 1998, he took a position at the world bank, and is now lead social scientist in the world bank's development research group. for fifteen of the last twenty-one years he has also been a (part-time) lecturer in public policy at harvard university's kennedy school of government. his current research focuses on strategies for enhancing state capability for implementation, on crafting more effective interaction between informal and formal justice systems, and on using mixed methods to assess the effectiveness of "complex" development interventions. over the past twentythree years he has authored over a hundred journal articles and book chapters, and co-authored or co-edited ten books, on topics ranging from social capital, history, and law to state capability, popular culture, and research methods. in 2015-17 he helped establish the world bank’s first global knowledge and research hub. he has contributed to several of the world bank’s major reports, including the one discussed in this interview, reversals of fortune: poverty and shared prosperity 2020, which he co-directed with samuel freije-rodriguez. michael was also a speaker at the 2019 accord network summit, a guest on an earlier ara podcast, and currently serves on the editorial board of the accord network journal, christian relief, development, and advocacy, for which roland hoksbergen is the chief editor. rh: michael, thank you so much for being with us today. how did you get from australia to the world bank? what parts of that journey would you like to tell us about? mw: first of all, let me thank you, roland, and all your colleagues, and everyone else who’s listening today. it is an honor and privilege to discuss this report. to answer your question: in my mid-twenties, like a lot of people at that time of their lives, i was wondering what god wanted me to do with my life. i considered my skill set, which seemed fairly modest, but i offered it up. my favorite parable is the one about the loaves and the fishes. that sense of offering up what little you have, which often feels so vastly inadequate to the nature and scale of the challenge at hand, is an everpresent reality for me… but somehow, in ways we never understand, one’s offering gets multiplied and does what it is supposed to do, in abundance. so i made that step. what i thought was the biggest problem in the world was that so many people were just needlessly dying, due to the absence of food, the absence of justice, the absence of resources and about:blank about:blank https://www.google.com/books/edition/poverty_and_shared_prosperity_2020/gromeaaaqbaj?hl=en&gbpv=1 https://www.google.com/books/edition/poverty_and_shared_prosperity_2020/gromeaaaqbaj?hl=en&gbpv=1 christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 covid, climate change, conflict, and global poverty, interview with michael woolcock 38 opportunities. at that time – in the eighties and nineties, as the cold war ended – it was still an open question as to whether and how those kinds of opportunities and resources could be extended to everyone. but if they could, i wanted to be a part of that process and to offer up my little bit as best i could. i knew enough sociology at that time to know that networks are everything, and that who you know counts for an awful lot, so i wanted to become part of the networks in which key ideas and decisions pertaining to international development were being formulated and debated. over time, i felt a particular call to work at a pretty high level. not everyone is called to do that, and no hierarchy or superiority is implied – i just offered up what i could and sought to connect it into the networks i was slowing starting to understand and be part of. if i was going to make the sacrifice of leaving a happy life and family situation in australia to spend probably the rest of my days doing this, then i wanted to do it at a high level. i knew i had to get a good graduate education and be part of the social networks of decision-making that are part of the process. so i chose to go to brown university to study sociology, because that was my discipline, and i wanted to study under this great social theorist, dietrich rueschemeyer, who could mentor me in the particular thing that i wanted to think i was okay at. i also needed to be part of this broader network of development researchers and policy advisors, so i went to brown because it was part of the ivy league, which enabled me to spend my third year of graduate school in the department of economics at harvard. it was this combination of sociological grounding and a familiarity with economics and economists (not necessarily the same thing!) that turned out to be ideal preparation for the position i was offered at the world bank. by a whole series of circumstances and steps that i will not describe here, in the mid-1990s the world bank, under the leadership of then-president james wolfensohn, established a social development department. there had been social development staff working on social development issues for many years at the bank, but they had never had a dedicated institutional space, and thus a collective voice. they did not have a formal place in the organizational chart, and as any student of bureaucracy knows, unless you are in the chart, you effectively do not exist. having created the social development department, however, it seemed no selfrespecting economist in the research group wanted to serve on the social development board, so they opened up a position to a non-economist for the first and only time; i was lucky enough to secure the spot. actually, they gave the job to someone they had advertised it for – someone with fifteen years of research experience – but they gave me a job anyway by creating an additional slot for me. i will be eternally grateful to the people who had the foresight, or the courage and the wherewithal, to do that. soon after i started at the bank, i got an opportunity to teach parttime at harvard’s kennedy school of government – so that combination of doing, thinking, and researching inside the world bank, but also teaching a class most years at the kennedy school, is what i have done (apart from four years living in the uk, on two separate occasions) for the last twenty-three years. rh: one of today’s listeners acknowledges your involvement in research and report-writing, but wonders what else the world bank does. mw: actually, report writing is a very small part of what the bank does. most of the power, influence, and politics of the world bank comes from its lending and grant giving. there are two different types of financial assistance we provide. all but the poorest (and most ‘fragile’) countries of the world (there are about 36 of them) are eligible to receive loans from the world bank to serve their particular development priorities. for the very poorest/most ‘fragile’ countries, the world bank provides grants through one of its branches called the international development association (ida). together, loans and grants add up to billions and billions of dollars each year. after all, we are a bank, and we lend money, and that is where most of our good work happens. but precisely because there are billions of dollars in play, it is also where lots of crazy stuff happens and where opportunities for malfeasance arise, such as when working with openly corrupt governments. ethical questions abound... but the underlying premise of multilateral institutions is that development is made possible, especially during global crises such as the present moment, by having globallysupported financial institutions in place for providing countries, especially the poorest countries whose public health budgets are being decimated, with quick access to resources, expertise and forgiveness for existing forms of debt. all that is really the bread and butter of the world bank. what i do for a living is deep in the outfield of what most people at the bank do most of the time. i am not modally representative in any way of what world bank staff actually do! but i just wake every day, like all of you, and offer up what i have. that has to be enough, because that is what we are called to do. rh: what is it like working as a person of faith at the world bank? you’ve already noted that you see it as a calling. but what is it like day to day, week to week? how do you live out your faith while working at the bank? mw: it has been a pleasant surprise, or maybe not really a surprise, to discover that in a global christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 covid, climate change, conflict, and global poverty, interview with michael woolcock 39 organization, where there are people from literally everywhere, a surprising number chose to work there for faith-based reasons that are versions of what i just described about mine. i have the pleasure of working with muslims, hindus, buddhists, jews, christians, mormons, everyone. but there is a commonality of shared intention that i think holds true across all the major world religions, which is that they exist, in part and on a good day, to help those who are the least privileged, those with the least access to key services, who are the least able to defend their rights, contribute to life of their community, and to realize their aspirations. the world bank’s mission, and certainly the mission of most of its staff members, is consistent with these ideals; what was pleasantly surprising was learning how many of my colleagues come at this from their own religious (or secular) standpoint as an explicit matter of principle, and then try to live it out. i love being part of that collective effort; at one level you are trying to integrate yourself with people who come at this from very different theological perspectives, but ultimately the commonality that you share is vastly more important than whatever differences there might be. we all think we are using the gifts god has given us – our talents, our resources, our access, and the connections we have – but we are doing that in the service of our counterparts, together seeking to make the world a slightly better place than it would be otherwise. yes, there is a whole lot of politics and shenanigans that go along with trying to live out your faith on a dayto-day basis, but that is the case whether you work at the bank or at the un or anywhere else. and yet there are also moments of incredible grace for me, such as when you’re in a big room with hundreds and sometimes thousands of people from everywhere in the world. i think god is looking around at everyone in that room and just smiling and hugging everyone, thinking “this is the world; these are my people, this is what we created.” and on a good day, when we all get on together like that, it is just magical. of course, such moments don’t happen all the time, and others use those same social differences to divide the world, but i do my work at the world bank for similar reasons that everyone else from a faith tradition does it. there does not have to be any contradiction to the broader mission of the organization, because the mission of the organization and of the poverty and shared prosperity report is to document and respond to those who get left behind, and to redress the deep and unequal processes that create and sustain them. the importance of taking on that challenge is a common christian theme, but also a common muslim theme, hindu theme, buddhist theme, jewish theme, and almost everyone else’s theme. rh: let’s move on to the report. before we get into the details, please talk about the background of the report. when was the first one written, how often is it updated? what is the purpose of the report? and have there been major changes over time? mw: under president jim kim in 2014, the bank underwent a reorganization of sorts and in keeping with a “mckinsey-esque” kind of approach it was deemed that we needed a very clear mission statement. we decided we should be consistent with the sustainable development goals (sdgs) of the un, but we also needed our own goals. those two goals were, first, the elimination of extreme poverty, which is sustainable development goal #1, to be measured by progress toward a global extreme poverty rate of 3%; and second, the promotion of shared prosperity, which is our way of talking about reducing inequality. shared prosperity would be measured by the extent to which those in the bottom 40% of an income distribution are benefitting disproportionately from a growth process, which sometimes happens and sometimes does not. levels of inequality are lowered when the bottom 40% grows faster than the rest. once those were the twin goals, then our leadership decided we needed a report card, a periodic check-in to see how things are going. is the world at least headed in a direction in which extreme poverty is declining and shared prosperity is increasing, even if it is hard to make the claim that the world bank is a major causal factor? the first report card, as it were, came out in 2016 and was mostly focused on inequality, looking at its various forms and manifestations. it was then decided that it was only necessary to issue a report every other year, so the next report was released in 2018. this second report focused on questions of data and how to expand the depth, breadth, and quality of data needed to answer questions about global trends in poverty and inequality in a more comprehensive, integrated, and accessible way. the original vision for the 2020 report, which was the one that my friend samuel freije-rodríguez and i were recruited to articulate, was to look at political economy and implementation questions. if there is some broad agreement on how to promote a growth process, why is it that this happens so fitfully, or in such a piecemeal way around the world? that is where we started; that was the original briefing note that we wrote and circulated and had approved. we were chugging away on that until april, when it became clear that covid was not going to be just a small little blip on the screen but instead a historic and existential event, and of great consequence for global poverty. that realization totally upended what we had been asked to write on, which meant that we had the stressful task before us – not just of reengineering what we were christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 covid, climate change, conflict, and global poverty, interview with michael woolcock 40 doing in a matter of weeks, but trying to write a report in the midst of a pandemic that we figured might only get worse, not better, over the window of opportunity when this report was going to get written and released (which was the last part of 2020). so that is where we are. the poverty and shared prosperity report (pspr) is a biennial document that provides an update on progress towards attaining the world bank’s twin goals of poverty reduction and shared prosperity. it is not the world development report, with which some listeners might be more familiar – that is a more formal, extensive, theory-grounded statement around a broad theme in development (the next one will be on data). the essence of the pspr is to provide an update on these twin goals, but then to ground the analysis in a particular thematic issue. rh: do you have a sense of who reads the report, who takes it seriously, and what kind of influence it has? mw: the pspr has already been downloaded some 80,000 times and cited in the media over 2,500 times. i don’t know the specific breakdown of its readership by particular groups, but it is targeted to policymakers, government officials, practitioners, advocates, students, and researchers. when you are writing it, you are very conscious that this high-profile coverage is the sort of reception it is going to get – indeed, it is quite stressful to write something that you know is going to be read and critiqued by lots of different people in lots of different countries in lots of different ways... an underappreciated aspect, especially considering the research interest of many in the audience today, is that we make all the data we use available for free to everybody, so that anyone who wants to use the data or replicate our analysis can, in principle, do just that. compared to when i was in graduate school, when many of us were still working with data out of dated, incomplete tables in the annex of big un reports, the ready availability of current data from nearly every country in the world is just extraordinary. there is a huge behind-the-scenes effort to make all that happen in a coherent, accessible way. as for the report, it is focused on these twin goals, but we know there are also a lot of researchers doing their own analyses, as well as professors teaching classes on global poverty and development, so everyone now has easy access to what is pretty close to the most comprehensive data and analysis of global poverty available. beyond the global level, there are other analysts trying to assess these issues at a more granular level, looking closely at the particular issues and themes we raise and discerning the extent to which they play out in their own country, their own state or their own communities. and of course there is the policy crowd in washington, new york, geneva and elsewhere who take very seriously the global agenda encapsulated in the sdgs and know that while these twin goals are important in their own right, they are also central to realizing all the other development goals. to the extent that poverty and inequality is the set of issues around which so much else turns, a report that summarizes these key issues at the global level, especially in the midst of a devastating pandemic, becomes really crucial to a lot of people. we try to present this empirical material as best we can, but you do not write these reports or work for the world bank without realizing that there are still enormous gaps in the data. and regarding global poverty itself, there is also controversy in certain quarters over whether the bank is part of the problem or part of the solution, so every day you live with the knowledge that many people are going to loudly dispute the findings, no matter how carefully they are done. you do not have to like that reality, but you do have to be okay with recognizing that there can sometimes be big tradeoffs people make in order to do this work. in the end, one can only write these reports in good faith and put them out into the public domain, believing that they do much of their most important work precisely through the sort of conversations that you and i, and those attending this seminar, are having now. rh: the title is called reversals of fortune. can you explain the title and why reversal is plural? what does the report cover? mw: i have some slides, taken from the report, that tell the story quite well. slide #1 (next page), on the left-hand side, shows us the trend in global poverty since the world bank started systematically collecting data on it back in the early 1990s. you can see that there has been an underappreciated but massive fall in global poverty: in 1990 – thirty years ago – over a third of the world’s population was living in extreme poverty – that is, on less than $2 a day. but with a little blip around 1997-98, which was the asian financial crisis, that number has gone down every year to now be at 7%, which is just extraordinary. for all the criticisms in various quarters about capitalism and globalization, it is just historically unprecedented that such a rapid and sustained rate of global poverty reduction has occurred. sure, a lot of that is driven by china and india, but this is a global report trying to assess trends in global numbers, so those aggregate declines in extreme poverty are really important. when we talk about a reversal of fortune, however, the depressing headline of the pspr is that this steady decline in global poverty has basically come to an end; that thirty-year window has closed, at least for now. christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 covid, climate change, conflict, and global poverty, interview with michael woolcock 41 slide #1 for the figures on the right, which document changes in shared prosperity (economic growth in the bottom 40% of the population), the story is more mixed, in part because it is one that is much more difficult to measure (so we have fewer data sources to draw upon), and in part because inequality generally tends to change quite slowly. (we could have a half hour conversation on that!) but when you look at the early results that have come in from countries around the world since the pandemic, you see that there has been a consistent rise in inequality as a result of the pandemic. the reasons for this have been discussed by others and are relatively well understood. for example, those people who work in services industries and in factories – all the places where a lot of poor people work – are the ones with a high risk of contracting and spreading covid. people living and working in such circumstances cannot earn a livelihood, like a lot of us do, by staring at screens all day in splendid isolation, and are far likely to have health insurance, unemployment benefits, or access to affordable medical care. minority groups, who tend to be poorer, have also suffered higher infection and death rates than majority groups. by june, as data started to come in on the effects of covid, it became clear that poverty reduction and the exacerbation of inequality were both shifting in directions that were historically unprecedented. more broadly, the global economy was contracting at levels that had not been seen since the great depression, or so it seemed to be in september 2020. the world was thus facing a massive economic contraction, an increase in poverty, and rising inequality – all of which were happening at rates that, at least in our lifetimes, for the last seventy years, had not been seen before. that was the reversals (plural!) of fortune part. “reversal of fortune” also happened to be the name of a famous paper from twenty years ago by daron acemoglu, simon johnson, and james robinson (2002). this important paper looked at the ways in which colonialism and institutions had led, over time, to countries that were once rich becoming poor, and those that were poor becoming rich. we just took that title and said that the world was now living through its own reversals – a product not only of covid, but violent conflict and climate change. the report’s original title was “reversing reversals of fortune,” but our translators did not like that and it risked taking on too much to imagine that our little humble team could somehow, in the midst of an ongoing and fluid set of overlapping crises, map out a plan for redressing the compounding effects of a pandemic, civil wars and climate change! so we agreed it was enough to just document and explain the reversals of fortune; at the end, we can talk about how we came to articulate the principles we need to address deep complexity rather than a laundry list of policies that might bring about a reversal of the reversals. rh: what are the definitions of poverty and shared prosperity that you use in the report? why did you choose them, and why they are important? christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 covid, climate change, conflict, and global poverty, interview with michael woolcock 42 mw: since the 1990 world development report, when the bank first tried to measure global poverty, there has been a lot of debate around how one should actually do that. i will not go into all of the methodological details, or the various critiques of the ways the world bank measures extreme poverty (much of which i am quite sympathetic to). however, for the purposes of needing something, and something that is comparable enough across different countries and different levels of development, we actually use three poverty lines. measured monetarily, poverty is a continuous rather than a discrete variable, which means in real life there is no actual “line” and no qualitative difference between going from living 5 cents below a “poverty line” to five cents above it. but to the extent that you need to have some form of monetary benchmark, we use the line that corresponds to the poverty rate in the poorest fifteen countries in the world. that is where we get the $1.90/day line (roughly $2/day). but then, as countries get richer, it costs more to live; obviously no one can live in the usa on $1.90/hour, let alone $1.90/day. sometimes it almost seems like you need $1.90/minute! following the same logic, we also produce two other poverty lines, one corresponding to the poverty rate in lower middle-income countries, which comes to $3.20/day, and another for the upper middle-income countries, which is $5.50/day. as you would expect, as people move up from the bottom of the income distribution, at $1.90/day, that means you would see a rise in the level to $3.20, unless there were a rise also in the people who had been making $3.20/day, and then moving up to the $5.50, but it usually takes several generations for that steady rise to happen. thus far there has not been a lot of movement in the $3.20/day and $5.50 lines, in part because quite fundamental changes in the economy and society are required to generate the sustained economic growth that enable more people to rise above those numbers, but also because people move into these higher levels of income as the number of those living in extreme poverty declines. it bears repeating that people are still desperately poor even when their incomes double from $2 a day to $4 a day. one of the innovations for the previous poverty and shared prosperity report (in 2018) was to recognize that poverty is not just an income issue. there are many different ways that people can be poor and be discriminated against, so to get an empirical handle on this we use what we call a multidimensional poverty index, which incorporates not just income but also access to health, education, and infrastructure. and there are other ways that scholars have tried to get at the multifaceted nature of poverty. what is really interesting to me is the high variability with regard to the extent to which income poverty correlates with other dimensions of poverty. in some countries the different dimensions are mostly aligned, but in other countries, not so much. niger, for example, shows big differences between those who are income poor versus those who do not have access to health and education, versus those who are just cut off and isolated by not having access to roads and other forms of infrastructure. there is no clear relationship there, so an interesting research agenda would be looking at the conditions under which the different dimensions of poverty are closely aligned with one another versus others in which various measures are needed to better understand why poor people are poor (and thus what might be done to enhance their welfare). it is hard enough just getting income metric data. we mentioned the thirty people the world bank has just to do this – they spend their lives trying to reconcile the income measures of data from peru and pakistan and paraguay, for example. these measures come from all over the world, and each country, rightly, measures poverty in its own way (albeit often with world bank assistance). but once you start adding anything new to the household surveys used to measure poverty – in the spirit of trying to be more inclusive, of trying to recognize that there are diverse ways of being poor – the quality and the quantity of data that you have access to falls away quite sharply. maybe if we are having this conversation in 30 or 40 years the world will be all nicely mapped out and we will have a detailed real-time discussion around poverty dynamics… but for now, we are still in the very formative stages of getting the data we need, not just in measures of income poverty, but especially for all the multidimensional ways in which people can be poor. rh: can you say more about shared prosperity? mw: shared prosperity is the extent of growth in the bottom 40% of the population – in its own right (which, if it’s positive and sustained, reduces poverty) and relative to the rest of the population (which, if it’s higher and sustained, reduces inequality). you can see on slide #1 that we only have data from roughly 68 of the world’s 190 economies for assessing the nature and extent of shared prosperity. measuring shared prosperity is even more challenging than measuring poverty, because we need to have two data points in time, spaced out far enough (at least five years), so that any change can actually be detected. but it is just really hard to get detailed data across the income spectrum from every country in the world spaced five or more years apart such that you can assess the growth of the bottom 40% relative to everybody else. even then, 53 of those 68 economies are upper middleor high-income countries. the places where we need data the most are christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 covid, climate change, conflict, and global poverty, interview with michael woolcock 43 the poorest and fragile states, and countries in conflict. but the data are rarely available in such places because data gathering on this issue is not a priority for their governments, or because it is literally too dangerous to collect that kind of information from people. one can also try to use satellite data (e.g., on nighttime luminosity, comparing rich and poor neighborhoods), and top-rates on cell-phone use (poor people do it frequently in small amounts; rich people do it infrequently, in large amounts)… but household surveys remain the gold standard for measuring poverty and inequality, and even though things improve a little every year, we still have a long way to go. everyone in the world would like to have a detailed discussion about inequality measures, and there is a lot of interesting qualitative work that can be done around that question in very specific places, but when you are trying to tell a global story that integrates different ways of measuring these things across 190 economies, it gets really hard. that is why we try to tell a more nuanced story around shared prosperity, because that is what the data suggest. yet it is also the case that we don’t have enough data from the places where we really need it most, and it is going to take a while for us to have it. rh: let’s talk about the data and other such methodological issues. it is obvious that obtaining good data is problematic. how has covid impacted your data gathering? how do you maintain reasonable sources of data in such a time as this? mw: i will try to simplify a complicated story, and complicate what some might think is a simple story… one big issue is that countries should be allowed to measure poverty as they think best. they are sovereign nations, with elected governments that have policy priorities and public resources that they should use to respond to the concerns of their citizens. being in accordance with the survey measurement protocols of the world bank and the un might be nice, but it is not likely to be a high priority for them. to the extent that the world bank can advise and offer itself as a repository of global expertise on these things, it does so. but at the end of the day, you are still left wanting to respect the principle that countries should measure these things in their own way. this is all fine, until you are a 30-year-old consultant at the world bank who is given 130 different data sets from 150 countries, collected in 100 different ways, who then has to follow specific internal methodological protocols to ensure that how the brazilians have measured it can be reconciled with how the congolese have measured it, and then turn all of that into something that becomes the simple, clean graphs like the one we see in slide #1! there is an enormous amount of work that goes into all this. even seemingly basic distinctions between whether you measure poverty by income, expenditure, salaries, assets, or recollections of how much money their small business has earned in the last month or weeks make a difference when assessing poverty, and greatly complicates efforts to aggregate and compare. most latin american countries, for example, measure economic welfare through income, whereas most of the rest of the world wants to measure it by how much people spend, on the grounds that poor people are more likely to be able to recall their expenditures, and also because their expenditures vary more – if one works in agriculture, for example, there will be boom periods when crops come in and you get a lot of money, but other times when you have very little money and thus need to balance expenditure over the course of the year. which is hard to do. if you are working in manufacturing, you might expect your salary to be a little more consistent and perhaps be verified in the form of a pay slip. either way, there are strengths and weaknesses to both approaches, especially when working in very poor communities – but they will likely yield different findings that then have to reconciled to tell a credible global story about trends in poverty reduction and inequality. if you are working on a report like this, how do you reconcile the various ways in which data is collected? researchers have found ways to do that, but these are the kinds of nerdy challenges that someone wanting to tell a global story about poverty has to deal with all the time. to hark back to your earlier question, most of what we do when we are trying to extrapolate into the future or even just describe what is going on now, is done on the basis of extrapolating on past trends, working with growth data (which is strongly correlated with poverty) or using data that is collected more frequently, such telephone surveys. but every approach has its limits, so there are always difficult trade-offs to be made. one of the big challenges for the report, and that you can see in slide #1, is that data stop at 2017. why does it do that? because that is how long it takes to go from having enough household surveys that have been properly cleaned and analyzed so they can be reconciled. it is about a two-year process, and not every country is collecting poverty data every year. this means you have to adjust the data to fit a common year – if the data were collected in 2018, we have to try to get that back to 2017. if they were collected in 2016, we have to nudge it forward so that we have a single year and we can line all these things up. the harsh reality is that we will not have detailed household level poverty survey results that include covid until at least the next report in 2022, but even then, researchers will be looking only at what was available up until around 2019 and 2020. it could be several more years before we have the sophisticated household level data surveys that we christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 covid, climate change, conflict, and global poverty, interview with michael woolcock 44 need to be able to tell precise stories at the level of detail we want to. to assess present and future trends, we are largely using the national accounts data on economic growth, which is not in real time, but at least gets updated every six months and enables us to make goodenough estimates of current poverty trends at the national level. as such, new data will be coming out in march of this year that will provide a clearer sense of where poverty is going. (there will doubtless be blogs on this, so if you’re really keen, keep an eye on the world bank’s poverty website: https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/poverty). rh: the report argues that there are three main culprits of the reversals; covid-19, violent conflict, and climate change. are they equal partners? is covid the more serious? is there synergy among all three? mw: we wrestled at lot with these questions. the methodological challenge is that you have what we came to call the three cs –covid, climate, and conflict – all unfolding along very different trajectories. covid is here and now; it is this big spike, this huge, global challenge affecting everyone, a real and present danger that has to be dealt with now. climate change, on the other hand, is like a slow-moving escalator; it is inexorable, but its trajectory of impact on poverty, at least for the next decade or so, is still likely to be relatively small. my colleagues who are experts on climate change say that the effects are real now, but they are going to be vastly more consequential in 2040 and 2050 when all of the big effects start to really kick in. in the estimates for this report, we show that at least over the next decade, up until 2030, there will be an extra 100 million people put back into extreme poverty as a result of climate change, and there is a roughly similar number with violent conflict. conflict is another really difficult phenomenon to disentangle from or aggregate into other processes and factors of change, because it happens in very particular places, it comes and it goes at varying levels of intensity, but its impacts can endure long after a war has ended. we commissioned a new paper for this report which showed that even long after a war has ended, such as in a country like nepal, the effects of the war they had 15-20 years ago still linger. the effects of war are just so insidious – on people’s mental health, the enduring risk of hidden landmines and bombs that are left unexploded, permanent physical injury. we had to write this report trying to help people distinguish between outcomes whose effects are relatively clear in the present (as the data in slide #2 show, which is this rise in extreme poverty back up to between 9.1% to 9.4% this year), but whose multiple causes slide #2 https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/poverty christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 covid, climate change, conflict, and global poverty, interview with michael woolcock 45 covid, climate change and conflict – are compounding one another, but doing so in different ways in different places at different rates for different groups. that makes it far from obvious what constitutes the ‘best’ way to respond, especially when many of the policy solutions themselves are contested and fluid. the report also drew on earlier work to show that although only 10% of the world’s population lives in fragile and conflict countries, roughly 40% of the world’s extreme poverty is located in such countries. in the report we overlay these places with where the risks of floods are high, which in turn enables us to identify the world’s “hot spots” – areas that have to deal simultaneously with all of the three cs, even as they unfold on very different trajectories, in countries with varying levels of resources and capability to deal with them. most of these hot spots are in sub saharan africa. what does one do about any of this? obviously, there are no easy answers, but it fell to me to write the concluding chapter for this report on how the world deals simultaneously with conflict, climate change, and covid – the three cs – when nobody really knows how to deal with any of them. i had to write something knowing full well that tens of thousands of people were going to be reading it in search of guidance of how to deal with a once-ina-century set of compounding problems! the pressure was intense. we have talked about methodological issues, but there were also serious political issues to contend with. india, for example, did not release its poverty data to us, because they were very skittish about what the data showed. a huge percentage of the world’s poor people live in india, so the fact that india did not make data available to us meant that we had to do some pretty creative accounting to get around that, while providing due acknowledgment of what those limitations are. whether it is in the politics, the nerdy methodological issues, or the structural characteristics of these different kinds of problems, the challenges of writing this report all unfolded and reinforced one another in very different ways and different places. once the report is done, the task for national policymakers, sector specialists and follow-up research in places like cameroon and peru is to ask “how did these three cs play out in this country? what kinds of policies and forms of assistance would be the most useful for it? and having decided on the optimal policy response, how do government and citizens ensure that they actually get implemented?” those are the key questions currently facing governments, multilateral agencies and ngos everywhere… rh: i was struck by the following quote from the report: “the pandemic’s impoverishing effects will be vast (6).” can you explain why (or how) covid-19 has been so harmful to the poor? are these short-term or long-term effects? it seems the global economy is poised to bounce back as the pandemic winds down. will the poor bounce back too? mw: there is a lot in that question. let’s start by looking at another slide (next page). the spider diagram in slide #3 speaks to what we know to be the broad characteristics of poor people in general. the outside line says that most people who are poor live in rural areas, have little or no education, work in agriculture, and are either self-employed or working in a small family business. the consequences of covid on what we are calling the “new poor,” or those newly rendered extremely poor as a result of covid, are not just an extension of the characteristics of the chronically poor, but instead tend to fall hardest on those who are more urban, have some form of education, are based disproportionately in lower middle-income countries, and working not in agriculture but rather in manufacturing and services, and therefore working for somebody else rather than for themselves. what everyone hopes for is v-shaped recovery – a relatively rapid rebound after a sharp fall. the grounds for optimism that this could happen rest on the assumption that if those big impacts have occurred disproportionately in urban areas and to people with higher levels of education, then that might mean the rebound could be faster and less severe for those rendered poor as a result of covid. but there is enormous heterogeneity around that. these trends were emerging when we were finishing up the report in september, but in the months since then the picture has become clearer as a result of data collected from realtime telephone surveys. developing countries, at least from a public health standpoint, thus far seem to have been less affected by all this than originally anticipated. the absence of testing no doubt make the picture rosier than it probably is, but a bigger looming challenge is how this is going to affect countries like kenya and bolivia where it was decided that school would be cancelled for a whole year. once you do that, it means a whole cohort of students will have lost an entire year’s worth of education that probably can never be regained. the human capital consequences of that are going to be cascade down through the coming years, for the rest of their lives… that said, some countries have figured out how to turn a crisis into an opportunity. niger has done a really amazing job of helping their kids gain access to online education, using the crisis as a moment to push forward and modernize an education system that was previously not in a position to do that. but perhaps the christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 covid, climate change, conflict, and global poverty, interview with michael woolcock 46 slide #3 biggest problem now – and all of this has happened since the report was released – is with the rollout of the vaccine and the political economy of who receives what, when. we see that poor countries, very predictably, will struggle to compete with the rich countries in the quest for a finite pool of vaccines, and that granting access to vaccines has become “a new tool of diplomacy”, as a recent headline put it. huge amounts of uncertainty remain. to the extent that the initial impacts seem to have been less catastrophic than they might have been, which is good, the bigger question for all of us – especially those of us on this call, who probably have not been as affected by this as much as a lot of other people – is discerning what constitutes a just response. how does one forge a social movement and a set of institutional and financial mechanisms that enable a more just global response to a global problem? that is a big question for all of us. precedents set in the current moment will linger for a long time… rh: what is your answer to that big question? who are the main players, and what are they doing? the report goes into this in a general way, but maybe there are some other ideas you would like to share. mw: in africa there has been a move to pool countries together, as a single continent-wide market, so that they can then compete against other regions for access to this finite pool of resources. but if it is just african money versus north american money versus european money, that is still going to be vastly inadequate. i am a proud multilateralist. i believe that, on a good day, multilateral institutions can play a much more balancing and countervailing role in trying to ensure that their client governments and their counterparts in this whole drama get a much fairer shot. there is a lot of money at stake here, which could mean countries taking on debt levels that might otherwise make analysts nervous, so multilateral agencies can help to ensure that debt levels needed to obtain vaccines are manageable. we can also do some symbolic things, like world bank staff putting themselves at the bottom of the priority lists for receiving covid vaccinations, because we are not that important, and we all have health insurance systems that enable us to weather this. whether it is symbolic steps like this or more hard-nosed negotiation around trying to ensure that those who are most vulnerable get first access to the vaccines, whether this can be institutionalized, and whether the new us administration will be a stronger force for all of that, all remains to be seen. we are witnessing a modern manifestation of an ancient problem. it is about how we all get along, and how our differences, especially our wealth differences, coalesce into a more just outcome. no one has the answers to that, but every generation struggles with it. this is our generational moment, and i hope global solutions can be found for a global problem. globalization has produced this problem, christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 covid, climate change, conflict, and global poverty, interview with michael woolcock 47 and it is exacerbated by people of privilege – a bad virus is spread by the same means as all the good things we enjoy, like trade and travel. as a matter of theology and moral principle, we should be the ones who bear the greatest costs for how we deal with it. the harsh reality is that this is not how power works, yet part of what being a person of faith means is that we become advocates for those who cannot advocate effectively for themselves. rh: in terms of policy advice, what do you suggest for both the new us government and for ngos, especially christian ngos? mw: let me take the second question first. when we were writing the report, we did not want to say how great the world bank has been in responding to all this. instead, we wanted to highlight examples in particular countries of ways in which different stakeholders, for example ngos – not in isolation but working in partnership with the private sector and with governments – were together able to figure out how to deal with wrenchingly difficult circumstances. we provide a nice example from mumbai, india of how in the slum settlements, where thousands of poor people were cramped together with minimal sanitation which could have resulted in a massive spread of covid, the response was not just a single effort of an allpowerful state or a nimble private sector or heroic ngos. it was a partnership among all three that stopped a major public health crisis from happening. that is the kind of response and solution we wanted to highlight— interesting partnerships in which experts, leaders, and everyday citizens had found ways to harness the comparative advantage of different sectors to address these kinds of complex challenges together. ngos have a particular comparative advantage, but so too do governments, companies, and multilateral agencies. they all have different mandates, resourcing levels, skills, and local legitimacy that they can call upon to address these challenges. the magic is figuring out how to put these together. great leadership can enable that to happen, and divisive leadership means it will not happen – and then all these differences just compound themselves, leading to confusion, duplication, and waste. the report was very much trying to say that no matter who you work for, there is a place for you; the magic is to bring what you do and to work in partnership with what other people do so that you do together what you could never do alone. rh: so, collaboration, global collaboration and local collaboration are big watchwords? mw: yes, and across disciplines as well. collaboration generally… that was one of the principles we invoked in the conclusion, precisely because no one knows what to do in this situation. it has never happened before at this scale or this speed. no one has lived through anything like this, but to make sense of it everyone wants to make it a version of something they already understand. is this a version of hiv? is it another version of ebola? a natural instinct is to frame both the problem and thus the solution as variants on something we are already familiar with. but what we face today is unique, a global problem that requires a global solution. that is a cliché at one level, but what it means is that we have to respond to this ancient challenge of how different people with different abilities and different resourcing levels figure out how to harness their respective abilities and resources with each other to have a positive impact. that makes it a quintessential collective action problem that is well understood in social science. how we learn to actually overcome it, however, and how we enact it in the face of the kinds of challenges that a pandemic places on us, is always unclear because the ‘right’ answer inherently turns on the contingencies of context. there are always lots of devils lurking in lots of details. to return to your first question on policy advice and the new us government… at the moment you can only go on the decisions of appointees and the symbolic nature of what has already been said, but i think it is pretty clear that the incoming administration is going to adopt a more traditional american understanding of its place among many in the global community of nations. appointing samantha powers as the incoming administrator of usaid and giving that appointee a very high stature in the cabinet is one important step. she has won a pulitzer prize for her literary and moral contributions to the thinking about ending wars and being able to provide effective leadership. all of that, at least to me, signals very powerfully that the new administration will adopt a much more vigorous view of development and a much richer appreciation that effective development, engagement with refugees, and defense of human rights and democracy is both a moral and strategic imperative. even so, we need to remember that anything done in the aid space is still only a small fraction of what the new stimulus bill might look like. the current usaid budget of 40 billion dollars is just a drop in the ocean compared to how big one round of stimulus can be in the us. but christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 covid, climate change, conflict, and global poverty, interview with michael woolcock 48 though small, it is still important. it can make a difference, and good people working with those resources under the right circumstances can themselves make a difference. to the extent that the alignment of levels of resourcing and adequate political support map onto an effective implementation system, we can be guardedly optimistic that things will be, at least in the short run, restored to where they once were, and maybe even more, given the nature of the challenges that we now all face. rh: you said you were guardedly optimistic. at this point in your life do you have hope? mw: i think everyone in development is congenitally optimistic. we are familiar with the concept of selection bias – “development people” are probably not representative of the population more generally! but everybody who signs up for a career in development, if their eyes are even vaguely open, has to be aware of how painfully difficult it is for most poor people in the world to live their lives. there is no romanticizing any of that, and there is just so much awfulness going on, so much injustice in terms of how people experience the world and how inadequate their opportunities for redress actually are. part of being called into this business is constantly being a person of hope. you have to be; otherwise, you just get too depressed. but if you put on a different set of glasses, you see that there are a lot of reasons for optimism. it is extraordinary how people can work together as i think i said when i spoke at calvin university many years ago, i had extraordinarily positive experiences in my upbringing, in my church, in my early development work, and they have to be to inure you against the harsher realities that inevitably come up, like covid for example, and the rise of authoritarianism around the world. still, there will be ways in which we are continually disappointed, because, very predictably, like with the vaccine situation, the rich countries are dominating this process. but at least there are mechanisms in place to deal with that. if you were living at a different time in history, there would be no way of alerting people to this type of reality; there would be no legal or geopolitical mechanisms in place for trying to do anything different, no tools or procedures for being able to share innovations and experiences from around the world in real time. once those are happening as they are, then you have to keep believing that both the letter and the spirit of what these organizations exist to do – whether big ones like the world bank, or smaller ones like your favorite ngo – have a place, an important role to play. being people of faith, as i said at the beginning, means to keep offering up what we have, which we do in a spirit of sharing and optimism, because that is what we are called to do. it will always feel inadequate; we will always feel swamped by these bigger forces in the world. and that is not just from a christian perspective. but there are so many people in development who come to it from a faith perspective, because they have these inner resources and the connections to something bigger than themselves that enable them to believe that offering up what they have, and standing up for those who cannot stand for themselves, is what we “to whom much has been given” are called to do. and when we do that, beautiful things happen, in ways we cannot always understand, and in ways that we cannot even see sometimes. when we act on that principle, that is how we sustain careers and lives in trying to do our bit to make things a little better. rh: thank you again for being with us today, michael. we pray god’s blessing on you, your family, and on all the work you are doing at the world bank. references acemoglu, daron, johnson, simon, robinson, james a. 2002. “reversal of fortune: geography and institutions in the making of the modern world income distribution.” the quarterly journal of economics 117(4): 12311294. https://economics.mit.edu/files/4127. https://economics.mit.edu/files/4127 christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(1), summer 2019 1 christian ideas of development: understanding the current theories, networks, and priorities of accord organizations stephen offutt and amy reynolds we examine the ways that accord organizations cultivate their identities and engage as christian development actors. based on a survey of leaders in forty-four accord organizations and interviews with leaders in twenty-one, we find that leaders claim the faith identities of their organizations as central. at a theoretical level, most organizations generally rely on evangelical thought and practice in thinking about poverty and development, even as they also consult mainstream understandings of development. there are still some questions and tensions surrounding transformational development that confront many of these organizations in practice. at the network level, we find that church partnerships are the most central partnerships for many organizations, and we propose a typology for how such partnerships are employed, arguing that simply noting the shared vision of church partnerships might ignore important differences among strategies. finally, we argue that at the organizational level, more attention should be paid to power dynamics and training, because a focus on external programming often may not reflect internal decisions within an organization. the accord network is a faith-based umbrella group. its “principles of excellence” state that “our christian faith is at the center of our identity, motive and manner of being” (principles…, n.d.). there are many umbrella groups for international development actors: accord’s distinctive is based on the level of intentionality with which it pursues its faith commitment and the particular type of faith to which it adheres. this should mean that faith matters in the way accord member organizations work. but how, exactly? we focus on three research questions within this broad area of inquiry: first, how do accord members conceptualize development? second, how do religious commitments shape the partnerships (and tensions in partnerships) that accord members have? third, how do faith identity and a focus on transformation impact organizational priorities and power dynamics within and among organizations? we argue that accord member organizations articulate a bricolage of ideas, beliefs, and priorities. they are strongly influenced by christian development ideas and partners, but they also draw on intellectual resources and participate in networks from the broader international development community. the integration of these ideas is not always seamless, leading to tensions and contradictions that require further research and discussion. in each of our research areas we thus describe the ways christian development leaders currently talk about these themes and then provide questions around which further research and discussion would be helpful. short history of the christian development sector religious actors have long been an integral part of the development sector. evangelicals helped create u.s. international humanitarianism at the turn of the 20 th century (curtis 2018). they were also early adapters to the new way that the relief and development sector was organized in the post-world war ii bretton woods era. a new organizational form emerged at this time: the non-government organization (ngo). world relief, founded in 1944, and world vision, founded in 1950, were early examples of what has become one of the most prolific organizational forms in history (reynolds and offutt 2014, mccleary 2009). since the emergence of the development ngo sector, faithbased (mostly christian) actors have represented between one-third to one-half of the sector (mcclearly 2009). a distinctively evangelical approach to development slowly began to emerge in the 1970s. the christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(1), summer 2019 2 integral mission paradigm that was developing in latin america served in many ways to help shape the conversation from which the transformation paradigm would emerge. key moments in this global conversation included the 1974 lausanne congress on world evangelization and the 1983 conference at wheaton convened by the world evangelical fellowship. authors like david bosch, bryant myers, rene padilla, vinay samuel, john stott, and chris sugden were influential in its development (tizon 2008). it was bryant myers who most completely articulated the transformation paradigm used by development agencies in his seminal work, walking with the poor (1999). the paradigm asserts that poverty is not primarily material, but rather relational. in other words, broken relationships constitute poverty. relationships are broken in four different areas: between god and humans, between people or groups of people, between the person and the perception the person has of him or herself, and between people and god’s creation. because poverty is understood in this way, myers defines development as those activities that restore such relationships and help communities move toward a state of shalom. one aspect of this relational perspective on poverty and development is the importance of working with local churches to implement development activities. together, these components make up the core of the transformation paradigm. a more recent and different discourse about religion and development has emerged in the secular or mainstream academy. in 2000, kurt verbeek argued that “development literature and development practices have systematically avoided the topic of spirituality” (verbeek 2000, 31). ideals such as the separation of church and state and the assumption that religion was on the wane in modern and modernizing societies caused many to assume religion was simply not relevant to poverty alleviation initiatives, and thus not worthy of scholarly attention. but these views have given way to the empirical reality that religion keeps showing up in development contexts. researchers have noticed, and they are producing a new wave of scholarship that engages theoretical questions of how christianity intersects with modernity in africa (gifford 2016), practical questions about religion’s role in specific development interventions such as microfinance (manzur, meisami, and roayaee 2013), and political questions about power dynamics between donors in the north and program implementers in the south (burchardt 2013). researchers have also focused attention on what aspects of religion to consider, with studies examining how everyday religious practices like sexual ethics (trinitapoli and wienreb 2012) and prayer (probasco 2016) aid or constrain human flourishing initiatives. in the midst of such a dynamic and growing discourse, detemple’s (2013) call to think about development as a religious project itself is particularly prescient. alongside the academic research, the international development sector has also engaged religious actors more seriously in the 21 st century. one approach has been to create offices dedicated to religion within government and multilateral organizations, such as usaid’s center for faith and opportunity initiatives, the world bank’s faith initiative, and the un’s interagency task force on religion and development (offutt, probasco and vaidyanathan 2016). another approach has been to commission large studies on religion. dfid, the uk’s official agency for international development, issued a major grant for a multi-year study on religion and sustainable development. they partnered with leading universities and scholars (see rakodi 2011 as an example of scholarship produced). the world bank has hired scholars to write books on religion and development inhouse (for example: marshall and keough 2004; marshall and van saanenn 2007). these initiatives have helped change institutional thinking about religion within development circles. organizational realities a subset of scholarship on religion and development has engaged the questions that are most relevant to our study. how, for example, does faith shape an organization’s identity? how does faith shape its networks? in what sense is faith present in an organization’s values and mission? scholarship around such questions indicates a wide range of what it means for development actors to be faith-based. some scholarship has highlighted the ways that faith-based and non-sectarian development ngos operate in similar ways, noting how programming may be similar (jeavons 2004) or the ways religion is embedded in both (schnable 2016). other scholarship has shown that explicitly faith-based organizations differ from each other in very important ways. reynolds and winship (2005), for example, argue that there is a critical difference between faith-based programs and faithinfused programs, while clarke (2007) lays out a fivefold classification of fbos. straightforward inquiries have thus unveiled the complexity and variation in the ways that faith shows up in development organizations and initiatives. case studies of christian development actors have provided further insights into how organizations manage their faith identity. based on her in-depth look at tearfund uk, freeman (2018) argues that there is a difference between “christians doing development” and “doing christian development.” she shows that in christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(1), summer 2019 3 the 1970s tearfund was motivated by faith to address poverty, but used secular approaches in their work. but over the course of two decades, tearfund began to base their programs, strategies, and goals on the emerging transformation paradigm. such changes created greater distinctions between tearfund uk and its secular counterparts. in another case study, king (2019) examines the ways that world vision international (wvi) has played a key role in shaping the field of christian development and even the evangelical movement around the world. although internal discussions about strategies and implementation are constant, a synthesis of poverty alleviation and local church strengthening is central to the group’s identity. behind such organizational analyses are more philosophical questions about how faith and development are connected. erica bornstein (2005) argues that “faith becomes the conceptual fuel for the prospect of change,” and “inspires a specific form of charitable giving with the promise of generating lasting material improvements in people’s lives” (2005, 7-8). deneulin and bano argue further that religion not only gives meaning to development, but actually defines what development means for people of faith. they state that development is what adherents to a religion do because of who they are and what they believe in. the engagement of religious communities in development activities derives from their core beliefs and teachings. it is not easy to separate the development activities (schools, hospitals, political protests, and so on) from the religious activities (such as prayer and worship) (2009, 5). in sum, religion and development organically inhabit the same spaces, and are constituted in part by the same activities. taken as a whole, the current literature has made significant inroads into understanding the intersections and overlapping nature of faith and development. but important questions remain. little is known about how communities of fbos share beliefs, values, and resources. nor has much been written on the decisions fbos make and the resources they use to sustain their faith identity. we contribute to this literature by analyzing the accord network, which currently has a membership of one hundred christian (mostly 1 the eight principles are summarized as follows: (1) our christian faith is at the center of our identity, motive and manner of being. (2) we acknowledge the reality and significance of the spiritual realm. (3) the church is central. (4) transformational practices start with us. (5) we recognize the whole system of poverty. (6) in our relationship journey with the church our local partners, and the community, we enter as guests, co-labor as partners, and continue as friends. (7) we support local communities and churches in measuring all that matters. (8) we tell the story with integrity. 2 the accord network’s membership list can be found here: https://www.accordnetwork.org/member-list evangelical) organizations. we find (1) that their christian identities are central to these actors, even as several points of tension and questions remain, and (2) that more work needs to be done to fully understand what this all means and how to integrate it into the daily work of these organizations. methodology defining accord this study focuses on organizations that are members of accord or who participate in accord research network meetings. the accord network, according to its website (www.accordnetwork.org), intends to “create a community of christ-centered organizations.” it requires members to accept either the apostle’s creed or the statement of faith of the national association of evangelicals, both of which are comprised of basic beliefs in christian orthodoxy. accord also asks members to affirm the eight “principles of excellence in integral mission,” which were developed within accord (“principles …” n.d.). 1 at the time of this survey (2017), accord had about 85 member and associate member organizations. as of july 2019, accord had 100 member and associate members. 2 the network began in the 1970s with just a dozen partner agencies. current membership includes non-profit development organizations as well as other types of ministries, institutes of higher education, and research groups. accord’s membership remains open and fluid, and many members are those who have joined in the past decade. survey methods this study emerged from conversations in the accord research alliance. we recognized that we did not have data about the research needs of accord member organizations or how academics and other researchers could best serve them. to our knowledge, no previous study of this sort existed. we knew that organizations chose to become members of the accord network because of its christ-centered orientation, and we suspected that faith would have a role in defining the nature and type of research needed. but beyond our own personal observations, we knew little else. we decided on a mixed methods approach, beginning with a survey, which was followed by open https://www.accordnetwork.org/member-list christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(1), summer 2019 4 ended phone interviews. to determine what topics were most worth pursuing, offutt conducted a series of conference calls with leaders from accord member organizations. with the themes that emerged from these calls, a team of accord research network actors crafted survey questions. the survey was housed at wheaton college and administered through qualtrics; responses were recorded between july and september 2017. the survey had five major sections. the first section asked for details on the organization; where they worked, the types of programs they did, the size of their budget, and their denominational identity. the second section asked about non-sectarian partnerships and program databases that might be of use to members. the third and fourth sections, not discussed in this paper, dealt with monitoring and evaluation and other research practices. the fifth section inquired about development theories, the integration of faith and development, work with churches, and measuring spiritual metrics. the final section requested information about organizational priorities and programs for training personnel. the survey targeted leaders in organizations and/or people who served in research departments. the survey went out to all members of the accord network in 2017. eight organizations that were not accord members at that time, but that had participated in the accord research alliance between 2015-2017, were also invited to participate. fifty-five people responded to our survey. we dropped four cases because they were incomplete entries. this left us with fifty-one cases to analyze, representing forty-four distinct organizations, thirty-nine of which were accord members; five of these came from the pool of eight accord participant organizations. sixteen respondents reported being the ceo or president of their organization. ten respondents reported being either a vice president or on the senior leadership team. eleven respondents reported that they were either the leader of the organization’s research team or a research analyst. seven respondents fell into other categories, including being managers or directors of other departments. we used responses of the person with the highest position in the organization for analysis when more than one respondent existed for an organization. the data was uploaded to stata and spss, where it was cleaned, coded, and analyzed. at the end of the survey we asked respondents if they would be open to a follow-up phone interview. twenty-seven people agreed to do this. we were able to contact and interview twenty-one. the themes of the phone interview were the same as those on the survey, 3 this set of ninety-five organizations are the current accord members absent the colleges/universities that are members of accord. it also does not include our sample of invited organizations. but we used this opportunity to ask some exploratory questions as well. phone interviews were conducted from september-december 2017. interviews usually ran 4560 minutes, although a few were roughly thirty minutes. the interviews were recorded and transcribed. they were then uploaded to atlas.ti, a qualitative data software package, where they were coded and analyzed. data those who responded to the accord research network survey appear similar to the larger accord sample. table 1 compares the budget of our respondents to those who are currently (as of 2019) members of the accord organization. in both our sample and the larger accord membership, there is a lot of variation in budget. our sample is nonetheless comparable to the broader accord membership in this regard. accord – current members 3 accord study sample expenses / budgets under $1 million 24.2% 18.2% $1 million-$5 million 31.6% 31.8% $5 million-$25 million 13.7% 13.6% over $25 million 15.8% 18.2% part of denomination or parent organization 7.4% 9.8% not reported 7.4% 2.3% total n 95 44 table 1: budget size of accord members and survey participants table 2 presents an overview of the types of development programming in which survey respondents are engaged. about half of the organizations are involved in church empowerment/biblical training, economic development and microfinance, medical/health issues, disaster response, agriculture, and sanitation. by contrast, advocacy work stands out as something in which only a small fraction (or less than 20%) of organizations engage. many are engaged in multiple types of activity. organizations also operate in countries around the world, with most of their activity occurring in the minority world/global south. christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(1), summer 2019 5 areas of activity percentage economic development 56.8% medical/health 54.5% church empowerment 52.3% education 50% agriculture 45.5% wash 45.5% relief/disaster 43.2% child development 43.2% biblical training 31.8% political advocacy 18.2% immigration/refugees 11.4% regional engagement sub saharan africa 86% asia 68% latin america 59% north america 52% north africa/middle east 41% europe 32% non-denominational identity 75% total n 44 table 2: programming/activity of accord members conceptualizing development the dominance of the transformation paradigm a foundational question of this study was: how do accord members think about and define development? the transformation paradigm is certainly relevant, but no study has been done that shows how widespread these ideas have become within accord or among evangelical development organizations more generally. nor is any research available, outside a few wellchronicled organizations, regarding how seriously the paradigm is taken by those who do know about it. we thus began our study by asking: “how important is the integration of faith and development to your organization?” all respondents indicated it was important, with 78% saying it was very important (or evaluating it as a five out of five). similarly, when respondents were asked if program efforts related to faith enhance or detract from efforts to reach poverty related outcomes, 80% of organizations indicated efforts were generally positive, and the remaining 20% said they were both positive and negative. this suggests that there are high levels of agreement that faith is important to what accord organizations do, and that without faith integration, they would be less effective at fighting poverty. survey respondents think that what they do is different than what mainstream development organizations do. they conscientiously rely on christian resources – particularly the transformation paradigm – to formulate their development approach. this became clear when 68% of respondents listed either walking with the poor or steve corbett and brian fikkert’s book, when helping hurts (2009), as two books that influenced their own views on development. when helping hurts summarizes the transformational development paradigm articulated in walking with the poor, makes it accessible to a wider audience, and provides new ideas for its application. for comparison, we analyzed combinations of all other authors that were mentioned, secular or christian. no other combination of authors could be created that was cited by more than 18% of respondents. the transformational paradigm is the unrivaled framing of christian development for ngo leaders participating in this survey. one typical respondent noted, “we look at [poverty] from a pretty relational aspect… disconnects in relationships with god, with self, with others, with the community.” myers’ work was the only theologically driven definition of poverty referenced in our data. but our respondents did reference economic and other non-theological definitions of poverty. they often paired such mainstream ideas with the poverty-asbroken relationships concept. some articulated poverty as lack of access to education or job opportunities. others articulated a structural understanding of poverty, arguing that people are poor because they are oppressed by the powerful. some respondents with medical backgrounds argued that diseases are both causes and consequences of poverty. respondents who used these kinds of definitions never explicitly rejected myers’ poverty-as-broken-relationships position. nor did respondents try to synthesize these mainstream ideas with myers’ thesis. rather, respondents tended to move fluidly in and out of these different ideas of poverty. these same organizations noted too that they often implement technical program components in the same way that non-christian organizations implement them. respondents of the survey and interviews reported trying to follow sector-wide best practices in medical interventions, wash programs, mfi initiatives, and educational components. sometimes respondents suggested they might even improve on industry wide best practices. as one interview respondent stated, “…as for the methodology [that we use]… it is very transferable to somebody who would not profess faith, or would profess a different faith. we’d gladly train a non-christian organization in the use of our tools.” there was a strong sense that faith-based organizations benefited from information-sharing in technical areas with mainstream organizations, and that faith-based organizations should share as well as receive learnings in these areas. christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(1), summer 2019 6 connecting spiritual and material poverty nearly every author who has contributed to the transformation paradigm, both in christian development and in mission circles, assumes that spiritual and material development can and should happen together. but other streams of literature assume an inverse relationship between the two. to find out how our respondents perceived this relationship, we asked a series of questions about this theme. respondents were first asked, “do you think that those who have a conversion experience will be more likely to see improvement in poverty or development indicators as well?” we received a wide variety of answers. one leader responded simply and affirmatively: “absolutely. yes.” another responded almost as strongly in the negative: “not particularly.” most, though, wanted to nuance their answers. one respondent stated that “i can answer it only in a sense of forty years of ministry in seeing very often how as people move towards christ in relationship with him. i just notice, but i don't know statistically what it means, but it does seem like people's lives improve in significant ways...” this response was counterbalanced by a fourth respondent who said, “i believe that spiritual experiences do [help alleviate poverty, but] conversion specifically -to an understanding of christian doctrine and acknowledgement of a christian doctrine-no.” in this the respondent affirmed the power of religion generally to improve material well-being, but did not want to single out christianity as having a unique impact in this regard. to pursue this line of thought beyond the point of conversion, we asked: “do you have the sense that over time the christians in a given community will come to experience less poverty on average than non-christians in a given community?” this hypothesis has backing from social science theory and research. scholars as far back as max weber and h. richard niebuhr note that “ascetic sects” move up the social ladder over the course of time. more recent scholarship argues that this dynamic holds for evangelical communities in latin america and elsewhere. we wanted to know whether our respondents perceived this to be a dynamic in their development initiatives. the leaders we talked with held different perspectives on these issues. some responded negatively or seemed to be agnostic. as one respondent put it, “what is amazing about grace is that god works through all people. all of his creatures are created in his image. god created them as creative and talented. all of them. so i don't see that distinction.” other respondents were reluctant to take a position on this question, as one said, “aaaahhh, that’s a really good question… i don’t think i could actually say definitively one way or the other.” it is nonetheless worth noting that none who shared these sentiments opposed a faithbased approach to development. they simply understood its effects differently. respondents who said that christians were likely to experience less poverty over time often provided qualifications. one respondent stated that “i think… having a relationship with god… can unlock so many doors of poverty that are holding people back. but yeah, i think poverty is so multidimensional, i think that’s hard to say.” another responded with “okay, defining poverty … so typically income, education, those are some of the outcomes we're talking about. …. so just a conversion experience maybe not, but churches that understand integral mission and are carrying that out, then i would say yes.” this respondent believed that a spiritually mature and properly functioning community might experience this kind of uplift, while people who make an initial commitment to christ, but whose lives do not subsequently change, would not likely be affected in the same way. some respondents perceived a diffusion effect in christianity’s positive impact on poverty. one respondent said that “it’s likely [that over time christians will experience less poverty], but i also think that changes in attitudes are in some ways getting caught by the whole community.” another respondent sounded a similar sentiment, saying that “in our experience… the level of poverty of the whole community changes together,” an idea that has support from the work on religion in the 1960s by talcott parsons, as well as from the growing body of literature about diffusion theory. the final question we posed in this series addressed a commonly held belief that as people become less poor, they also become less religious. we wondered if leaders of accord held this perspective, and if so, whether this created any tension with regard to how they viewed the long-term spiritual impact of successful poverty alleviation programs. the responses we received to this question tilted strongly in the direction of believing that there is an inverse relationship between material wealth and spiritual dynamism. the observations were provided at different levels. one respondent said that “i just have a notion from history that as societies gain economically they become more secular.” corresponding observations about what happens at a local and individual level included the comment that “sometimes the more resources somebody has, the lower their connection [to god] and spiritual development is.” a third respondent saw the tension in the question for the transformation paradigm: “i want to say maybe [people become] more religious [when they become less poor], christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(1), summer 2019 7 but i don't believe that. poverty has been alleviated in some of the places we worked specifically and religiosity has actually gone down.” a few respondents expressed a minority view on this question, believing either that spiritual depth could increase as material wealth increases or, more modestly, that increased poverty does not mean increased spiritual health. one person who saw spiritual and material advance moving together referred to it is as “a chicken and egg type of thing.” another said, “i could see both. i can see in a more western environment, as prosperity goes up, perhaps attributing it to some sort of spiritual influence.” others focused on the implications of saying poverty improves our spiritual lives. one said flatly that “if people are living in need and missing out on an education, there's no romantic spiritual wonder in that,” while another said, “i don't think the idea is that we need to live in poverty in order to experience god more.” poverty in this perspective, is certainly not necessary, and may even hinder, spiritual growth. poverty and systemic change the international development community is increasingly aware that systemic change and political advocacy are needed to deal with the complex roots of poverty. christian development organizations are part of this broader awareness (reynolds and offutt 2014), but this new emphasis on advocacy emerged after the transformation paradigm had already become established. recent efforts to help christian development organizations think about advocacy in the context of transformational development exist (offutt et al. 2016), but the most recognized components of christian development theory still do not emphasize faith-based political advocacy as an effective tool. advocacy is interestingly situated within accord. less than 20% of accord organizations indicate that they do advocacy—by far the lowest type of programming that we asked about, and this in spite of the fact that accord highlights advocacy work in its fifth principle of excellence. this may be because organizations, especially the smaller ones, do not feel sufficiently empowered to do effective advocacy. one of the most effective ways to increase leverage in advocacy is to partner with others. in the interviews, we asked leaders whose organizations are not currently involved in advocacy if they would participate in collaborative advocacy efforts in which other christian organizations are taking the lead. some expressed concern about unduly stretching resources or personnel and others qualified their answers by saying it was contingent on the issue, but all of them answered affirmatively. some did so enthusiastically, such as one respondent who said, “oh, absolutely!” questions for further discussion and research a: the connections between reducing poverty and increasing spiritual well-being are messy and poorly understood, in spite of the many claims of transformational development scholars and practitioners that they complement each other. how should christian development take account of this reality? b: while transformational development is a central paradigm used to combat poverty, what theories are employed to make sense of wealth? that is, while poverty is viewed as a hindrance to flourishing, how might christian organizations more adequately theorize about wealth and abundance? c: we note that none of our discussions with leaders surfaced issues of inequality. we also did not directly ask about this issue. but if relationships are central to understandings of development, how might organizations think about the problem of inequality (and not just the problem of poverty)? how might this be captured in program evaluations and designs, for example? d: what role does advocacy play in theories of development change? how do organizations think about systemic and structural issues surrounding poverty and exclusion, and how do they respond? the partners and collaborators of christian development actors creating community and facilitating networks has always been the central purpose of the accord network. but we know of no formal studies with respect to how and with whom accord members make connections. a deeper understanding of accord member networks is important because faith plays a role in building bridges and boundaries within and around communities. this study shows that accord member organizations’ partners are many and diverse. some partner with christian organizations; others with state or non-sectarian actors. by far the most common partnership for accord members is with churches. we thus pay special attention to them in this report. many accord members also choose to present themselves as faith-based actors within the larger international development sector. this sometimes requires them to position their faith differently than they do in explicitly christian networks. both types of networks carry christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(1), summer 2019 8 implications for the kind of research accord members need. networks in and beyond christian development figure 1 highlights some of the more common places where accord members find partners in the development sector and highlights their diversity. 4 about two thirds of survey respondents reported coordinating or collaborating with accord sometimes, usually, or always. the united nations has been a partner to over half of the organizations. 5 further, one third of all organizations report coordinating activities with the joint learning initiative for faith and local communities (jli) at least sometimes, which on its website describes itself as an “international collaboration on evidence for faith groups’ role and contributions to local community health and wellbeing and ending poverty” (https://jliflc.com). figure 1: organizations with which members coordinate or have coordinated most, but not all, leaders of accord organizations appear willing to enter interfaith settings, though some organizations do not see the point of interfaith partnerships. as one leader said, “...because we have such a holistic approach, it would make that type of partnership rather difficult.” other leaders did not report having any interfaith partners, but were not 4 ngos that responded as having coordinated their activities with an organization sometimes, usually, or always are contrasted here with those reporting never having coordinated with one of these four groups. 5 evangelicals in other parts of society often report feeling embattled or marginalized by mainstream society. but our respondents reported the opposite, as was summed up by this colorful comment: “i am not super aware of any people honestly that pooh pooh christian development. i know there are skeptics, but i am trying to think of any who are actually against integrating religion into development. i don’t know of anyone.” if organizations do not perceive themselves to be marginalized, diverse partnerships can be more easily established. against it. said one respondent: “so i think we wouldn't be against doing that. i'm not sure that it has occurred.” some of those that do have interfaith interactions referred to interfaith tables they participated in, which were often set up by local or national governments. one leader put it this way: “some officials might have an interfaith commission or interfaith leaders come together. regularly those are things that we try to get engaged with.” finally, some organizations reported integrating people of other faiths into their programming. as one leader said, “if the faith leader is engaged and can be an influencer of thinking, then why not engage the faith leader that community is most likely to listen to, which will be a leader of whatever religion the community is?” in all of the responses we received, it was clear that national or cultural context was one of the determining factors in how programs approached this issue. in terms of work with secular or non-faith actors, as figure 1 reveals, at least half of the respondents noted that they have worked with usaid and the un. still, only 18% reported being members of interaction, which is the largest us-based mainstream umbrella organization for international development nonprofits. more discussion might help ascertain why this is the case – for example, interaction does have steep dues. in spite of this, interviews suggest there are benefits to being part of this network. as one leader said: “i am going to learn from some of the best non-faith-based orgs out there who are doing amazing work... so i have no problem whatsoever learning from the amazing work they have done outside of faith-based orgs.” in sum, non-faith-based agencies appear to have legitimacy among many accord member organizations. learning about best practices and funding opportunities were cited as the most frequent motivations for partnerships with such entities. connecting with churches in development leaders of accord organizations clearly indicated that local churches are important players in community transformation. our survey asked whether working with local churches adds value to or detracts from antipoverty efforts. only two organizations recorded efforts as non-positive (one as neither positive nor negative, and one as slightly negative). 89% of all responding https://jliflc.com/ christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(1), summer 2019 9 organizations suggested that local churches help poverty efforts at levels between 5/10 and 10/10. these responses indicate a strong belief and adherence to the transformational development message that good development is church-centered development. but there is great diversity among accord organizations with respect to how to partner with local congregations. there are even different approaches within some organizations that vary strategies based on the context and capacity of local congregations. data from our research uncovered five church partnership models; 1) church as sole implementer, 2) church as primary partner, 3) community as primary partner with the church in the mix, 4) partnerships with denominations or national church networks, and 5) church can be substituted by organizations of other religions. we discuss each of these below. church as sole implementer: for some leaders, it was the church, not their organizations, that was the primary stakeholder and implementer of given projects. in these cases, the organization operated like a funding organization and a capacity building agency. to the extent that they are able, such organizations responded to churches and their plans rather than initiate project ideas. said one respondent: “they are the ones who come up with the plan, they are the ones who submit the application.” a leader from another organization with a similar partnership strategy stated that “we don't do much implementation. the local church has full ownership of programs and we support them through raising their capacity for funding, doing strategic planning with them and connecting them to other [strategic partners].” a third leader stated that “we regard [the local church] as the implementer and we wouldn't do anything that is not with them or through them.” in some of these cases, for example, if a church wants to do a health-related or microfinance project, the organization provides technical support, but they make clear that they want to remain in that supporting role; they do not wish to drive the project. this approach to church partnership perhaps best embodies the ideals that many in the transformational development movement have, and which are consistent with the assetbased community development ideas that are increasingly prominent in international community development. church as primary partner: not all organizations take such a hands-off approach. a second partnership model was one where the organization feels responsible for at least part of the project implementation. some such models leaned in the direction of still working through the church, but with a stronger role for the organization. as one leader put it, “there is definitely a laying out of what each party is bringing to the table and the role of each of the partners in the partnership… [but] the goal is to make the bride of christ beautiful through the partnership to empower the local church.” other such models leaned in the direction of the organization doing the project, but trying hard to allow local churches to influence the process, even from the very beginning. for example, one leader explained their entry into communities in this way: “we meet with [local churches] before we start to actually mobilize a community around a project... and try to align our mission with what the church is already doing in that place.” a third partnership model was to have the organization empower churches to run parallel programs. said one respondent: “usually we implement our things, we help equip churches to implement things… similar goals, but it wouldn't be like they're implementing our projects on our behalf.” in these examples, both the church and the organization play major roles in project implementation, even as roles, responsibilities, and decision-making power shift between actors from case to case. community as primary partner with the church in the mix: a third type of collaboration was one in which organizations partnered with congregations, but only insomuch as congregations participated in the organization’s broader process of engagement with the community. for example, an organization may form a community board and invite a local pastor or pastors to sit on the board. but the board, not the church, is viewed as the primary point of community interface for the organization. in other cases, organizations ask local churches to serve as advisors to projects that the organization runs in and with the community. a third approach along these lines is to encourage churches and their members to simply participate in development projects. one leader stated that “our staff will typically do most of the training in the community and the local church will just be part of those trainings, so it won't be exclusively the church body.” this general approach might best be summed up as communitybased development as opposed to church-based development, but with resources dedicated to ensuring that local churches are on board. partnerships with denominations or church networks: some organizations chose to connect with church bodies at regional or national levels. for example, one respondent said that his organization spends a lot of time “connecting with networks at the national level. [this is with either] evangelical alliances or council of churches or things like that, or sometimes a denomination.” this respondent also said that while his organization doesn’t always have a local congregational partner in a specific community, they will connect at a district level with inter-denominational groups. a christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(1), summer 2019 10 second leader said his organization is able to scale up more effectively if the partnership is at the denominational level. his organization looks for denominations with a track record for addressing the types of issues that align with their programs. they then come alongside the denomination and provide financial support, expertise, and capacity building to accomplish specific shared objectives. some organizations even create new multi-denominational church networks specifically for the purpose of partnering with clusters of churches rather than individual churches. the desire from organizations to sign mous or lous with larger entities often has to do with economies of scale; sometimes it also allows organizations to be free from the responsibility of nurturing congregational partnerships for specific local-level initiatives. church can be substituted by organizations of other religions: organizations that work where christians are in a pluralistic context, or one where no christian presence exists, reported working with organizations and leaders of other religions. this can look very different based on the different programs that organizations run. one leader explained that in majority muslim contexts, their organization relies on muslim leaders to distribute relief supplies. another leader explained that they seek out representation from mosques when they put together a community committee for their projects. a third organization recognized the importance of religion in programming. they talked about spiritual nurture programs that are suited to the religious makeup of the communities in which they serve—in other words, they nurture the spiritual lives of people within the context of their own religions—they don’t try to make them christians. the leader explained that “in [the] interfaith context [and in the] non-christian context it might be a more general sense of spiritual nurture. and very often the best partners for that would be [non-christian] religious communities.” to summarize, accord members have a vast and diverse array of partners. churches are by far the most common of these. our sense is that the church partnership models currently in use make pragmatic sense, but we are not aware of any careful theological or missiological work that has been done to guide these ideas. we also see other important networks at play, and our survey shows them to be important sources of knowledge and best practices. in discussions of partnerships among accord organizations, the following additional questions need more attention. questions for further discussion and research a: are church partnerships being used to reach program goals? if so, are those goals consistent with theories of change within organizations? b: what are the most relevant missiological and theological principles that relate to church partnerships? c: what kinds of best practices exist for working with interfaith and non-sectarian actors? in what circumstances might accord organizations benefit most from the wisdom of such actors, or from coordinated action with them? the organizational priorities of the christian development sector research on nonprofits and effectiveness has found that a greater focus on diversity and staff care are important for missional success. but we know little about how christian development organizations think about their own personnel structures and demographics. we asked respondents to rate on a scale of 1-10 how much effort their organization focuses on a series of issues: racial inequality, cross-cultural training, empowering local and indigenous leadership, gender inequality, psychosocial care (e.g. trauma), religious conflict/diversity, and staff self-care. of these, empowering local leaders was by far the highest value, with roughly 75% stating that it was very important (score of 8-10). the mean for empowering local leaders was 8.1. the next highest value was staff self-care, with 30% of organizations rating it between an 8-10, and with a mean of 6.2. figure 2: different organizational priorities and issues christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(1), summer 2019 11 the mean scores for the other six priorities ranges from 4.7 to 5.6, which is over a full standard deviation below the mean score of empowering leaders. these include diversity markers (board diversity, gender inequality, racial inequality, religious conflict and cross-cultural training), as well as psychosocial care. previous research has found that christian nonprofits struggle more than other peer organizations with having a diversity of leadership, and differences in gender equity are striking. women’s representation within accord ngos worsens as budgets increase. recent analysis of 2014-16 tax records for over fifty christian development actors shows that board leadership is a particularly weak area for christian organizations, with over half of organizations having boards with fewer than 20% women (and 11% with no women serving on the board). further, this research also found that while 40% of interaction members have women leading their organizations, it was 13% for accord members. previous research has shown that evangelical development actors, like most evangelical nonprofits, do about half as well as peer groups in the area of gender diversity (reynolds 2014). interview data from this study show a slightly different picture than the survey data. in the survey, board diversity, gender diversity, and racial/ethnic diversity were generally valued, but did not rise as important shared priorities for all accord members. in the interviews, many respondents acknowledged problems created by gender inequality, noting that issues of gender and leadership can be magnified on the field and within church partnerships. a common problem on the field is that men in a community will not get involved in projects if the staff member leading it is a woman or if the community representative is a woman. this can aggravate an initial tendency, which several respondents noted, that in general it is more difficult to get men to participate in the first place. one respondent related that it has to be acknowledged that there are differences in the way that cultures perceive leadership and sometimes it's proven difficult for certain individuals to step in to do a project and maintain a sense of leadership and have that be fully supported and respected by the local church; particularly in my thinking of places i've worked in central africa where there is this barrier to get over about how they perceive women in leadership. another respondent told a story of how some years ago her organization hired only women to lead a program under the auspices of a large local church, and then handed the program over to the church. over the next several years, all of those originally-hired personnel were replaced by men. some respondents saw pathways for women to participate in leadership. one noted that some african nations have national policies on gender balances for community-based organizations, and that this has helped a lot. another respondent observed that although the church leaders they work with are male in one region, they have a strong female staff member there, and she seems to be highly respected and the leaders are responsive to her initiatives. two other respondents reported that although in the minority, they have worked with pastors who are women in the field, and those have been fruitful partnerships. challenges related to gender are thus reflected both in the home office and on the field. they are navigated with varying levels of success. addressing psychosocial care and religious conflict received the most “not important” votes. this seems to imply that few organizations work in war torn regions, and especially those regions where war is created by religious conflict. we did not pursue these issues in our follow-up interviews. why this is so and what it means for christian development work could be important areas for future research, especially given the increasing concentration of poverty within fragile states. need for faith-based training: we also asked a series of questions about personnel issues. given the priority of christian identity for these organizations, we asked survey respondents if their organizations provide personnel training in explicitly christian development. 62% of the organizations stated that they provide such training. interview respondents helped us to see what that looked like. one respondent explained that in their orientation for new personnel, “bryant myers and others are introduced.” another leader said that they have a book list for new employees, and conduct a weekly book study with titles such as walking with the poor, when helping hurts, and mission drift by greer, horst, and haggard (2014). a third leader explained that while their trainings include christian authors, they want their employees to read more broadly. as this leader said, “we also don’t want to be insulated from the world and what is happening around us.” for some smaller and younger organizations that did not provide training in christian development, this is an aspiration for the future. the leader of one such ngo stated that we’re getting our heads around making sure our staff remains healthy first, and then i think being able to make sure your staff is more educated. each of these things for staff care… are capacity issues, you need to have enough money to have christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(1), summer 2019 12 enough staff, that your staff can stay healthy. and then you have to have enough more money to hire enough staff so people can take the time that they need to take on necessary learning. so, it’s a growth and capacity thing for small organizations like ours. the survey also noted that many organizations made use of resources to assist with training in christian development. over 84% said that a certificate from a christian college or seminary would be (or has been) useful in this regard—with an equal divide among those who have used such programs and who would use such programs. likewise, conferences (like accord) and christian education in christian colleges are two resources that a majority of organizations reported as being useful for them in their training to date. questions for further discussion and research a: what hinders organizations from truly empowering local leaders (and how might power be adjusted, shared, or handed over)? this a priority for many accord organizations, but it does not always happen on the ground as desired. b: is enough attention given to organizational structures and organizational dynamics? are the same standards in their work regarding attention to power dynamics (gender, racial, national) and good governance also at play within the organization? in what ways might care for employees, attention to flourishing, and right relationship be strengthened within the organization at all levels? c: if christian development is different from other development efforts, how do christian organizations manifest and reflect this in their training? discussion and conclusions members of accord organizations identify with faith on a variety of levels, including how they think about development and change, poverty, collaborations, relationships, and program implementation. the transformational development model (and especially walking with the poor) is still central to the ways actors think about christian development, although new questions are also arising. how do christian development actors think about poverty and development? how are anti-poverty efforts connected (or not connected) to addressing inequality? what does development or modernity look like? how do theories of development that are very relational connect with program implementation and research on the ground? there are debates within the development community about how important addressing inequality and extreme wealth is for poverty-reduction, and relational theories of development seem relevant to such debates. a number of different tools are available in the social sciences for measuring poverty, inequality, and development (such as the sustainable development goals, the multi-dimensional poverty index, or the human development index). more research might also examine how theories of development are connected to the definitions of poverty used in program implementation and monitoring and evaluation. this paper has not addressed the different programs that exist, nor has it addressed the way faith impacts monitoring, evaluation, and research. more attention is needed in these areas because measurement and budgets reflect priorities and ultimate values of organizations. in the three areas of christian development that we have addressed, we have posed in each section a number of questions that accord and its members might consider. most, if not all, are connected to the ways that development is a religious project, as detemple (2013) argues. we add that the lack of clarity among organizational leaders regarding the link between poverty and spiritual well-being might be addressed by further research on the religious aspect of development itself. connected to this issue is a need for increased attention to the wide range of spiritual, biblical, and ecclesiological issues that are not directly related to broken relationships, but are nonetheless relevant to transformational development. within accord, myers’ work is the primary framing device for understanding spiritual poverty, even when other biblical ideas about spiritual poverty are available. respondents, for example, did not reference witchcraft, demon possession, evil spirits, curses, juju, or other forms of spiritual attacks. they also did not discuss lack of biblical knowledge, bad doctrine or heresy, the relative absence of local churches in some regions, or the need for spiritual revival. none of these are part of the main discourse surrounding spiritual metrics. finally, and connected to this, we note that while christian organizations are involved in a wide range of development efforts, some key strategies are noticeably lacking. how, for example, can and should development work be complemented and informed by advocacy and/or attention to policy? and how do accord organizations measure and engage the complex causes of poverty that are beyond the reach of community-level development projects, including systemic realities and public policies? like the themes of christian development theory and church partnership theology, research into these areas could christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(1), summer 2019 13 significantly improve the way accord members approach their work in development. references bornstein, erica. 2005. the spirit of development: protestant ngos, morality, and economics in zimbabwe. palo alto, ca: stanford university press. burchardt, marian. 2013. “faith-based humanitarianism: organizational change and everyday meanings in south africa.” sociology of religion 74(1):30–55. clarke, gerard. 2007. “agents of transformation? donors, faith based organisations and international development.” third world quarterly 28(1):77–96.  corbett, steve and brian fikkert. 2009. when helping hurts: how to alleviate poverty without hurting the poor…and yourself. chicago: moody publishers. curtis, heather. 2018. holy humanitarians: american evangelicals and global aid. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. deneulin, severine, and masooda bano. 2009. religion in development: rewriting the sacred script. london: zed books.  detemple, jill. 2013. cement, earthworms, and cheese factories: religion and community development in rural ecuador. notre dame, in: university of notre dame press. freeman, dena. 2018. “from christians doing development to doing christian development: the changing role of religion in the international work of tearfund.” development in practice 28(2): 280-291. gifford, paul. 2016. christianity, development and modernity in africa. new york: oxford university press. greer, peter, chris horst, and anna haggard. 2014. mission drift: the unspoken crisis facing leaders, charities, and churches. ada, mi: baker books. jeavons, thomas. 2004. “religious and faith-based organizations: do we know one when we see one?” nonprofit and volunteer sector quarterly 33(1):140–45. king, david. 2019. god’s internationalists: world vision and the age of evangelical humanitarianism. philadelphia, pa: university of pennsylvania press. manzur, davood, hoosin meisami, and mehdi roayaee. 2013. banking for the poor in the context of islamic finance. journal of contemporary management 2(2):53–70. marshall, katherine, and lucy keough. 2004. mind, heart and soul in the fight against poverty. washington, dc: world bank. marshall, katherine, and marisa van saanen 2007. development and faith: where mind, heart and soul work together. washington, dc: world bank. mcclearly, rachel. 2009. global compassion: private voluntary organizations and u.s. policy since 1939. new york: oxford university press. myers, bryant. 1999. walking with the poor: principles and practices of transformational development. new york: orbis books. offutt, stephen, lierin probasco, and brandon vaidyanathan. 2016. “religion, poverty and development.” journal for the scientific study of religion 55(2): 207-215. offutt, stephen, f. david bronkema, krisanne vaillancourt murphy, robb davis, and gregg okessson. 2016. advocating for justice: an evangelical vision for transforming systems and structures. grand rapids: baker academic press. “principles of excellence in integral mission.” https://www.accordnetwork.org/integral n.d. probasco, lierin. 2016. “prayer, patronage, and personal agency in nicaraguan accounts of receiving international aid.” journal for the scientific study of religion 55(2): 233-249. rakodi, carol. 2011. “inspirational, inhibiting, institutionalized: exploring the links between religion and development.” working paper no. 66, religions and development research programme. birmingham, uk: university of birmingham.  reynolds, amy. 2014. “gender dynamics in evangelical institutions: women and men leading together in higher education and the nonprofit sector.” report for the women in leadership national study. wentham, ma: gordon college. reynolds, amy, and stephen offutt. 2014. “evangelicals and international economic engagement.” in the new evangelical social engagement, edited by brian steensland and phillip goff, 242-261. new york: oxford university press. reynolds, amy, and christopher winship. 2005. “faith, practice, and transformation: a theorybased evaluation of faith-based teen programs.” in taking faith seriously: engaging and evaluating religion in american democracy, edited by mary jo bane and brent coffin. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. schnable, allison. 2016. “what religion affords grassroots ngos: frames, networks, modes of https://www.accordnetwork.org/integral christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(1), summer 2019 14 action.” journal for the scientific study of religion 55(2): 216–232. tizon, al. 2008. transformation after lausanne: radical evangelical mission in global-local perspective. eugene, or: wipf and stock publishers. trinitapoli, jenny, and alexander weinreb. 2012. religion and aids in africa. new york: oxford university press. verbeek, kurt a. 2000. “spirituality: a development taboo.” development in practice 10(1):31–43. stephen offutt is an associate professor of development studies at asbury theological seminary. he has worked in christian development and missions in el salvador and south africa. offutt’s current scholarship looks at the intersection of faith, poverty and development. author email: stephen.offutt@asburyseminary.edu amy reynolds is an associate professor of sociology at wheaton college, where she studies and teaches on economic globalization, religion, and gender. her current research analyzes gender inequality in christian development organizations as well as differences in economic ideologies around poverty/inequality among development actors. author email: amy.reynolds@wheaton.edu mailto:stephen.offutt@asburyseminary.edu mailto:amy.reynolds@wheaton.edu christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(2), winter 2020 slimbach, global development in the anthropocene 70 global development in the anthropocene richard slimbach the best science available warns that human impacts on global ecological and climate systems pose an existential threat to organized human life. in light of what climate scientist james hansen describes as our “apocalyptic” future, current models of “transformational development” and “integral mission” ring increasingly hollow. genesis 2:15 instructs us to watch over creation and take care of it, yet the most popular evangelical development texts largely omit any discussion of environmental breakdown and climate change. in response, this essay highlights the harmful effects of our slow-onset climate emergency on the very people christian development practitioners care most about: the world’s poorest and most vulnerable peoples. it argues in favor of a seven-fold course of action, on both individual and organizational levels, that could put christians on the frontlines of efforts to secure an “abundant life” for all without destabilizing the critical natural processes upon which it depends. perhaps the most remarkable fact about the last 50 years is what mit economists abhijit banerjee and esther duflo (2019) describe as “the pace of change, good and bad.” while world poverty has been halved, then halved again, the global development community is also witnessing what is perhaps the greatest threat to planetary shalom: rising concentrations of carbon dioxide (co2) in the atmosphere. for nearly 250 years, humans have burned a hundred million years of sunlight stored in the form of coal, petroleum, and natural gas. the contemporary “fossil economy” (pirani, 2018) has enabled the rise of a modern civilization, with startling achievements in wealth production, medicine, communications, human rights, education, and much else. at the same time, economic expansion and fossil energy consumption have continuously pushed atmospheric concentrations of co2 upward—from 270 parts per million (ppm) in 1750 to over 415 ppm in 2019. incredibly, more than half of the carbon exhaled into the atmosphere by the burning of fossil fuels has occurred since 1990, as industrial production and consumption has exploded worldwide (wallace-wells, 2019a). human activities within a fossil-fuel powered global economy have now dramatically modified the physical environment on a planetary scale. the earth has been pushed into a new era, the anthropocene. natural systems that have long sustained themselves now suffer under the strain of industrialized humanity. forests are being decimated to make way for vast wheat, soy, corn, and palm plantations. up to 1 million of the estimated 8 million plant and animal species on earth are at risk of extinction. ozone smog blankets industrial cities in lowand middle-income countries, making air unbreathable for billions of people. more people, across more of the planet, are experiencing more extreme heat and drought than ever before. permafrost—the frozen soil that makes up most of the artic—is melting at an alarming rate. glaciers are sliding into the sea five times faster than in the 1990s, with current losses doubling every decade. trapped in the ice are 1.5 billion metric tons of carbon, almost twice as much as is currently suspended in the earth’s atmosphere. as the ice thaws and oceans absorb this c02 like a sponge, the delicate chemical balance of marine ecosystems will be radically altered. at current rates of thawing, sea levels are predicted to rise by four feet by the end of the century. given that most of the world’s megacities are located in the coastal zone—as are its ports, power plants, naval installations, river deltas, and fisheries—the urban poor are especially susceptible to sea-level rise, storm surge, and flooding (lu & flavelle, 2019). this is a drama of a scale that we only used to encounter in mythology or eschatology. but now the science is indisputable. standard models collated by the inter-governmental panel on climate change (ipcc, 2018), the gold standard of climate science, warn that unless we achieve massive and immediate emissions reductions, each year, for the next 12 years, humanity will pass the point of no return. average global temperature will rise to 3 or 4 degrees celsius before the end of the century, producing catastrophic impacts for most living things. raymond pierrehumbert (2019), a lead author of ipcc’s report, warns: “with regard to the climate crisis, yes, it’s time to panic. we’re in deep trouble.” christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(2), winter 2020 slimbach, global development in the anthropocene 71 the evidence is compelling that even a 2-degree warmer world will supercharge every other problem that development practitioners care about: unbreathable air, water shortages, deforestation, infectious disease, habitat and biodiversity loss, falling food yields, resource wars, loss of life from “natural” disasters, deepening poverty, and safety-seeking mass migration. without a stable climate, decades of progress in poverty reduction could stall or even be erased. christian aid (2006) recognized this fact 15 years ago when it boldly reported that the potential ravages of climate change are so severe that they could nullify efforts to secure meaningful and sustainable development in poor countries. at worst, they could send the real progress that has already been achieved spinning into reverse. no other single issue presents such a clear and present danger to the future welfare of the world’s poor. thirteen years later, their language is even more unequivocal: “climate change is the single greatest threat to humankind in our lifetime… forget making poverty history; climate change is making poverty permanent” (author’s italics) (christian aid, 2019). the contemporary climate emergency presents christian development practitioners and educators with a harrowing question: twenty-five or 50 or 100 years from now—during the lifetimes of our children’s children—will the technological, economic, and public health improvements we rightly celebrate be undone by the increasingly threatening predations of ecological breakdown and human-induced climate change? this essay attempts a response. following a brief synopsis of the inequities of climate change, it presents seven routes or pathways that christian development practitioners from rich countries might take in order to address these inequities. the aim is to provide development practitioners and educators an opportunity to reassess their personal and organizational priorities and practices in the face of impending climate catastrophe. figure 1: fossil co2 emissions by country (2017)1 mountains, valleys and pathways in the gospel of luke, jesus quotes the prophet isaiah: every valley shall be filled and every mountain and hill shall be made low. the winding roads shall be made straight, 1 author’s calculations based on european environmental agency, 2018; richter, 2019; and wikipedia, 2020. and the rough ways made smooth, and all flesh shall see the salvation of god. (luke 3:5-6 in the lowering of mountains and the raising of valleys, the ground is leveled. those with too much and those with too little have enough: the basic needs of all are satisfied. humanity walks forward together on equal footing into a fully healed creation. embedded in jesus’ christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(2), winter 2020 slimbach, global development in the anthropocene 72 imagery of mountains and valleys is the indispensable question of how the energy and material consumption in the well-off world interacts with the present needs of the world’s poorest communities, and of future generations and other species. the average american’s annual carbon footprint (co2e) is about 17 tons. to put this in comparative perspective, this is more than twice the amount of someone in europe and china, 3.5 times the global average, and nearly 2,000 times that of a villager in the african nation of ethiopia (0.1 metric tons per year). in fact, the bottom two billion humans emit almost nothing (european environmental agency, 2018). the poorest half of humanity are responsible for only around 10 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions, but they happen to live in flood-prone tropical coastal zones and dry rural areas of poor countries that have few resources for meaningful adaptation. on the other hand, the richest 10 percent of humanity produce 50 percent of the earth’s climate-harming emissions, but live in countries best prepared to withstand its worst effects. this is the basic injustice when it comes to climate: the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people must pay the high price for the energy consumption of those who are most secure. the consensus of the world’s leading scientists is that the maximum worldwide average ‘footprint’ must be brought down to about between 2 and 3 tons per head in order to reduce carbon emissions even by 80 percent by 2050, and thus avert disaster (undesa, 2011; ipcc, 2018). what follows are seven paths, amid the world’s mountains and valleys, that can help achieve that goal and heal a warming planet. our discussion equates “development” with creational healing. both terms bespeak a condition of enduring positive change—in individuals, in households, in local communities, and in ecosystems. indicators include the meeting of basic needs (and more), sustainable relations with the natural world, justice for all groups (especially the most vulnerable), and the creation of psychologically and spiritually healthy persons in culturally diverse places. “development” also says something about the capacity of economic and political systems to provide the circumstances for that well-being on a sustainable, long-term basis. 1. ecological conversion with the advent of fossil-fuel powered society 250 years ago, humankind embarked on an allencompassing life-mission: to conquer nature. political economy became an endless contest of greed and power. life values were replaced by technocratic and financial values. fifty years ago, philosopher and city planner lewis mumford (1970) poignantly captured the reversal of basic values and conduct of life under capitalism. “there is only one efficient speed—faster; only one attractive destination—further away; only one desirable size—bigger; only one rational quantitative goal—more. on these assumptions, the object of human life, and therefore the entire productive mechanism, is to remove limits, to hasten the pace of change, to smooth out seasonal rhythms… and destroy organic continuity” (173). mumford’s analysis signals the present ecological crisis as, fundamentally, a cultural and spiritual crisis. modern industrial society has normalized a relation with the earth that is essentially extractivist: it thrives on the domination, privatization, commodification, monetization, and commercialization of earth’s bounty. humans are not only separate from nature, but her lords and masters. in his 2015 encyclical titled laudato si: on care for our common home, pope francis summons the church to “a profound interior conversion–an ecological conversion—whereby the effects of [our] encounter with jesus christ become evident in [our] relationship with the world around [us]” (no. 217). a central feature of this conversion is a personal rediscovery of our interdependence with the natural world, and our responsibility to it. in sharp contrast to the logic of extractivism, stewardship involves not just taking but also taking care. it refuses to regard the earth “as an insensate order, as a cold body of facts, as a mere ‘given’, as an object of utility, as raw material to be hammered into useful shape” (no. 115). life values— ‘being,’ humility, self-restraint, compassion, service to others, care for the natural world—are no longer crowded out by the money/market values of ‘having,’ achievement, material affluence, personal comfort, and constant fun (fikkert and kapic, 2019). the intrinsic logic of social and economic organization considers quality of life (genuine progress indicators) over standard of living (gross national product) (cha, 2013). the difficulty of achieving this type of deep, personal, and ultimately structural conversion to a caring relation for “our common home” can hardly be overstated. modern society has largely severed the soul from the body, and the natural from the supernatural. the result for most of us is a state of spiritual confusion and psychological distortion. we naturally aggrandize ourselves at the expense of other people and the nonhuman creation, violating the natural processes of both. to satisfy a craving for continual stimulation and satisfactions, we mindlessly buy non-essential consumer goods produced by transnational corporations and marketed through gigantic retailers and megamalls. their primary goal is not to prevent an overshoot of greenhouse gases or the diminishment of biodiversity. it is to maximize short-term profits for shareholders. achieving this goal almost invariably involves the exploitation of both workers (through low wages and few safety regulations) and the earth (through extraction christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(2), winter 2020 slimbach, global development in the anthropocene 73 beyond ‘carrying capacity’). as global consumers, many of whom already feel empty and insignificant, we willingly cooperate with these stable, high prestige structures in order to project a fashionable and publicly rewarded self-image. spiritual alienation and insecurity, in turn, fuels more exploitation, more production, more stimulation, and more consumption. pleasure and profits assume primacy over people and planet, causing the earth to “groan in travail” (see rom. 8:1923). christian development practitioners and educators play an important role in engaging the church, and the public, with a compelling, theologically-informed vision of humanity reconciled with both creator and creation. ecological conversion suggests a ‘turning’ from an anthropocentric to a theocentric and ecocentric orientation to the world. it affirms the intimate link between ecosystems and ethnoscapes, and calls us to “hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor” (no. 49). in that hearing, we become aware of our resource footprint (patterns of production and consumption) and how that footprint reflects a certain moral and spiritual character. understanding why our “internal deserts” have become so vast prepares us to exercise moral leadership in protecting the world’s peoples from the effects of “external deserts” and other climate calamities. 2. decarbonization of the global economy modern civilization has been indisputably responsible for a stunning array of political, economic, technological, medical and cultural advances. what is much more debatable is whether the basic design of industrial culture is survivable in the unfolding future. by 2050, according to un estimates, the world’s population will grow from its current (2019) level of 7.6 billion to 9.8 billion, with approximately two-thirds of the world's people living in urban areas. world cities currently account for roughly 75 percent of the world’s energy consumption and 80 percent of its greenhouse gases. they are, by definition, parasites on a vast hinterland where supplies of fuel, food, water, and materials originate. to produce the “wealth of nations,” they impoverish the ecosphere. now add two billion more people in the next 30 years that the earth will need to feed, clothe, house, heat, cool, and transport. how will this explosive increase in energy demand be met? again, global co2 emissions need to fall from the current level of 37 billion metric tons (5 metric tons for every person on the planet) to a sustainable level of 2 to 3 tons by 2050. there is only one plausible way to achieve this goal, and that is to decarbonize the entire global economy. in other words, aggressive action needs to be taken, by all countries, to create a 100 percent clean-energy grid. such a global development project would entail: massive growth in energy efficiency and clean renewable energy supplies (nuclear, solar and wind); • steady and dramatic cuts in the global production and consumption of fossil fuels (oil, coal, and natural gas); • rising mileage, manufacturing and emissions standards, and carbon market prices; • re-engineering every major sector of the economy— energy, housing, industry, military, commerce, transportation, public space, water, agriculture/food, and waste cycling—to connect to a smart-energy grid; • re-employing persons currently working in fossil fuel-related industries in low-emission, sociallycontributive sectors; and • simultaneous reductions in wealth inequalities, social segregation, and human-earth disconnection. no words can adequately convey the magnitude, technical complexity, and social and political obstacles involved in such a sweeping decarbonization project. it would be unprecedented and herculean, “akin to changing the engine, the driveshaft and all four wheels of a moving car without ever stopping it” (dyer, 2008, 72). consider what this might entail for just one province, guangdong, in just one country, china. reining in the province’s surging co2 emissions would require closing most of its industries—garment and textile, food and beverage, construction material, electrical appliances, machinery, petrochemical, forestry and papermaking, pharmaceuticals, and automobile. this would involve unemploying most of its 40 million workers… an unthinkable prospect. and that’s just guangdong. there’s no question that nuclear, solar, wind, biomass, and hydro power will ultimately replace most fossil fuel energy production. unfortunately, climate stabilization is not simply a matter of unplugging coal plants and plugging in solar panels or wind turbines. greenhouse gas emissions are produced across the entire economy, not only or even mainly by electric generating stations, which accounts for only about 26 percent of global co2 emissions (see figure below). that means that even if every coal, oil and gas-fired electric generating plant in the u.s. closed tomorrow, and were replaced with clean energy sources, we would still need to drastically suppress emissions across the rest of the economy in order to reach 2050 targets. a practical pathway to completely decarbonizing the earth’s economy is scarcely imaginable, much less feasible. renewable power generation and large-scale storage batteries would need to be global in scale. that supply would then need to connect to highways, railways, and airports; to warehouses, shopping malls, office buildings, and houses; to mines, smelters, forges, and factories; to farms, ranches, forests, and fisheries; christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(2), winter 2020 slimbach, global development in the anthropocene 74 source: ipcc (2014) and to facilities that process waste in the forms of packaging and discarded products. currently, virtually all of that infrastructure, worldwide, depends on fossil fuels. in just one sector alone—transportation— petroleum products are used to power the world’s 1.5 billion cars, trucks, trains, ships, and planes that haul people and freight. every sector of modern life has a carbon footprint, and that footprint needs to be eliminated—completely. currently, though, it’s doing the opposite: co2 emissions in the u.s. alone rose 3.4 percent in 2018, the largest increase in eight years, and will hit a record high once again in 2019. 3. urban redesign rural areas have long dominated development discourse. and in the next few decades, we will likely see a dramatic expansion of humanitarian aid in coastal and rural areas of the global south. christian agencies will be called upon to assist in the areas of disaster preparedness, famine relief, economic recovery, and resettlement/sponsorship. these are critical ameliorative processes that serve populations most affected by environmental, climatic, and economic shifts. nevertheless, the great transition to a steady-state global economy, if it is possible at all, will not be achieved in the world’s villages and hamlets. just as we cannot hope to create a sustainable culture with any but sustainable souls, neither can a sustainable planet be achieved without sustainable cities. cities are already the fundamental economic, political, and social organizing units of our time. and by 2050 they will house two-thirds of humanity. even though cities occupy a mere two percent of the world’s landmass, they consume over two-thirds of the world’s energy and account for more than 70% of global co2 emissions. that makes cities ground zero for ensuring human wellbeing on a hotter and less stable planet. in the words of former un deputy secretary general jan eliasson (2015), “cities are where the battle for sustainable development will be won—or lost if we fail.” true, fertility rates are contracting in north america, europe, japan, and china. but across south asia, the middle east, and africa, megalopolises are multiplying. the global cities institute at the university of toronto projects that, 30 years from now, mumbai, dhaka, karachi, delhi, lagos, kolkata, kinshasa, cairo, and manila will all have populations between 24 and 42 million people. these places are already dominated by slums and beset with acute burdens on all of the systems mentioned above. the development challenge is to make cities more climateresilient and inclusive while meeting the basic life needs of burgeoning populations. this challenge is, fundamentally, one of urban design, planning, and policy making. the city is a complex system of systems, integrating land use, housing, materials, construction, infrastructure, manufacturing, trade, food, biodiversity, energy, water, transportation, and waste disposal. these are the “structures” that are heating the planet, and radically reducing their carbon footprint is the task of our times. that task is particularly germane to christian development practice. drawing upon the poetic imagination of micah (4:1-5) and isaiah (65:17-25), how might city systems be transformed to support the truly flourishing urban existence? the short answer to that questions is this: policy and planning. policy affects the lives of millions of people with the stroke of a pen. planning concerns, quite literally, the remaking of the human presence on earth. city officials in the global south are quite familiar with the “smart” design being done in virtually every large european and north american city. what they often lack is the national and international support to conduct the policy research and create the adaptation plans that adequately respond to burgeoning populations, weak governance, profit-driven land speculation, and widening wealth disparities. the association of african planning schools is charting an encouraging path forward. rather than simply mimicking the planning approach of northern nations, its curriculum is based on a logic of “downward accountability.” through experiential learning and practical problem-solving within grassroots communities, students learn how to listen to local residents and create channels of communication between those communities and municipal officials. this is also where locally-engaged congregations could play a critical role. to the extent they are energized by a shared vision of integral mission, they could help close the gap between what local authorities can do and what the urban poor actually need. many churches are embedded in poor people’s communities. they are intimately familiar with local living conditions christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(2), winter 2020 slimbach, global development in the anthropocene 75 and health risks. they know from first-hand experience what adaptation policies and interventions are needed during times of crisis. moreover, many congregations are often well-networked across urban areas, enabling “people power” to be mobilized and leveraged in support of more inclusive planning processes. all to say, local churches have the potential to be an effective “interface” between the state, which has the resources and technical expertise, and capable and energetic congregant-citizens, which are typically left out of policy-planning (watson, 2009). what they need to learn is how and with whom to leverage their power on behalf of informalized and vulnerable majority populations. public officials are, of course, the obvious and often most appropriate targets of direct leverage, whether through consultation, demonstration, policy advocacy, or popular education. at other times, indirect leverage may be the most strategic course. foreign donors and development implementers can significantly support this community-driven process, whether through technical knowledge of best planning practices, disaster risk reduction, or climate change adaptation. 4. adaptive development the development task becomes immediate and concrete as we consider the capacity of informal settlers in lowand middle-income nations to act in the face of climate shocks and stresses. will low-income households be able to cope with an increase in the price systems withstand the next mega-storm? will the most vulnerable residents—the young, the elderly, the chronically ill, the disabled—survive high winds, torrential rain, and protracted heat waves? will they be able to bounce back in ways that reduce future risks? cities in wealthy nations take resilience for granted. most local governments ensure that residents live and work in code-conforming buildings; that they have access to all-weather paved roads and storm drainage systems; that public transport, piped treated water, and waste disposal systems are provided; that emergency services and early warning systems are in place; and that risk-reducing land use and climate action planning are prioritized. in cities of the global south, measures that build up accumulated resilience are often non-existent. city government have little technical and investment capacity to promote low-carbon and climate-resilient urban development. as previously noted, large sections of the population occupy land unrecognized by the government, in overcrowded and substandard dwellings, within settlements lacking access to basic public services like policing/rule of law, storm drainage systems, paved roads, and waste collection. in short, households have little resilience to stress or shock. these institutional realities significantly constrain urgent efforts to reduce climate-related hazards, either by radically reducing carbon emissions (“mitigation”) or by reducing people’s vulnerability to actual or expected climate-related impacts (“adaptation”). extraordinary action is imperative on both fronts, and in strategic coordination with city designers, planners, and policy makers (ipcc, 2014; global commission on adaptation, 2019). potential synergies exist between conventional development agendas and various mitigation and adaptation interventions. better climate models and datasets, for example, can inform pro-poor urban planning and critical infrastructure development. improved mass transit can cut carbon emissions and connect urban poor residents to better jobs. still, to achieve their full potential, mitigation and adaptation actions must integrate with each other (as suggested by the perforated line in the above table) across sectors (industrial, residential, agricultural) and scales of government (local, regional, national), and also mobilize the most vulnerable and underserved communities in plans to strengthen their adaptive capacity. effective implementation also requires dedicated and knowledgeable leaders and strong governance structures, along with significant political commitment and investment capacity. such enabling conditions may be difficult to imagine in many cities of the south. but any realistic prospect of broad-scale “adaptive development” (agrawal & lemos, 2015) or “transformative climate adaptation” (chu, et al. 2019) will be thwarted without them. easily overlooked in the global debate about how to pursue deep adaptation is the fact that considerable heating, sea level rise, and instability are already “locked in” due to rapidly thawing permafrost (university of exeter, 2017). this suggests that it may be too late to avert uncontrollable impacts on human habitats and global agricultural, political, and social systems within the lifetimes of people alive today (world bank, 2012; ehrlich, 2013). keeping the planet to 1.5 degrees of warming, let alone two degrees, would require immediate, transformative action. and as of 2020, no plausible plan exists to substantially reduce, much less phase out, fossil fuels. that leaves us to do all we can to help slow and reduce harms through both emissions cuts and adaptation action. change doesn’t happen by itself. it results from the dogged efforts of passionate, empowered individuals and groups at the grassroots. they see something that’s wrong and, despite seemingly insurmountable odds, organize and agitate in ways that influence the powers that be. christian development ngos have a potentially vital role to play in helping to catalyze community-driven adaptive development, especially among the three billion urban dwellers who will live in insecure settlements by 2050 christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(2), winter 2020 slimbach, global development in the anthropocene 76 table 1: mitigation and adaptation action (barbière, 2017). the following list suggests some possibilities: • prioritize direct engagement with vulnerable urban poor populations in climate adaptation planning. • enable grassroots awareness of climate science and lessons from best practices in the global south. • promote more community-based, people-centered, and inclusive visions of urban development. • foster data sharing and knowledge co-production between city governments, academic institutions, civil society organizations, church leaders, and urban poor community groups. • provide training and direct technical assistance to municipal officials and community leaders. • strengthen the social contract between government and informal communities. • delineate guidelines and metrics for communitylevel vulnerability reduction and livelihoodprotection. • assist churches in organizing congregants and other community groups to neighbors, and local associations to partner with municipal governments in adaptation actions. • promote grassroots (including church-based) social movements that advocate for climate action. • support long-term science-policy-practitioner coordination. • help establish funding pathways to channel external resources (e.g., private donations, multilateral aid, philanthropy) to specific urban adaptation programs. • assist churches in organizing congregants, neighbors, other religious groups, local associations and municipal governments to act locally and regionally. • provide pastoral services to refugees and internallydisplaced persons affected by climate change impacts, helping them to bounce back, both physically and psycho-spiritually, from tragedy, trauma, and loss. 5. institutional contraction we can be encouraged by the number of cities, north and south, that are taking environmental constraints seriously, typically under the banners of “sustainability,” “resilience,” or “climate action.” still, the painful reality is that global energy and resource use continues to steadily rise, not decline. as it stands, the world is on a path to nearly 3°c of warming by the end of the century, and even that assumes substantial emissions reductions in the future. along with an increase of over two billion people over the next 30 years, global income is expected to triple. but instead of being the solution, economic growth has unwittingly become a big part of the problem. that’s because a rising middle-class in southern cities wants what their high-consuming neighbors in the global north have: iphones and big screen tvs, refrigerators and suvs, big box stores and air conditioners, processed foods christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(2), winter 2020 slimbach, global development in the anthropocene 77 and international travel experiences. teenage slumdwellers in lagos and mumbai have no interest in staying “sustainable.” they look out at the city skyscrapers, or overhead at flying jets, and compare the material quality of their own lives to that of the rich. they won’t be convinced that having more doesn’t equal being happier. meanwhile, the safety window for radically reducing global emissions is rapidly closing. in the short period of time left to us, it’s hard to imagine how the current system, based on price, profits, and market competition, could instigate a transition in energy use at the necessary or possible level. equally dispiriting is the fact that, thus far, no government or major political party has been willing to shut down new fossil fuel production, switch entirely to renewable energy across the economy, or radically curtail non-essential air travel, manufacturing, or construction. policy makers, industrialists, financiers, insurance companies, and bankers continue to be heavily invested in the fossil fuel economy. populist authoritarian regimes are on the rise. oil and gas infrastructure is being built at a furious pace. petrochemical corporations continue to use undisclosed, untraceable “dark money” to buy their way to political power and prevent action against climate change, all the while enjoying tens of billions of dollars in federal subsidies (environmental and energy study institute, 2019). they also show little evidence of being willing to advance the initial capital and bear the project risk of a clean-energy transition. the necessary political will and policy support to build a global clean-energy economy is just not there. given the scientific prognosis and the current political climate, we need to ask whether it’s possible to make poverty history without also making affluence history. in other words, can the interconnected problems threatening humanity and habitat be solved without an immediate, dramatic, and coordinated contraction in the rates of production, consumption, and resource use in rich nations? in the judgment of ipcc scientists, the answer is “no.” “green growth” and incremental efficiency improvements are too little, too late to reverse trends in global emissions. the only feasible way to meet carbon reduction targets is to actively scale down or “degrow” the material throughput of the global economy. in essence, the global consuming class needs to stop converting so much of the planet into “product.” the un’s sustainable development goal #12 asks countries to ensure, by 2030, “sustainable consumption and production patterns.” but what does that goal 2 the union of concerned scientists (n.d.) estimate that, “every year, american armed forces consume more than 100 million barrels of oil to power ships, vehicles, aircraft, and ground operations—enough for over 4 million trips around the earth, assuming 25 mpg.” at present, the pentagon burns more oil than 140 smaller countries. see also neta crawford (2019). actually require countries to do other than to say amen? americans alone make per capita ecological demands that are about eight times the standard for global sustainability. one might insist, as a standard of fairness, that the u.s. and other rich countries be required to bring down per capita co2 emissions to a sustainable (2 -3 metric tons) level. the global class of high-consuming people (mountains) would “be brought low” (produce, buy, and use much less stuff), while the bottom two billion—the “under-consumers” of basic infrastructure, schools, health care, durable housing, jobs, and so on— are “lifted up.” as the emerging economies grew, they would agree to switch from a carbon-emitting industrial base to carbon-neutral technologies. rich countries would agree to support poorer countries through nonfossil technology transfers and direct financial subsidies, even as they execute a similar transition. christian relief and development organizations are uniquely prepared to make a solid ethical case for such a “just transition.” and yet it’s politically unimaginable that any reforms would be accepted that move significantly against the interests of capital, along with the livelihoods and consumer preferences of billions of people. according to the carbon majors database (griffin, 2017), 71% of total global ghg emissions can be traced to just 100 investor-owned corporations, mostly fossil fuel giants. what this means is that no “sustainable production” is possible unless gross polluters like peabody coal (coal), saudi aramco (oil), and russia’s gazprom (natural gas) are willing to accept immediate and major retrenchment or closure. but these are only the obvious first targets. many other industrial sectors are fossil fuel-dependent and would need to undergo radical “degrowth”: oil refining and distribution, construction, agribusiness, auto and airplane manufacturing, travel and tourism, shipping, and synthetics production, to name just a few. then there are the thousands of hugely profitable firms that produce and sell frivolous and mostly unhealthful goods to middleand high-income people. corporations like pepsico (bottled water), coca-cola (sugary drinks), starbucks (coffee), mcdonald’s (fast food), tyson foods (factory-farmed chicken, beef, and pork processor), h&m (fast fashion), and walmart (low-cost disposables) employ vast numbers of people, but generally at the expense of human and ecological health. and we still haven’t reported on the largest institutional consumer of oil products in the world: the u.s. armed forces. 2 substantially shrink or shutter these diverse institutions and tens of millions of people would suddenly be unemployed—or worse. but fail to christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(2), winter 2020 slimbach, global development in the anthropocene 78 do so and we will certainly face rising temperatures, extreme weather, and environmental collapse. “absent a significant adjustment to how billions of humans conduct their lives,” writes wallace-wells (2017), “parts of the earth will likely become close to uninhabitable, and other parts horrifically inhospitable, as soon as the end of this century.” the stakes for human development couldn’t be higher. standing in our place in history, what would jesus seek to do–or undo? 6. progressive simplification the foregoing has argued that without fundamental, systemic reductions in global material production and consumption (energy use), “overshoot” is inevitable. in the final analysis, installing solar panels and adopting a plant-based diet has little real impact on the concentration of carbon in the atmosphere. nor on the material realities of the world’s most vulnerable peoples and places. that’s because the vast majority of energy and resource consumption, along with pollution and waste production, is generated by institutions— commercial, industrial, corporate, agribusiness, government, and military—not individuals. institutional sin outstrips individual virtue, as well as the concerted action of the proverbial “small group of thoughtful, committed citizens.” but this fact shouldn’t lead us to conclude that individual actions don’t matter. yes, there are powerful systems that are difficult to disassemble. factory farming, fast fashion, car culture, and consumer society shape how we eat, dress, get around and spend. but we are also free to choose from possible options which, when taken up by enough people, drive system reform. the personal is political. we are the animal cruelty. we are the landfill. we are the weather. the needed public policy changes and industrial contractions wait upon the future, and so are presently nonexistent. but there are innumerable small-scale “solutions” that christian development personnel can adopt—and promote—now. at a minimum, those of us who can afford fossil fuel-dependent comforts and conveniences can learn to meet basic needs for mobility, food, cooling, heating, lighting, and consumables with dramatically fewer resources. we can pare down to one car. better yet, instead of driving a car, we can commute by bike. we can stop flying or fly much less. we can swear off junk food and cheap, trendy clothing. we can cut way back on heating and cooling, and retrofit our homes to conserve energy. above all, we can establish a strict line of “enough” in our spending. “if we want to stop the impoverishment of land and people,” writes wendell berry (2013), “we ourselves must be prepared to become poorer.” this doesn’t mean we go back to riding horses, hunting and gathering our food, and living in log cabins. but it does mean we learn to need less, to waste less, and to make things last longer. the goal is progressive simplification—a relation between humanity and habitat that is inwardly rich, outwardly simple, and publicly contributive. capping personal consumption is also important in moral terms. as individuals, we are personally responsible to do everything we can to mitigate the damage caused by being a consenting member of a civilization that wreaks havoc on the planet. utilitarian philosophers like peter singer (the life that you can save), peter unger (living high and letting die), and william macaskill (doing good better) argue persuasively that every individual of even a moderate degree of wealth is morally obligated to use their resources to alleviate the suffering of others. john wesley (n.d.), in his famous sermon entitled, “the use of money” also enjoined his hearers to “gain all you can, save all you can, and give all you can.” anticipated what “effective altruists” would propose 200 years later, wesley proposed a faith-infused way to put more of the world’s wealth and expertise where it can do the most good. christian development practitioners need not be extremely wealthy in order to claim a spot among the world’s wealthy. according to the global rich list http://www.globalrichlist.com/, a $40,000 annual income easily places community developers, humanitarian workers, and other modestly-salaried ngo staff among the global 1% of earners. we may consider ourselves “poor” relative to the majority of other americans or canadians who are extraordinarily affluent, but we are rich compared to those who, by an absolute standard, are unable to meet their basic needs. apart from encouraging simple living and generosity throughout their organizations, christian ngos can leverage their influence within local churches to support organizations and projects, including their own, that connect voluntary simplicity to high-impact global development priorities. there are over 65 million members of mainline and evangelical churches in the u.s. alone. most of their giving goes to sustain church programs and select missionary enterprises, the majority of which lack performance standards and rarely undergo impact evaluations. this fact alone makes them hard to justify in terms of transformational development. moreover, funds that are directed to humanitarian causes tend to be strongly biased towards christian charities like world vision and catholic relief services. are religious non-profits more cost-effective than organizations recommended by non-religious charity evaluators like givewell and givedirectly? they may or may not be. still, the assumption persists within most evangelical churches that actors with an explicit christian identity bring an indispensable moral and ethical dimension to http://www.globalrichlist.com/ christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(2), winter 2020 slimbach, global development in the anthropocene 79 development practice that is unattainable within nonreligious ventures. this claim is central to christian development practice, and it deserves careful empirical authentication. but our more immediate concern is how to build a bridge between those who are absolutely poor (lacking the resources to meet their basic needs) and those who are absolutely affluent (having the resources, not just to meet their family’s basic needs, but also to take cruises, own timeshares, operate multiple vehicles, stay in fashion, and purchase the latest ithings). although christian ngos might understandably view well-vetted secular development organizations as direct competitors for limited resources, a deep commitment to the ‘greater good’ might lead them to encourage congregations to support high-impact organizations and projects that address development priorities largely devalued within evangelical circles—issues like animal welfare, criminal justice reform, and climate change mitigation/adaptation. no-strings-attached cash transfers, in particular, simultaneously combat material poverty and climate vulnerability. the “luxury emissions” of the rich are reduced while essential “subsistence emissions” of poor people are raised. money is moved from households that need it the least to households that need it the most. mountains are lowered and valleys lifted up. both rich and poor are able to lead healthier, more fulfilling lives. 7. collaborative action there is a final path that the christian development community can take to help move the dial on climate change. individual and institutional contraction and effective philanthropy are strategically connected to the great “moral multiplier”: political action. here we consider how the “advocacy” arm of the christian development community might campaign for infrastructural and policy changes that achieve both deep emissions reductions and deep adaptation. wallace-wells (2019b) sharpens the point: buying an electric car is a drop in the bucket compared with raising fuel-efficiency standards sharply. conscientiously flying less is a lot easier if there’s more high-speed rail around. and if i eat fewer hamburgers a year, so what? but if cattle farmers were required to feed their cattle seaweed, which might reduce methane emissions 3 these include charities like christian aid and operation noah, the quakers, the united church of christ, the methodist church, the church of england, the world council of churches, union theological seminary, a number of catholic religious orders, and many large catholic institutions. notably absent from the list of institutions disinvesting in fossil fuel energy stocks are evangelical colleges, evangelical megachurches, or large evangelical development agencies. by nearly 60 percent… that would make an enormous difference. major reconfiguration of the global political economy will likely come about only as the impacts of unmitigated climate change become horrific. in the meantime, the church is invited to “speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute” (prov. 31:8), and to thereby change the context in which our energy and economic systems operate. faith-based campaigning has begun to shape our political moment. to date, over 1,000 institutions have used their investment portfolios to divest from fossil fuel producers, with religious organizations representing the greatest share (29%). 3 secular advocacy groups have also organized masses of concerned citizens. student campaigns associated with the sunrise movement and zero hour are demanding that politicians refuse to take money from the fossil fuel industry and prioritize the health of families and ecosystems. rainforest action network and banktrack advocate for banks to stop financing the expansion of the fossil fuel industry. the global unfriend coal campaign focuses on holding the insurance industry accountable for its role in climate change. as part of broader localism movements, transition town initiatives and nonprofit advocacy organizations like local futures seek to right-size the scale of human organization, with small cities and towns assuming greater control over energy, food, water, money, transportation, and waste cycling. more recently, the extinction rebellion (xr) movement has called for thousands of activists to block roads and shut down transport systems in major world cities—not just for one day, but long enough to impose to paralyze commerce and force governments and business elites to respond to the climate emergency. these are all global movements, but they have inspired highly localized projects by smaller groups of people—from banning single-use plastic to stopping a pipeline or coal port. rupert read, one of the central figures in extinction rebellion, likes to say that what’s needed is a “revolution in consciousness,” something akin to pope francis’ “ecological conversion.” the collective revolution or conversion may visibly manifest in public actions, but it begins with people who begin to see new visions and dream new dreams. something that was long tolerated becomes intolerable. the jesus christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(2), winter 2020 slimbach, global development in the anthropocene 80 movement in the first two centuries embodied such an alternative imagination, the kingdom of god. gatherings of jesus-followers created new norms for organizing social life that became the seedbed for a new humanity grounded in faith-filled civil disobedience. today, a rapidly growing network of christians are breaking out of both denialism and despair in order to take serious climate action. groups like global catholic climate movement, greenfaith, christian climate action, young evangelicals for climate action (yeca), a rocha, and interfaith witness for climate action cite their christian faith as the moral force energizing their work. they regard non-compliance with ruling authorities, along with their false values, as a crucial form of kingdom faithfulness. their conviction is that the kingdom comes as the church, energized by the spirit and in solidarity with other persons of faith and conscience, goes out into the world informed, vulnerable, praising, and protesting, “always bearing about in the body the dying of jesus, that the life also of jesus might be made manifest…” (2 cor. 4:10 kjv). standing in arm-in-arm solidarity with activists of other faiths or no faith, they exemplify a model of collaborative action expounded by british theologian and missiologist lesslie newbigin (1989) in his classic the gospel in a pluralist society: the christian will be eager to cooperate with people of all faiths and ideologies in all projects which are in line with the christian’s understanding of god’s purpose in history… every day of our lives we have to make decisions that we cannot take without regard to the others who share the story. they may be christians, muslims, hindus, secular humanists, marxists, or some other persuasion. they will have different understandings of the meaning and end of the story, but along the way there will be many issues in which we can agree about what should be done. there are struggles for justice and freedom in which we can and should join hands with those of other faiths and ideologies to achieve specific goals, even though we know that the ultimate goal is christ and his coming in glory and not what our collaborators imagine. (181) conclusion for decades, the christian relief and development community has been committed to continuous improvement in the human condition. “development,” once viewed as synonymous with modernization, economic growth and increased consumption, must now aim to obtain the maximum of well-being with the minimum of consumption (schumacher, 1977, 42). the alternative, according to the ipcc, is a level of earth systems breakdown that leads to slow and agonizing suffering and death for billions of people. the climate crisis will not be solved with more philanthropy, more lobbying, more global summits, more awareness raising, better technologies, and the ‘greening’ of transnational corporations. that’s because the root problems are inherent in what we value and how we think about and interact with the other-thanhuman world. whether by social or evolutionary conditioning, humans are simply incapable of sacrificing present benefits to forestall future costs. we might know the planet is facing an apocalyptic future, yet still refuse to believe it. we continue acting as if tomorrow will be just like yesterday. this essay has outlined seven potential pathways for community engagement, beginning with a biblicallyrooted, ecclesially-located and publicly engaged vision of a flourishing life. taken together, they suggest ways to live out, individually and institutionally, the positive implications of that vision for the poor and the planet. given the scale and complexity of the climate emergency, no one solution will suffice. there are some questions only governments will be able to answer—for example, about renewable energy infrastructure and massive c02 extraction—and christian churches and development agencies ought to ratchet up their pressure on governments to act rightly. at the same time, and of equally importance, is keeping up pressure on our organizations, and ourselves. the anthropocene was brought on by what humans are doing and, ultimately, because of who we are. christian development practice will find its distinctive contribution to creational flourishing in its ability to transform both. references agrawal, arun and lemos, maria carmen. 2015. “adaptive development.” nature climate change, vol. 5 (march 2015). the association of african planning schools. retrieved from https://www.africanplanningschools.org.za/ banerjee, abhijit and duflo, esther. 2019. good economics for hard times. new york: public affairs. barbière, cécile. 2017. “french urban development expert: ‘in 2050, 3 billion people will live in slums’” euractiv (march 6). retrieved from https://www.euractiv.com/section/developmentpolicy/interview/french-urban-developmentexpert-in-2050-3-billion-people-will-live-in-slums/ berry, wendell. 2013, sept. 3. “less energy, more life.” the progressive. retrieved from https://progressive.org/dispatches/less-energy-life/ cha, j. mijin. 2013. what’s missing from gdp? retrieved from https://www.africanplanningschools.org.za/ christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(2), winter 2020 slimbach, global development in the anthropocene 81 https://www.demos.org/sites/default/files/publicati ons/gdp-explainer.pdf christian aid. 2006. “the climate of poverty: facts, fear and hope.” retrieved from https://www.christianaid.org.uk/resources/aboutus/climate-poverty-facts-fears-and-hope-2006 christian aid. 2019. “climate change: it’s now or never.” retrieved from https://www.christianaid.org.uk/news/climatechange-its-now-or-never chu, e., et al. 2019. “unlocking the potential for transformative climate adaptation in cities.” background paper prepared for the global commission on adaptation, washington dc and rotterdam. crawford, neta. 2019. “pentagon fuel use, climate change, and costs of war.” watson institute, brown university. retrieved from https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imc e/papers/2019/pentagon%20fuel%20use,%20cli mate%20change%20and%20the%20costs%20of %20war%20final.pdf dyer, gwynne. 2008. climate wars. new york: random house. ehrlich, paul and ehrlich, anne. 2013. “can a collapse of global civilization be avoided?” proceedings of the royal society biological sciences (march 7). retrieved from http://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2012.2845. eliason, jan. 2015. opening remarks, mayor’s forum of the world cities summit, new york (june 9). retrieved from https://www.un.org/press/en/2015/dsgsm874.doc. htm environmental and energy study institute. 2019. “fact sheet: fossil fuel subsidies: a closer look at tax breaks and societal costs.” retrieved from https://www.eesi.org/papers/view/fact-sheet-fossilfuel-subsidies-a-closer-look-at-tax-breaks-andsocietal-costs european environmental agency. 2018. emission database for global atmospheric research (edgar). retrieved from http://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/ fikkert, brian and kapic, kelly. 2019. becoming whole: why the opposite of poverty isn't the american dream. chicago: moody publishers. global commission on adaptation. 2019. adapt now: a global call for leadership on climate resilience. global center on adaptation. retrieved from https://cdn.gca.org/assets/201909/globalcommission_report_final.pdf griffin, paul. 2017. the carbon majors database. retrieved from https://b8f65cb373b1b7b15febc70d8ead6ced550b4d987d7c03fcdd1d.ssl.cf3.rac kcdn.com/cms/reports/documents/000/002/327/o riginal/carbon-majors-report2017.pdf?1499691240 intergovernmental panel on climate change (ipcc). 2014. ar5 climate change 2014: mitigation of climate change. retrieved from https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg3/ intergovernmental panel on climate change (ipcc). 2018. special report: global warming of 1.5 ºc. retrieved from https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/ lu, denise and flavelle, christopher. 2019. “rising seas will erase more cities by 2050 new research shows.” the new york times. oct 29. retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/29/c limate/coastal-cities-underwater.html mumford, lewis, 1970. the pentagon of power. new york: harcourt brace jovanovich. newbigin, lesslie. 1989. the gospel in a pluralist society. grand rapids, mi: eerdmans. pierrehumbert, raymond. 2019. “there is no plan b for dealing with the climate crisis,” bulletin of the atomic scientists, 75:5, 215-221. retrieved from https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/009 63402.2019.1654255 pirani, simon. 2018. burning up: a global history of fossil fuel consumption. london: pluto press. pope francis. 2015. laudato si’: on care for our common home. [encyclical]. retrieved from http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclic als/documents/papafrancesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html richter, felix. 2019. “the global disparity in carbon footprints.” statista. https://www.statista.com/chart/16292/per-capitaco2-emissions-of-the-largest-economies/ schumacher, ernst. 1973. small is beautiful: economics as if people mattered. new york: harper & row. united nations department of economic and social affairs (undesa). 2011. world economic and social survey 2011 [the great green technological transformation]. retrieved from http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/policy/w ess/wess_current/2011wess_chapter2.pdf university of exeter. 2017. “climate change impacts already locked in, but the worst can still be avoided.” sciencedaily. retrieved from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/11/1711161 05020.htm wallace-wells, david. 2017. “the uninhabitable earth.” new york magazine. retrieved from http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/07/climatechange-earth-too-hot-for-humans.html wallace-wells, david. 2019a. the uninhabitable earth: life after warming. new york: penguin ransom house. https://www.demos.org/sites/default/files/publications/gdp-explainer.pdf https://www.demos.org/sites/default/files/publications/gdp-explainer.pdf https://www.christianaid.org.uk/resources/about-us/climate-poverty-facts-fears-and-hope-2006 https://www.christianaid.org.uk/resources/about-us/climate-poverty-facts-fears-and-hope-2006 https://www.christianaid.org.uk/news/climate-change-its-now-or-never https://www.christianaid.org.uk/news/climate-change-its-now-or-never https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/2019/pentagon%20fuel%20use,%20climate%20change%20and%20the%20costs%20of%20war%20final.pdf https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/2019/pentagon%20fuel%20use,%20climate%20change%20and%20the%20costs%20of%20war%20final.pdf https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/2019/pentagon%20fuel%20use,%20climate%20change%20and%20the%20costs%20of%20war%20final.pdf https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/2019/pentagon%20fuel%20use,%20climate%20change%20and%20the%20costs%20of%20war%20final.pdf http://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2012.2845 https://www.un.org/press/en/2015/dsgsm874.doc.htm https://www.un.org/press/en/2015/dsgsm874.doc.htm https://www.eesi.org/papers/view/fact-sheet-fossil-fuel-subsidies-a-closer-look-at-tax-breaks-and-societal-costs https://www.eesi.org/papers/view/fact-sheet-fossil-fuel-subsidies-a-closer-look-at-tax-breaks-and-societal-costs https://www.eesi.org/papers/view/fact-sheet-fossil-fuel-subsidies-a-closer-look-at-tax-breaks-and-societal-costs http://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/ https://cdn.gca.org/assets/2019-09/globalcommission_report_final.pdf https://cdn.gca.org/assets/2019-09/globalcommission_report_final.pdf https://b8f65cb373b1b7b15feb-c70d8ead6ced550b4d987d7c03fcdd1d.ssl.cf3.rackcdn.com/cms/reports/documents/000/002/327/original/carbon-majors-report-2017.pdf?1499691240 https://b8f65cb373b1b7b15feb-c70d8ead6ced550b4d987d7c03fcdd1d.ssl.cf3.rackcdn.com/cms/reports/documents/000/002/327/original/carbon-majors-report-2017.pdf?1499691240 https://b8f65cb373b1b7b15feb-c70d8ead6ced550b4d987d7c03fcdd1d.ssl.cf3.rackcdn.com/cms/reports/documents/000/002/327/original/carbon-majors-report-2017.pdf?1499691240 https://b8f65cb373b1b7b15feb-c70d8ead6ced550b4d987d7c03fcdd1d.ssl.cf3.rackcdn.com/cms/reports/documents/000/002/327/original/carbon-majors-report-2017.pdf?1499691240 https://b8f65cb373b1b7b15feb-c70d8ead6ced550b4d987d7c03fcdd1d.ssl.cf3.rackcdn.com/cms/reports/documents/000/002/327/original/carbon-majors-report-2017.pdf?1499691240 https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg3/ https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/ https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/29/climate/coastal-cities-underwater.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/10/29/climate/coastal-cities-underwater.html https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00963402.2019.1654255 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00963402.2019.1654255 http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html https://www.statista.com/chart/16292/per-capita-co2-emissions-of-the-largest-economies/ https://www.statista.com/chart/16292/per-capita-co2-emissions-of-the-largest-economies/ http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/policy/wess/wess_current/2011wess_chapter2.pdf http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/policy/wess/wess_current/2011wess_chapter2.pdf http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/11/171116105020.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/11/171116105020.htm http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-earth-too-hot-for-humans.html http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-earth-too-hot-for-humans.html christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(2), winter 2020 slimbach, global development in the anthropocene 82 wallace-wells, david. 2019b. “time to panic.” the new york times. (feb. 16). retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/16/opinion/sun day/fear-panic-climate-change-warming.html watson, vanessa. 2009. “seeing from the south: refocusing urban planning on the globe’s central urban issues.” urban studies, 46(11): 2259-2275. wesley, john. n.d. “the sermons of john wesley. sermon 50: the use of money.” wesley center online. retrieved from http://wesley.nnu.edu/john-wesley/the-sermons-ofjohn-wesley-1872-edition/sermon-50-the-use-ofmoney wikipedia. retrieved february 2020. “list of countries by carbon dioxide emissions.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/list_of_countries_by _carbon_dioxide_emissions world bank. 2012. turn down the heat: why a 4°c warmer world must be avoided. washington dc: world bank. retrieved from https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/climatechang e/publication/turn-down-the-heat richard slimbach is professor of global studies at azusa pacific university, where he guides students to assume their fair share of responsibility for the fate of the poor and the planet. slimbach is the author of becoming world wise (2010) and the art of world learning (2020). author email: rslimbach@apu.edu https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/16/opinion/sunday/fear-panic-climate-change-warming.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/16/opinion/sunday/fear-panic-climate-change-warming.html http://wesley.nnu.edu/john-wesley/the-sermons-of-john-wesley-1872-edition/sermon-50-the-use-of-money http://wesley.nnu.edu/john-wesley/the-sermons-of-john-wesley-1872-edition/sermon-50-the-use-of-money http://wesley.nnu.edu/john-wesley/the-sermons-of-john-wesley-1872-edition/sermon-50-the-use-of-money https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/list_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/list_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/climatechange/publication/turn-down-the-heat https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/climatechange/publication/turn-down-the-heat mailto:rslimbach@apu.edu christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(2), winter 2020 allaby, protestant christianity and control of corruption, past and present 83 protestant christianity and control of corruption, past and present martin allaby this article is structured around five key statements about corruption: 1. corruption is a major obstacle to ending extreme poverty. 2. the world bank strategy for reducing corruption lacks focus on incentives and hazards. 3. protestant christianity has motivated individuals to control corruption in the past. 4. protestant christianity continues to motivate some individuals to control corruption in the present. 5. there are, however, serious weaknesses in the wider protestant response to corruption. the article concludes with a sixth point, that christians have a major role to play in the fight against corruption, but they must address three areas if they are to realize their potential: adequate funding, reflection on their current status in relation to corruption in society, and good theology. finally, interested readers are invited to connect with the faith and public integrity network (https://fpinetwork.wordpress.com/). introduction corruption is widely understood to play a causal role in the persistence of global poverty. the world bank makes this argument, as do christian scholars such as gary haugen and victor boutros (2014) and roberto laver (2018). true, corruption may not be poverty’s only cause, but the important role it plays requires us to fight it. after some introductory comments about how corruption and poverty are linked, this paper outlines the world bank’s strategy for controlling corruption, but critiques the bank for being slow to acknowledge the lack of incentives for rulers to control corruption, or the hazards faced by champions of reform. if the world bank is not up to the task, from whence might help come? the paper points out that protestant christianity has played an important role in the past in limiting corruption and goes on to argue that at least some protestant christians are taking up the task of fighting against corruption today. two such organizations are introduced, one from the philippines and the other from honduras. unfortunately, we must acknowledge that christian organizations today are not as engaged in fighting corruption as their secular counterparts. why is that? the paper explores three reasons why christians are not taking up the fight as they should, and concludes with a call to christians everywhere to take the bible seriously and to get involved. corruption is a major obstacle to ending extreme poverty let us begin with a look at the nature of corruption, and its powerfully negative impacts, especially on the poor. there is no universally agreed definition of corruption, but this one developed by transparency international is widely used: “the abuse of entrusted power for private gain.” transparency international classifies corruption as grand, petty, or political, depending on the amounts of money lost, and the sector where it occurs: grand corruption consists of acts committed at a high level of government that distort policies or the central functioning of the state, enabling leaders to benefit at the expense of the public good. petty corruption refers to everyday abuse of entrusted power by lowand mid-level public officials in their interactions with ordinary citizens, who often are trying to access basic goods or services in places like hospitals, schools, police departments and other agencies. political corruption is a manipulation of policies, institutions and rules of procedure in the allocation of resources and financing by political decision makers, who abuse their position to sustain their https://fpinetwork.wordpress.com/ christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(2), winter 2020 allaby, protestant christianity and control of corruption, past and present 84 power, status and wealth (transparency international 2019a). the discourse on corruption is located within the broader concept of governance, which has to do with the way decisions are made and implemented and with how citizens and other organizations are involved in that process. control of corruption depends on good governance, in which the legislature, the executive and the judiciary – the three main institutions of the state operate as they should. the world bank considers corruption a major challenge to its twin goals of ending extreme poverty by 2030 and boosting shared prosperity for the poorest forty percent of people in developing countries: corruption has a disproportionate impact on the poor and most vulnerable, increasing costs and reducing access to services, including health, education and justice … corruption erodes trust in government and undermines the social contract. this is cause for concern across the globe, but particularly in contexts of fragility and violence, as corruption fuels and perpetuates the inequalities and discontent that lead to fragility, violent extremism, and conflict. corruption impedes investment, with consequent effects on growth and jobs. countries capable of confronting corruption use their human and financial resources more efficiently, attract more investment, and grow more rapidly (world bank 2018). although corruption is often seen as a problem that mainly affects lower-income countries, there are no grounds for complacency in high-income countries. using a scale where 100 represents perfect control of corruption, transparency international’s corruption perception index (cpi) score for the usa fell from a high point of 76 in 2015 to 69 in 2019. more fundamentally, some observers raise concerns about the influence of global finance on government policies, particularly in high-income countries (monbiot 2015), but such issues require a discussion that is beyond the scope of this article. the world bank strategy for reducing corruption lacks focus on incentives and hazards the world bank’s official engagement with corruption began in 1996 when james wolfensohn, president of the bank at the time, delivered a groundbreaking speech in which he called on the world to take action against the “cancer of corruption” (wolfensohn 1996). over the next few years bank staff developed a strategy for reducing corruption that comprises reforms intended to achieve the following: • capable, transparent, and accountable states. • multi-stakeholder engagement with civil society, media, and communities. • a competitive and responsible private sector (world bank 2007, 47-54). in its early assessments of progress with the strategy, the bank was candid about the enormous difficulty of combating corruption: “global trends in governance and corruption indicate that, while some progress may have been made in strengthening state capacity and accountability worldwide, there is little evidence that this has had a significant aggregate impact on reducing corruption overall” (world bank 2007, 40). to tackle the more deep-rooted institutional and political problems that underpin grand corruption and political corruption, the strategy pinned great hopes on “the key role of country-level reformers in moving forward the governance reform agenda” (world bank 2007, 47). while it is certainly true that leadership by countrylevel reformers can be very important, the bank’s strategy pays little attention to factors that might generate or strengthen the motivation those reformers need. several writers have noted the lack of incentives for rulers to control corruption, as well as the hazards faced by champions of reform. the economist robert neild observes that the institutions required to keep corruption in check are well known, but poses the question “what has sometimes given rulers the will and the ability to introduce these institutions which, in their very nature, constrain the degree to which they, the rulers, can pursue power and wealth?” (nield 2002, 201). in his assessment of the task faced by countrylevel reformers in the most corrupt countries, the economist paul collier gives a stark account of the challenge they face (collier 2007, 180, 192): within the societies of the bottom billion there is an intense struggle between brave people who are trying to achieve change and powerful groups who oppose them. the politics of the bottom billion is not the bland and sedate process of the rich democracies but rather a dangerous contest between moral extremes… although the reformers have truth on their side, truth is just another special interest, and not a particularly powerful one. the villains willing to lie in order to defeat change have an advantage over those constrained by honesty. reformers do not have it easy. christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(2), winter 2020 allaby, protestant christianity and control of corruption, past and present 85 to be fair to the bank, some of their more recent statements have been more forthcoming about the dangers inherent in fighting corruption, and the moral nature of the task. for example, in his speech at a 2016 anti-corruption summit in london, bank president jim yong kim said: while information is becoming more accessible, it is troubling that the space for citizens and non-state organizations to voice their objections is often diminishing. the death of activists, such as berta caceres, nelson garcia and so many others in honduras, has had a chilling effect on accountability. we must do all we can to protect the defenders of transparency … we will rededicate ourselves to fighting the cancer of corruption and move ahead with urgency to stop those who are stealing from the poor. this is both our moral duty and one of the best possible strategies for economic development (kim 2016). protestant christianity has motivated individuals to control corruption in the past it is thus of great importance to discover what it is that motivates people to live with integrity in public office and to establish a civil society that protects against corruption. historically, there is evidence that christianity, particularly protestant christianity, has played an important role in controlling corruption. consider the work by two contemporary social scientists, francis fukuyama and robert woodberry. fukuyama provides a narrative account of the top-down reforming role of political leaders motived by their christian faith. woodberry uses the power of statistical analysis to show that protestant missionaries have played a major role globally in improving control of corruption through strengthening civil society. both these scholars emphasize the role of protestants, rather than roman catholic or orthodox christians, and this emphasis is consistent with statistical evidence that, after adjusting for other factors, countries with a protestant majority tend to do slightly better at controlling corruption (treisman 2000). proposed explanations for this finding range from the religious, in which protestants are characterized as people who emphasize personal responsibility for avoiding sin, to the cultural, according to which protestant societies are more likely to discover and punish abuses by government officials because dissent is the norm in the religious sphere. attempts to find statistical support from international datasets for any of the proposed explanations have so far not proved successful (ko & moon 2014), but the fact remains that there is a small, but significant, relationship between protestantism and control of corruption. reform from the top down fukuyama seeks to explain why the state performs better in germany, britain, and america than in greece or italy. of the former countries, he writes: in each of these countries, individual leaders of reform movements were motivated by personal religiosity. they included the great elector and frederick william 1 of prussia, whose calvinism induced them to import coreligionists from abroad and gave them a disciplinary vision of an austere and moral society led by an upright state … from well before the english civil war, puritanism was an important driver of reform in england, and it continued to shape the behavior of the new middle classes in the nineteenth century. this was true as well of the upper-crust progressive era reformers in late-nineteenth century america, who did not think merely that political bosses and patronage politics got in the way of making money. they were morally outraged that public offices were being perverted for private ends … individual leaders like gifford pinchot were driven by a kind of protestant religiosity that has largely disappeared from contemporary american public life (fukuyama 2014, 206). the protestant king frederick william 1 of prussia (1688-1740) is remembered for transforming prussia from a second-rate power into an efficient and prosperous state, through reforms that included dissolving his extravagant court, freeing all serfs and abolishing hereditary leases, encouraging industry and manufacture, and instituting compulsory primary education (britannica library 2019). gifford pinchot (1865-1946) was a conservationist and chief forester of the united states. he is remembered as part of a generational cohort that one historian has called “ministers of reform,” who eschewed the protestant ministry but invoked protestant values to push for social reform. his concern to use forests and rivers for “the greatest good for the greatest number for the longest time” thrust him into battles against monopolistic corporate abusers of the land and cast him as a crusader for the public good (naylor 2005). the so-called clapham evangelicals exemplify the influence of puritanism in nineteenth century england. the historian herbert schlossberg described their activities in these terms: apart from the issue of slavery, their most consistent legislative activity was directed at economic and administrative issues. they were christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(2), winter 2020 allaby, protestant christianity and control of corruption, past and present 86 invariably proponents of reforms that would make the government more honest and efficient, and they and their allies made significant contributions in reforming the navy, chancery law, the east india company, and abuses such as bribery and purchase of governmental offices. they found offensive the corruption that was endemic in the government and had long been tolerated, and they did what they could to bring the problem to the forefront of debate (schlossberg 2000, 253). these individuals and groups illustrate some of the diverse ways in which christians occupying leadership positions within the state have been motivated by their faith to reform the state and control corruption. reform from the bottom up the sociologist robert woodberry analyzed a large global dataset to generate evidence that the christianity practiced by “conversionary protestant” missionaries over the past 200 years fostered democracy, rule of law, and control of corruption through their efforts to enable people to read the bible in their own language and to facilitate lay religious involvement: as conversionary protestants tried to spread their faith, they catalyzed mass education, mass printing, and civil society—hampering elite attempts to monopolize these resources ... these resource transfers to non-elites helped alter the class structure, fostered the rise of political parties and nonviolent political movements, and facilitated broader political participation. non-state-supported protestant denominations historically suffered from discrimination and persecution by governments and state churches. thus, they fought for religious liberty and against state interference in civil society. finally, nonstate missionaries moderated colonial abuses, particularly when abuses undermined conversions and in british colonies (where conversionary protestants had greater influence). to reach their religious goals, nonstate missionaries punished abusive colonial officials and counterbalanced white settlers … when missionaries were financially independent of the state, of slave owners, and of white settlers, missionaries undermined these elite co-religionists in ways that fostered democracy (woodberry 2012, 244). woodberry tested these arguments using a wide array of statistical data and found that the most powerful predictor of a country’s mean democracy scores, and of indicators of rule of law and control of corruption, during the period 1950–94 was the number of protestant missionaries per 10,000 population in 1923. he concluded that max weber was correct in his intuitions about the importance of religious beliefs and institutions: “what we consider modernity was not the inevitable result of economic development, urbanization, industrialization, secularization, or the enlightenment, but a far more contingent process profoundly shaped by activist religion” (woodberry 2012, 270). protestant christianity is motivating some individuals to control corruption in the present moving from the past to the present, this section briefly describes two examples of ways in which protestant christians are contributing to controlling corruption today: a top-down approach in the philippines, pursued by the fellowship of christians in government (focig), and a bottom-up approach in honduras, adopted by the association for a more just society (ajs). these two organizations warrant attention because they have been established for a relatively long period, and because there is some evidence that they have made an impact on a national scale. a top-down approach in the philippines since 1989 focig has been pursuing a christian faith-based approach to countering corruption in the philippines. although they initially pursued a bottomup approach that involved public education and support for legal cases, in 2005 they shifted to a topdown strategy, seeking reform from within the state itself. recognizing the huge influence of the military in the philippines, they began there. their founder, niels riconalla, described their approach as follows: if you want to solve a lot of problems in this country, notably corruption, then we as christians in the government should play a key role. we’re on the inside and we can do something about it. in 2005 the secretary of national defense approved our proposal to conduct moral values training for the top brass of the armed forces of the philippines. we have seen amazing results in the army (allaby 2013, 74-5). christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(2), winter 2020 allaby, protestant christianity and control of corruption, past and present 87 generals who have been influenced by conversion to christ describe changes in their behavior that include refusing large kickbacks on high-value contracts for military hardware, and adopting a zero-tolerance approach to extra-judicial killings. probably the most dramatic impact of this approach came during the philippines presidential election in 2010. the army chief at that time, general bangit, had been converted from nominal catholicism to active christian faith in 2005 through attending focig moral values training seminars. in 2010, subversive political forces offered him the opportunity to lead a military junta, provided he would promise to lead a coup in the event of victory by the reform candidate benigno aquino. but general bangit maintained that his duty as a christian was to protect the philippine constitution, so he refused the offer to lead a military junta. instead, he facilitated a free and fair election by ordering the army to assist in the distribution of electronic voting machines, and benigno aquino was duly elected. although the incoming president aquino decided to replace general bangit as army chief, his decision to support a free and fair election had a continuing impact. according to the asian development bank (2016, 3), aquino’s administration made the fight against corruption one of its major thrusts, pursuing major corruption cases and creating more trust in the functioning of the state. these efforts resulted in higher tax collection, increasing investment, and stable economic growth. it is difficult to measure changes in corruption over time, but transparency international’s cpi score is a widely used measure of the perceived extent of corruption. during aquino’s time as president, the philippines cpi ranking among countries in the asia pacific region improved from 25th out of 33 in 2010, to 11th out of 27 countries in 2014, before falling back to 18th out of 30 countries by the end of his term in 2016 (transparency international 2019b). such dramatic changes in any country’s cpi ranking are rarely seen over such a short period of time. limitations of focig’s approach to reform include the relatively high rate of turnover among the philippine generals, who typically spend only a few years in the post before facing compulsory retirement at age 56, and the risk that a reform-minded president will be succeeded by one who lacks such goals. since rodrigo duterte was elected president in 2016, the philippines cpi ranking has fallen to 22nd out of 31 countries in the asia pacific region (transparency international 2019b). turnover of senior personnel causes similar problems in other government agencies with which focig has worked, such as the philippine national police, the bureau of internal revenue, and the bureau of customs. to help address this limitation, in 2019 focig entered a partnership with trident integrity, a malaysiabased consultancy that helps governments develop comprehensive national integrity programs, which typically include the design and installation of software that makes it much easier to detect theft or fraud from public accounts. at the time of writing it is too early to say whether this combination of the personal approach (encouraging christian leaders to apply their faith to the challenge of corruption) with technical innovation will succeed in institutionalizing better control of corruption, so that if reform-minded leaders are replaced by corrupt officials it will be harder for them to revert to corrupt practices. a bottom-up approach in honduras moving from a top-down to a bottom-up approach to controlling corruption, the honduran organization ajs was founded in 1998 by a group of four hondurans and a north american couple working in honduras. their mission statement is: ‘we strive to be brave christians, dedicated to doing justice in honduras and to inspiring others around the world to seek justice in their own contexts’ (association for a more just society 2019a). their anti-corruption work encompasses land rights, investigative journalism, reform of education and public health services, a corruption hotline, and legal assistance. their successful track record in these areas is evidenced by the decision of transparency international (a non-religious organization) to designate ajs as its national chapter in honduras. an important part of ajs strategy involves empowering local citizens to know their rights and to hold their local governments, including their schools, accountable. they train people in communities on their civil rights and the role they can play as monitors of educational practice in their local schools. these empowered citizens initially focused on monitoring the presence of teachers and principals in the schools. in recent years, however, in response to student weakness on standardized test scores, they have started training local teams of monitors to assess the quality of education (hernandez et al. 2019, 26). ajs efforts in education reform have produced particularly impressive results: ajs helped discover how corruption was preventing honduran children from getting the education they deserve. although 200 days of class are required by law, children in honduras met for school an average of only 125 days per year, significantly preventing their opportunities for learning. additionally, 26% of teachers that were on the payroll weren’t in the classroom. because of corruption and poor management, honduras was christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(2), winter 2020 allaby, protestant christianity and control of corruption, past and present 88 spending more per capita on education than any other latin american country, but their test results were the lowest in latin america. by making these reports public and working with the ministry of education, we helped open up an opportunity for education reform: days in class have increased to over 200 on average, and teachers missing from classrooms have dropped from 26% to 1%. we continue to push for a quality education so that honduras’ children have opportunities for a bright future (association for a more just society 2019b). although the relationship between these reforms in the education sector and corruption as a whole needs further exploration, it is noteworthy that the education reforms coincided with a modest improvement in honduras’ cpi ranking, from 25th out of 28 countries in the americas in 2010, to 19th out of 26 countries in 2015 (transparency international 2019b). there are, however, serious weaknesses in the wider protestant response to corruption despite the evidence that protestant christianity has helped to control corruption in the past, and is inspiring some protestants to fight corruption today, christian scholar roberto laver noted that, on the whole, corruption is receiving far more attention from secular organizations than religious ones (2010); and recent research suggests that protestants today are not seen as particularly effective in opposing corruption (allaby 2013). what might account for the lackluster contemporary protestant response to corruption? this important question can usefully be explored from three different perspectives: the economic strength of protestants; whether they form a majority or minority in society; and their guiding theology. economic strength as noted above, taking a stand against corruption is often costly. although almost everyone is better off when corruption is controlled, apart from a few elites who lose out financially, efforts to fight corruption are hindered by a “prime mover” problem: anyone who starts to fight against corruption is likely to face personal losses. so potential reformers may be more likely to act if they start out with sufficient economic strength to be able to accommodate such losses. that was the situation of all the top-down reformers described in this article and also, but less obviously, for the bottom-up “conversionary protestant” missionaries described by woodberry, and for ajs in honduras. in the nineteenthand early twentieth-centuries, protestant missionary organizations dwarfed most commercial companies, and they were institutionally and financially independent of the state; this gave them an ability and willingness to challenge the state when it abused its power (woodberry 2011). in a similar way, ajs receives substantial support from international donors, which gives them a strong economic base from which to campaign against corruption. this contrasts with the relative poverty of many christians and churches in the global south today. indeed, christian leaders report poverty and fear of poverty as among the most significant factors that lead christians and churches to act in corrupt ways themselves (allaby 2013, 182). protestants as a majority or minority in society an important factor that can influence the ways in which protestants interact with corruption is whether they constitute a majority or a minority in society. a century ago, the german protestant theologian ernst troeltsch used the terms “church” and “sect” to describe these two different circumstances: the church is an institution which is able to receive the masses, and to adjust itself to the world, because, to a certain extent, it can afford to ignore the need for subjective holiness for the sake of the objective treasures of grace and of redemption. the sect is a voluntary society, composed of strict and definite christian believers bound to each other by the fact that all have experienced “the new birth.” these “believers” live apart from the world, are limited to small groups, emphasize the law instead of grace, and in varying degrees within their own circle set up the christian order. whenever a particular christian denomination or church forms the majority in society, they are at risk of accepting prevailing social norms that may be contrary to justice and integrity, despite the strong emphasis throughout the bible on upholding justice and living with integrity (king 2018). my own research finds that protestants in two countries where they represent a majority of the population (kenya and zambia) correspond to troeltsch’s “church” type: they are seen as no less corrupt than anyone else, having lost their moral authority, particularly through being compromised through co-option by the state. the same research shows quite different findings for protestants in two mainly catholic countries (the philippines and peru). they correspond instead to troeltsch’s “sect” type: although they have a reputation for honest christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(2), winter 2020 allaby, protestant christianity and control of corruption, past and present 89 behavior, they are seen as too detached from society to have much impact on corruption (allaby 2013, 189). most of the protestant reformers described in this article correspond to the “sect” type: the conversionary protestant missionaries were “strict and definite christian believers” who volunteered to join a missionary society. additionally, the leaders of focig and ajs are protestants operating in catholic countries, and as minority groups they can be characterized as “strict and definite christian believers.” where focig and ajs differ from many “sect” types is that their theology encourages engagement with social problems, including the challenge of corruption. theology that brings us to the third major influence on the relationship between protestantism and control of corruption: theology. although martin luther’s program of reformation gave birth to protestantism and arguably contributed to modern democracy, his dualistic doctrine of the “two kingdoms,” in which the kingdom of god deals with that which is spiritual and inward, while the worldly kingdom has authority over that which is bodily and outward, has been associated with passivity in the face of abuses of power, including corruption (phillips 2012, 62). the continuing widespread influence of this dualism was acknowledged in the final statement from the 2010 global meeting of the lausanne movement in cape town: the falsehood of a ‘sacred-secular divide’ has permeated the church’s thinking and action. this divide tells us that religious activity belongs to god, whereas other activity does not … we name this secular-sacred divide as a major obstacle to the mobilization of all god’s people in the mission of god (lausanne movement 2010, 28). this framing of christianity as a spiritual or otherworldly religion has continued despite official statements from several international protestant bodies, from the 1970’s onwards, that have attempted to correct it. in 1974 the international conference on world evangelization (lausanne movement 1974) affirmed that (evangelism and socio-political) involvement are both part of our christian duty. for both are necessary expressions of our doctrines of god and man, our love for our neighbor and our obedience to jesus christ. in 1983 the world evangelical fellowship made this declaration in their wheaton ’83 statement (lausanne movement 1983): evil is not only in the human heart but also in social structures … the mission of the church includes both the proclamation of the gospel and its demonstration. we must therefore evangelize, respond to immediate human needs, and press for social transformation. in 2001 the micah network produced a declaration that articulated a more integrated understanding of the relationship between evangelism and social involvement for evangelical protestants: it is not simply that evangelism and social involvement are to be done alongside each other. rather, in integral mission our proclamation has social consequences as we call people to love and repentance in all areas of life. and our social involvement has evangelistic consequences as we bear witness to the transforming grace of jesus christ. although a growing number of protestants have embraced this kind of theology, which sees god as concerned with matters of earthly justice, they remain a minority among protestants in many countries, which constitutes a major obstacle to their constructive engagement in the fight against corruption. for example, one filipino protestant campaigner for social justice reported this frustrating experience: there’s only a minority of christians in this country who would like to engage in good politics or good governance, who believe that part of their christianity is a call to be involved in society. the belief that ‘politics is evil, christians should not be involved in that, christians should just pray about all this evil’ that is a huge problem amongst evangelicals in the country. young people are being taught the theology of ‘you can grow as a christian and not care about the world. god doesn’t care whether you’re helping the needy people around you; as long as you’re not hurting other people, as long as you’re doing bible study and praying, that is alright’ ... you need a pastor who’s going to tell the congregation: ‘when you do not care about the poor around you and when you don’t care about society, you’re actually committing sin’. but no pastor would say that. it’s very difficult to break that theology (allaby 2013, 97). a second, and relatively novel, theological impediment to protestants as they try to fight corruption is the so-called “prosperity gospel.” in this theology, selected “proof-texts” from the bible are interpreted to christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(2), winter 2020 allaby, protestant christianity and control of corruption, past and present 90 mean that god wills all believers to prosper in this life, and that he will bring this about by rewarding them financially in proportion to the amount they give away, particularly to the pastor (asamoah-gyadu 2004). this kind of theology not only distracts christians from addressing the true causes of poverty, which include corruption, but also prevents the church being seen as a credible critic of corruption. even when christians adopt a theology that can potentially equip them to fight corruption, careful attention is needed to the way that theology is used in the formation of the attitudes and behavior of christians. as heather marquette (2010, 31), professor of development politics at the university of birmingham, has written: there is little evidence to suggest that religion, in terms of religious content, impacts upon individuals’ attitudes towards public morality. membership of a religious community that rejects behaviour seen as being ‘corrupt’ seems more likely to have an impact, but a lot depends upon the way in which members of the community are encouraged (or discouraged) to engage in principled reasoning. so, although the bible can be a rich resource for fighting corruption, its potential can only be realized when christian leaders and teachers derive sound theology from it, and use that theology to help christians interpret and apply its teachings to the challenges of corruption in their own context. christians have a major role to play in the fight against corruption it follows from the analysis in the preceding sections that protestants have a major role to play in the fight against corruption, but will only fulfil this godgiven mandate if certain conditions are fulfilled. first, individuals with economic resources need to take the lead as prime movers, recognizing that they are better placed than most to deal with the personal costs that reformers are likely to face. as jesus said, “from everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded” (luke 12:48). christian donor organizations need to ask whether their funding allocations reflect the importance of controlling corruption for achieving development goals, and the god-given mandate of the church to be salt and light in society. it is estimated that protestants in europe and north america donated more than us$120 billion to christian causes in 2015 (johnson, zurlo and hickman 2015). formal data are not available, but personal experience leads me to believe that only an extremely small proportion of that giving is focused on fighting corruption. even a small increase in the proportion of those funds allocated to fighting corruption could make a big difference. second, protestants need to take stock of their status in relation to corruption in society. do they match the “church” type, so that they are indistinguishable from others in terms of corruption? if so, no progress will be possible without serious reflection and internal reform. or do they match the “sect” type and, if so, are they using their reputation for integrity to be salt and light in society? finally, we need to strengthen and promote theologies that reflect god’s concern for justice in the here and now, as well as educate protestants away from “dualism” and “prosperity theology.” theology needs to be taught in ways that lead the faithful to apply the bible’s teachings to the challenges of corruption in their own contexts. one initiative that seeks to promote all these things is the faith and public integrity network (https://fpinetwork.wordpress.com/). this network convenes regular webinars and a biennial global summit of christian anti-corruption activists, and publishes country profiles, case profiles of christian anticorruption initiatives, and other anti-corruption resources. it welcomes new members who are seeking to develop a christian faith-based approach to fighting corruption. if reading this article inspires you to join forces with other christians who are actively engaged in fighting corruption, please visit the website and introduce yourself. references allaby, martin. 2013. inequality, corruption and the church: challenges and opportunities in the global church. oxford, regnum books. asamoah-gyadu, j.k. 2004. african charismatics: current developments within independent indigenous pentecostalism in ghana. leiden: brill. asian development bank. 2016. “evaluating and monitoring anti-corruption reforms and programs: reports on a high-level panel discussion and workshop.” https://www.adb.org/sites/default/files/publication/ 217396/evaluating-monitoring-anticorruption.pdf association for a more just society. 2019a. “who we are.” https://www.ajs-us.org/who-we-are association for a more just society. 2019b. “anticorruption.” https://www.ajs-us.org/what-we-do/anti-corruption https://www.adb.org/sites/default/files/publication/217396/evaluating-monitoring-anticorruption.pdf https://www.adb.org/sites/default/files/publication/217396/evaluating-monitoring-anticorruption.pdf https://www.ajs-us.org/what-we-do/anti-corruption christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(2), winter 2020 allaby, protestant christianity and control of corruption, past and present 91 britannica library. 2019. “frederick william i.” http://library.eb.co.uk/levels/adult/article/frederic k-william-i/35261 collier, paul. 2007. the bottom billion: why the poorest countries are failing and what can be done about it. oxford: oxford university press. fukuyama, francis. 2014. political order and political decay. london: profile books. haugen, gary a. and boutros, victor. 2014. the locust effect: why the end of poverty requires the end of violence. oxford: oxford university press. hernandez, carlos, hoksbergen, roland, parsons, katerina, and kurt ver beek. 2019. “for a government that works: asj’s theory of change, with a case study of their efforts in education.” christian relief, development, and advocacy 1:1, 15-30. johnson, todd m., gina a. zurlo & albert w. hickman. 2015. “embezzlement in the global christian community.” the review of faith & international affairs, 13:2, 74-84. kim, jim yong. 2016. “tackling corruption to create a more just and prosperous world”. speech to the anti-corruption summit 2016 london, united kingdom. https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/speech/2016/05/1 2/remarks-by-world-bank-group-president-jimyong-kim-at-anti-corruption-summit-2016 king, richard. 2018. confronting corruption: letting the bible speak. oxford, regnum books. ko, kilkon & seong-gin moon. 2014. “the relationship between religion and corruption: are the proposed causal links empirically valid?” international review of public administration 19:1, 44-62. lausanne movement. 1974. “the lausanne covenant.” https://www.lausanne.org/content/covenant/lausan ne-covenant#cov lausanne movement. 1983. “transformation: the church in response to human need.” https://www.lausanne.org/content/statement/transform ation-the-church-in-response-to-human-need lausanne movement. 2010. “the cape town commitment.” https://www.lausanne.org/content/ctc/ctcommitme nt#capetown laver, roberto. 2010: “’good news’ in the fight against corruption.” review of faith and international affairs 8(4):49-57. laver, roberto. 2018. deliver us from evil: corruption and the challenge to the christian faith and church. oxford: regnum books. marquette, heather. 2010. “corruption, religion and moral development.” working paper. university of birmingham, birmingham, uk. http://epapers.bham.ac.uk/1649 micah network. 2001. “the micah declaration on integral mission.” https://www.micahnetwork.org/integral-mission monbiot, george. 2015. “let’s not fool ourselves. we may not bribe, but corruption is rife in britain.” the guardian, march 18, 2015. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/201 5/mar/18/corruption-rife-britain naylor, keith d. 2005. “pinchot, gifford (1865– 1946).” in encyclopedia of religion and nature. london & new york: continuum. neild, robert. 2002. public corruption: the dark side of social evolution. london: anthem press. phillips, elizabeth. 2012. political theology: a guide for the perplexed. edinburgh: t & t clark international. schlossberg, herbert. 2000. the silent revolution and the making of victorian england. ohio: ohio state university press. transparency international. 2019a. “how do you define corruption?” https://www.transparency.org/what-iscorruption#define transparency international. 2019b. “corruption perceptions index: overview.” https://www.transparency.org/research/cpi/overview treisman, daniel. 2000. “the causes of corruption: a cross-national study” journal of public economics 76/3:399-457. troeltsch, ernst. 1912. the social teaching of the christian churches. translated by olive wyon 1931 london: allen & unwin. wolfensohn, james. 1996. “people and development.” http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/13580146 7993234363/pdf/people-and-developmentannual-meetings-address-by-james-dwolfensohn-president.pdf woodberry, robert. 2011. “religion and the spread of human capital and political institutions: christian missions as a quasi-natural experiment.” in the oxford handbook of the economics of religion, edited by rachel m. mccleary. oxford: oxford university press. woodberry, robert. 2012. “the missionary roots of liberal democracy.” american political science review 106(2):244-74. world bank. 2007. “strengthening world bank group engagement on governance and anticorruption.” http://www1.worldbank.org/publicsector/anticorrupt/c orecourse2007/gacmaster.pdf world bank. 2018. “combating corruption.” http://library.eb.co.uk/levels/adult/article/frederick-william-i/35261 http://library.eb.co.uk/levels/adult/article/frederick-william-i/35261 https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/speech/2016/05/12/remarks-by-world-bank-group-president-jim-yong-kim-at-anti-corruption-summit-2016 https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/speech/2016/05/12/remarks-by-world-bank-group-president-jim-yong-kim-at-anti-corruption-summit-2016 https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/speech/2016/05/12/remarks-by-world-bank-group-president-jim-yong-kim-at-anti-corruption-summit-2016 https://www.lausanne.org/content/covenant/lausanne-covenant#cov https://www.lausanne.org/content/covenant/lausanne-covenant#cov https://www.lausanne.org/content/statement/transformation-the-church-in-response-to-human-need https://www.lausanne.org/content/statement/transformation-the-church-in-response-to-human-need https://www.lausanne.org/content/ctc/ctcommitment#capetown https://www.lausanne.org/content/ctc/ctcommitment#capetown http://epapers.bham.ac.uk/1649 https://www.micahnetwork.org/integral-mission https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/18/corruption-rife-britain https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/18/corruption-rife-britain https://www.transparency.org/what-is-corruption#define https://www.transparency.org/what-is-corruption#define https://www.transparency.org/research/cpi/overview http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/135801467993234363/pdf/people-and-development-annual-meetings-address-by-james-d-wolfensohn-president.pdf http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/135801467993234363/pdf/people-and-development-annual-meetings-address-by-james-d-wolfensohn-president.pdf http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/135801467993234363/pdf/people-and-development-annual-meetings-address-by-james-d-wolfensohn-president.pdf http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/135801467993234363/pdf/people-and-development-annual-meetings-address-by-james-d-wolfensohn-president.pdf http://www1.worldbank.org/publicsector/anticorrupt/corecourse2007/gacmaster.pdf http://www1.worldbank.org/publicsector/anticorrupt/corecourse2007/gacmaster.pdf christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(2), winter 2020 allaby, protestant christianity and control of corruption, past and present 92 https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/governance/brief/ anti-corruption martin allaby chairs the steering committee of the faith and public integrity network. a doctor and former missionary, he is now consultant advisor at the national institute for health and care excellence in england. he holds a phd from the oxford centre for mission studies. author email: mallaby@ocms.ac.uk https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/governance/brief/anti-corruption https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/governance/brief/anti-corruption mailto:mallaby@ocms.ac.uk christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 john, book review 100 book review undivided witness: jesus followers, community development, and least reached communities by greenlee, david, mark galpin, and paul bendor-samuel, eds. reviewed by t.s. john oxford: regnum books, 2020. $13.68 in undivided witness, editors david greenlee, mark galpin, and paul bendor-samuel, along with a seasoned group of nine contributors, grapple with the challenge of combining church planting with development among “least reached peoples.” their purpose is to assess the potential synergy between christian development and a growing indigenous church planting phenomenon labeled by the editors as “vibrant communities of jesus followers” (vcfj). the structure of the book is the presentation and evaluation of ten principles drawn from the rich experience of the contributors. the editors hope the book will “help dissolve the perceived tension between [church planting and community development] (12)”. because few if any published scholarly works have examined the intersection of christian community development, least reached peoples, and vcfjs, undivided witness is a pioneering work in this space. indeed, the ten principles are helpful in guiding the application of the synergies discovered in least-reached contexts. it is also true that some of the contributors’ conclusions about handling the perceived tensions between the two approaches are understandably debatable and, in my view, show a bias towards achieving community development outcomes at the expense of spiritual/vcfj outcomes, without fully exploring the costs entailed in doing so. given the controversies surrounding such topics, the book’s value should not be judged by its ability to reach uncontested conclusions. rather, its importance is derived from the helpful conversation it initiates within an unexplored space. in the spirit of this stated outcome, i take the liberty to add the voices of laura dudley jenkins and dena freeman for consideration. the book proceeds by providing a robust exploration of its ten guiding principles. the principles were created by operation mobilization (om) to ensure that their own development practices aligned well with their other goal of achieving vcfj outcomes among least reached peoples. it is important to note these principles are not the brainchild of an individual, but emerged instead from extensive discussions with om development practitioners and partners, missiologists (including bryant myers), and development-savvy faculty from both oxford centre for missions studies and all nations christian college. the principles were then published as a scholarly article in the journal transformation (greenlee, et al. 2020), and are presented in this book in a more robust form. while the editors have confidence in the universality of the ten principles, they also see them as “under development” and hope they will stimulate further discussion and insights from christian community development practitioners and missiologists. the first four principles, “understanding the kingdom of god is fundamental,” “understanding how people enter the kingdom of god shapes how we do ministry,” “the gospel impacts whole peoples and people’s whole contexts,” and “a broad vision of glorifying christ” are an important reminder of current thinking on the theology of development from an evangelical perspective. the contributors argue that helping the poor experience the socio-economic christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 john, book review 101 implications of god’s kingdom is a biblical form of witness that points to the king and can lead to the emergence of vcfjs. the contributors also surface challenges that can impede the emergence of vcfjs. they encourage practitioners to believe god is working through their development initiatives despite the lack of spiritual fruit. in my view the contributors in this section should have been a bit more circumspect about the absence of spiritual fruit and vcfj outcomes in light of their strong views on the importance of vcfjs in development. if one accepts bryant myers’ claim that “it is impossible to imagine a transforming community without a transforming church in its midst” (2011, 177), which is echoed by mark galpin in principle 7, then the lack of spiritual/vcfj fruit should be deeply disturbing to christian development practitioners. it would certainly disturb church planting movement proponents, and their voices on these issues would provide some helpful balance. it is for this reason holly steward’s chapter on “principle 5: prayer, spiritual warfare, and change” is so important. steward’s engagement of spiritual warfare is often ignored by christian development practitioners from the west, but lies at the roots of spiritual/vcfj growth. not only do her stories and lessons reflect the perspective of grassroots christian development and church planting practitioners i have encountered in south asia, they also reflect the growing movement of pentecostals transforming traditional societies in ways that, according to dena freeman (2012), rival if not exceed the work of development organizations, christian and secular alike. bryant myers is right that western-influenced christian development theorists must take the transformative impact of pentecostal efforts much more seriously (myers 2015). consequently, the chapter is a welcome and relevant addition to the literature. robert’s sluka’s chapter on “principle 6: caring for creation as worship, witness and obedience” is another important contribution, partly because he brings much needed attention to the issue of creation care, but also because he helps readers understand how it can be applied at the intersection of community development, least reached peoples, and vcfjs. editor mark galpin takes on “principle 7: a vision for renewal and vibrant communities of jesus followers.” like myers, galpin argues that community transformation can only happen if the strategy incorporates “a vision for vibrant communities of jesus followers (vcfj) and the renewal of the whole person and community” (97). ultimately, the book’s thesis rests entirely on galpin’s argument and he does a commendable job defending his position. still, his analysis of the practical outworking of this vision and his concerns about proselytism (discussed in greater detail in the epilogue of section one), would benefit greatly from analyses like those of laura dudley jenkins’ study of dalit mass conversions in india (2019). her analysis encourages those working in the international christian development sector to reconsider their enlightenmentinfluenced conceptions of conversion among marginalized people groups, to question their relationship with state and international actors who use these conceptions to reinforce marginalizing systems, and to stimulate fresh, maybe even prophetic perspective on how christian development initiatives can support vcfjs to become a grass-roots force for systemic change. in “principle 8: community development workers are committed to professional excellence,” scott breslin unpacks this important principle through an analysis of seven stakeholders: the affected people, host governments, donors, the international development sector, the development organization, the development worker him/herself, and god. while the analysis is helpful in addressing and resolving faithbased challenges (and opportunities) faced by the practitioner in the development “workplace,” breslin leaves out the church as a stakeholder (local, regional, or otherwise) and does not integrate vcfj as a defining outcome that influences his measure of professional excellence. in “principle 9: shared principles of excellence,” andrea waldorf provides an insightful comparison between the defining principles of community development and principles outlined by david garrison in his seminal analysis of vcfj movements among least reached people, “church planting movements” (cpms). while there are significant overlaps between cpms and christian community development principles, there are also some key differences that waldorf does not address. the chapter nevertheless offers a helpful bridge between cpm proponents and proponents of christian community development that will prove valuable for ongoing discussion between the two. in the final chapter, “principle 10: the least reached are so for a reason,” rosemary hack draws from her own experience to help readers understand why the “least reached” are such. geographic, linguistic, political, and climate (i would add cultural and infrastructural) barriers have made access to least reached peoples anything but easy both for the church and even, in some instance, the rest of the international community. hack’s overview reminds readers that cross-cultural missions remain relevant and vital to the spread of christ-centered human flourishing. her challenge to the church to go where few have ventured to tread shows that the world still needs risk-taking “sodalities” of the church (to use ralph winter’s terms) to bring christ’s transforming power to the least reached. christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 john, book review 102 finally, paul bendor-samuel wraps up the book with a call to “listen closely” to the communities served and to what god is doing among them, to “see clearly” to find and respond to the least reached, and “ask humbly” how god might have readers respond to their needs. throughout the book, undivided witness provides important recommendations and food for thought within a space that is largely unexplored. though there are times the conflict between community development and church planting leans in favor of development, undivided witness makes an important contribution to this important debate. in addition to providing helpful principles and addressing important issues, the book may kick-start further discussion on the most biblically sound strategies for integrating christian community development with church planting efforts among least reached peoples. practitioners in both camps have much to learn from each other. references freeman, dena. 2012. pentecostalism and development: churches, ngo’s and social change in africa. non-governmental public action series. new york: palgrave macmillan. greenlee, david, mark galpin, andrea christel, and cameron willett. 2020. “exploring the intersection of community development, the least reached and emerging, vibrant churches.” transformation 37(2): 105–118. jenkins, laura dudley. 2019. religious freedom and mass conversion in india: pennsylvania studies in human rights. philadelphia: u penn press. myers, bryant. 2011. walking with the poor: principles and practices of transformational development. revised. maryknoll: orbis books. _______. 2015. “progressive pentecostalism, development, and christian development ngos: a challenge and an opportunity.” international journal of missionary research 39(3): 115–120. ts john is founder/ceo of south asia access and lived in south asia for 18 years. he holds an ma in intercultural studies from wheaton, an mba from hope international university, and is currently a doctoral student at asbury theological seminary. author email: tsjohn@southasiaaccess.org about:blank christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(2), winter 2023 leffel, book review 75 book review participating in abundant life: holistic salvation for a secular age by mark r. teasdale reviewed by gregory p. leffel 2022. downers grove, il: ivp academic. $24.00 mark teasdale is professor of evangelism at garrett-evangelical theological seminary, united methodist clergy, and church consultant. he worries that clergy, church members, christian activists, development workers, and even his seminary students are entirely tongue-tied when trying to explain the content of their salvation and their motivation for social mission in public life. too often, he notes, they become timid, downplaying personal faith and evangelism in their social activism to get along in pluralistic public spaces (or we might ask, to attract funding?). or else withdrawing from social involvement in fear that secular values will confuse their evangelistic mission. teasdale writes to clear the air about what salvation means in and for the world and the common good. he wants to help “christians better articulate their beliefs ... [and to equip] christians to live out their salvation in the world as it is, learning how they can maneuver in a secular culture without feeling embattled or as if they must trade off the fullness of their faith to be effective” (27). effective, that is, in evangelistic witness to their faith as well as effective in their public-facing actions to support humanitarian aid, development programs, and community organizing. drawing from the good shepherd—“i came that they may have life, and have it abundantly,”—teasdale defines salvation as “abundant life.” a fulness to be experienced by participating in god’s life-giving abundance now as well as in eternity. salvation’s abundant life is much more present-tense, earthly, wholesome, lively, and social than christians often conceive it. even now, salvation breaks into the world’s life as people of good will work for peace, justice, and human fulfillment. people of faith naturally join them while also pointing to the source of abundance in god’s mission of salvation. teasdale is not alone in this perspective. for example, the world council of churches commission on world mission and evangelism’s 2013 document together towards life: mission in changing landscapes (keum 2013) makes much the same point about pursuing abundant life. while refreshing, teasdale’s argument is not new. his remarkable innovation is to bring this pursuit down to earth by measuring it; that is, by defining specific quantifiable criteria christians may use to measure our progress toward bringing forth abundance in public life. these metrics are grouped around three concepts: standard of living, quality of life, and eternal life, measures, he argues, that express the common human desire to flourish and that are shared in one way or another by all people of good will. each of the three concepts gets chapter-length treatment, offering theological and sociological arguments to justify them, and then—here is the breakthrough—defining them quantitatively using commonly accepted public criteria. these include the un’s human development index and sustainable development goals, the global happiness and well-being policy report, and the oecd’s better life index, among other measures. by drawing upon objective measures developed through well-vetted social science research and that represent broad consensus nationally and internationally, teasdale has appropriated a common language—i.e., everybody can agree on improving people’s standard of living and quality of life—to get christians, persons of other faiths or no faith, civil christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(2), winter 2023 leffel, book review 76 society actors, even politicians on the same page to work for the common good. and to do it efficiently and effectively by providing criteria to set mutually-agreedupon, measurable goals, and then to measure progress in attaining them. on this common ground religious and secular groups can build a kind of missional ecumenism based on shared vision and values, a space where christians can demonstrate their faith and be understood, even appreciated, as they try to bring eternal life to bear abundantly on the present. teasdale writes most directly for the benefit of congregations and lay leaders, pastors, and future pastors (his seminary students). his book is a primer, though a sophisticated one, not a research monograph. it fits into the evangelism genre but overlaps with development studies. it can be read along with william j. abraham’s the logic of evangelism (1989) and bryant l. myers’s walking with the poor (2013) for greater depth. denominational and other christian ngo leaders will appreciate it if just by being warmly reminded why they do what they do. but with its use of metrics and developmental concepts, the book also provides a useful language to help ngo leaders better communicate with supporting congregations and contributors. the book may also be helpful in strengthening the faith of new development workers who might well be shaken by the difficulty of their work in public settings. for a “practical” book, participating in abundant life is admirably rich in its combination of biblical, theological (broadly protestant; curiously roman catholics and catholic social teaching are left out of his ecumenical picture), philosophical, sociological, and global development perspectives. there is a lot here. lay persons may find it a bit challenging, but not terribly technical; an experienced lay leader or pastor could easily lead parishioners through it. indeed, it provides a solid foundation for a serious and necessary program of discipleship and spiritual formation for christian engagement in public life. a solid foundation, yes, but not the whole building. in an era dominated by the managerial expectations of performance philanthropy, analytic measures, and objective outcomes, congregations will benefit from teasdale’s recommendations to quantify their public engagement and meet the accountability and quality measurements the public expects. such a professional approach can move well-intended but unfocused charity towards concrete social investment. teasdale provides the rationale to create public-facing programs and simple numerical measurement methods scaled to the needs of pastors and their congregations to implement them. seasoned development specialists will necessarily have a more sensitive, extensive, and sophisticated mix of quantitative and qualitative measures. let us also remember that fundamental social transformation is a job rough enough to try the faith and wear out the commitment of any saint. yes, structural injustices must fall, legal and economic systems be reformed, minds changed, the causes of poverty erased. sadly, in today’s contentious times, when we engage with the deep political and economic roots of the problems that prevent many from finding a decent standard of living and quality of life, we discover that the “common good” is a rare and contested commodity; that one’s “person of good will” is another’s “agent of destruction,” that rancorous politics divide the wellmeaning from one another. there is no reason why christians cannot thrive in this tangled environment, because we are called to this sacrificial fight for the world’s sake, even if we struggle to find abundant life there, but teasdale gives us little guidance in dealing with such inevitable political conflict. being wise as serpents and innocent as doves requires a sophistication that the church rarely achieves and participating in abundant life is only a start. all the same, mark teasdale has framed in a paradigm to pull the church out of itself, and to put it squarely into public life where he believes it can thrive. he has laid a foundation for congregations and individual christians to build upon. references keum. jooseop, ed. 2013. together towards life: mission and evangelism in changing landscapes. world council of churches. abraham, william. 1989. the logic of evangelism. grand rapids, mi: eerdmans. myers, bryant. 2011. walking with the poor: principles and practices of transformational development. revised and expanded edition. maryknoll, ny: orbis books. gregory p. leffel is director, one horizon institute, lexington ky, past-president of the american society of missiology, and author of faith seeking action: mission, social movements, and the church in motion (scarecrow press. 2007). author email: gleffel@onehorizon.org christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 reader, evaluating transformational development 65 evaluating transformational development as christian mission1 gregory reader transformational development (td), sometimes referred to as integral mission or holistic mission, is an approach to christian mission that strives for improved quality of life for the whole person and the whole community. many christian organizations engaged in international development refer to their work as td. this paper argues that effectiveness in alleviating poverty is not, on its own, an indication of effectiveness in christian mission. it suggests that themes from missional theology can be used to shape program design and evaluation in ways that bring greater clarity to td as an engagement in christian mission. because meaning is conveyed in and through actions, td organizations should assess what beliefs, aims, and values are conveyed through their practice. evaluation of td effectiveness in christian mission should therefore take into account whether it influences people to consider the significance of what god has done and is doing in history to reconcile all things to himself. introduction many christian organizations involved in international development use terms such as integral mission, holistic mission, or transformational development (td) as an indication they consider their work to be an aspect of christian mission. their effectiveness as relief and development organizations can be assessed using robust monitoring and evaluation tools based on generally accepted development aims and standards. 2 how to evaluate their effectiveness in christian mission, however, is less clear. there is no widely held consensus on what aims and standards are appropriate to christian mission, 3 nor is there clarity on what, if anything, should differentiate the work of a christian organization from the work of any other organization involved in international development. this paper argues that missional theology is such a 1 this paper is adapted from the author’s dissertation project “a study of christian witness in the work of canadian protestant community development agencies,” mcmaster divinity college. an earlier version was presented at the 2020 national conference of the evangelical missiological society. 2 such as the united nations sustainable development goals. 3 david bosch suggests four broad aims of mission: conversion to christian faith, the planting of new churches, philanthropy and social justice, and the establishment of god’s reign on earth (bosch 1993, 5). for a thorough discussion of td as a model of mission, see myers 2011, offut 2012, and offut and reynolds 2019. 4 myers states that bragg proposed the term in the paper he presented at the conference. the paper by bragg, however, that was published in samuel and sugden 1987, 20–51, is entitled “from development to resource for td practitioners in their efforts to both understand their work as christian mission and assess its effectiveness as such. after summarizing how td emerged as a contemporary mission model, the paper highlights two key themes of missional theology and their relevance to td. finally, the paper concludes by showing how the influence of missional theology on td’s design, monitoring, and evaluation could further strengthen initiatives that aim for fullness of life for the whole person and the whole community. the emergence of transformational development as a model of mission the term transformational development has been attributed to wayne bragg, who raised the idea at “the church in response to human need” conference hosted by the world evangelical fellowship at wheaton college in 1983 (myers 2011, 16). 4 this christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 reader, evaluating transformational development 66 conference was considered the culmination of a decades-long debate within evangelical missiology concerning the relative importance of verbal evangelism versus social development work within mission. evangelical emphasis on the priority of verbal evangelism and personal conversion was in some ways a reaction to the rise of the social gospel movement around the beginning of the twentieth century. later, disillusionment with modernity’s narrative of progress, especially after the carnage of two world wars and the collapse of colonialism, reinforced the idea that the world is what we need to be saved from, as opposed to what we should be trying to change. concerned with a growing focus in the world council of churches on mission as the human establishment of shalom in the present, many evangelicals feared that the church was losing sight of the importance of eternal salvation and was therefore less committed to the proclamation of a gospel of repentance and conversion to personal faith in jesus (stott 1975, 20). at the world congress on evangelism in berlin in 1966, some participants reiterated an understanding of the gospel as salvation from the world, rather than hope for change in the world (stott 1975, 23). the subsequent 1974 international congress on world evangelization, brought 2700 participants from over 150 countries to lausanne, switzerland, in an effort to further evangelistic impetus around the world (stott 1992, 9). 5 ironically, it was at this conference that evangelical voices from contexts of oppression and exploitation in the global south called for a deeper consideration of the role of relief, development, and justice work in christian mission. contributions from leaders like samuel escobar and rené padilla from latin america were so compelling that when the lausanne covenant was subsequently drafted, it included a whole section on christian social responsibility (myers 2011, 48). 6 nonetheless, lausanne still prioritized verbal evangelism. in the lausanne covenant, the section on “christian social responsibility” (article 5) is placed between “the nature of evangelism” (article 4) and “the church and evangelism” (article 6), and the latter states in no uncertain terms that “in the church’s mission of sacrificial service evangelism is primary.” less than a year later, john stott, the main drafter of the lausanne covenant, articulated a different transformation” and, although it critiques development and suggests we should aim rather for transformation that only god makes possible, it never actually uses the specific term transformational development. 5 jayakumar christian also offers a helpful summary of these developments (christian 1999, 65–72). 6 stephen offutt notes “most evangelicals in latin america who were educated enough to read liberation theology found it to be at odds with how they read the scriptures. one reason was that evangelicalism and pentecostalism in particular, had a pacifist bent at that time. but if liberation theology was not the answer, then how were evangelicals to respond? it is in their approach to this question that the beginnings of the transformational development paradigm can be found” (offut 2012, 39). understanding of the relationship between word and deed in mission. in his short book entitled christian mission in the modern world, he described how social action was understood by some as a means to evangelism and by others as a manifestation of evangelism, but suggested it was best defined as a partner of evangelism. he described the relationship in this way: “as partners the two belong to each other and yet are independent of each other. each stands on its own feet in its own right alongside the other. neither is a means to the other, or even a manifestation of the other. for each is an end in itself” (stott 1975, 27). this understanding of social action and evangelism as partners in mission was reinforced in 1979 at the all india conference on evangelical social action in madras (christian 1999, 67–68). the resulting madras declaration began by thanking god “that social concern has been a partner of evangelism in our land with a variety of expressions and richness of results” (madras declaration, 89). it then went on to confess a number of ways in which indian churches and mission initiatives had failed to adequately demonstrate god’s concern for this world. these included narrowing god’s salvation to “the rescue of his people from a corrupt world,” the failure “to define and defend” human dignity and rights, following “false gods of mere economic growth at the cost of human rights and progress towards god,” and inactivity “on issues of justice in the interests of our personal and institutional security” (madras declaration, 89–91). following each acknowledgement of failure, the authors then offered an expression of repentance and a commitment to corrective practical action. a similar perspective was expressed at a consultation hosted in grand rapids by the lausanne committee in 1982. the consultation’s report, entitled “evangelism and social responsibility: an evangelical commitment,” still asserted the priority of evangelism over social action, but was careful to stress that “in practice, as in the public ministry of jesus, the two are inseparable, at least in open societies. rather than competing with each other, they mutually support and strengthen each other in an upward spiral of increased concern for both” (stott 1982, section 4 d). the report also suggested that it was equally valid to view social action as a consequence and aim of evangelism, as a christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 reader, evaluating transformational development 67 bridge to evangelism, or as a partner with evangelism (stott 1982, section 4 c). 7 the wheaton conference mentioned earlier took place the following year. “the church in response to human need” capped five years of “study and reflection on the nature of development from a biblical perspective” initiated by wayne bragg, bruce nicholls, john robinson, vinay samuel, and ronald j. sider (samuel and sugden 1987, ix–x). with contributions from such known figures as tom sine, tito paredes, chris sugden, tito tienou, david j. bosch, vishal mangalwadi, chavannes jeune, and samuel baah, the conference represented a wide spectrum of contextual experience and addressed themes ranging from the history of secular development theories, to contextual evangelism, to social transformation, and eschatology. acknowledging how the term development is often associated with humanistic and even colonial agendas of progress, the authors of the wheaton ‘83 statement favored the term transformation, which they defined as “the change from a condition of human existence contrary to god’s purposes to one in which people are able to enjoy fullness of life in harmony with god” (samuel and sugden 1987, 256–57). for its part, evangelism was described as “an integral part of our total christian response to human need” rather than as a separate theme (samuel and sugden 1987, 254). more recent consultations have affirmed an integrated understanding of mission. for example, “the micah declaration on integral mission” from the inaugural gathering of the micah network in 2001, opens with this description of integral mission: it is not simply that evangelism and social involvement are to be done alongside each other. rather, in integral mission our proclamation has social consequences as we call people to love and repentance in all areas of life. and our social involvement has evangelistic consequences as we bear witness to the transforming grace of jesus christ (micah declaration, 1). ten years later, the 2011 capetown commitment struck a similar chord: 7 considering that this document was drafted by a committee once again chaired by john stott, the fact that it affirmed all three relationships as equally valid shows a significant shift in both stott’s own thinking and that of the wider evangelical missiological community. 8 although there continues to be resistance among some evangelicals to an integrated understanding of mission (see “the statement on social justice and the gospel,” https://statementonsocialjustice.com), the concept of td has gained momentum in north america. the accord network, which has over 100 member agencies in the united states, and the canadian christian relief and development association with over fifty member organizations, both refer to the work of their members as td. the global micah network, with over eight-hundred-member organizations, uses the language of integral mission more than transformational development. we commit ourselves to the integral and dynamic exercise of all dimensions of mission to which god calls his church. god commands us to make known to all nations the truth of god’s revelation and the gospel of god’s saving grace through jesus christ, calling all people to repentance, faith, baptism and obedient discipleship. god commands us to reflect his own character through compassionate care for the needy, and to demonstrate the values and the power of the kingdom of god in striving for justice and peace and in caring for god’s creation (cape town commitment, 1.10.b.). this more holistic understanding of mission has been further fostered in north america by the theological reflection of practitioners, as well as the work of researchers and educators like bryant l. myers, professor of td at fuller seminary, brian fikkert, founder and director of the chalmers center and co-author of the widely influential book when helping hurts, the editors and contributors of the accord network’s peer reviewed journal “christian relief, development, and advocacy,” and the directors of wheaton college’s humanitarian and disaster institute. 8 one of the distinctive themes to emerge within td discourse over the last decade concerns the relational dynamic of poverty, arguing that broken and dysfunctional relationships are not only symptoms, but also core contributors to conditions of poverty. accordingly, many td theorists and practitioners point to the healing and renewal of four fundamental relationships as essential if people and communities are to fully flourish: relationship with god, neighbor, self, and the rest of creation (myers 2011, 96–97; fikkert and mask 2015, 81–84; offut 2012, 2). the correlation between these aims and the historic emphasis of christian mission on reconciliation with god, neighbor, and all creation, is fertile ground for new frameworks and metrics to evaluate td’s effectiveness not only as development work, but also as christian mission. the following section discusses the potential of missional christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 reader, evaluating transformational development 68 theology to provide even further definition to the practice of td as christian mission. which story are we in? themes from missional theology aristotle taught that every techne (art, practice, technology) is tied to a logos (rationale, account of the world) (kroeker 2015, 163). if that is true, then what we do, and how we do it, is rooted in and conveys particular ways of understanding the world and our place in it. the question then arises as to what story is told through the practice of td. is it the standard development story that poverty can be overcome through human ingenuity and initiative, or does td practice point to a larger story and to realities beyond materiality and human capacity?9 some christian organizations express the need to “integrate aspects of christian faith into field programs” (norman and odotei 2019, 31) or employ faith as a “competency” (faith as a competency 2020). yet this does not address the possibility that the programs themselves might be designed and implemented in ways that reinforce understandings of the world and humanity’s place in it that are at odds with christian visions of human flourishing.10 even td’s emphasis on the healing and restoration of relationship with god, self, neighbor, and the environment, lacks specificity as to which deity is referred to, or what particularly is involved in restoring relationships with self, neighbor, and environment. adherents of nearly any belief system or spirituality could affirm these aims. no doubt, there can be great benefit in finding common ground with others, but if a christian worldview has unique value, then it is important to be clear on what that value is and how it can be offered for the benefit of others. although the term missional has become somewhat of a buzzword over the past twenty years or so, the core theology associated with it has much to offer in bringing greater definition to td practice as an 9 by raising this question, i do not intend to infer that humanity is not able to improve quality of life. the history of international development has shown that we are able to develop better education, better agricultural methods, better business practices, better legal and political systems, better health care, better technology. we should expect no less if humanity is created in the image of god and called to be god’s image-bearers as stewards of creation. but where is god in the international development story? and does it even matter? the more successful we are at development through human knowhow and effort, the less room there seems to be for god. god is relegated to those few areas we still are not able to explain and control. merely trying to integrate god back into the story, only reinforces the message that god is not really that relevant. for td practice to be an aspect of christian mission, the story needs to be reframed. 10 jayakumar christian, former national director of world vision india, points to “ideological centres” as the inner spirituality of structures and systems (christian 1999, 129). 11 wright’s language for these themes is: “people who know the story they are part of”; “people who care for creation”; “missional engagement in the public sphere”; and “people who are a blessing to the nations.” 12 for more detail concerning newbigin’s appropriation and adaptation of barth’s concept of missio dei see guder 2000, 19. for a description of newbigin as “something like a father to the movement,” see hunsberger 1998, 3–8. aspect of mission. in the mission of god’s people, christopher j. h. wright describes mission as being grounded in “the living god and his grand plan and purpose for the whole of creation” (wright 2010, 17), and the church as a people co-laboring with god in that mission because they “know the story they are part of” (wright 2010, 35). key aspects of that story, according to wright, include: the metanarrative of creation, fall, redemption, new creation, including the centrality of the cross, care for creation, engagement in the public sphere, and working for the wellbeing of all peoples (wright 2010, 8–13). 11 christopher schoon, in his doctoral thesis on the role of worship in the missional church, identifies five similar themes, all of which are rooted in the writings of lesslie newbigin and further developed in the north american context by authors involved in the gospel and our culture network (schoon 2016, 22–25).12 these five themes are: the missio dei (trinitatis), the church sent to participate in god’s mission, incarnational and contextualized ministry, the end of christendom, and a holistic gospel that addresses every aspect of creation (schoon 2016, 39–40). each of these themes is relevant for td, but for the purposes of this paper, only two will be discussed: the missio dei, and the church sent to participate in god’s mission. missio dei: which god? when missional theology refers to the missio dei, it refers to the specific actions in history of the god proclaimed in the bible as the one and only true god (wright 2006, 71; newbigin 1991, 94). the deus of the missio dei is not a generic term to be used of any apparent deity worshipped by people. nor does the missio dei refer to just any historical development that humans perceive to be good. in contrast to liberal christianity’s drift toward an understanding of god as either a deity disengaged from the world, or an impersonal life force propelling history toward an christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 reader, evaluating transformational development 69 inevitably better future, newbigin grounded his theology in the personhood and action of the triune god as revealed in the jewish and christian scriptures (newbigin 2003, 11–12; hunsberger 1998, 67). yet even the classic formula of the missio dei as the father sending the son into the world, the father and son sending the spirit into the world, and the father, son and spirit sending the church into the world, can easily devolve into ambiguous theological abstraction (bosch 1993, 390). david bosch recalls h. h. rosin’s criticism that such abstraction allowed for the concept of the missio dei to function as a “trojan horse through which the (unassimilated) ‘american’ vision was fetched into the well-guarded walls of the ecumenical theology of mission” (rosin qtd. in bosch 1993, 392). presumably the “american vision” referred to here is that of ongoing progress toward security and prosperity, propelled by human ingenuity and industry. without adequate definition, the language of missio dei can be bent to whatever ends are desired, rather than providing direction and parameters to the work of christian mission. newbigin provides such definition. while he certainly understands god to be involved in “the whole historical process,” it is precisely in the specific events referred to in the bible and in the ongoing participation of the church in god’s mission that he sees that involvement taking place (hunsberger 1998, 113–55; newbigin 1991, 93–99). newbigin insists that the father’s sending of the son, the father and the son’s sending of the spirit, and god’s sending of the church, are actual events within human history, past, present, and future, as opposed to timeless truths that we contextualize (newbigin 2003, 34). he argues that history itself is “the sphere in which the acts of god are accomplished and in which his will is being executed in judgment and mercy” (newbigin 2003, 8). the missio dei is not an abstract concept of inevitable progress, nor a generic affirmation of the love of god; it is rather what god accomplishes through particular engagements with the world, engagements that are witnessed to in the texts of the bible. there are therefore parameters to what the church is sent to do in the world, and there is specificity as to what the church is to communicate within the world. those parameters and that specificity are determined by the story found in scripture of creation, fall, the election of one people for the blessing of all, the centrality of the life, death, and resurrection of jesus, and the sending of the church to bear witness to this history, and to the coming kingdom of god, the foretaste of which is 13 for example, the world bank’s study, voices of the poor, shows that the majority of the world’s marginalized and vulnerable people consider spirituality and relationship with the divine as integral to their perception of wellbeing (narayan et al. 2000, 38). already available through the resurrection of jesus and the outpouring of the spirit (newbigin 2003, 106). the significance of this for christian witness in the work of td is considerable. international development is by definition focused on human progress. its values, objectives, and methodologies are rooted in the plausibility structure of secular social science, which is assumed to be religiously neutral and universally valid. although religious faith and spirituality have recently been recognized within development discourse as important to many societies’ conceptions of what constitutes human wellbeing, religious beliefs tend to be lumped together as if all are equal or simply different expressions of the same fundamental human spirituality. 13 this is evidenced, in part, by the use of the generic term “faith based organization” to refer to any organization involved in development “whose philosophy, mission, values, or vision is knowingly inspired from a religious belief” (audet et al. 2013, 295), rather than naming to which specific faith the organization adheres. but missional theology insists that it does matter which faith is embraced, which god is worshipped, and in which story we see ourselves. what could mark td as distinct from other approaches to international development, is whether or not it communicates this story and plausibility structure, while respectfully and humbly exposing and challenging the dominant development plausibility structure of on-going progress toward an eventual utopia accomplished through human ingenuity and effort. this does appear to be one of the reasons why the drafters of the wheaton ‘83 statement preferred the language of transformation to that of development. yet as ravi jayakaran (president/ceo of medical ambassadors international) rightly points out, many td practitioners struggle to define what is actually meant by the term transformation. jayakaran suggests that transformation is “progressive, permanent, and god-intended change” (hill 2018), but this definition does not capture the difference between developmental change and transformational change. developmental change is progressive, incremental, and linear. transformation is more radical. as with the metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butterfly or, to use a more biblical metaphor, a seed into a plant, transformation entails a fundamental undoing of something, and then a re-forming into something new. the butterfly is the same species as the caterpillar, but it is a completely new organism. the kernel of wheat ceases to exist as a seed, and transforms into a shaft of wheat producing exponentially more kernels. with christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 reader, evaluating transformational development 70 both developmental and transformational change there is continuity between what was, what is, and what will be. but unlike developmental change, transformation also results in a radical discontinuity between what is and what will be. by using the metaphor of the wheat kernel, jesus evokes the dynamic of his own coming death and resurrection. the risen jesus is still jesus, but he is now in the reality of the coming kingdom, and therefore radically different from what he was before the resurrection. newbigin describes the path from present social, economic, political, and relational realities to the flourishing of life in god’s kingdom not as progressive development by human achievement, but as a radical undoing and re-forming in and through the death and resurrection of jesus. this does not negate the value of development work, but relativizes it within a larger story, and frames it as “a kind of acted prayer for the coming of god’s reign” (newbigin 1991, 136–37). 14 wright also stresses that “it is vital that we see the cross as central and integral to every aspect of holistic, biblical mission. … it is a mistake, in my view, to think that, while our evangelism must be centered on the cross …, our social engagement and other forms of practical mission work have some other theological foundation or justification” (wright 2006, 314). the challenge for td practitioners is how to design, monitor, and evaluate programs that not only result in developmental change, but are also signs and symbols, and perhaps even catalysts, of the kind of christcentered transformation that is at the very heart of god’s mission. one of the organizations grappling with this challenge is world renew. their global ends policy articulates a theory of change that is clearly rooted in and shaped by their faith commitments as an agency of the christian reformed church of north america: communities and constituencies undergo transformation when members are increasingly able to embrace and live out their calling as human beings bearing the image of god, marred by sin but being restored in christ jesus, receiving and expressing justice and mercy and peace, as evidenced in healthy (shalom) relationships with god, neighbor, self and the creation. … capacity building activities therefore become transformative when they are undertaken within the broader missional aim of renewing belief systems and restoring broken relationships through peacemaking, reconciliation, advocacy, creation care, justice awareness and action and the renewal of systems and structures” (global ends policy 2019). this statement is an example of high-level organizational aims emerging from deeply held theological convictions. world renew believes that dysfunctional relationships, inadequate belief systems, damaging practices, and conditions of poverty are all intertwined, and that renewed belief systems are integral to healthier relationships, constructive practices, and conditions of flourishing. a christ-centered theory of change 14 developmental change can still point toward the shalom of god’s coming kingdom, but it infers that fullness can be achieved through the steady progress of developmental change and does not require a more radical, cruciform transition. christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 reader, evaluating transformational development 71 there is an inherent tension, however, at the operational level, because of how counterproductive it can be when beliefs and aims are imposed on communities from the outside. cognizant of this tension, world renew takes a participatory approach to program design and evaluation and has stated that it “does not use humanitarian assistance or development programs to coerce people into its denominational membership nor use such interventions as a condition of receiving assistance or training” (harris 2014, 481). nonetheless, their global ends policy makes clear their desire that people consider and even experience the transformative power of christian faith. when christians engage in development in ways that are merely successful according to the principles and metrics of the social sciences, they reinforce that way of understanding the world, that plausibility structure. this is not to say, of course, that christian organizations should not contribute to agendas like the united nations sustainable development goals, but that for their contribution to be an aspect of christian mission, it should be reconceived in terms of the biblical narrative of which the life, death, resurrection, and reign of jesus christ is the core. 15 a fundamental implication of the missio dei is that, in wright’s words, “mission is not ours; mission is god’s. certainly, the mission of god is the prior reality out of which flows any mission that we get involved in” (wright 2006, 62). effectiveness in terms of missional theology is therefore not a matter of accomplishing god’s mission for god, but of bearing witness to god’s character, intentions, and actions (hunsberger 1998, 196–97). it is a matter of communication, and other metrics are only significant to the degree they impact that communication (budd 2018). effectiveness in communication can be measured, at least to some degree, by whether people encounter another way of understanding the world and humanity’s place in it, and specifically the significance of the life, death, resurrection, and imminent return of jesus christ. this may result in improved standards of living, changes to culture, or even personal conversions to christianity and numerical growth in churches, but communication can be effective whether or not this happens. effective communication is measured by understanding, not necessarily by acceptance. local congregations as the hermeneutic of the gospel another theme of missional theology is that the very nature and purpose of the church, especially at the 15 i am grateful to dr. steven studebaker for the language of “reconceiving” development goals within a christian framework, as opposed to “layering” so-called spiritual values over materialist agendas. 16 bosch put it this way: “it is not the church which ‘undertakes’ mission; it is the missio dei which constitutes the church” (bosch 1993, 519). level of the local congregation, is to participate in god’s mission. as craig van gelder puts it, “the church is missionary by nature, created by the spirit to participate fully in the redemptive reign of god” (van gelder 2000, 125). 16 a number of missional authors take this to mean that congregations should spend more time, energy, and money on engaging the world outside of the church than on facilities and activities that serve those who are already part of the church. in the words of milfred minatrea, “when the activities of a church focus inward, the church has exchanged its mission for maintenance” (minatrea 2004, xvi). schoon, however, argues convincingly that the apparently inward-focused activities of the church, such as liturgy, worship, and discipleship, have an essential role to play in “forming god’s people within the character of jesus christ as active participants within the missio trinitatis” (schoon 2016, 49). schoon’s important point is that for effective outward engagement, there has to be healthy inward formation. effective outward engagement in td, though, requires more than christ-like character and vibrant faith. specific expertise and technical skills are also essential. as myers contends, “the poor deserve better than gifted amateurs with their hearts in the right place” (myers 2011, 2). what then, is the role of local congregations in td? some participate by helping resource the work of parachurch organizations that specialize in td. others function as the spiritual home community for congregants who work professionally in td. and some develop their own td programs and projects which they manage directly. missional theology suggests that there is another, more fundamental role for local congregations in td. newbigin insists that “the primary reality of which we have to take account in seeking for a christian impact on public life is the christian congregation. … the only answer, the only hermeneutic of the gospel, is a congregation of men and women who believe it and live it” (newbigin 1989, 227). when development projects help improve aspects of life, just as when evangelism techniques persuade people to change their beliefs, that does not necessarily mean that the god of the bible is at work. it could simply mean that the methods employed are effective and that certain goals have been accomplished by human ingenuity and power. if that is the case, then a plausibility structure other than that of the missio dei is likely being reinforced. but if the work of td, or evangelism, or any other mission endeavor, is in some way connected to the transforming communal life of local congregations that are rooted in christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 reader, evaluating transformational development 72 and shaped by the life, death, resurrection, and reign of jesus, and the outpouring of the spirit, then a whole other dimension of witness becomes possible. newbigin identifies six characteristics of christcentered life that are uniquely embodied by local congregations and that, therefore, can only be conveyed by other entities to a limited degree, if at all. the first characteristic is praise and thanksgiving, which is an acknowledgement of dependence on and loyalty to god (newbigin 1989, 227–28). the second characteristic is truth. in the face of both modern positivism and postmodern relativism, newbigin constantly contends that “a christian congregation is a community in which, through the constant remembering and rehearsing of the true story of human nature and destiny, an attitude of healthy skepticism can be sustained, a skepticism which enables one to take part in the life of society without being bemused and deluded by its own beliefs about itself” (newbigin 1989, 229). the third characteristic is that of living for the sake of neighbors, and the fourth is the preparation and support of congregants in their own “exercise of the priesthood in the world” (newbigin 1989, 229). the fifth characteristic is mutual responsibility. newbigin contends that “if the church is to be effective in advocating and achieving a new social order …, it must itself be a new social order” (newbigin 1989, 231). this new social order is built on the renewed and reconciled relationships of people being transformed by the gospel (hunsberger 1998, 66–72). the resonance of this characteristic with td’s aim of restored relationship with god, self, neighbor, and environment, is obvious. the sixth characteristic is hope. the field of international development is rife with both extreme optimism, and disillusionment verging on despair. in contrast, the hope in the coming kingdom of god, of which spirit-filled congregations can be a foretaste, enables an anticipation that is both “eager and patient” and cultivates a humble confidence that pulls us back from both dangerous utopian dreams and disillusionment in difficulty and failure (newbigin 1989, 232). congregations that embody these characteristics allow others to see and experience life that is ordered around and empowered by the death and resurrection of jesus and the outpouring of the spirit. they allow others to see, in ways that no other entities can, what life 17 there are obviously contexts in which open connection between a td organization and a local congregation would be dangerous to both. and there are other contexts in which no local congregation exists. i am not suggesting that without explicit connection to a local congregation, a td organization cannot be engaged in christian mission, but that the td organization’s witness is enhanced when it is in open relationship with local congregations. 18 see, for example, the june 2013 edition of the canadian journal of development studies / revue canadienne d’etudes du développement, which was completely devoted to debating the relationship between religion and development. is like when it is oriented to the already present yet still coming kingdom of god. when td practitioners do not (or cannot) introduce people to such congregations, they are severely limited in what they are able to communicate concerning christian faith. 17 yes, they can speak to how christianity inspires and sustains them in their work. yes, they can talk about the difference christianity makes in their own personal life. but faith issues may then come across as nothing more than a set of privately held convictions that help people in their individual lives. they are not presented as public truth that exposes and, ultimately, overcomes injustice, forms renewed communities, and invites all to “taste and see that the [one and only] lord is good” (ps 34:8). for td organizations to reach their full potential as christian witness, they need to relate to the reality of the local congregation that, in newbigin’s words, stands in the wider community of the neighborhood and the nation not primarily as the promoter of programs for social change (although it will be that) but primarily as itself the foretaste of a different social order. its members will be advocates for human liberation by being themselves liberated. its actions for justice and peace will be, and will be seen to be, the overflow of a life in christ, where god’s justice and god’s peace are already an experienced treasure (newbigin 1989, 231–32). conclusion: toward missional metrics there is now a growing body of research published around the world focused on the role of faith in international relief and development. some voices are highly critical of faith-based initiatives, especially of those that identify as christian. others are cautiously respectful and acknowledge examples of development initiatives undertaken by christians that are at least as effective in overcoming aspects of poverty as are those engaged in by secular agencies. 18 helping marginalized people and communities improve their quality of life is not, however, on its own an indication of effectiveness in christian mission. for td to be effective as christian mission, it also needs to contribute to the accomplishment of aims that are particular to christian mission. christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 reader, evaluating transformational development 73 missional theology suggests that a fundamental aim of mission is to bear witness to what the god of the bible has done, is doing, and will do to reconcile and renew all creation. a td organization’s effectiveness in christian mission could therefore be evaluated, at least in part, by the degree to which its work contributes to people’s understanding of this narrative, one that is centered on the life, death, resurrection, and reign of jesus. missional theology also suggests that such witness can be enhanced by appropriate, mutual partnership with christian congregations. it is one thing to aim for restored relationships, and growing understanding of the life, death, resurrection, and reign of jesus. it is quite another to measure the degree to which these things are happening, why they are happening, and what difference that makes in the lives of individuals and communities. one small step in that direction might be to experiment with qualitative research methods (interviews, focus groups, etc.) that explore participants’ perceptions of the organization’s beliefs, aims, and values. the findings of such research could indicate what meaning is being conveyed through the organization’s work, and what plausibility structure is being affirmed. 19 more highly complex work would be needed to devise better models for partnership with congregations, missional metrics that are appropriate to td, and data-gathering methods for the purpose of evaluation that are both ethical and effective. if td is able to further formulate such models, methods, and metrics, it will not only increase its effectiveness in helping people overcome poverty, but will also contribute greatly to the witness of god’s people in the public sphere. references act alliance. “faith as a competency in development,” june 11, 2020, https://actalliance.org/act-news/faith-as-acompetency-in-development. all india conference on evangelical social action. 1986. “the madras declaration.” exchange 15(45): 89–92. audet, françois, et al. 2013. “religious nongovernmental organizations and canadian international aid, 2001–2010: a preliminary study.” canadian journal of development studies 34(2): 291–320. doi: 10.1080/02255189.2013.794721. 19 the author’s dissertation project tests a qualitative methodology for determining the degree to which christian organizations’ efforts to overcome poverty cause people to consider the validity, value, and implications of convictions concerning jesus of nazareth. bosch, david j. 1993. transforming mission: paradigm shifts in theology of mission. the american society of missiology series 16. maryknoll, ny: orbis. budd, merv. 2018. “evangelism and missional theology.” paper presented online for missional theology course, mcmaster divinity college. the capetown commitment. 2011. https://www.lausanne.org/content/ctcommitment. christian, jayakumar. 1999. god of the emptyhanded: poverty, power and the kingdom of god. rev. ed. brunswick east, victoria, australia: acorn press. fikkert, brian, and russell mask. 2015. from dependence to dignity: how to alleviate poverty through church-centered microfinance. grand rapids: zondervan. guder, darrell l. 2000. the continuing conversion of the church. the gospel and our culture series. grand rapids: eerdmans. harris, john. 2014. “proselytism and canadian ngos: editor’s note.” canadian journal of development studies revue canadienne d’études du développement, 35(3):480–482, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02255189.2014.958338. hunsberger, george r. 1998. bearing the witness of the spirit: lesslie newbigin’s theology of cultural plurality. the gospel and our culture series. grand rapids: eerdmans. hill, graham joseph. 2018. “community development & transformation as participatory, holistic, progressive, permanent, & godintended change.” https://theglobalchurchproject.com/video/ravijayakaran-video. kroeker, travis. 2015. “technology as principality: the elimination of incarnation.” pro ecclesia xxiv, 2:162-177. the lausanne covenant. n.d. https://www.lausanne.org/content/covenant/lausan ne-covenant. micah network. 2001. “micah network declaration on integral mission.” http://www.micahnetwork.org/sites/default/files/do c/page/mn_integral_mission_declaration_en.pdf. minatrea, milfred. 2004. shaped by god’s heart: the passion and practices of missional churches. san francisco: jossey-bass. myers, bryant l. 2011. walking with the poor: principles and practices of transformational development. rev. ed. maryknoll, ny: orbis. https://actalliance.org/act-news/faith-as-a-competency-in-development https://actalliance.org/act-news/faith-as-a-competency-in-development https://www.lausanne.org/content/ctcommitment http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02255189.2014.958338 https://theglobalchurchproject.com/video/ravi-jayakaran-video https://theglobalchurchproject.com/video/ravi-jayakaran-video https://www.lausanne.org/content/covenant/lausanne-covenant https://www.lausanne.org/content/covenant/lausanne-covenant http://www.micahnetwork.org/sites/default/files/doc/page/mn_integral_mission_declaration_en.pdf http://www.micahnetwork.org/sites/default/files/doc/page/mn_integral_mission_declaration_en.pdf christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 reader, evaluating transformational development 74 narayan, deepa, et al. 2000. voices of the poor: crying out for change. voices of the poor 2. new york: oxford university press. newbigin, lesslie. 1989. the gospel in a pluralist society. grand rapids: eerdmans. ———. 1991. foolishness to the greeks: the gospel and western culture. grand rapids: eerdmans. ———. 2003. “the kingdom of god and the idea of progress.” in signs amid the rubble: the purposes of god in human history, edited by geoffrey wainright, 3–55. grand rapids: eerdmans.———. 2003. “church, world, kingdom.” in signs amid the rubble: the purposes of god in human history, edited by geoffrey wainright, 95–109. grand rapids: eerdmans. norman, ray, and odoi odotei. 2019. “faith integration and christian witness in relief and development: reflections and practical guidance for field teams.” christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(1):31–43. offutt, stephen. 2012. “new directions in transformational development.” the asbury journal 67(2): 35–50. offutt, stephen, and amy reynolds. 2019. “christian ideas of development: understanding the current theories, networks, and priorities of accord organizations.” christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(1), summer 2019. samuel, vinay, and christopher sugden, eds. 1987. the church in response to human need. grand rapids: eerdmans. schoon, christopher james. 2016. toward a communally embodied gospel: exploring the role of worship in cultivating an evangelistic character among god’s people within the missional church movement. phd dissertation. university of toronto. https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/handle/1807/729 02. “the statement on social justice and the gospel.” n.d. https://statementonsocialjustice.com stott, john. 1975. christian mission in the modern world: what the church should be doing now! downers grove, il: intervarsity. ———, ed. 1982. “evangelism and social responsibility: an evangelical commitment – report from the international consultation on the relationship between evangelism and social responsibility.” https://www.lausanne.org/content/lop/lop-21. ———. 1992. decisive issues facing christians today: your influence is vital in today’s turbulent world. london: marshall, morgan & scott, 1984. 3rd printing, grand rapids: fleming h. revell. van gelder, craig. 2000. the essence of the church: a community created by the spirit. grand rapids: baker. world renew. “global ends policy.” february 2019. https://worldrenew.ca/wpcontent/uploads/2019/10/world-renew-boardpolicies-1-4-2.pdf wright, christopher j. h. 2006. the mission of god: unlocking the bible’s grand narrative. downers grove, il: ivp academic. ———. 2010. the mission of god’s people: a biblical theology of the church’s mission. biblical theology for life. grand rapids: zondervan. gregory reader is a learning and development specialist with international teams canada, and board chair for the canadian christian relief and development association. he has over 35 years of international experience, an mdiv from tyndale seminary, and is currently working on a doctorate in practical theology at mcmaster divinity college. author email: gregreader@gmail.com https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/handle/1807/72902 https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/handle/1807/72902 https://statementonsocialjustice.com/ https://www.lausanne.org/content/lop/lop-21 https://worldrenew.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/world-renew-board-policies-1-4-2.pdf https://worldrenew.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/world-renew-board-policies-1-4-2.pdf https://worldrenew.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/world-renew-board-policies-1-4-2.pdf mailto:gregreader@gmail.com christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(2), winter 2023 mutonono, book review 73 book review the god that the poor seek: conversion, context, and the world of the vulnerable by rupen das reviewed by dwight s.m. mutonono carlisle, cumbria, uk. langham global library. 2022. £17,99 this book grapples with the question, “what makes the poor seek god?” how and why do they choose to worship jesus christ (7)? in order to answer these questions and discern how god works in the lives of the poor, das turns to looking at how conversions happen among them. in the process, das explores several elements that are crucial for christian development practitioners pursuing holistic efforts to keep in mind as they work with the poor. perhaps first and foremost among these is that research strongly indicates that there is a clear link between poverty and spirituality (8) in that the poor seek divine intervention and their spirituality helps them cope with poverty (9596, 181, 196); das thus finds it unfortunate that their spirituality is often ignored by those who work with them (195). the voices of people experiencing poverty and how they converted to christianity is the focus of the book. this is especially dear to das, because so often the poor do not get to tell their own stories. hence, a large portion of the book (chapters 5 & 6) presents snippets from direct conversations with people living in poverty in syrian and indian contexts. the types of poverty are different, but the unfiltered voices of the people themselves are captured. the first section of the book (chapters 1-4) provides a fascinating background to understanding christian conversion through church history. historically, conversion to christianity is more a process than an event, with the catechetical system being pivotal to early church practice. current expectations of personal decision-making are relatively new in church practice. das argues that the “modern evangelical understanding of conversion has its root in the puritans and jonathan edwards (and to a certain degree the anabaptists)” (38). in the case of poverty, however, the sense of helplessness and vulnerability of the poor becomes all-encompassing due to their powerlessness to change the structures that led to their poverty (195). in this context, conversions and spirituality enable them to address the deep yearning for a god who is real (161). the final section of the book analyses the stories in chapter 5-6 and reaches the conclusion that “conversion was a process punctuated by encounters, experiences, and decisions at various points and accompanied by a growing understanding of who christ is and what he has done for them” (168). a second major finding is that often, supernatural encounters proved decisive in people’s resolutions to leave their former faith and convert to christianity. in general, it was not a yearning for life after death or some other doctrinal concern that brought them to christ. instead, “they wanted a god who is real in the midst of the challenges and evils of life” (186). these insights are highly relevant for christian development practitioners to understand more fully the spirituality of the people they work with. the biggest learning point for me in this book was das’s walk through christian history in relation to conversion. throughout my life in zimbabwe, i have been greatly influenced by evangelical christianity, in which a personal decision is critical to conversion. i realize now, however, that socialization and liturgical acts were very much part of the conversion process throughout most of christian history (24). according to christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(2), winter 2023 mutonono, book review 74 das, it was the entrance of constantine into the church that contributed to a weakening of an early church tradition that was effective. das writes that “though constantine had a life-transforming experience…he remained unbaptized and uncatechized, yet was considered a christian” (35). after constantine, it became normal for people, even whole nations to be admitted into the church without the necessity of catechesis, as had, prior to this, always been the case. here again, das’ exploration has implications for how christian development practitioners interact with the churches and conceive of their work in function of helping to advance spiritual formation as part of their integrative efforts. another key issue for das is utilitarianism. he acknowledges that people may become followers of christ for utilitarian reasons (184). yet my experience in the african church causes me to ponder the quality of christianity or depth of conversion people experience. while the powerful effects of conversion should not be discounted, especially in circumstances in which people need god to break in and do something about their situation, i wonder about what happens if the economic situation changes for the better, and people experience upward social mobility? if there is a link between poverty and spirituality, is that not also an explanation for why materially developed or more prosperous parts of the world experience a decline in christianity? are the conversions das describes deep enough to survive hunger and suffering as paul discusses in philippians 4:12-13? if so, what role should christian development agencies play to learn from the poor while also helping foster deeper spiritual maturity? my final thought around conversion is that it is not “just a punctiliar event—a decision that can be dated” (170). it encompasses the whole process of salvation from regeneration, justification through to sanctification, and glorification. we are continually being saved and must continually repent and turn towards god in different ways as we grow in the faith. das’s book is a great contribution to missiological and developmental issues around people living with poverty. his research and insight into conversions and spiritual insights of the poor challenge christian development practitioners committed to both material and spiritual aspects of life to listen to and learn from the poor (chapter 4) on matters of the integration of evangelism and spiritual formation. outsiders generally think for, speak for, and act on behalf of people in material poverty. this book lets the poor speak for themselves. it is a voice from the margins, articulating issues in the unfiltered way that the disenfranchised understand them. this is the primary intent of the book, and das achieves it very well. his historical discussion on conversion is likewise incisive and useful. dwight s.m. mutonono (dmin, phd intercultural studies candidate) serves his church, faith ministries, on the international council. he was previously the executive director of africa leadership and management academy in harare, zimbabwe. he is married and has two grown children. author email: dwight.mutonono@asburyseminary.edu christian relief, development, and advocacy 3(2), winter 2022 sebahene, book review 58 book review relentless love: living out integral mission to combat poverty, injustice and conflict by graham joseph hill, ed. reviewed by alfred sebahene carlisle, cumbria, uk. langham global library: $27.44 my four months’ journey of reading relentless love has refreshed and challenged me to look back into and reflect on my thirty years of ministry in the church of god in africa as both a pastor and an academic. yes, some of the contributors’ biblical teachings in the book have challenged me to understand who i am and what my responsibility is as a child of god in tanzania and a world that is not mine. the main theme of the book is the “resilience” of communities and nations in their efforts to comply with the subtitle of the book, living out integral mission to combat poverty, injustice and conflict. the book is a collation of the sessions and papers shared at the triennial micah global consultation held in the philippines in 2019. the many contributors, motivated by and rooted in their variety of christian traditions and experiences, combine to provide readers with a comprehensive and compelling real-world study of the ideas and practices of “resilience” as it relates to integral mission. this timely and significant word, which in simple language means the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties, is well-reflected in the context of “integral mission.” in my view, nothing more important has been highlighted in the entire book than writers, knowingly or unknowingly, being guided by the gospel truth about missio dei – what god does in the world to make “a new heaven and a new earth” (xvii). among the many issues explored are worship, compassion, gender, urban poverty and development, north-south relations, partnership, the theology of peace and justice, local church ministry, corruption, and much more. and always the discussion comes back to resilience in joining with god in the missio dei. there are over fifty contributors to the thirty-two chapters of the book, and every one, in whatever approach, interest, focus, knowledge, expertise in the field, and writing, opens the door for the church, theological students, pastors, and laymen and women to ask the question why so many churches have not been living out integral mission and have therefore become less effective in addressing or combatting poverty, injustice, and conflict. we need also to evaluate the performance of governmental actors, for the church’s witness should not be undermined in the public arena. still, let the biblical metaphor of “the speck in the government’s eye” being emphasized at the cost of “the plank in the churches’ eye,” not be the case for christians. the government reference is not only important, but of special interest to me, because of my public theological inclination and passion to see how a reflective christian may go about doing theology in a way that contributes to public issues affecting society. whether there was an agreement among contributors or they were asked to do so, or it is by mere coincidence, on reading the book, i noted right from the endorsers, to the words of the foreword, preface and to the entire parts i-v of the book, that the word “call” has a strong foot in the book. interestingly, the contributors’ tone on the word “call” is, in my view, deliberately conversational and also homiletic in parts, covering the themes of the church, poverty, injustice, and conflict. having noted this unique appearance of the book, i took interest in the style and approach of the leaning and emphasis on “call.” their interpretation is welllocated and significantly broad. i will give a few christian relief, development, and advocacy 3(2), winter 2022 sebahene, book review 59 examples. most contributors emphasize the whole church and each single believer as being called and sent; others, in the same spirit, emphasize the word “call” in a variety of ways. for example, called… for a renewal of faith and energy; called out to take responsibility; to influence governments and speak to power; to love and repentance in all areas of life; to serve individuals, people groups, and whole cultures, to serve jesus and his world; to declare the whole gospel to the whole world, in word, sign, and deed, and to keep together, to mention a few. this special trajectory on the word “call” cannot be ignored for it brings weight to the book. one small theological/cultural/geographical issue i find with the book arises from my african understanding of the sense of community as well as my understanding of an aspect of the doctrine of the church. the church can and should impact every aspect of god’s world regardless of what is happening to her and where god placed it. my concern is that the entire book provides a picture of unbalanced readership location for the book. as i read it, it is as if relentless love is a good piece of work that is only or relatively more applicable for africa, latin america, caribbean, and asia. in fact, some aspects of the book stand out only and immediately for readers from these geographical locations. i know some of the authors in the book are from the global south, but most seem to be from the global north. this is not a problem, but for a welladjusted focus and in the future, we shall need more commentary from leaders in the global south. a book like this needs more authors from the global south whose discussion on issues of combatting poverty, injustice, and conflict is global and not for a particular region. this will avoid the common way of viewing the globe. i would rather emphasize that this book, which is fairly well-painted by its biblical truth and, in many ways, culturally applicable, should be and is intended for a wider readership. in fact, i see the book as a wakeup call for the global church, where evangelical reflections on mission by church leaders are also much needed. so, i would wish to remind all who read this volume to remember that power to bring transformation should always be drawn from individual believers in the global church being in christ and his good news, especially in relation to integral mission which has to flow from believers being in christ (xxvii). in fact, the book makes it clear that the power to bring transformation is drawn from our being in christ and his good news, which we are called to proclaim and demonstrate (xxviii) regardless of where we live and/or despite the different levels of poverty, injustice, and conflict we experience. likewise, all church communities, regardless of boundaries, should continue to reflect upon their engagement with the world. let us not lose sight that the biblical-theological bases that frame the church’s mission hinge on building and nurturing the body of christ. and all churches have enormous god-given potential for empowering individuals and communities with the knowledge, attitudes, skills, and strategies they need to address poverty, injustice, and conflict. that said, i agree with much of the current research, testimonies, and facts about the global shift of the center of gravity in the christian world, and that it keeps shifting away from europe and north america, and toward africa, asia, latin america, and oceania, where a larger percentage of all christians now live. this brings me to another point that needs brief mention, which is that the book is written exclusively in english with authors forming an international team. this book needs to be written in and/or translated into many languages. beyond such minor concerns, i find the book biblically and theologically sound. i know not everyone will agree with every word in this book. yet it is my hope that it will enjoy a wide readership and help many to appreciate the rich knowledge in it that suggests that when local churches are equipped and enabled to understand and fulfill their god-given mandate to bring whole life transformation to their communities, the result is flourishing and resilient communities. i pray that, through this book, the church will be guided through the process of learning and change, leading to practical church-based actions to act by living out integral mission and thus to combat poverty, injustice, and conflict. alfred sebahene is senior priest and canon theologian in the anglican church of tanzania. he has been in parish ministry for fifteen years and serves as head of the department of theology and religious studies at st john’s university of tanzania in dodoma, where he also coordinates the unit for the study of corruption. author email: asebahene@sjut.ac.tz about:blank christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 gramby-sobukwe, book review 18 book review liturgies from below: praying with people at the end of the world by claudio carvalhaes reviewed by sharon gramby-sobukwe nashville: abingdon press, 2020. $29.99 this collection of “462 acts of worship” seems an active response to howard thurman’s call for a ministry for people with their backs against the wall (thurman, 1996). it steps decidedly into the center of demands for decolonizing everything, especially worship, focusing on prayers, and liturgical practices of people from outside the metropoles of this global order. carvalhaes presents redefined and empowered prayers against bastions of power and domination, but for the destitute and oppressed. in doing so, this book redefines prayer and its purpose in the interests of the majority of peoples in the world. in partnership with christian world mission, carvalhaes presents a collection of prayers, songs, rituals, art, and poetry curated collaboratively, by globally diverse contributors who lived and worshipped incarnationally on four continents, asia-pacific islands, africa, americas, and europe. this collection emerges from the council for world mission’s project, re-imagining worship as acts of defiance and alternatives in the context of empire, from 2018-2019. from the council for world mission’s perspective, empire is characterized as the ever-present context of god’s mission. from jesus’ incarnation “in an imperial world,” until today, empire kills the whole of creation, “demands to be worshipped alone,” manufactures a kaleidoscope of spiritualities in support of “the hegemonic paradigm of neoliberal politics and economics” (xi), “commodifies god’s people,” and thus, “rejects god and god’s plan for the world” (xii). prayer, therefore, needs to be renewed radically, to “be anathema to any form of government that sustains war, that oppresses people, animals, mountains, oceans, and the whole earth” (3), if we are to change the conditions of empire. this kind of prayer brings attention to and empowers the oppressed, enlightens and enacts the privileged to solidarity, and reconciles deep community globally. carvalhaes offers this collection as an invitation to those in the metropoles to transform their traditional prayers to connect with those at the margins (hooks, 1989), and in the process to be transformed to listen, serve, imagine, and fight, in the name of god for new worlds (6). a collection of various types of prayers, from calls to worship and benedictions, prayers of thanksgiving, confession and intercession, topical prayers addressing the lived experiences of the destitute, to complete liturgical sequences, liturgies reconsiders the meaning and purpose of prayer. here, prayer is individual and collective; it offers social, political, and economic critique, but is also mournful, confessional, and liturgical. steeped in the cultural traditions and expressions of christians from various parts of the world whose lives are typically made invisible, expendable, and oppressed by racial capitalism, imperialism, hetero-patriarchy, and climate crisis, prayer is an empowering starting point for change (5). prayer in these experiences continuously voices and validates the experiences of the poor and oppressed, everything from small joys and big hopes, loss and mourning, to anger and critique. this kind of prayer provides confirmation, healing and empowerment, leading to transformation, as a matter of responsibility to one another and worship of god. this approach is an intersectional foray into christian literature and analyses that gives voice to a christian radicalism focused “glocally,” both locally and christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 gramby-sobukwe, book review 19 globally. it foregrounds race, class, ability, and gender as parts of an anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist analysis. in its unflinching resistance to dominant global systems of politics, economics, and even christiandom, liturgies reflects criticisms emanating from climate crisis, #metoo, and #blacklivesmatter movements, to reconsider structures and systems holistically, and from the perspectives of those suffering beyond the attentions of capitalist metropoles. the liturgies’ conception of prayer builds upon latin american liberation pedagogy, or, as paulo freire styles it, liberation theology engaging the oppressed in a process of self-awareness and empowerment (freire, 1996). this reconnection to christian faith as movement, like jesus’ the way, is an attempt to center the marginalized, amplifying their voice and following their lead. such a task, noble and principled as it is, is vulnerable to typical critiques of decolonization, of going too far by conservatives and not far enough for radicals. some will argue that these prayers, often rife with pain, suffering, mourning, and anger (as well as faith, hope, and imagination), cannot replace the holiness of established prayers. further, efforts to replace established prayers become so persistently relativistic that they ultimately eliminate all that is sacred. some of us, who identify more with those “in the margins” than the metropoles, cannot help but to be discomfited by language targeting the “we” and “us” of the metropole. is this yet another empire-centric exercise? from one perspective, carvalhaes’ book is published and marketed amidst the centers of empire and these prayers challenge those of us here to learn, confess, and follow with action. yet, would this project prove even more powerful and reflexively authentic if it instead targeted peoples of the margins, prioritizing them, and then, secondarily, bringing along those of us in the metropoles? written for “pastors and other leaders to use in worship services or other gatherings,” the strength of this collection is not only its intersectionality, but also its practical contributions to works focused on both decolonizing religion, and its provision of pedagogies for transformation and healing as holy acts in the midst of suffering. liturgies’ global perspective harmonizes with contemporary, u.s. focused works, such as obery j. hendricks’ christians against christianity: how right-wing evangelicals are destroying our nation and our faith (2021); randall balmer’s, bad faith: race and the rise of the religious right (2021); and, du mez’s jesus and john wayne: how white evangelicals corrupted a faith and fractured a nation (2020). each of these assesses the role and impact of colonialisms in mal-shaping historic and contemporary christian theology and ideology. while these books call for decolonization at institutional levels, carvalhaes’ contribution seems intentional in refocusing church to local and congregational level practices. these practices echo cutting edge emphases, not only in decolonization but also in pandemic response work, on healing trauma and suffering through daily practices, made holy ritual. for instance, the grace of playing: pedagogies for learning into god’s new creation (goto, 2016) and playing in the face of death: pedagogical play as love and lament in a time of covid (green, 2020) document the pedagogical processes of using play for healing and lament. likewise, in “schoolin’ black girls: politicized caring and healing as pedagogical love” (mcarthur and lane, 2019) and “from lament to advocacy: black religious education and public ministry” (lamont, 2021), these and other similar works focus on empowering the oppressed through intentional holy practices such as focusing on love to produce healing pedagogies, and practicing lament as a necessary first step in public theological reflection and action. thus, for church ministry and relief work, this book is a powerfully inspiring and enlightening resource for engaged praxis. references balmer, randall. 2021. bad faith: race and the rise of the religious right. grand rapids, mi: william b. eerdmans publishing company. du mez, kristin kobes. 2020. jesus and john wayne: how white evangelicals corrupted a faith and fractured a nation. new york: liveright publishing. freire, paolo. 1996 pedagogy of the oppressed (revised). new york: continuum. goto, courtney t. 2016the grace of playing: pedagogies for leaning into god's new creation. eugene, or: wipf and stock publishers. green, rachelle r. 2020. "playing in the face of death: pedagogical play as love and lament in a time of covid." religious education 116 (1): 16-25. hendricks jr, obery m. 2021. christians against christianity: how right-wing evangelicals are destroying our nation and our faith. boston: beacon press. hooks, bell. 1989. "choosing the margin as a space of radical openness." framework: the journal of cinema and media 36: 15-23. lamont, tracey. 2021. "from lament to advocacy: black religious education and public ministry." the wabash center journal on teaching 2 (2). mcarthur, sherell a., and monique lane. 2019. "schoolin’ black girls: politicized caring and healing as pedagogical love." the urban review 51 (1: 65-80. thurman, howard. 1996. jesus and the disinherited. boston: beacon press. christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 gramby-sobukwe, book review 20 sharon gramby-sobukwe is associate professor of political science at eastern university where she also serves as director of the campolo institute for applied research in social justice and chair of the department of social transformation. author email: sgrambys@eastern.edu christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(1), summer 2022 ramírez, response to bueno 8 response to david bueno by a church and community facilitator fabiola ramírez de rivera after working for more than nine years in communities with diverse socioeconomic contexts, i can understand that the dynamics of social participation and intervention of the evangelical church are affected by the gang phenomenon. as david bueno puts it, “the challenge for many community initiatives is that gang control makes the long-term prognosis of a better future untenable” (2022, 38). in my experience working for a christian development organization, when we begin accompanying a church in its community transformation work, we usually ask if we can visit the area alone or accompanied, by either a church or community leader who has a good reputation. there are some neighborhoods, for example, where we have dared to enter or walk alone through the community and the pastor has warned us because of how dangerous it could be. in some cases, we have stopped accompanying churches due to direct or indirect threats to a member of the enlace team or to the leadership of the church and community. oftentimes, the pastor has expressly told us: “i cannot talk to them (the gang members) and i cannot guarantee at this time that it is safe to enter.” and so, clean water or economic development initiatives have been suspended to avoid entering situations where a staff members or community leaders are put at risk. the solution to this phenomenon can be complex, but in the field we have also observed gang members who, seeing the church working on community initiatives, allow people from outside the community to enter, for example, vendors of construction materials, engineers, or medical professionals. bueno is right when he says that “in tightly-controlled communities, gang consent is required for any non-local to enter” (39). i personally believe that it is worth getting involved, and worth the risk to enter communities besieged by gangs, when it is god who himself grieves for each vulnerable and marginalized person. the church continues to be a beacon of light in the community, a source of hopeful resources for the most vulnerable and poor in society, including gang members. although parachurch organizations play an important role in managing resources for transformational development, the most important part is what locals do in organizing, managing, and administering development initiatives. the involvement of the church in this sense becomes key, because despite the fact that the dynamics and the "codes" of the gangs have changed recently following the truces (el faro 2021) between politicians, the church is still recognized as an institution that must be respected instead of disregarded. the pastors become respected among the young people who belong to gangs. sometimes, as part of the trust phase of community engagement, pastors even support gang members when they are in legal proceedings. these actions do not always have the expected results. a pastor from the department of cuscatlán grew concerned when he was threatened with death after the court where the gang member had been reported learned that he had not shown up for some time to do community work. this generated a tense environment for the pastor, the leadership, and the church. the situation was resolved when the gang learned that it was neither the pastor nor the leaders who reported the situation, but officials from the court. it is for such situations that bueno says “most pastors and church members strive to maintain cordial relationships with gang members, and do their best to avoid direct confrontations” (40). it is important to recognize the value of churches that are involved in community transformation initiatives, as it would be much easier for them to address only the problems of their membership, which are many, in contexts of extremely limited resources and evident multidimensional poverty. david bueno (2022) argues that it stands to reason that communities directly affected by crime, poverty, and marginalization would prioritize the needs of the congregation instead of broad social issues. there is a church in the municipality of chalchuapa, santa ana, which for many years maintained a program with children, to the point that in its early days the congregation was made up almost entirely of minors. in her testimony, the pastor of the church says that the leaders of her denomination told christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(1), summer 2022 ramírez, response to bueno 9 her to put this work aside and to focus instead on the adults. but the pastor felt god’s strong call to continue working with the children and youth, especially those suffering from violence and family abuse, poverty, low schooling, and lack of opportunities. the pastor explains now that gang members “have not been able to enter” into her community, because they have never been able to organize within their community. if gang members are found in the area, they are from other neighborhoods, not from the local community. she attributes this dynamic to the work that has been done for almost twenty years serving children and youth in the community. during this same time, the same denominational leader who encouraged her to leave the youth ministry had to leave his own church and community due to threats from gang members. she believes that was because this pastor did not want to dedicate his efforts to rescuing children when there was an opportunity to do so. the key to unraveling this mess, as bueno (2022, 42) says, is " the local church, … one of the few remaining options to solving the gang crisis." the local church is, despite its many limitations, betterpositioned to be able to propose sustainable solutions to a problem that is increasingly rooted in society. first because it is an organism that does not move from the community; second, because they know people and their needs; and third, because it has the potential to make links with public and private, national, or international institutions. the church cannot flee as development organizations do when they feel threatened. instead, the church must pray so that such threats are not carried out. if necessary, leaders can move when there are direct threats to them or their families. to remain effective, the church must reinvent strategies for approaching gang members, for gangs too know that, when the church undertakes initiatives in latrines, clean water, housing, or road improvement, the entire community, including them and their families, benefits. on some occasions they participate by working in community initiatives, giving days of work, although this generates concern among church and community leaders, because one never knows when such unwritten agreements may be broken, such as when some of the gang members act under the influence of drugs or alcohol, or when the police suspect that criminals are being protected by the church’s cover. the reality is that churches must learn to live cautiously and wisely among the gangs, because gang members are not afraid of spending a lifetime in prison for committing homicide. for some time, christians were highly respected by the gangs, but today they are carefully watched. if gang members believe someone has ties to the rival gang, it is reason enough for those people to be killed or disappeared (a form of homicide in which corpses are buried in clandestine cemeteries that the community cannot expose). in the practice of transformative community development, there is a ray of hope when the local church gets involved. even so, major challenges remain, external resources are always necessary, and the accompaniment of local church leaders who bear the heavy emotional and spiritual burdens of leading development becomes imperative. references el faro (2021). la tregua [podcast]. san salvador, san salvador, el salvador: l. trelles, f. guzmán, & d. alarcón. accessed in 2022 at https://elfaro.net/es/202104/el_salvador/25386/la -tregua.htm fabiola ramírez de rivera directs the church and community program at enlace. she is professor of transformative development and theology of the church at the christian university of the assemblies of god in el salvador, and does research in the area of theology and community development. author email: fabiola.ramirez@enlace.link https://elfaro.net/es/202104/el_salvador/25386/la-tregua.htm https://elfaro.net/es/202104/el_salvador/25386/la-tregua.htm mailto:fabiola.ramirez@enlace.link christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(1), summer 2022 ramírez, response to bueno 10 respuesta desde la mirada de una facilitadora de iglesia y comunidad al artículo de david bueno fabiola ramírez de rivera después de trabajar por más de nueve años en comunidades con contextos socioeconómicos diversos, puedo comprender que la dinámica de la participación e intervención social de la iglesia evangélica se ve afectada por el fenómeno de las pandillas. como bien plantea david bueno, “el desafío para muchas iniciativas comunitarias es que el control que ejerce las pandillas hace que el pronóstico de un futuro mejor sea insostenible” (2022, 38). en mi experiencia trabajando para una organización cristiana de desarrollo, cuando se inicia una relación de acompañamiento a la iglesia en su trabajo de transformación comunitaria, usualmente preguntamos si podemos visitar la zona solos, o acompañados por un líder de la iglesia o comunidad que tenga una buena reputación. hay algunos casos, por ejemplo, en donde nos hemos atrevido a entrar o caminar solos por la comunidad y el pastor nos ha llamado la atención por lo peligroso que puede ser para nosotros. en algunos casos, hemos dejado de acompañar algunas iglesias por amenazas directas o indirectas a un miembro del equipo de enlace o del liderazgo de iglesia y comunidad, en la que expresamente el pastor nos ha dicho: “yo no puedo hablar con ellos (los pandilleros) y no les puedo garantizar que sea seguro entrar por ahora”. y así, se han suspendido iniciativas de agua limpia o de desarrollo económico para evitar entrar en una situación en donde se vulnere a un miembro del staff o líder comunitario. la solución a este fenómeno puede ser compleja, pero en la práctica también hemos podido observar a los miembros de pandillas, quienes al ver a la iglesia trabajando en iniciativas comunitarias, permiten que personas ajenas a la comunidad ingresen, por ejemplo, vendedores de materiales de construcción, profesionales ingenieros o médicos. tal como bueno afirma, “en comunidades estrictamente controladas, se requiere el consentimiento de las pandillas para que cualquier persona no local ingrese“ (39). considero personalmente, que vale la pena involucrarse, vale la pena arriesgarse al ingresar a comunidades asediadas por pandillas, cuando es dios quien se duele por cada persona en condición de vulnerabilidad y marginalidad. la iglesia sigue siendo un faro de luz en la comunidad, una fuente de recursos con esperanza para los más desprotegidos y pobres de la sociedad, incluyendo los pandilleros. aunque las organizaciones paraeclesiásticas juegan un papel importante en la gestión de recursos para el desarrollo transformacional, la parte más importante es la que hacen los locales en la organización, gestión y administración de una iniciativa de desarrollo. el involucramiento de la iglesia en ese sentido se vuelve clave, porque a pesar que la dinámica y los “códigos” de las pandillas hayan cambiado después de las treguas (el faro 2021) entre políticos en los últimos años, aún se reconoce a la iglesia como una institución que debe ser respetada y con la que no se debe jugar. los pastores se convierten en referentes de respeto entre los jóvenes que pertenecen a pandillas y muchas veces hasta en un apoyo cuando están en procesos judiciales como la fase de confianza en las que realizan labores comunitarias. estas acciones no siempre tienen los resultados esperados, un pastor del departamento de cuscatlán pasó momentos de preocupación cuando fue amenazado a muerte después que el juzgado, donde se reportaba el pandillero, supiera que él no se había presentado por algún tiempo a realizar las labores comunitarias que le había ordenado. esto generó un ambiente tenso para el pastor, el liderazgo y la iglesia, y finalmente la situación se arregló cuando se enteraron que no fue ni el pastor ni los líderes quienes informaron de la situación, sino los encargados del juzgado. efectivamente, tal como bueno menciona que “la mayoría de los pastores y miembros de la iglesia se esfuerzan por mantener relaciones cordiales con los miembros de la pandilla y hacen todo lo posible para evitar confrontaciones directas” (40). es importante reconocer el valor que tienen las iglesias que se involucran en iniciativas de transformación comunitaria, ya que les resultaría mucho más fácil atender únicamente los problemas de su membresía que son bastantes, en contextos de christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(1), summer 2022 ramírez, response to bueno 11 recursos sumamente limitados y de pobreza multidimensional evidente. bueno plantea que es lógico pensar que las comunidades directamente afectadas por el crimen, la pobreza y la marginación prioricen las necesidades de la congregación en lugar de los problemas sociales amplios. en ese sentido hay una iglesia en el municipio de chalchuapa, santa ana, que desde hace muchos años comenzó un trabajo intenso con la niñez. la congregación la integraban prácticamente menores de edad en sus inicios, y la pastora al contar su testimonio, se refiere como sus líderes eclesiales le hicieron énfasis en dejar de lado su trabajo con la niñez y enfocarse en trabajar con adultos. sin embargo, para ella era importante responder al llamado de dios de atender a niños que sufrían violencia y abuso familiar, pobreza, baja escolaridad y falta de oportunidades. la pastora reitera que en su comunidad los pandilleros “no han podido entrar”, haciendo referencia a que no se han podido organizar dentro de su comunidad, y si se encuentra pandilleros por la zona, son de lugares aledaños, más no de la localidad. ella atribuye esa dinámica al trabajo que se ha realizado desde hace casi 20 años atendiendo a la niñez y adolescencia de la comunidad, mientras que su líder denominacional tuvo que abandonar la comunidad donde pastoreaba por amenazas de pandilleros. la pastora considera que fue porque este pastor no quiso dedicar sus esfuerzos en rescatar a estos niños cuando hubo oportunidad de hacerlo. la clave para desenredar este embrollo como dice bueno (2022, 42), “es la iglesia local, -quees una de las pocas opciones restantes para resolver la crisis de pandillas”. la iglesia local está, a pesar de sus múltiples limitaciones, mejor ubicada para poder proponer soluciones sostenibles a una problemática cada vez más enraizada en la sociedad. primero porque es un organismo que no se mueve de la comunidad, segundo; porque conoce a las personas y sus necesidades, y tercero porque tiene el potencial de hacer nexos con instituciones públicas y privadas, nacionales o internacionales. la iglesia no puede huir como lo hacen las organizaciones de desarrollo cuando se sienten amenazadas; la iglesia debe orar para que las amenazas no se lleven a cabo, o en su defecto se dan movimientos de líderes cuando hay amenazas directas a su vida o su familia. por lo tanto, la iglesia es clave en la reinvención de alternativas para acercarse a los pandilleros ellos conocen que, si la iglesia ejecuta una iniciativa de letrinas, agua limpia, viviendas o mejoramiento de infraestructura vial, toda la comunidad incluidos ellos y sus familias se ven beneficiados. en algunas ocasiones participan trabajando en las iniciativas comunitarias, dando días de trabajo, aunque esto genere preocupación entre los líderes de la iglesia y la comunidad, porque nunca se sabe cuándo estos acuerdos no escritos se puedan romper, como cuando algunos de los pandilleros están actuando bajo los efectos de las drogas o el alcohol, o también cuándo la policía pueda sospechar que se está encubriendo a delincuentes bajo la sombra de la iglesia. la realidad es que se debe aprender a vivir con cautela y sabiduría entre las pandillas, porque no son grupos que tienen temor a pasar toda una vida en la cárcel por cometer homicidio. durante algún tiempo, los cristianos fueron sumamente respetados por las pandillas, en la actualidad son observados y si los pandilleros consideran que alguna persona tiene nexo con la pandilla rival es motivo suficiente para que se asesine o desaparezca (una forma de homicidio en el que los cadáveres son enterrados en cementerios clandestinos que la comunidad no puede denunciar). en la práctica del desarrollo comunitario transformador se observa que a medida la iglesia local se involucra hay una luz de esperanza, entendiendo que los desafíos están latentes, que los recursos externos son siempre necesarios y que un acompañamiento se vuelve imperativo porque la carga emocional y espiritual es sumamente grande para quienes lideran los procesos de desarrollo, la iglesia. referencias el faro (2021). la tregua [podcast]. san salvador, san salvador, el salvador: l. trelles, f. guzmán, & d. alarcón. recuperado el 2022, de https://elfaro.net/es/202104/el_salvador/25386/la -tregua.htm fabiola ramírez de rivera es jefa del programa iglesia y comunidad en enlace, profesora de la cátedra desarrollo transformador y teología de la iglesia en la universidad cristiana de las asambleas de dios en el salvador. apoya procesos de investigación teológica y desarrollo comunitario. author email: fabiola.ramirez@enlace.link https://elfaro.net/es/202104/el_salvador/25386/la-tregua.htm https://elfaro.net/es/202104/el_salvador/25386/la-tregua.htm mailto:fabiola.ramirez@enlace.link christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(2), winter 2023 toop, more than partners: christ-centered organizations and the local church 64 more than partners: christ-centered organizations and the local church katie toop local churches have increasingly been called upon as local partners in development work, by faithbased and secular organizations alike, for their invaluable local history, knowledge, and connections. while acknowledging the value of these assets is important, the partnerships with local churches can easily fall into purely transactional relationships. at world concern we care deeply how our identity as a christ-centered organization impacts our relationship with the local church, how our calling intersects with that of the gathered fellowship of believers, and how we work to foster mutually lifegiving partnerships with christ’s bride. this article reviews an exploratory exercise world concern did together with partner churches in africa in 2016. the goal was not to train or teach, but to think about the character of our partnership. the article provides a glimpse into some of world concern’s continuing field conversation around this critical topic. at world concern, our vision statement is “a world transformed from poverty to the abundance of life.” we take this vision from jesus in john 10:10b, where he says, “i came so that they would have life, and have it abundantly” (nasb). but what is unique about the abundance jesus promises and the abundance of the world? what does it look like? how do we pursue it? is it discovered? developed? gifted? and what role do we play? it was this last question, about the role we play— and more specifically, the role we play in relation to the local church—that led us to consider our approach to church partnership more intentionally. as a christcentered organization, we believe the gathered fellowship of believers is central to god’s plan for this abundance and thus must also be central to our own. jesus promised he would build his church (matt. 16:18), not his international non-governmental organization (ingo), and while we acknowledge that the kingdom of god is not limited to the church, and we pray our own christ-centered ingo will indeed bear fruit for the kingdom, 1 we also recognize that the abundance jesus spoke of includes and finds unique expression in a growing and vibrant local church. 1 we acknowledge that god is at work outside the boundaries of those who are surrendered to him. the spirit is not restricted or bound by the sacred/secular divides human beings have constructed; still, this article intends to consider what is done in the context of a christ-centered organization, a group of people intentionally surrendered to the lordship and leadership of jesus. why the local church? there are myriad reasons to work in partnership with the local church. one does not have to be a person of faith to see the value local churches can bring to disaster response and community development work. secular organizations, governmental donors, scholars, and practitioners from many walks of life have acknowledged the benefits of partnership with churches in communities. local churches have relational networks of trust, local knowledge, an understanding of context, local language, and a sustainable presence, to name a few. while it is important to acknowledge and celebrate these benefits, it is also possible to slip into a transactional relationship with the local church, where partnership is viewed as purely strategic, either solely or primarily from the perspective of meeting the targets of the ingo—be they community development milestones or numbers of lives impacted that need to go into a report—on ingo timelines, often dictated by donors whose priorities may or may not align with the church. in this case, the local church becomes, at best, one of several valued local partners without any special spiritual significance and, at worst, simply a means to an end. local partners are invaluable to our work as christcentered ingos. partnership, however, takes time, christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(2), winter 2023 toop, more than partners: christ-centered organizations and the local church 65 energy, and resources, so organizations like world concern must be strategic about those we partner with. for that reason, ingos, formally or informally, often perform some version of a cost-benefit analysis in selecting and continuing with partners. if the local church is no more than another option for partnership, an organization’s decision will also be based on such an analysis. how does the response of a christ-centered ingo change if we view the local church as somehow distinct from other local partners? if we believe the church is the bride of christ (eph. 5:25-32) and the body of christ (eph. 1:22-23), surely our commitment to her must be of an entirely different nature than that of a partner that is merely “strategic.” if the church is the beloved of the one at the very center of our identity, are we not compelled to remain faithful to her even when the cost-benefit analysis, financially, programmatically, or operationally, does not land in her favor? for world concern, the answer is a resounding yes. therefore, we set out to explore how best to partner with her. this is a journey we are still on today. understanding our role: a conversation with leaders in order to partner well, one key question is how the calling of the local church and the calling of our ingo are related. what is unique about the local church, what is unique about world concern, and what do we share? we asked this question during a 2016 meeting with our country leaders in africa. those gathered were women and men from a handful of african countries who had been serving in the region doing disaster response and community development in a variety of spiritual contexts, from the wide open to highly restricted. some had extensive experience working with the local church in programming, others were somewhat new to the concept. we drew two overlapping circles on a piece of flipchart paper, as seen in the image below. the circle on the right represented the calling and mandate of the local church and the one on the left represented world concern. the area of overlap was meant to capture the parts of our mandate that were held in common, roles that were shared. we had no preconceived notion of how the discussion would go, nor how the circles would look in the end. it was not meant to steer participants toward a predetermined solution; instead, it was truly a blank slate, open for any and all views and possibilities. the goal was not to be exhaustive but to provide ourselves an overview and general picture of where our callings were distinct and where they were shared. we began by identifying what was unique to the local church. this was done relatively quickly. participants identified four unique aspects of the local church’s role: ordinances, 2 institutional church planting, receiving of the tithe, and long-term discipleship. we then moved on to identifying what was unique to world concern. what was it about our mandate and calling that was only ours to pursue? this is what our regional leaders came up with: 2 while some use the term “ordinances and other sacraments,” and the understanding of what the term encompasses varies, in this discussion, “ordinances” referred primarily to baptism, communion, and marriage. christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(2), winter 2023 toop, more than partners: christ-centered organizations and the local church 66 most of the items in the area of overlap landed there only after lengthy and active discussion. while the details of the discussion were not recorded, the essence of the conversation was fairly consistent. one participant, for example, felt that the building of local institutions should be considered unique to us as an ingo; just as the facilitator was going to write that in the “world concern” circle, another participant spoke up to offer an example of the local church establishing local institutions (e.g., the organized feeding program in the early church, as described in acts 6), so it ended up in the area of overlap. another participant suggested that disaster response be put into the “world concern” circle because that is an area of technical expertise we are uniquely equipped to offer, but just as that was about to be written, others argued that the local church is equally called to meet the urgent needs of the local community, as found in titus 3:14. thus, one by one, each suggestion for the left circle ended up in the shared category. what does this mean? at the end of the exercise, we asked ourselves what conclusions we might draw. if this was truly how we understood the relationship between our calling and that of the local church in the africa region, how should it impact who we are, what we do, and how we do it? we were not under the impression that this simple drawing captured an entire model for church partnership—it was the initial exploration of one aspect of it—but the conversation was compelling and challenging. the leaders involved in the meeting left with a renewed sense of commitment to intentionally engage with, build the capacity of, serve, and serve with the local church in our areas of operation. beyond those present in the room, this conversation was catalytic for the organization. over the next several years, leaders throughout world concern continued to wrestle with our relationship to the local church. echoes of this and similar exercises had implications for our philosophy of ministry, our strategy, and our programming. 1. philosophy: input like this from our global teams helped shape our philosophy of partnership with local churches. we acknowledged and articulated the following as part of our theory of change: our work in any one location is temporary and should contribute to the edification and equipping of the 3 this statement is part of a larger whole theory of change and thus does not, on its own, capture adequately our commitment to mutuality, which is articulated separately but applies to all partnerships. this statement addresses what we bring to the partnership and how we view the local church. to outline how we learn from and are served by the local church would require another article altogether. 4 “strategic” in this sense refers to strategic for the advancement of the kingdom of god, not merely program strategy. local and global body of christ to walk more fully in her identity as god’s beloved bride, ambassador, and agent of reconciliation. 3 as an ingo, do we have skills and resources that are not currently present in the local church? in most cases, yes, we do. and those should be used to build up, encourage, serve, and equip the body of christ, even as we are encouraged, built up, and strengthened by her. if world concern does its job well, when the left circle is removed from the flipchart, nothing is lost. the journey of holistic transformation continues, championed and led by the local church. 2. strategy: when it came time for an organizational strategic planning process, the results of these kinds of conversations informed the expansion of church partnerships from a subset of partnership in general to a strategic 4 focus all its own. we became more intentional about designing approaches to and opportunities for partnership globally, regionally, and locally with the fellowship of believers god has called together for the glory of his name and the good of those he loves. 3. program: new programmatic initiatives were born out of conversations like this. of note is a program called africans to africa, which, as internal program documents say, seeks to “…mobilize the whole african church and the whole body of african believers to holistically reach the whole of africa—because we can!” in this program, world concern partners with churches in nairobi, kenya to reach unreached or least-reached parts of south sudan, kenya, and democratic republic of the congo (drc) with the good news through the training up and support of local evangelists in holistic ministry. this program builds on one of the strengths of christ-centered ingos, which is our ability to offer a neutral but faith-aligned, nondenominational platform for churches to begin partnering with one another. in time, it is envisaged that this program will be fully run by the churches themselves in a way that testifies powerfully to the unity that is possible—and indeed commanded—in the body of christ. christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(2), winter 2023 toop, more than partners: christ-centered organizations and the local church 67 what does this not mean? while some helpful learning points came out of the diagram and associated discussion, it is also important to clarify what we did not conclude through the conversation. 1. the local church is not our sole local partner. this one exercise singled out world concern and the local church, but if we were to zoom out, there would be many other circles. in 2021, in fact, we did another venn diagram exercise that included the community itself, local government, the regional church, the global church, and other key stakeholders. no two drawings from any two countries were the same! and none was as simple as this. in terms of kingdom-aligned partners, in addition to institutions like the church, we also partner with christian professionals and networks both locally and regionally. none of that is captured in this conversation—not because it is less important, but because, at the time, we were specifically considering the local church. 2. the institution of the local church is not the sole vehicle for kingdom ministry. while we firmly believe that the local church is critical to flourishing, we also believe in the priesthood of all believers and acknowledge that kingdom work happens seven days a week throughout community life as christ-followers live into and out of their true identities as image-bearers of god. in fact, the diagram drawn by these leaders looks this way essentially because of our belief in the priesthood of all believers. the calling of world concern overlaps the calling of the local church because, as christ-followers, we are the church, and we are called to be the church in all we do. 3. the local church is not meant to become the local ngo. if you only look at this one diagram and the contents of this one conversation, it would be easy to conclude that the local church is simply being trained to take over the work of an ngo. the reality on the ground in many areas we serve is that 5 a note of caution on this. in a christ-centered ingo, we have the unique privilege of seeking the lord together with our coworkers. we get to worship together, pray together, serve together, and live out our calling in rich community. indeed, we are the church to one another and the world around us. at times, we may be tempted to replace the local church with the community of believers we find at work. the local church is, after all, another broken institution. nevertheless, the local church is critical. it is the gathering place for all believers. even in a christ-centered organization, we are hired and fired from positions based on factors such as experience, training, job performance, and funding. but we are not hired or fired from the local church. we opt into or out of jobs based on factors like job satisfaction, compensation, career growth, or stage in life. we are not designed to opt into or out of the local church. we are exhorted not to give up meeting (heb. 10:25). the local church, while messy and uncomfortable at times, and imperfect always, is a crucial steward of the ministry of reconciliation, a place of growth and discipleship, and a powerful testimony to the watching world. the local church is one of the few local institutions faithfully present to serve people in the community, and they do end up wearing many hats. still, our intention is not to turn churches into ngos. we do not expect local churches to become the administrative center for initiatives in every sector of community life. should the church be starting up hospitals and nutrition centers? in some cases, yes, that may be very appropriate, but in most cases, no, that is not the role of the local church. regardless, the local church is still the place where christ-followers who serve in every arena of community life, are equipped to do so with a kingdom mindset. we expect to see local churches discipling women and men who go into community as priest-nurses and priest-lawyers and priest-blacksmiths, as we together pursue a holistic mandate and rediscover the abundance of life we are designed for. 4. world concern is not fully distinct from the church. 5 while we drew world concern and the local church as two circles, this does not capture the fullness of reality. it is a flawed and limited picture. in truth, we are all (those of us who are christ-followers in world concern and those who are christ-followers in the local church) part of the greater body of believers, the global church. in most cases, our local staff are also part of the local church where we serve, so they very much live in the overlap. we represented the organizations distinctly because we are administratively separate, but we must keep in mind that the representation is limited and the conversation is not designed to introduce new boundaries, but to help us think about our partnership from one of many perspectives. concluding thoughts we have not sought to present a model for church partnership here—either for ourselves or for other organizations. we have simply invited you to listen in on some of our organizational conversation about a christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(2), winter 2023 toop, more than partners: christ-centered organizations and the local church 68 critical and irreplaceable partner, the local church, and how our callings relate to one another. for us, this conversation has helped highlight aspects of our own identity as well as the critical role of the local church in community abundance and some of the opportunities to be part of edifying and building her up, even as she edifies and builds us up. at world concern, we still have a lot of work to do in defining and refining our philosophy of and approach to local church partnership, but we have reaffirmed our commitment to journeying together with the bride of the one in whom we find our very identity. we intend to continue learning and growing both from and with the uniquely beautiful expressions of the body of christ in the places where he allows us to serve. like the local church, we are messy and imperfect in our attempts to love and serve those around us. and, like her, we are fully dependent on connection to the vine if we are to bear any fruit at all (john 15:1-17). may we be found faithful. katie toop is senior director of transformational development at world concern, and one of the accord network fellows for 2023. she has served in disaster response and community development work internationally for 18 years. her current role focuses on staff capacity building and strategic approaches to community engagement. author email: katiet@worldconcern.org about:blank christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(1), summer 2019 james, book review 51 book review christianity in india: conversion, community development and religious freedom by rebecca samuel shah and joel carpenter, eds. reviewed by manohar james minneapolis, mn: fortress press, 2018. $34.00 the collection of articles in this book discusses the contemporary contentious topics of hindu nationalism, conversion, christian contribution, religious freedom, and violence in india. as the editors admit, this work is not an exhaustive overview of christianity in india or a missionary account, but rather a timely effort that provides clarity on the current complex issues the indian church is facing under the pressure of hindu nationalism. the well-written essays by indian and western authors encapsulate the historical, socioreligious and political contexts of anti-christian violence and christian responses to the suffering in one volume. the book has three parts. the first part informs how christian conversions have been negatively viewed and portrayed by hindu nationalists, although many converts preserve their indian identity and contribute to the development of the underprivileged and marginalized people around them. in the opening article, “saving the soul of india,” rebecca samuel shah has beautifully captured in a nutshell the historical backdrop of the rise of hindu nationalism, which evolved through various sociopolitical and religious revivals beginning with swami dayananda saraswati and swami vivekananda of the 19th century. she points out how the presence and proselytization efforts of semitic religions such as islam and christianity challenged, shaped, and helped the reconstruction of hinduism and hindutva ideology, enabling hindu fundamentalists to show to the world that hinduism is supremely ancient, authoritative, coherent, flexible, reasonable, inclusive, and tolerant. this reconstruction process became an inspiring focus of cultural and national unity, an anti-colonial political mobilization for hindus and a prospect of self-evaluation for missionaries. in the second essay, sean doyle shows how the christian faith influenced laxmibai tilak, a high caste hindu convert from pune, and impacted her thinking in the areas of human dignity, gender equality, and social disparities. her conversion and life transformation did not alienate her from indian culture, but rather inspired her to dig deeper into her heritage, and to value and uphold the indian identity, even after becoming a christian. doyle notes, “her embracing of the christian message and her shift in religious identity were the primary impulses that led to her active promotion of cultural renewal…” along the same lines, the third essay by bernardo a. michael recounts the story of anglican missionary c. f. andrews, who reached across the boundaries of differences and left a legacy in india. andrews was “quick to discern the divine working in the lives of others, even if they were from other faiths, a view that was not shared by many of his christian peers.” contrary to the anti-missionary allegations, andrews stood by indians in their struggle for freedom and became an indian nationalist who called for india’s independence. joshua iyadurai’s article, “christian conversion in india” helps clear the fog on the hindu nationalist perceptions against conversions by exposing the political agendas of the major leaders of nationalist movements and by contending that not all conversions are irrational. his empirical research shows that “conversion is not a change of religious identity, but finding a new identity in jesus who transformed their lives, who gave them peace and joy, and who delivered them from sin and curse.” christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(1), summer 2019 james, book review 52 the second part of the book offers insights on the importance of understanding the integral relationship between evangelization and social transformation. aminta arrington’s article, “american evangelicalism, social action and christianity in india,” explains how american evangelicalism traditionally carried out its mission to the world with new activities and old paradigms. while enumerating the reasons why some american evangelicals emphasized social engagement and economic development beyond personal spiritual transformation while others did not, arrington shows a few examples of indian christian practices and theologies on holism and suggests that “american evangelicals engaged in social action must not only look at what god is doing outside the west, but hear the interpretation of what god is doing from theologians from outside the west.” in “what god has joined together let no one separate,” darren duerksen unfolds the challenges and gaps between the christian developmental organizations (cdos) and the local church in south india, and shows the need for a close collaboration between the two to act as co-agents of missional transformation. while i agree with his recommendation for divine marriage between the church and the cdos in india, i am doubtful whether his assessment of south india churches fully represents the reality of the churches and denominations across india. in my opinion, he has not clearly addressed the economic and literacy problems the local church faces. the final part of the book focuses on how hindu nationalism has been inspired, supported and promoted in various ways and forms, as well as how it poses a threat to the aspects of secularism affecting the religious freedom of minorities, especially christians. samuel thambuswamy’s critical examination of bollywood films demonstrates that the indian films, especially karan johar’s movies, are invitational and inspirational to the people in india and to the indian diaspora in the west to remain patriotic to their sociocultural pride, which privileges hinduism. thambuswamy argues that while johar’s films achieve success because of their exclusive vision of indian-ness which is tantamount to hindu religious identity, their undergirded hindu perspective affords support to hindu nationalist spirit that promotes the demarcation of boundaries between “us” (indians) and “them” (nonindians). karuna m. johnson’s interview of human rights advocates, john dayal and vijayesh lal, captures the continued scenario of the opposition and persecution of christians in 21st century india. the interviewees’ assertion of the escalated anti-christian violence and the suffering of christians is made clear in vikas ram and kay higuera smith’s examination of the ground experience of persecuted christians from four regions of india. in their research, the writers discovered that christians love their country, culture, and hindu neighbors, even amid violence. they also enact biblical archetypes by remaining strong and hopeful in their dedication to christ, despite suffering. in “religious freedom among the marginalized,” rebecca and timothy samuel shah provide the historical context to the freedom of religion laws. they contend that under the influence of hindu nationalist leaders, the ambiguity of the conversion laws restricts freedom of religion by placing a heavy price on the conversion of minority communities, reducing them to victims and objects. the price includes losing government benefits such as housing, food subsidy, and educational grants for children. in the final article, “the burned church,” paul s. rowe addresses how pluralism and secularism are threatened by a single religious nationalist movement, and how the hindutva movement fails to recognize the dramatic diversity of indian society. he also maintains that under indian pluralism, christianity generously contributes to the development of health, economics and society. this book is unique in a sense that it includes both historical and ground experience research which shows the ongoing christian challenges in perspective and portrays a fair picture of the current christian situation in india. it’s a useful resource for researchers in the field of hindu nationalism and christianity in india. manohar james is executive director of serving alongside international, and pastor of intercultural ministry at high point church in madison, wisconsin. he served as cross-cultural native missionary and seminary professor in india for 15 years, and holds a phd in intercultural studies from asbury theological seminary. author email: manoharjames@gmail.com mailto:manoharjames@gmail.com christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 williams, book review 93 book review a gospel for the poor: global social christianity and the latin american evangelical left by david c. kirkpatrick reviewed by andrew l. williams philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press, $55.00 this monograph provides a detailed and intricate look into one of the most important christian developments in the latter portion of the 20th century: the emergence of an evangelical left in latin america and the influence of its misión integral (“integral mission”) on international evangelicalism more broadly. in the immediate aftermath of wwii, carl f. h. henry lamented a fundamentalist/evangelical retreat from social issues in his book, the uneasy conscience of modern fundamentalism. prominent western evangelicals such as john stott and the berlin congress on world evangelization (1966) illustrated this retreat by espousing the primacy of evangelism over social concerns. in that context, latin american evangelical leaders grew wary of a gospel of the wealthy and its lack of interest in economic and political structures that perpetuate oppression, racism, and poverty. at issue, in the simplest terms, was (and is) whether social action is inherently part of the gospel or is only an implication of the good news. beginning with the role of global south leadership at the 1974 lausanne congress, kirkpatrick reviews the growth of a christian movement that sought a more robust and balanced theology. what they would produce, referred to as integral or holistic mission, would become standard evangelical language within a few decades. to some degree, the story of this book is about navigating boundaries with the purpose of articulating a theology that is both faithful to the biblical witness and carefully contextualized. ideologically, latin american evangelicals sought a middle way between marxism and right-wing politics of the u.s. church and its missionaries. theologically, leaders such as miguez bonino and rené padilla navigated the border of ecumenical (left leaning) and evangelical (right leaning) groups within latin america. relationally, samuel escobar, padilla, and others functioned as liaisons between the latin american body of christ and christian leaders external to the continent. this book makes many valuable contributions to our understanding of christian relief, development, and advocacy, three of which are discussed here. first, it offers an example of the important fruit born by contextualizing church and theology. one practitioner quoted in the book says that christian humanitarians and missionaries needed to “up our game” theologically (161). the evolution in one element of global church relations, between latin america and europe/north america, that kirkpatrick’s research captures is a compelling corrective in the continued struggle with western cultural and theological imposition and blindness. lamin sanneh is an example of a prominent missiologist who explored similar themes. second, padilla, escobar, and others show that the kingdom of god transcends political ideology (left or right; communist or capitalist). though the term “left” in the title may suggest otherwise, the theology and ministry of misión integral is neither partisan nor in the service of a particular political agenda—an important reminder in our age. third, for scholars interested in themes related to christian humanitarianism, as well as latin american christianity or theology, this book is an intricate, perhaps definitive, record of one important movement. the extensive use of archival research and substantial documentation of secondary sources will christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 williams, book review 94 likely constitute a lasting reference for the academic community. a gospel for the poor raises the ever-present question of discontinuity versus continuity in historical analysis. thankfully, kirkpatrick is aware of the complexity of the record. even though his book sides principally with discontinuity or the innovation of misión integral, in numerous instances he acknowledges that the concepts at the heart of it are not novel to the latin american evangelical left in the 1960s and 70s. for example, he calls into question the historiography of the “great reversal,” or the fundamentalist/social gospel split in the early 20th century, by pointing to the more holistic theologies of the black church and female missionaries. yet, despite a few contrary examples, kirkpatrick places a significant onus on readers to hold the complexity of the historical narrative together. for instance, the book has relatively little to say about the post-world war ii explosion of international non-governmental organizations (ingos) that was deeply influenced by christians concerned about poverty and oppression; and that included the creation of evangelical organizations such as world relief (1944), world vision (1950) and compassion international (1952). brian woolnough, a scholar of christian relief and development, uses the language of holistic mission to discuss post-war christian humanitarian ngos. another example is provided by latin american catholicism, which is more nuanced than the dichotomy of liberation theology, on the one hand, and support of hierarchy and despotism, on the other. in fact, the via media of the latin american evangelical left is similar in approach and analysis to such encyclicals as rerum novarum (1891) and quadragesimo anno (1931). additional questions, theological in nature, are close to the surface throughout the writing. several come more clearly into focus in the discussion of the emerging church’s connection to padilla and integral mission. is misión integral, as brian mcclaren asserts, a “different theological ecosystem” that moves away from an emphasis on penal substitutionary atonement (164)? would mcclaren or padilla give no priority to eternal or spiritual over temporal, terrestrial, or social ends? in addition, misión integral follows a more optimistic, or “realized,” eschatology. by way of illustrative contrast, “christian realism” (e.g., richard niebuhr), which played a major role in post-war neoliberalism, was more skeptical of human institutions and structures—a view influenced by the failure of the league of nations to prevent either wwii or the holocaust. are christian realism and integral mission different emphases or incompatible ecosystems? one could also ask about the theological categorization of latin american figures such as padilla and bonino. kirkpatrick, who raises that question in various ways, partially answers it by noting that padilla became increasingly ecumenical and bonino increasingly evangelical over time (133). the conclusion, which feels too rushed, begins with the dichotomy of jim wallis and al mohler, and the former’s assertion that he has more in common with global christianity than with american evangelicals like mohler. yet, in some segments of the global church and with certain issues (including some “social issues”) mohler’s evangelicalism is a much closer fit abroad. a better inquiry may be to probe the limits of terms like “evangelical” and “ecumenical,” or “left” and “right,” especially across geographies and decades. we should be grateful to kirkpatrick for excavating this history and raising such questions. all told, this is a terrific resource that works hard to tell an important story accurately. i highly recommend a gospel for the poor to practitioners, scholars, and students. andrew l. williams is a phd student in nonprofit and global studies at iupui, and a lecturer in international relations and development at lcc international university. he has lived and worked in the dominican republic and rwanda. author email: andylwilliams@gmail.com christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(2), winter 2023 parsons, book review 77 book review service and the ministry of reconciliation: a missiological history of mennonite central committee by alain epp weaver reviewed by katerina parsons newton, ks: bethel college, 2021. $10.00 my concept of international “service” was first shaped by mennonite central committee’s (mcc) one-year exchange program for young adults, which placed me with a justice organization in tegucigalpa, honduras. i spent the next seven years with mcc and mcc partners, first in honduras and then in washington, d.c., wondering sometimes whether i was “serving” or merely “working.” informed by its identity as a ministry of the global anabaptist church, mennonite central committee works for “relief, development and peace in the name of christ” in countercultural ways that promote nonviolence and favor the slow, small, and relational over anything flashy, fast, or sprawling (see the mcc logo at www.mcc.org). mcc funds most of its projects through local churches or civil society organizations and often supports these organizations not just with money but with “service workers,” who may be from any country with an anabaptist presence. it is this idea of “service” that is central to alain epp weaver’s slim volume, service and the ministry of reconciliation: a missiological history of mennonite central committee. developed from a series of lectures at kansas’s bethel college on the occasion of mcc’s centennial, the book is written primarily to provide people familiar with mcc “new ways of thinking about how [their] part of the mcc story fits within broader directions and tensions across mcc’s century-long history” (xiv). the questions the book raises, however, are relevant to anyone questioning “colonial and racialized assumptions about who is serving whom and where” (60), particularly those skeptical of models of service that send young north americans to presumably be of some “service” in countries where they do not speak the language or know the culture, to carry out tasks they would likely be unqualified to perform in their hometowns. epp weaver’s rich archival research traces a history of tension between conceptions of service as christian witness, as relief work following humanitarian principles, as active nonresistance against militarism and war or – as service worker lydia schlabach put it in 1950 – as “some glamor, some broadening of experience, some new learning, and a lot of dedication and hard work” (50). at the heart of this book – and mcc’s mission – is a challenge against service as simply “doing” (4), particularly when that action flows from wealthier countries to poorer countries. “christian service certainly involves doing, lots of doing,” epp weaver writes, “but fundamentally christian service is about connection to and fellowship with others, discovering ourselves before god in our common need” (9). this definition leads to mcc’s “ministries of presence” over modernization, and peacebuilding over prescriptivism. it is something mcc workers have been saying for decades. “unless we learn from the people themselves…who they are and why they see themselves, the world, us and god as they do,” mused jean snyder, an mcc service worker in jamaica in the 1980s, “we have little to offer them but our busyness. and our busyness may, in the long run, have more relevance to our monthly reports than to the lives we touch” (62). epp weaver comes to this view informed by his own history with mcc, beginning with his wife’s and his first placement in palestine, where they were sent “not with a predetermined agenda but were instead tasked https://mcc.org/ christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(2), winter 2023 parsons, book review 78 with building connections and forging relationships” (100). he writes that “presence, solidarity, connection, relationship, [and] accompaniment” were the “keywords” shaping their orientation to mcc, an organization where some workers joked they should be evaluated by how many cups of tea they shared with neighbors (100). at the same time, he notes, parents of children in the school where they were assigned expected them to teach (100). this caused a tension, he writes, “in holding together the missiological imperative of being present, on the one hand, with the need to plan for and report on results, on the other,” something he argues “is a tension that has defined mcc more broadly” (100). this is a significant tension. mcc’s intentionally slow, relational work cannot be scaled to fully meet the needs of a planet facing war, displacement, hunger, and a changing climate that is right now destroying homes and livelihoods. facing such immense need, mcc’s concept of service as reconciliation and mutual sharing makes the most sense in a context that looks ahead to god’s “kingdom come.” in epp weaver’s telling, the “why” of relief work is not just about feeding the hungry and clothing the naked but is instead “a living and powerful testimony to love at a time when it is most needed” (46). in syria, for example, mcc’s relief items might have been a drop in the bucket, but through mcc “the church gave an embodied witness to what syria might yet one day be, and to the coming future in which all will stand in fellowship before god in our shared need” (12). service and the ministry of reconciliation is not the most exhaustive book about mcc’s history, nor is it the most accessible to someone outside the anabaptist fold (or whose parlance does not include terms like “missiological”). 1 as a member of the target audience, however, i found new ideas to challenge my own concepts and expectations of service. others who have worked or “served” abroad could benefit from similarly honest storytelling about their own organizations and who concepts of “service” are understood to encompass. 1 mcc’s history is well documented in books like in the name of christ: a history of the mennonite central committee and its services 1920-1951 by john d. unruh and mennonite central committee in canada: a history by esther epp-thiessen. an accessible entry point might be pursuing peace: the essence of mennonite central committee by esther epp-thiessen, which is just 39 pages and free online. those interested in thematic explorations through mcc’s lens might read intersections: mcc theory and practice quarterly, edited by alain epp weaver. katerina parsons is a policy specialist at usaid’s bureau for humanitarian assistance. a graduate of calvin university and american university, she spent four years in tegucigalpa, honduras before moving to washington d.c. to work on humanitarian assistance policy. author email: katerinaparsons@gmail.com https://mcccanada.ca/media/resources/12502 https://mcccanada.ca/media/resources/12502 intersections:%20mcc%20theory%20and%20practice%20quarterly about:blank christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(1), summer 2022 hoksbergen and bronkema, editors’ introduction i editors’ introduction roland hoksbergen and david bronkema – crda co-editors it is always a blessing to see how the spirit brings together an issue, and this one is no exception. we are particularly thankful for the way that the engagement with our journal is transcending the originally published articles with follow up webinars and conversations. in fact, a significant portion of this issue is the result of follow-up reflections based on david bueno’s article in our spring issue where he wrote about his experiences with transformational development work in communities where gangs are present, pervasive, and powerful. bueno offered ideas for work at both community (or micro) levels, and national (or macro) levels, even as he wrestled with the best way forward. working where gang activity permeates a community, complete with the threat and reality of violence, as well as threats to attract and enfold community youth into the ranks of the gangs, is difficult, to say the least, and despairing, to put a more accurate label on it. where is god, and where is redemption, amidst such trouble? in this issue we present three thoughtful responses to bueno’s basic questions around how our faith helps us understand gang presence, inspires us to act, and informs our mission of doing development work that is truly transformational. two of these responses, by barbara rowe and fabiola ramirez, emphasize individual, spirit-led change that comes through faith commitment and the formation of christian character. the local church plays a key role here, and, as ramirez argues, church engagement must begin by connecting with children at an early age. a third response, from edgar aguilar in honduras, adds another dimension based on the work of his organization, the asociación para una sociedad más justa (asj in english, association for a more just society) in honduras both at the community and the national level in terms of meeting needs and tackling entrenched structures. aguilar explains how asj partners with churches, not only for the spiritual nurturing emphasized by rowe and ramirez, but because churches form key parts of the community and are entry points that help asj engage the whole community in seeing to its own security and development, and based on which policy level actions can be undertaken. this brief introduction to the three responses is intended mostly as a teaser. there is more to be discovered and appreciated in each response. but, that is not all! this summer issue continues with… 1. a thoughtful piece from samuel verbi of eido research about how to measure the impact of spiritual transformation programs over time when respondents’ very understanding of the extent and nature of that transformation may also change during the time period of the program. verbi proposes the use of retrospective pretest designs as a promising tool to deal with this “response-shift bias” to improve measurement and appreciation of the spiritual changes many programs seek. 2. a synopsis of the two most recent research intensives held by the accord research alliance, one, in 2020, in an online format due to covid19, and the other in 2021 (in person). the first intensive focused on integrating improved practices of listening into all aspects of organizational life, and the second addressed faithbased aspects of evidence that organizations use to assess their work. 3. book reviews of four recent books of interest to the crda community because bueno’s article and the three responses arise out of spanish-speaking cultures and nations, we decided to have his article translated into spanish and include it in this issue, which you will find after the three responses. david bueno and all respondents are either native spanish speakers or completely fluent, which of course helps them enter into the reality they are describing and analyzing. similar to bueno’s article, the response by ramirez is written in both english and spanish. perhaps we should have ensured that the other two responses were written in both languages as well, but we did not achieve that. to any who would like either to read all three responses in spanish or share them with spanish speakers, we apologize. as editors, we are fully aware of how important fluency with different languages is to development work in general and to communication across cultures. pentecost-like dreams of full communication inspire all of us, but we will work through language issues as we are able, bringing as many people across the globe into conversation as possible. our efforts in this issue are minimal, but we hope meaningful in some way too. christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(1), summer 2022 hoksbergen and bronkema, editors’ introduction ii as our opening comments noted in the most recent issue (winter 2022), we are pursuing special issues that address topics that christians find both challenging and compelling. nina kurlberg and roland hoksbergen are leading an effort to assemble a special issue on decolonization and its significance for christian-inspired development work in all regions of the globe. a good number of contributors have already joined the project, but if you feel called to participate in this special issue, please write to us at the address below. other special issues in early stages of development include one on the foundational question of the relationship of faith and development, and another on mainstreaming gender in christian ngos. if you feel inspired to lead and edit a special issue on a topic of relevance to the crda community, please write. all communication to the editors can be sent to crda@accordnetwork.org. about:blank christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(1), summer 2022 warner, book review 49 book review human development and the catholic social tradition: towards an integral ecology by severine deneulin reviewed by jonathan warner 2021. new york: routledge. $47.96 this book is concerned with developing and deepening our understanding of human development. two main chapters address what development is and what it means to live a fully human life. a third chapter offers suggestions for the future of development thought and practice. for crda readers, severine deneulin’s book will help us engage with roman catholic social thought (cst), which arises from papal encyclicals from the past 130 years. she elegantly demonstrates how these ethically rich documents can complement one of today’s main development paradigms, amartya sen’s capability approach to human development. over the past thirty years, there has been a big shift in the way development policy is conceptualized. following the publication of sen’s seminal development as freedom in 1999, key development actors shifted their focus from increasing gdp (based on modernization theories of the 1950’s) towards expanding the opportunities of real people to live valuable lives, or, as sen famously says, “a life one has 1 encyclicals are typically referred to by the first words of their latin text. reason to value” (1999, 74). sen’s capability approach (ca) became highly influential in policy circles – the uk’s department for international development (dfid), set up to use the money from meeting the undp target of 0.7% of gdp going to the global south, used it as a guide to decide which projects to support. the change is evident in a shift away from grand projects such as harnessing hydroelectric power and towards capacity building, in such areas as health, education, and poverty-reduction. expanding opportunities is a good in itself, as well as an instrumental good in promoting growth in output and income. the focus of the ca is on enhancing what are termed “positive freedoms” – what someone is able to do – rather than negative freedoms – freedom from constraints, of the type more associated with milton and rose friedman’s 1980 book, free to choose. the millennium development goals (mdgs) and the successor sustainable development goals (sdgs) cohere well with the ca. cst has its origins in the roman catholic church’s belated response to changes wrought by the industrial revolution. it draws on a number of papal encyclicals (letters from the bishop of rome to his flock and the wider church) that outline principles for social action. the foundational encyclical of cst, rerum novarum (of new things 1 ), which was promulgated in 1891, has shaped the subsequent literature, either explicitly (as in the fortiethand hundredth-year anniversary documents, quadragesimo anno (1931) and centesimus annus (1991) respectively) or in encyclicals that pick up on one or more themes in these documents. while these documents are not wellknown among protestant christians, they are compatible with much of protestant christianity’s theology of life in society, especially the development theologies of bryant myers, brian fikkert, and the lausanne covenant, to name a few. among their most basic principles are human dignity, solidarity, and the common good. unsurprisingly, these are foundational christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(1), summer 2022 warner, book review 50 for many catholic relief and development organizations. deneulin’s book draws together the literatures on the capabilities approach and catholic social thought, demonstrating how each can inform and enrich the other. for example, there are three well-known criticisms of the ca. first, some argue that the ca is underspecified. sen has said that he is not attempting to produce a complete theory of justice to rival that of john rawls; instead, he is more interested in keeping open what a “life one has reason to value” (sen 1999, 74) might actually look like in detail. sen’s view differs significantly from martha nussbaum’s rival conception of the ca, which she dubs the “capabilities approach.” whereas sen prefers to keep things more general and thus prefers the more ambiguous modifier “capability,” in her women and human development (2000) nussbaum famously proposes a list of ten specific capabilities that she contends are necessary for a fulfilling life. but nussbaum’s approach highlights a second criticism, that, at base, the ca is too focused on persons as individuals. this is also true of sen’s approach – it is the individual’s assessment of a life that counts. the role of social capital and community in general is downplayed. in fact, so far, attempts to include group or community capabilities within either the sen or nussbaum frameworks have not been very successful. as deneulin argues, cst, with its emphasis on seeking the common good, helps address this deficiency, both in terms of the importance of relations between individuals and community, and in fleshing out an account of human flourishing beyond just what the individual person finds valuable. the third criticism is that while the ca implicitly acknowledges the value of the natural environment (as a prerequisite for valuable life), cst, particularly under the reign of pope francis (drawing on his canonized 12/13th century namesake, francis of assisi) has noted and expounded on the nonhuman parts of the biotic creation. cst helps address each of these three criticisms, but deneulin points out that the direction of influence goes the other way as well, for there is much that cst can learn from the ca. for example, the ca is a firm advocate of human agency and of the idea that one's choosing something has value in itself; but this is not a major feature of cst, which could usefully integrate this idea. the third chapter expands the scope of the argument by examining two areas of special concern to the author. the first is the environment and the nonhuman parts of creation. recent encyclicals, especially laudato si! (praise be!) in 2015), have picked up on the idea of the earth being our common home, and have laid out some principles for appropriate environmental care. at over 37,000 words in the english version, laudato si! appears to be the longest official contribution to cst, indicating both francis’s concern about the issue and his desire to produce a welldeveloped set of ideas capable of gaining traction beyond the roman catholic church. second, deneulin is concerned about gender issues, which have not, to date, been a focus of cst. the ca, on the other hand, is highly oriented toward acknowledging the full humanity of all genders, and especially women in global south contexts. for cst, it does not help gender equality that much of the language of recent encyclicals is still gendered – perhaps best illustrated by the title of francis’s 2020 letter, fratelli tutti (brothers all), even though it is clear from context that he is referring to all people. similarly, encyclicals that used to be addressed to those in communion with the pope (roman catholics and a few others, such as lebanese maronites) are now addressed to “men [sic] of good will.” in summary, deneulin’s book provides readers with an accessible introduction to and contextualization of cst. in addition, the inclusion in the cst framework of environmental issues that deneulin spells out has great value for everyone thinking through christian approaches to climate change and concern for those likely to be affected by it. this is surely a part of what human flourishing means. references francis. 2020. fratelli tutti. vatical city. francis. 2015. laudato si!. vatican city. friedman, milton and rose d. 1980. free to choose: a personal statement. orlando: a harvest book, harcourt, inc. john paul ii. 1991. centesimus annus. vatican city. nussbaum, martha c. 2000. woman and human development: the capabilities approach. cambridge: cambridge university press. pius xi. 1931. quadragesimo anno. vatican city. sen, amartya. 1999. development as freedom. oxford: oxford university press. jonathan warner is an emeritus professor of economics at quest university canada. he has taught economics in europe and asia, as well as in north america. his research interests are in the economics of development, the role of religion in economics, and in the nature of money and monetary substitutes. author email: jonathan.warner@questu.ca about:blank christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 lowe, lamb, padilla-deborst, reconciling conservation and development … 49 reconciling conservation and development in an era of global environmental change: a theocentric approach benjamin s. lowe, rachel l. lamb, and ruth padilla-deborst 1 longstanding friction between socioeconomic development and biodiversity conservation has become increasingly untenable in an unprecedented era of anthropogenic global environmental change. despite numerous and high-profile attempts at better integrating these often-competing priorities, unresolved tensions remain as a result of dueling worldviews and approaches: much of development tends to be anthropocentric (centered on humans) while much of conservation remains eco/biocentric (centered on the bio/ecosphere). we offer theocentrism as a biblically normative and conceptually effective way to transcend and reconcile these conflicting worldviews. after providing a brief biblical overview of theocentrism, we highlight seven theoretical implications of this worldview. we then offer four practical applications for faith-based organizations along with examples of christian groups that are seeking to more holistically integrate conservation and development in their work around the world. introduction many argue that we are now living in the anthropocene, an age in which human activity exerts a more significant influence on the environment than natural processes (crutzen 2002; lewis and maslin 2015; steffen et al. 2011). naming this geological epoch as the anthropocene is a recognition of the “magnitude, variety, and longevity of human-induced changes” (lewis and maslin 2015, p. 171). our species wields increasingly more power to shape the world and other lifeforms than ever before, and it is clear that the anthropocene presents serious challenges for global development and conservation alike (slimbach 2020). through the ‘planetary boundaries’ paradigm, scientists have sought to identify a safe operating space for humanity, where human societies do not fundamentally alter the processes that regulate earth system functioning (rockström et al. 2009). this framework provides a science-based analysis of the risk that humans, through business-as-usual activities, will destabilize the earth system at the planetary scale (steffen et al. 2015). while acknowledging that some level of human activity is necessary and safe, this approach also emphasizes that maintaining the current 1 the authors are grateful to two anonymous reviewers for their helpful feedback on this article. trajectory of change will result in severe consequences for many species, including the creation of a world unlike anything humans have experienced before. within this context, the united nations (un) has declared 2021-2030 the decade on ecosystem restoration (un 2015). situated across the un’s seventeen sustainable development goals (sdgs), this initiative elevates ecosystem services restoration as a global priority, with essential benefits for climate, biodiversity, food security, and water supply (waltham et al. 2020). along with other high-profile efforts, such as the intergovernmental science-policy platform on biodiversity and ecosystem services (ipbes), it highlights the growing recognition that integrating conservation and development is imperative to addressing the emergent problems of the anthropocene. international funding structures such as the green climate and green development funds have also formed to catalyze innovative programs at these intersections. notwithstanding these efforts, the conservation and development communities have long struggled to reconcile their perspectives and priorities, and the tension between “people-first” or “nature-first” remains (newsham and bhagwat 2016). christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 lowe, lamb, padilla-deborst, reconciling conservation and development … 50 despite its ability to uniquely engage conservation and development together, the church and its ministries have largely fallen short in addressing this growing need and taking seriously the anthropocene and its implications for ongoing growth and development. pursuing the mutual flourishing of people and the rest of nature should be something christians see as fundamentally biblical and wellaligned with the mission of god’s people (wright 2010; moo and moo 2018). such an endeavor is an integral part of the christian calling and offers an opportunity to help lead the transition toward a more faithful integration of what are often perceived as competing priorities in god’s world. there is also a growing openness and recognition across much of society that religion in general, and christianity in particular, has the potential to make critical contributions in this nexus; not just around relief and development (e.g., deneulin and rakodi 2011; tomalin 2015), but also when it comes to conserving biodiversity (e.g., bhagwat et al. 2011; mikusiński et al. 2014), addressing climate change (e.g., jenkins et al. 2018; wilkinson 2012), and promoting sustainable development (e.g., deneulin et al. 2016; unep 2020; tomalin et al. 2019). these perceptions derive from christianity’s considerable ethical (and normative), socio-cultural, economic, and spiritual resources, which, when engaged via christian relief and development organizations and christian environmental organizations, serve as extended ministries of the church and its members. in light of this opportunity for greater faithfulness, this paper provides an overview of current global efforts to integrate conservation and development, highlights the underlying conflict between anthropocentric versus bio/ecocentric perspectives, and proposes theocentrism as a more biblical and effective approach. we conclude by offering practical suggestions for how christian nongovernmental organizations (ngos) can pursue theocentric approaches to reconciling conservation and development. recent attempts at integration ongoing attempts to form an environmentally “sustainable” international development agenda sit against the backdrop of longstanding debate about whether and how to reconcile conservation and development. although a full historical review is beyond the scope of this article, it is important to note that current conservation and development movements both stem heavily from the same historical processes of european imperial expansion and the intensification of global trade, with a particular focus on the commodification of nature (castree, 2008, newsham and bhagwhat 2016). economic activity and growth remain at the heart of developmental trajectories, while the imperative for conservation reflects a concern with these trajectories' environmental impacts (newsham and bhagwhat 2016). though often perceived as oppositional, environmental historians note that international conservation interventions emerged from the same “kind of homogenizing, capital-intensive transformation of people, trade, economy and environment” that fueled european colonization (grove, 1995:2, in newsham and bhagwhat 2016). simply put, “it was this push for territory and trade which made scientific conservationism a truly global phenomenon” (newsham and bhagwhat 2016, 21). despite their shared historical origins, conservation and development initiatives have largely been “organized to run along parallel tracks and to be kept separate from each other” (newsham and bhagwat 2016, 76). thus, the friction between conservation and development organizations stems in part from a history of attempting to impose an artificial dichotomy between nature and society, and between humans and wilderness (ridder 2007, siipi 2008). while conservation efforts are located in nature (and for nature), development is assumed to be in society (and for people) (newsham and bhagwat 2016). it is unsurprising then that many contemporary approaches to reconciling the two fall along a complex gradient including: “1) treatment of conservation and development as separate policy realms; 2) identification of poverty as a critical constraint on conservation; 3) recognition that conservation should not compromise poverty reduction; and 4) the assertion that effective conservation depends on poverty reduction” (adams et al. 2004; as cited by newsham and bhagwat 2016, 211). the range of solutions supplied by conservation and development organizations are equally varied in emphasis. on the conservation front, at least three broad nature-based approaches exist for reconciling conservation and development in the anthropocene, including neo-protectionism, natural capital conservation, and convivial conservation (van dyke and lamb 2020a). for example, e.o. wilson’s neoprotectionist “half-earth” proposal would dedicate one half of the earth to nature and the other to humans living within a “safe operating zone” (wilson 2016). this approach asserts that conservation can be used as a tool to protect nature from people. in contrast, natural capital conservationists suggest that such proposals are insensitive to human need and instead propose strategies for promoting the health and prosperity of people and nature together—an enlightened human, social, and economic development (marvier et al. 2019). here, the conservation (or perhaps commodification) of nature is essentially for people. a third paradigm of ‘convivial conservation’ asserts that instead of marketing nature as potential capital christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 lowe, lamb, padilla-deborst, reconciling conservation and development … 51 accumulation, nature can be promoted as areas where people are considered “welcome visitors, dwellers or travelers rather than temporary alien invaders upon a nonhuman landscape” (büscher and fletcher 2019). the goal is to build “long-lasting, engaging and openended relationships with nonhumans and ecologies,” supporting local ownership and management with conservation-based local incomes (büscher and fletcher 2019). such an approach seeks to break the “from-humans and for-humans” dichotomies, but still leaves open-ended questions about implementation where there may be conflict between local, national, and global priorities in the face of rampant global environmental change. such conversations in the world of conservation parallel discussions about appropriate integration from the vantage point of international development. the 1972 stockholm conference is widely considered to be the start of sustainability thinking within the international development arena, paving the way for a series of subsequent multilateral negotiations. in 1992, the un conference on environment and development (the rio summit) resulted in the creation of five major environmental documents, including agenda 21, a comprehensive work plan to address “social and economic dimensions of environment and development, conservation and management of resources, and means of implementation” (van dyke and lamb 2020b, 516). an ambitious plan, the integration of socialecological decision-making has been hard to achieve in the context of international law and policy (anderson et al. 2019). agenda 21 led to the development of both the millennium development goals (2000-2015) and sustainable development goals (sdgs; 2016-2030), both of which include overtly environmental goals. in fact, the word “sustainable” in “sdg” suggests a crosscutting theme of environmental protection across all goals. still, “to account for the competing political, socioeconomic, and environmental interests that are common in conservation policy, compromises are typically made during [sdg] target development and implementation, which can weaken their primary objectives” (doherty et al. 2018, 810). the 1987 un brundtland report, promising to diffuse tensions between environmental protection and economic growth, popularized the triple-bottom-line (people, profit, planet) approach, which claims to dissolve the old conflict between economic growth and biophysical limits, eliminate confrontation over who is entitled to the lion’s share of remaining growth, avert the question of northern overconsumption, and be universally applicable (carruthers 2001). despite the lofty rhetoric, many global initiatives have shown in practice that “when push has come to shove, safeguarding the prospects for short-to-medium term economic growth has been deemed more important than environmental concerns” (newsham and bhagwat 2016, 41). there is a functional hierarchy to the “triplebottom-line” model. post-development scholars have also questioned this concept of ‘sustainable development’ altogether, arguing that there should be alternatives to development itself, rather than alternative forms of development that still reflect capitalist ideologies (e.g., escobar 1992, o’connor and arnoux 1993, sachs 2010). persisting dichotomies this challenge of reconciliation persists in both the conservation and development communities. at the end of the day, the primary goal for many conservation organizations is still to protect biodiversity and ensure ecosystem health, with humans as a necessary but challenging species to motivate, respect, and involve. and, while promising sustainability, much of international development still starts with increasing the economic well-being of people through capitalism and claims environmental protection as a necessary but secondary and potentially compromisable objective. there is a wide range of programs designed to further reconciliation of these approaches, including integrated conservation and development projects (icdps), payment for ecosystem services (pes) schemes, and community-based ecotourism ventures (table 1). these efforts should not be underappreciated; we need creative solutions. yet many of these efforts can still fall short because they are functionally anthropocentric at their core. these tensions have left organizations struggling along the continuum between anthropocentric (humancentered) versus ecocentric (ecosystem-centered) or biocentric (life/biosphere-centered) efforts. weak and strong versions of anthropocentrism and bio/ecocentrism play out in practice (norton 2017), with the practitioner feeling like they are in an unending tug of war with no way out other than to pick a place on the rope and pull for their side. even aldo leopold, considered one of the founders of ecocentrism through his development of the land ethic, may not have fully resolved the tension between claiming human responsibility for the conservation of the landcommunity and simultaneously asserting that humans are only “plain members and citizens of it” (leopold 1949). forging ahead on such a continuum has been made even more challenging in light of global environmental change, which is negatively impacting nearly every biogeochemical cycle, with correlated negative impacts on people (foley et al. 2005; foley et al. 2011). human activity through industrialization and globalization is fundamentally altering our ecologies in christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 lowe, lamb, padilla-deborst, reconciling conservation and development … 52 ways that force us to reconsider the long-term viability of those very same activities (e.g., vitousek et al. 1997; tilman et al., 2002). in this context, “humans” and “nature” are regularly pitted against each other when, in fact, their futures are increasingly caught up together: table 1: common approaches to integrating conservation and development globally* approach description * recent reviews integrated conservation and development projects projects where local communities share the benefits of plant or animal resources at sustainable levels, take ownership of the conservation of such resources, and retain an active role in decisions affecting resource use and management to their individual and collective benefit blom et al. 2010 van velden et al. 2020 payments for ecosystem services voluntary, conditional agreements between at least one “seller” and one “buyer” targeting a well-defined environmental service or land use providing such a service; creates a novel market for goods and services that might otherwise be left out of traditional markets with clear economic incentives for protection jack et al. 2008 farley and constanza 2010 community-based ecotourism travel to natural areas that conserves the environment and sustains the well-being of local people by linking conservation with local livelihoods; financial models can include initial investment capital from ngos in exchange for biodiversity protection or center on tourism revenues kiss 2004 ortega-álvarez et al. 2020 * descriptions derived from material in van dyke and lamb 2020d [e]cological sustainability is the sine qua non for any talk of any other human or ethical concern. if we destroy the conditions of human life on the planet, no other concerns will be relevant at all. … the short history of the environmental movement clearly reveals that when human well-being is set against the well-being of other species, as in “save the babies, not the whales,” or “save our jobs, not the snails,” everyone loses (gushee 2010, 253). the solutions we might have taken to address conservation and development challenges over the past century must now become “anthropocene-informed,” including adaptive to new environmental conditions that may be rapidly diverging from historical precedent (van dyke and lamb 2020c, dhyani et al. 2020). the scale and pace of change underscore the importance of better coupling ecological and community resilience in the face of altered baselines, climate uncertainty, and shifting livelihoods (irp 2019). doing so from either an anthropocentric or ecocentric perspective only adds to the challenge. the urgency of our global situation has led some nation-states and international organizations to seek short-term solutions without full consideration of the long-term impacts. some downplay the seriousness of global environmental challenges in order to focus on meeting current human needs first, utilizing the same approaches that created the problems to begin with. others advocate the preservation of biodiversity and ecosystems, regardless of impacts on local human populations, intensifying tensions with communities and often undercutting their primary conservation goals. these reactions further magnify ongoing debates between diachronic (i.e., intergenerational) and synchronic justice, where “diachronic justice focuses on justice across time, in contrast to synchronic justice, which focuses on justice within the same time (e.g., among those currently alive)” (lowe 2019, 481). regardless of how these tensions are negotiated, it is increasingly important to include future generations as additional stakeholders in current deliberations around our “common but differentiated” responsibilities in the anthropocene (lowe 2019; stone 2004). ultimately, the pervasive “people versus nature” clash is a self-defeating and false dichotomy. both development that ends up unsustainably degrading the environment and conservation that ends up oppressing and marginalizing people ultimately fail (newsham and bhagwat 2016). and half-hearted or incomplete attempts to integrate the two fail because humanimposed hierarchies and interests still win the day. even the term “ecosystem services” suggests an instrumental value of nature for people, with little to no consideration to the potential exclusion of the intrinsic value of non-human species. goals must be explicit relative to intended ends, and we need more rigorous approaches that transcend dichotomies to truly pursue and value mutual flourishing as the primary goal. christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 lowe, lamb, padilla-deborst, reconciling conservation and development … 53 what does a biblical perspective offer? counter to the above conflicting worldviews, the bible offers a robust and distinctly theocentric approach to understanding reality, the world, and how humans fit in with the rest of the natural order. as its name suggests, theocentrism centers god and assents to god’s will and governance (gustafson 1981). it emphasizes that “‘the earth is the lord’s and all that is in it, the world, and those who live in it’ (ps 24:1) … god is the source of creation; it is his amazing handiwork, and to god belongs ownership and rule over what he has created” (gushee 2010, 247). it acknowledges the authorial claim of god over the entire created order (gonzalez, 2015, 17). this directly contrasts with the “people-first” or “nature-first” approaches of anthropocentrism and bio/ecocentrism respectively (table 2). table 2: a generalized comparison of major worldviews related to the environment category: anthropo centrism bio/ecocentrism theocentrism priority human beings all life/species (biocentrism) or ecosystems (ecocentrism) god goal advance human wellbeing advance biological or ecological well-being advance/obey god’s will view of non-human creation natural resources, to manage/exploit for the sake of humans moral subjects, each with their own intrinsic worth and interests god’s creation; humans are to live responsibly with the rest of creation, which does not exist just for human use view of human creation apex of the natural world with the right to use it for own purposes problems to manage/restrain in order for nature to flourish unhindered unique members of the community of creation tasked with the responsibility to serve as god’s ambassadors as the overarching and normative biblical worldview, theocentrism continually draws our attention back to god—the source and center of all value—and not to ourselves or our species: although the bible gives a great deal of attention to humans—it is indeed a text for and about humans— they are everywhere in the bible embedded in the larger context of the creation and especially in their relationship with god. if humans have intrinsic value in the biblical tradition, then so does the rest of the natural world because humans and the rest of the natural world are valuable as part of god’s creation—an ecocentric worldview, if you will. but the creation itself has value only in as much as it is the creation of god, who remains in relationship with it. god imputes the creation—humans, animals, the land—with value, and god the creator is the measure of all that is good and right in the world. the biblical worldview is first and foremost theocentric (simkins 2014). theocentrism thus grounds the value of all creation in its shared and sacred source, which is the creator, not humans. ironically, christianity is widely perceived as (and often guilty of) being anthropocentric. in western academic and scientific arenas, this association was popularized in large part by lynn white jr.’s seminal article, the historical roots of our ecological crisis (white 1967). a historian, white blames western christianity for driving environmental degradation by promulgating a worldview characterized by the hubristic domination of nature for human purposes. in other words, white asserts that western christianity promotes anthropocentrism and does so to great effect. while there is much to be said for white’s claims, considerable scholarship over the decades since has raised important nuances and critiques (e.g., kanagy et al. 1995; hitzhusen 2007; djupe and hunt 2009; smith and veldman 2020; van dyke 2005). as theologian richard young qualifies, while “the church stands in need of an ecological reformation, the christian scriptures are not responsible for the ecological crisis” (young 1994, 23). from a biblical and theological standpoint, christianity is profoundly nonanthropocentric (for that matter, it is also noneco/biocentric), though “actually occurring” christian religion has often manifested as functionally anthropocentric in many contexts: “western christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 lowe, lamb, padilla-deborst, reconciling conservation and development … 54 christianity may indeed be the most anthropocentric religion the world has ever seen, as white claims, but only because western culture, the offspring of the enlightenment, is so anthropocentric” (simkins 2014, 399). theocentrism and the bible the arc of scripture from genesis 1 through revelation 22 (i.e., from the account of god creating the world to the description of god’s renewed creation) is defined from beginning to end by god’s engagement with all of creation, not just with humans: when we [open] the bible and look especially for god’s relationship to other creatures and the creation, we find a god who creates other creatures and the creation (gen 1-2), who declares them good (gen 1:31), who feeds and sustains them (ps 104; mt 6:26), who makes covenant with them (gen 9), who protects them in his laws (lev 25; deut 6:14), who hears their groaning (rom 8:28), and who promises their ultimate liberation from bondage” (gushee 2010, 264-265). passages such as job 38-40, where god confronts job with the magnificent scale and diversity of creation, serve to remind humans of our humble place before the creator and ruler of all: “this is a far from anthropocentric vision of the cosmos…. this is a universe that is what it is quite independently of us. the effect on job must be to decentre him away from his preoccupation with his own case” (bauckham 2010, 45). psalm 104 conveys a similar message in the form of creational praise to god: after instancing many species individually, stressing their diversity, the psalm goes on to bring them all together, humans and other animals alike, in their common dependence on the creator (vv 27-30). what gives wholeness to the psalm’s reading of the world is not human mastery over it or the value humans set on it, not (in contemporary terms) globalization, but the value of all created things for god. this is a theocentric, not an anthropocentric world” (bauckham 2010, 71). a more thorough analysis would unpack numerous additional passages, including the creation accounts in genesis 1-2, the first recorded covenant with god in genesis 9 (made not just with people but explicitly with all life on earth), and god’s granting of ethical and legal considerations through the law and prophets to all creation (humans, other animals, and even the land itself). we see god’s everlasting covenant with all life (from genesis 9) persist through the new testament, where the apostle paul teaches that our eternal destiny remains intertwined with the rest of creation. not only is the rest of creation groaning with us, but god wills it this way in order that the rest of creation will also be liberated with us from sin and death (romans 8). as colossians 1:15-20 emphasizes, this comprehensive reconciliation and restoration is centered in the divine person and work of christ and “offers a holistic vision of the whole creation integrated in jesus christ. it is he who ‘holds it all together’. he is intimately related to the whole, and the meaning of the whole creation consists in having jesus christ as its source, its focus, its healer and its goal” (bauckham 2010, 157). the theocentric vision consistently rendered in the bible is the restoration of shalom (i.e., harmony/right relationships and mutual flourishing) to all creation, as it was in the beginning (see genesis 1-2) and will be at the end (see revelation 22) (woodley 2012). this vision is grounded in the love of god who is love (1 john 4). since god’s very nature is love, it follows that love is also foundational to reality in this world that we share with god’s other creatures (young 1994, 90). as image-bearers of god, we are called to pattern ourselves after god in showing sacrificial love and concern for all creation: “the christian concept of love is epitomized by god’s giving his son for the sins of humanity (rom. 5:8). this selfless giving of oneself for the sake of others is the core of christian ethical teaching, as is based on the character of god (1 john 4:7-21). the object of our love is not only god and fellow humans, but everything god loves, that is, his entire creation” (young 1994, 212). thus, a worldview centered on god is defined by selfless love, which should direct how we live, create, and relate at every level, whether individually, collectively, or structurally/systemically (lowe and vena 2019). furthermore, based on a biblical understanding of the trinity, christian theocentrism does not envision a single divine authority per se, but a god who is, in essence, the divine community-of-love. father, son and holy spirit are one in love, interrelated as the perfect community. created in the image of god, then, human beings are essentially beings-in-relation. they are created by community and for community. full human flourishing takes place when people relate lovingly to the rest of the community of creation, of which we are a distinctive member, with particular responsibilities. from a biblical perspective, it is only when we align ourselves with a theocentric worldview—with god and god’s will at the center—that we can also pursue right relationships with each other and the rest of creation: “the bible is a religion for people, directing them how to live together in justice and love, under god and within a nature with which they have an entwined destiny” (rolston 1996, 24). in that sense, theocentrism christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 lowe, lamb, padilla-deborst, reconciling conservation and development … 55 integrates anthropocentric and eco/biocentric concerns without making either the ultimate end. in other words, it acknowledges the worth of both humans and nonhuman species, and recognizes the importance of their interests, but does not elevate them to the level of idolatry. with god as the ultimate end, theocentrism “overrides chauvinistic human speciesism” and “is simultaneously biocentric and anthropocentric because it is so deeply theocentric” (gushee 2010, 264). theocentrism thus serves as a prophetic challenge to the work of relief and development, which all too often skews toward viewing and framing goals and outcomes in anthropocentric terms: the biblical worldview offers a challenge to the anthropocentrism that has infected western christianity since the enlightenment by dethroning humans from their artificial (human-made) precipice overlooking the natural world. humans are part and parcel of the creation, along with the rest of the natural world, and their role within the creation cannot separate them from the creation (simkins 2014, 411). implications of theocentrism as a comprehensive and orientating worldview, theocentrism offers at least seven interrelated implications for reconciling conservation and development (table 3). table 3: seven implications of theocentrism implication: summary description: fosters humility places god—and god’s mission and vision—at the center of reality and purpose; submits to god’s will/governance and accepts the finitude and limitations of humans and all other aspects of creation. reassesses value understands that all creation—human and non-human—has intrinsic value that comes from god, apart from any instrumental value it may also have for any individual species, group, or individual. affirms human responsibility acknowledges the unique capacity and role humans are created and called to serve in, as image-bearers of god, to represent and join in manifesting god’s desires for this world. embraces interrelationship sees all creation as intricately interconnected and interdependent with itself and its creator (sharing the same creator also implies a level of kinship between humans and other species); these relationships have been fractured by sin but are being reconciled through the redeeming love and mission of god. recognizes god’s involvement appreciates that god remains deeply engaged with creation, including in ways we do not comprehend and that are separate from us. this frees us from trying to save the world on our own, and instead empowers us to offer up our efforts as worship and witness. reframes conflict understands that god created the world to flourish in a state of shalom and that there ultimately should not be any inherent conflict between advancing god’s will and advancing the true interests of creation (human and non-human). confronts idolatry challenges all worldviews or ideologies that attempt to center humans, any other species, or any aspect of creation above or in competition with the creator. first, by acknowledging god at the center of reality and seeking to decenter ourselves, theocentrism helps us better recognize and come to terms with all that we cannot yet fully understand or reconcile, and thus “both expresses and nourishes a religious moral attitude of humility” (gustafson 1994, 74). cultivating a posture of humility toward our place in the world is precisely what lynn white jr. prescribes in order to address the arrogant anthropocentric attitude of domination that drives the ecological crisis (white 1967). as peter harris notes from his work founding the international christian conservation organization, a rocha: “if we recognize that the world exists primarily for the creator, and only secondarily to satisfy our material needs, we have a basis for that humility, and our active christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 lowe, lamb, padilla-deborst, reconciling conservation and development … 56 relationship with the creator provides the context for the christian field worker” (harris 2000, 119). second, theocentrism recognizes and affirms the inherent worth and rights of all creation, thus challenging the “modern assumption that nature must serve human interests” (jenkins 2013, 80). the ultimate value of all creation--human and non-human--comes from the same source: “[in] a theocentric perspective all creational value is derived value, in that god the creator is the one who authoritatively declares and demonstrates the value of all things that he has made” (gushee 2010, 263). in other words, the rest of creation has intrinsic value above and beyond the instrumental value that humans might ascribe to parts of it at any given time or place: “[e]arth’s abundance is not just ‘raw materials’ for industry. it is not just ‘natural resources’ or ‘real estate.’ the fruit of the earth is not just ‘commodities.’ it is god’s good, morally valued creation—a partner in a covenant pact with god that still holds” (snyder 2014, sec 5). thus, like humans, all other lifeforms are also moral subjects (i.e., they can be treated rightly and wrongly) and possess their own godordained interests—that we are called to recognize and respect—independently of our own. third, while theocentrism affirms that all creation has god-derived intrinsic value, it also embraces the unique role and responsibility that humans are entrusted with on behalf of god (as a function of the imago dei), which has been described alternately as being stewards, vice-regents, ambassadors, and priests. this diverges markedly from the biospheric/species egalitarianism common across biocentrism and ecocentrism, which views humans as no more than plain members of the community of creation along with all other species (leopold 1949; taylor 1986). thus, theocentrism provides the foundation for asserting that, while we are moral subjects along with the rest of creation, we are also moral agents given responsibilities by god within creation. this distinction is for the purpose of loving service, however, and not domination (at least not in the fallen and anthropocentric terms this word is often twisted into representing): “theocentrism preserves the christian insight into the nature of humankind as the image of god, without giving humanity license to dominate or despoil the earth... theocentrism condemns the tragic distortions of anthropocentrism, while affirming mankind’s [sic] priestly role at the center of creation” (rossi 1988, 13). old testament theologian daniel block unpacks this servant role further using the example of noah in genesis 6-9: as the image of god, noah was deputized to represent the cosmos in god’s covenant confirmation process, but throughout he functions primarily in the interests of the creatures, rather than having them serve him. as the fountainhead of humanity, noah’s actions are paradigmatic for all his successors who encounter threats to the environment. based on very specific divine instructions, noah built the ark to preserve animal life in the plurality of species and its rich biological diversity (block 2010, 132). thus, bearing the image of god is a functional distinction that provides both the divine authority and unique capacity to govern the world with care. but it is clear from scripture that humans are to represent god’s interests here—not our own—and to govern the world in line with the kingdom of god and the humble model of sacrificial servanthood embodied by christ. fourth, theocentrism affirms a central tenet of ecology: everything is integrally connected and interdependent. we cannot separate ourselves from the rest of creation, nor can we separate the rest of creation from us: “biblically, it is wrong either to elevate the environment over human beings or to stress human uniqueness to the point that we miss our utter earthdependence. the biblical way is not to place one over the other but to see the interdependence built into god’s order. here we think ecologically if we think biblically…” (synder 2014, sec 5). importantly, what makes this view theocentric (and not just ecocentric) is that these relationships do not exist and persist on their own but flow from and are centered in god: “[e]verything is naturally connected to everything else because god is all in all and everything is connected to god, who is the first principle of theocentrism” (rossi 1988, 14). of course, a natural consequence of such an interconnected community of creation is that, for better and for worse, we impact those around us (whether human or non-human) and they impact us: what we have in common with the lilies of the field is not just that we are creatures of god, but that we are fellow-members of the community of god’s creation, sharing the same earth, affected by the processes of the earth, affecting the processes that affect each other, with common interests at least in life and flourishing, with the common end of glorifying the creator and interdependent in the ways we do exactly that (bauckham 2010, 88). fifth, and building on the above, theocentrism prompts us to recognize that god relates to and is involved in the rest of creation quite apart from human mediation. while biblical theocentrism lays out a meaningful role for humans as divinely commissioned agents of god, it affirms that god also maintains a direct relationship with and is actively engaged in the world independently of us: “[s]o long as we avoid the anthropocentric fantasy that god relates to the rest of christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 lowe, lamb, padilla-deborst, reconciling conservation and development … 57 creation only via humans, it is easy to realize that there must be a great deal about god’s relationship to other creatures that we shall never know – at least, this side of the end of history” (bauckham 2010, 147). this realization is a source of encouragement for all who are deeply concerned about the bleak state of the world and our woefully limited ability to right the wrongs and fix the messes our species is making. while humans are in no way off the hook, a theocentric approach puts humans in our place and rejoices that the good of the world ultimately does not rest solely on our shoulders: in genesis 9, we witness an agreement with god and his creation that is made specifically with people. it continues, however, to establish a direct relationship between god and his creation without reference to us... later in the old testament we read that job was asked, “where were you when i laid the earth’s foundation?” we are at times a spectator in the vital relationship between god and his creation, and conscious of that, our work becomes worship. in giving others the opportunity to become aware of that dimension, our work goes on beyond worship to become witness (harris 2000, 119). such a perspective empowers us to be faithful in the present without being obsessed with immediate results or trapped in desperation and despair. while our efforts do indeed seek the well-being of both people and the planet, they are ultimately offered as worship to the one holding all things together (colossians 1:17). sixth, theocentrism challenges us to reframe and renegotiate conflicts between the well-being of humans and the rest of creation from god’s perspective. unlike anthropocentrism, theocentrism holds that perceived human interests do not ultimately determine what is right and good in a given situation (gustafson 1994). the priority is to align with god’s will and purposes, which encompass the good of all creation: human needs must be redefined beyond the utility satisfaction of simply self-interested desires. they must be seen instead in the light of god’s intentions, intentions that include respect for the nature he created [not just] for our benefit. and human actions must be oriented to the good of god’s creation. at the same time that they honor the good that is god’s creation of man [sic], they must honor the good that is god’s creation of nature. a theocentric view of man [sic] and nature thus subtends a morality of charity and conservation unlike those of the anthropocentric and ecocentric views of man [sic] and nature (hoffman and sandelands 2005, 155). from a biblical perspective, however, there should ultimately be no conflict between god’s will and what is in the actual interests of people (or the rest of creation, for that matter): if it is true, as just suggested, that honoring god’s command advances human well-being, then there should not be any tension between a theocentric and anthropocentric approach. as we honor our creator god and obey god’s commands, we act in ways that advance human well-being… this works out, however, only if human well-being is properly understood (gushee 2010, 249-250). of course, the tragic reality of sinful humanity in a fallen world is that tension remains here, often because of narrow or misguided understandings of what human well-being entails. while theocentrism does not necessarily provide simple answers to these complex challenges, it does reframe the conflict more critically and holistically, and primes our commitment to strive for win-win solutions that promote the well-being of both people and the rest of creation (lowe and vena 2019). as hoffman and sandelands (2005) note: whereas anthropocentric and ecocentric environmentalisms invite controversy between these two objectives, theocentric environmentalism forswears their dichotomy and thereby controversy between them. it suggests, rather, that where the two objectives cannot be met at the same time, it is because they are misunderstood as being opposed to one another. the challenge thus is determining how and when this misunderstanding may arise (153-154). tragic conflicts in the present are not the way god designed things to be but instead are properly understood as a consequence of sin and brokenness. the bible testifies that god created, and remains determined to restore, a world defined by shalom, where humans and the rest of creation are reconciled to once again flourish in harmony with each other and god (woodley 2012). seventh, both theologically and practically speaking, to embrace a worldview other than theocentrism is to embrace idolatry: “any position short of a full acceptance of theocentrism will not represent the completely biblical, patristic christian worldview” (rossi 1985, 14). on one hand, by centering humans above all other concerns, anthropocentrism idolizes humanity. this is precisely how humans went wrong in the garden of eden— instead of submitting to god, they rebelled and sought to elevate themselves to rival god (genesis 3). it is also how we have arrived in the anthropocene, which is the christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 lowe, lamb, padilla-deborst, reconciling conservation and development … 58 inevitable outcome of an anthropocentric worldview. on the other hand, by centering the interests of nonhuman creatures and ecosystems (at least as best we perceive them), biocentrism and ecocentrism tend to idealize and idolize (wild) non-human nature and are thus also problematic, if at least less self-aggrandizing. in the western church, in particular, there is a great need to repent for our anthropocentric biases and to pursue biblical discipleship and witness that centers on god and orients ourselves, our species, and the rest of creation in right relationship around the creator: it is not too much to say that to the extent christians have failed to acknowledge god’s sacred relationship to other creatures and the creation, we have failed god, we have sinned against him and against other creatures and the creation we share with them. our sins demand repentance, which includes both grief over sin and new commitment to a different way of relating. we must learn to perceive our moral obligations as god’s people to those other creatures loved and valued by god, and to the ecosystems that god prepared and still employs to sustain all our lives (gushee 2010, 265). application: putting theocentrism into practice the purpose of this paper has been to propose theocentrism as a biblically normative and conceptually effective approach for reconciling conservation and development, which is an increasingly critical challenge in the world today. a growing number of faith-based organizations—including relief and development agencies, environmental groups, and even traditional mission societies—are engaging more holistically around interconnected social, ecological, and spiritual needs, and there is much that can be learned from these ongoing efforts (table 4). toward this end, we offer four concrete recommendations for how the relief and development community, in particular, can implement a more theocentric approach at the organizational and programmatic level. first, in an increasingly complex and interconnected world, it is important for organizations to take a rigorously holistic approach to understanding problems and crafting solutions. systems thinking, which assumes complex human-environment interactions, should be normative along with connecting the dots between how socioeconomic and ecological (and, for faith-based organizations, also spiritual) issues and spheres interact and influence each other in specific places and contexts (liu et al. 2007). these issues are inextricably entangled and, as toly (2019) puts it, “managing them well does not mean disentangling them, but wisely addressing their entanglement” (2). for example, plant with purpose partners with rural households and communities around a comprehensive and integrated agenda that includes reforestation projects, sustainable agriculture practices, savings and loans groups, and discipleship programs. this holistic model has proven highly fruitful through the years because it appropriately recognizes that the challenges facing households and communities today are just as much about economic well-being as they are about ecological and spiritual health, which are all ultimately tied together. another example is world hope international, which explicitly connects all of their work to the sustainable development goals (sdgs). while the sdgs have their limitations and are not theocentric per se, they do provide a useful and widely recognized framework for identifying connections and evaluating how any given project fits into the overarching goal of restoring creational flourishing. second, the most feasible way for many organizations actually to implement such a holistic approach will be through innovative collaborations with groups that have complementary areas of expertise. environmental conservation and international development are both specialized fields that require considerable understanding, skill, and networks in order to be effective. relief and development agencies should be wary of assuming that they have what it takes to do conservation well on their own (and vice versa for conservation organizations). the literature is replete with examples of integrated conservation and development projects that were well-intentioned but failed due to deficient conception and implementation (e.g., aldashev and vallino 2019; winkler 2011). one way for groups to increase the likelihood of success here is through strategic partnerships that complement gaps in expertise and relationships. a good example comes from the shores of lake tanganyika, a global biodiversity hotspot in east africa. the tuungane project, a secular organization funded in part by the nature conservancy, is working to conserve lake tanganyika by improving fisheries co-management and protecting aquatic habitats (lowe et al. 2019). at the same time, tuungane recognizes the importance of improving food security and reducing soil erosion and sedimentation through addressing small-scale farming practices in the communities where they work. to do this, they partnered with echo (a christian organization promoting sustainable agricultural development with a regional center in tanzania) on a “terrestrial training programme” christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 lowe, lamb, padilla-deborst, reconciling conservation and development … 59 table 4: select examples of christian ngos working to integrate conservation and development a rocha: an international christian conservation organization that seeks to show god’s love for all creation by conserving biodiversity while improving the well-being of local communities. examples include remediating an urban dump into a biodiverse community park in england, and developing ecotourism projects in kenya that generate revenue from protecting forests instead of cutting them down. arocha.org cama services: a ministry of the christian and missionary alliance; partnered with church leaders in kosovo to start a plastics recycling business with the expressed vision of generating income while caring for creation by reducing trash in the community. they also support an aquaculture project in a part of mali where farmers are struggling and the niger river is being overfished. camaservices.org echo: teaches, innovates, and offers a wealth of resources on sustainable farming practices for small-scale farmers around the world. on the tanzanian shoreline of lake tanganyika, they partnered with the tuungane project on an integrated conservation and development initiative focused on improving livelihoods and farming practices while protecting important fish habitat in this global biodiversity hotspot. echonet.org plant with purpose: models a rigorously holistic approach that seeks to address environmental degradation and rural poverty together through ecological restoration, sustainable agriculture, microfinance, and spiritual discipleship. in haiti alone, they partner with almost 10,000 families across 133 communities to improve resilience, promote soil conservation, and plant trees—nearly 4 million to date. plantwithpurpose.org tearfund: has been advocating for climate action since the early 1990s and also works to tackle waste and promote a circular economy. their rubbish campaign (launched in 2019) focuses on urging major corporations to reduce their plastic waste in particular. in malawi, they partner with eagles relief and development programme to integrate reforestation, conservation agriculture, and climate adaptation throughout their work with villages across the country. tearfund.org world hope: explicitly ties its work around the world to the sustainable development goals (sdgs), which includes climate action among other socio-ecological concerns. in cambodia, they are the recipient of a grant from the disney conservation fund for jahoo gibbon camp, an ecotourism and research center that empowers the indigenous bunong people to protect the endangered yellow-cheeked gibbon and its habitat. worldhope.org world vision international: includes climate change as an area of focus and recognizes the connections between a warming planet and increased poverty and vulnerability. as a result, among other initiatives, they have invested in reforestation projects and have helped restore millions of acres of degraded farmland across sub-saharan africa and parts of asia. wvi.org for village farm plots (echo 2015). this successful collaboration not only highlights the value of partnerships between conservation-focused and development-focused organizations but also affirms that faith-based and secular groups can indeed find fruitful ways to work together around shared concerns. a helpful framework for thinking through such partnerships in a pluralistic world is what religion scholar willis jenkins terms “theocentric pragmatism,” which combines theocentrism with the grow-as-you-go, problem-solving approach of pragmatism (jenkins 2013). theocentric pragmatism bypasses cosmological approaches that require all parties to share a single underlying worldview in order to collaborate. instead, groups begin by bringing the best of their respective traditions/resources to bear in engaging around a shared problem with other stakeholders. in the process of working on the problem together, mutual learning and growing takes place, new possibilities develop, and groups are able to identify common ground and build the trust needed in order to innovate and pursue greater steps (jenkins 2013). theocentrism helps foster the humility needed to learn from others and engage in non-traditional and interdisciplinary partnerships and approaches to tackling entrenched problems, recognizing there may be limitations to our current strategies and abilities. a third aspect of practicing theocentrism is the importance of balancing the tension between the biblical vision of shalom with honest expectations of present realities. this involves naming and accepting the tragic reality that fully and finally reconciling conservation and development remains beyond our reach, though it must continue to be our aim. while considerable progress is possible (and should be gratefully celebrated whenever achieved), securing the christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 lowe, lamb, padilla-deborst, reconciling conservation and development … 60 complete flourishing of all creation is an ongoing struggle to do the best we can, given the circumstances we face. no matter how hard we try, we will continue to encounter intractable conflicts that force us to choose between competing non-trivial goods or goals, all of which are simultaneously unachievable (toly 2019). in other words, we face wicked conflicts that have no fully self-justifying solutions. as moral agents and imagebearers of god, however, we still have to make the most loving choices we can, even though it means ending up with dirt and blood on our hands (at least figuratively) from the unavoidable tradeoffs involved. from a christian theocentric perspective, “justification by the work of jesus christ, alone, not only frees the christian from the demands of self-justification but also frees them for a pattern of vicarious representative action on behalf of others, frees them to be there for others” (toly 2019, 94). in other words, while lamenting what is lost and hoping in the resurrection to come, christians are not to be paralyzed in the present by socalled “wicked problems” that defy clean solutions. instead, we are empowered through the grace and example of christ to sacrificially bear the costs associated with tragic tradeoffs so that others are better able to flourish: “a readiness to dirty our hands for others—to bear costs for neighbor and creation— symbolizes… what it means to be like god at the dawn of a new, but enduringly tragic, geologic era” (toly 2019, 117). fourth, pursuing a theocentric approach is also an opportunity to bear prophetic witness—both across broader society and within the church—against the pervasive and destructive cult of anthropocentrism. in reality, theocentrism runs counter to the ingrained operational worldview of many christian spaces, which may pay lip service to the biblical vision of jesus as lord, but function predominately as if humans were the center of the universe. this tendency toward anthropocentrism runs particularly deep in western/white christianity and has been exported widely through its heavy emphasis on international missions and theological education (among other factors). in contrast, other, less individualistic and anthropocentric christian traditions are often a rich source of theological insight and practical wisdom around theocentric conservation and development. these include indigenous theological traditions (e.g., woodley 2012) and the heavily christian-influenced environmental justice movements in the u.s. and beyond (e.g., around indigenous rights and deforestation in the amazon region). challenging the idolatry of anthropocentrism, which is a core and crosscutting issue of christian discipleship, will often be costly and unpopular. relief and development organizations rely on donations from individuals and institutions who tend to be much more motivated by anthropocentric appeals and arguments. for example, it is typically easier to raise support for child sponsorships than for ecosystem restoration. still, biblical ethics and anthropocene realities agree—we have to find a way to do both. tearfund is an example of an organization providing leadership here through various public advocacy campaigns over the years and by supporting groundbreaking initiatives such as young evangelicals for climate action and the lausanne/world evangelical alliance creation care network. in 2013, they also teamed up with the evangelical environmental network to bring a group of key christian leaders in the united states to visit a partner organization in malawi, the eagles relief and development programme, to learn why and how they are integrating conservation agriculture and climate resiliency into their work with rural communities. conclusion: by providing courageous and persistent leadership in reconciling conservation and development, relief and development agencies have the opportunity to make significant and biblically faithful contributions toward reframing our deficient understanding of christian mission and reorienting the church toward a more theocentric approach in an era defined by anthropogenic environmental change. they also have an opportunity to innovate and model conservation and development approaches that honor the god-given value of all creation and transcend the false dichotomies and shallow reconciliation attempts of many global solutions. as van dyke and lamb (2020a) state, “we may yet give this present age a good name – not because we tried to save nature from people, nor that we merely labored to save nature for people, but that we worked to save nature through people and with people, that our efforts found dignity in this purpose, that human life and nature’s life might find and know life together” (122). win-win solutions that conserve biodiversity and promote human well-being can be challenging to bring to fruition, and require holistic and honest accounting of benefits, losses, costs, and tradeoffs so that they can be openly discussed and negotiated (mcshane et al. 2011). if christians are to faithfully participate in the biblical mission to restore all creation to mutual flourishing, we must reject exclusionary approaches to conservation and development and refuse to settle for half-hearted attempts at their reconciliation. instead, we are called to unreservedly embrace god’s vision of shalom and joyfully accept our responsibilities as members of the community of creation and ambassadors of the creator, sustainer, and reconciler of all. christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 lowe, lamb, padilla-deborst, reconciling conservation and development … 61 references adams, william m., ros aveling, dan brockington, barney dickson, jo elliott, jon hutton, dilys roe, bhaskar vira, and william wolmer. 2004. “biodiversity conservation and the eradication of poverty.” science 306 (5699): 1146–49. doi:10.1126/science.1097920. aldashev, gani, and elena vallino. 2019. “the dilemma of ngos and participatory conservation.” world development 123: 104615. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2019.104615 anderson, christopher b., cristiana s. seixas, olga barbosa, m. siobhan fennessy, julio díaz-josé, and bernal herrera-f. 2019. “determining nature’s contributions to achieve the sustainable development goals.” sustainability science 14 (2): 543–47. doi:10.1007/s11625-018-0643-5. bauckham, richard. 2010. bible and ecology: rediscovering the community of creation. waco, tx: baylor university press. bhagwat, shonil a., nigel dudley, and stuart r. harrop. 2011. “religious following in biodiversity hotspots: challenges and opportunities for conservation and development.” conservation letters 4 (3): 234– 40. doi:10.1111/j.1755-263x.2011.00169.x. block, daniel. 2010. “to serve and to keep: toward a biblical understanding of humanity’s responsibility in the face of the biodiversity crisis.” in keeping god’s earth: the global environment in biblical perspective, edited by noah toly and daniel block, 116-142. downers grove, il: intervarsity press. blom, benjamin, terry sunderland, and daniel murdiyarso. 2010. “getting redd to work locally: lessons learned from integrated conservation and development projects.” environmental science & policy 13 (2): 164–72. doi:10.1016/j.envsci.2010.01.002. büscher, bram, and robert fletcher. 2019. “towards convivial conservation.” conservation and society 17 (3): 283. doi:10.4103/cs.cs_19_75. carruthers, david. 2001. “from opposition to orthodoxy: the remaking of sustainable development.” journal of third world studies 18 (2): 93–112. doi:10.2307/45193956 castree, noel. 2008. “neoliberalising nature: processes, effects, and evaluations.” environment and planning a: economy and space 40 (1): 153–73. doi:10.1068/a39100. crutzen, paul j. 2002. “geology of mankind--the anthropocene.” nature 415 (6867): 23–23. doi:10.1038/415023a. deneulin, séverine, and augusto zampini-davies. 2016. “how the sustainable development goals (sdgs) can engage with religion.” religion and the public sphere (19 oct 2016). available from: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/76459/ deneulin, séverine, and carole rakodi. 2011. “revisiting religion: development studies thirty years on.” world development 39 (1): 45-54. dhyani, shalini, debbie bartlett, rakesh kadaverugu, rajarshi dasgupta, paras pujari, and parikshit verma. 2020. “integrated climate sensitive restoration framework for transformative changes to sustainable land restoration.” restoration ecology n/a (n/a). accessed september 20. doi:10.1111/rec.13230. djupe, paul a., and patrick kieran hunt. 2009. “beyond the lynn white thesis: congregational effects on environmental concern.” journal for the scientific study of religion 48 (4): 670-686. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-5906.2009.01472.x doherty, tim s., lucie m. bland, brett a. bryan, timothy neale, emily nicholson, euan g. ritchie, and don a. driscoll. 2018. “expanding the role of targets in conservation policy.” trends in ecology & evolution 33 (11): 809–12. doi:10.1016/j.tree.2018.08.014. echo. 2015. 6 th follow-up/final report of the tuungane terrestrial training programme (unpublished report), 22 june. escobar, arturo. 1992. “reflections on ‘development’: grassroots approaches and alternative politics in the third world.” futures 24 (5): 411–36. https://doi.org/10.1016/0016-3287(92)900147.farley, joshua, and robert costanza. 2010. “payments for ecosystem services: from local to global.” ecological economics 69 (11). amsterdam: elsevier: 2060–68. doi:10.1016/j.ecolecon.2010.06.010. foley, jonathan a., ruth defries, gregory p. asner, carol barford, gordon bonan, stephen r. carpenter, f. stuart chapin, et al. 2005. “global consequences of land use.” science 309 (5734): 570–74. doi:10.1126/science.1111772. foley, jonathan a., navin ramankutty, kate a. brauman, emily s. cassidy, james s. gerber, matt johnston, nathaniel d. mueller, et al. 2011. “solutions for a cultivated planet.” nature 478 (7369): 337–42. doi:10.1038/nature10452. grove, richard. 1995. green imperialism: colonial expansion, tropical island edens, and the origins of environmentalism, 1600-1860. studies in environment and history. cambridge: cambridge university press. http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/toc/cam026/93028654. html. gonzalez, justo. 2015. la creación: la niña de los ojos de dios. buenos aires: kairós. about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/toc/cam026/93028654.html http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/toc/cam026/93028654.html christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 lowe, lamb, padilla-deborst, reconciling conservation and development … 62 gushee, david. 2010. “environmental ethics: bringing creation care down to earth.” in keeping god’s earth: the global environment in biblical perspective, edited by noah toly and daniel block, 245-266. downers grove, il: intervarsity press. gustafson, james m. 1981. ethics from a theocentric perspective, i. chicago, il: university of chicago press. gustafson, james m. 1994. a sense of the divine: the natural environment from a theocentric perspective. cleveland, oh: the pilgrim press. harris, peter. 2000. under the bright wings. vancouver, bc: regent college publishing. hitzhusen, gregory e. 2007. “judeo‐christian theology and the environment: moving beyond scepticism to new sources for environmental education in the united states.” environmental education research 13 (1): 55-74. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504620601122699 hoffman, andrew j., and lloyd e. sandelands. 2005. “getting right with nature: anthropocentrism, ecocentrism, and theocentrism.” organization & environment, 18 (2): 141–162. https://doi.org/10.1177/1086026605276197 international resource panel (irp). 2019. land restoration for achieving the sustainable development goals: an international resource panel think piece. a think piece of the international resource panel, united nations environment programme, nairobi, kenya. https://www.resourcepanel.org/reports/landrestoration-achieving-sustainable-development-goals. jack, b. kelsey, carolyn kousky, and katharine r. e. sims. 2008. “designing payments for ecosystem services: lessons from previous experience with incentive-based mechanisms.” proceedings of the national academy of sciences 105 (28): 9465–70. doi:10.1073/pnas.0705503104. jenkins, willis. 2013. the future of ethics: sustainability, social justice, and religious creativity. georgetown university press. jenkins, willis, evan berry, and luke beck kreider. “religion and climate change.” annual review of environment and resources 43 (2018): 85-108. kanagy, conrad l., and hart m. nelsen. 1995. “religion and environmental concern: challenging the dominant assumptions.” review of religious research: 33-45. https://doi.org/10.2307/3512069 kiss, a. 2004. “is community-based ecotourism a good use of biodiversity conservation funds?” trends in ecology & evolution 19 (5): 232–37. doi:10.1016/j.tree.2004.03.010 liu, jianguo, thomas dietz, stephen r carpenter, marina alberti, carl folke, emilio moran, alice n pell, et al. 2007. “complexity of coupled human and natural systems.” science 317 (5844): 1513–16. leopold, aldo. 1949. a sand county almanac, and sketches here and there. new york: oxford univ. press. lewis, simon l., and mark a. maslin. 2015. “defining the anthropocene.” nature 519 (7542): 171–80. doi:10.1038/nature14258. lowe, benjamin s. 2019. “ethics in the anthropocene: moral responses to the climate crisis.” journal of agricultural and environmental ethics 32 (3): 479–85. doi:10.1007/s10806-019-09786-z. lowe, benjamin s., and christopher vena. 2019. “integrating creation care with relief and development.” in hands: stories and lessons of holistic development, edited by cama services, 61-71. colorado springs, co: cama services. lowe, benjamin s., susan k. jacobson, happiness anold, athanasio s. mbonde, and catherine m. o’reilly. 2019. “adapting to change in inland fisheries:analysis from lake tanganyika, east africa.” regional environmental change, 19 (6): 1765-1776. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10113-01901516-5 marvier, michelle, peter kareiva, and robert lalasz. 2019. conservation in the anthropocene: beyond solitude and fragility. the breakthrough institute. available at https://thebreakthrough.org/journal/issue2/conservation-in-the-anthropocene. accessed 20 aug 2019. mcshane, thomas o., paul d. hirsch, tran chi trung, alexander n. songorwa, ann kinzig, bruno monteferri, david mutekanga, et al. 2011. “hard choices: making tradeoffs between biodiversity conservation and human wellbeing.” biological conservation 144 (3): 966–72. doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2010.04.038. mikusiński, grzegorz, hugh p. possingham, and malgorzata blicharska. 2014. “biodiversity priority areas and religions—a global analysis of spatial overlap.” oryx, 48 (1): 17-22. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0030605312000993 moo, douglas j., and jonathan a. moo. 2018. creation care: a biblical theology of the natural world. edited by jonathan lunde. grand rapids, michigan: zondervan academic. newsham, andrew, and shonil bhagwat. 2016. conservation and development. new york, ny: routledge. norton, bryan g. 2017. “environmental ethics and weak anthropocentrism.” in the ethics of the environment, edited by r. attfield, 333–50. london: routledge. doi:10.4324/9781315239897-21. about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 lowe, lamb, padilla-deborst, reconciling conservation and development … 63 o’connor, martin and rosemary arnoux. 1993. “translators’ introduction” in in the wake of affluent society: an exploration of postdevelopment, by serge latouche. london: zed books. ortega-álvarez, rubén, and rafael calderón-parra. 2020. “linking biological monitoring and wildlife ecotourism: a call for development of comprehensive community-based projects in search of sustainability.” environment, development and sustainability, may. doi:10.1007/s10668-020-00761-7. ridder, ben. 2007. “the naturalness versus wildness debate: ambiguity, inconsistency, and unattainable objectivity.” restoration ecology 15 (1): 8–12. doi:10.1111/j.1526-100x.2006.00184.x. rockström, johan, will steffen, kevin noone, åsa persson, f. stuart chapin, eric f. lambin, timothy m. lenton, et al. 2009. “a safe operating space for humanity.” nature 461 (7263): 472–75. doi:10.1038/461472a. rolston iii, holmes. 1996. “the bible and ecology.” interpretation 50 (1): 16-26. https://doi.org/10.1177/002096439605000103 rossi, vincent r. 1988. “theocentrism: the cornerstone of christian ecology.” epiphany: a journal of faith and insight 8: 8-13. sachs, wolfgang. 2010. the development dictionary: a guide to knowledge as power, 2nd ed. london: zed books. simkins, ronald a. 2014. “the bible and anthropocentrism: putting humans in their place. dialectical anthropology 38, (4): 397-413. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10624-014-9348-z siipi, helena. 2008. “dimensions of naturalness.” ethics and the environment 13 (1). indiana university press: 71–103. https://doi.org/10.2979/ete.2008.13.1.71 slimbach, richard. 2020. “global development in the anthropocene,” christian relief, development, and advocacy 1 (2): 70-82. smith, amy erica, and robin globus veldman. 2020. “evangelical environmentalists? evidence from brazil.” journal for the scientific study of religion 59 (2): 341-359. https://doi.org/10.1111/jssr.12656 snyder, howard. 2014 “genesis 9: the forgotten covenant.” ecology of church and kingdom (blog). seedbed (january 13). retrieved from https://www.seedbed.com/genesis-9-the-forgottencovenant/ steffen, will, jacques grinevald, paul crutzen, and john mcneill. 2011. “the anthropocene: conceptual and historical perspectives.” philosophical transactions of the royal society a: mathematical, physical and engineering sciences 369, (1938): 842-867. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2010.0327. steffen w, richardson k, rockström j, cornell s e, fetzer i, bennett e m, biggs r, carpenter s r, vries w de, wit c a de, folke c, gerten d, heinke j, mace g m, persson l m, ramanathan v, reyers b and sörlin s. 2015. “planetary boundaries: guiding human development on a changing planet.” science 347 online: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/347/6223/1 259855 stone, christopher d. 2004. “common but differentiated responsibilities in international law.” the american journal of international law 98 (2): 276–301. doi:10.2307/3176729. taylor, paul w. 1986. respect for nature: a theory of environmental ethics. princeton, n.j.: princeton university press. tilman, david, kenneth g. cassman, pamela a. matson, rosamond naylor, and stephen polasky. 2002. “agricultural sustainability and intensive production practices.” nature 418 (6898): 671– 77. doi:10.1038/nature01014. toly, noah j. 2019. the gardener’s dirty hands: environmental politics and christian ethics. new york, ny: oxford university press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190249427.001. 0001 tomalin, emma, ed. 2015. the routledge handbook of religions and global development. abingdon, oxon: routledge. tomalin, emma, jörg haustein, and shabaana kidy. 2019. “religion and the sustainable development goals.” the review of faith & international affairs 17 (2): 102-118. unep. 2020. “faith action on the un sustainable development goals.” policy and programme division, united nations environment programme. available from: http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11822/33848. van dyke, fred. 2005. “between heaven and earth: evangelical engagement in conservation.” conservation biology 19 (6): 1693-1696. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1523-1739.2005.00311.x van dyke, fred, and rachel l. lamb. 2020a. “the anthropocene: conservation in a humandominated nature.” in conservation biology: foundations, concepts, applications, 81–124. cham: springer international publishing. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-39534-6_3. ———. 2020b. “the legal foundations of conservation biology.” in conservation biology: foundations, concepts, applications, 489–530. cham: springer international publishing. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-39534-6_12. about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(2), winter 2021 lowe, lamb, padilla-deborst, reconciling conservation and development … 64 ———. 2020c. “biodiversity conservation and climate change.” in conservation biology: foundations, concepts, applications, 125–70. cham: springer international publishing. doi:10.1007/978-3-03039534-6_4. ———. 2020d. “conservation economics and sustainable development.” in conservation biology: foundations, concepts, applications, edited by fred van dyke and rachel l. lamb, 449–87. cham: springer international publishing. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-39534-6_11. van velden, julia l., henry travers, boyson h.z. moyo, and duan biggs. 2020. “using scenarios to understand community-based interventions for bushmeat hunting and consumption in african savannas.” biological conservation 248 (august): 108676. doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2020.108676. vitousek, peter m., john d. aber, robert w. howarth, gene e. likens, pamela a. matson, david w. schindler, william h. schlesinger, and david g. tilman. 1997. “human alteration of the global nitrogen cycle: sources and consequences.” ecological applications 7 (3): 737–50. doi:10.1890/10510761(1997)007[0737:haotg n]2.0.co;2. waltham, nathan j., michael elliott, shing yip lee, catherine lovelock, carlos m. duarte, christina buelow, charles simenstad et al. “un decade on ecosystem restoration 2021–2030—what chance for success in restoring coastal ecosystems?” frontiers in marine science 7 (2020): 71. white jr., lynn. 1967. “the historical roots of our ecologic crisis. science 155 (3767): 1203-1207. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.155.3767.1203 wilkinson, katharine k. 2012. between god and green: how evangelicals are cultivating a middle ground on climate change. oxford: oxford university press. wilson, e.o. 2016a. half-earth – our planet’s fight for life. new york: norton. winkler, ralph. 2011. “why do icdps fail?: the relationship between agriculture, hunting and ecotourism in wildlife conservation.” resource and energy economics 33 (1): 55-78. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.reseneeco.2010.01.003 woodley, randy. 2012. shalom and the community of creation: an indigenous vision. grand rapids, mi: wm. b. eerdmans publishing. wright, christopher j. h. 2010. the mission of god’s people: a biblical theology of the church’s mission. illustrated edition. grand rapids, mi: zondervan academic. young, richard a. 1994. healing the earth: a theocentric perspective on environmental problems and their solutions. nashville, tn: broadman & holman publishers. benjamin lowe is a phd candidate, nsf graduate research fellow, and harvey fellow studying tropical conservation and development at the university of florida. his interdisciplinary research focuses on the human, religious, and ethical dimensions of global environmental change. www.benlowe.net. author email: ben.s.lowe@gmail.com rachel lamb is a phd candidate in geographical sciences, harvey fellow, and university flagship fellow at the university of maryland, college park. her recent work focuses on strategic reforestation to meet climate mitigation and other social and environmental goals. author email: rachel_lamb@icloud.com ruth padilla deborst is a theologian, missiologist, educator, and storyteller. she serves with resonate global mission, leading the comunidad de estudios teológicos interdisciplinarios (ceti), the international fellowship for mission as transformation, and leadership development initiatives of the christian reformed church. she has been involved in theological formation for integral mission in her native latin america and beyond for several decades. author email: rpadilladeborst@gmail.com about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(1), summer 2022 miles, book review 43 book review amateurs without borders: the aspirations and limits of global compassion by allison schnable reviewed by carrie a. miles 2021. oakland, ca: university of california press. $29.95 the audience for whom this book will prove most useful is also the one most likely to be offended by the use of the word “amateur” in the title. but author allison schnable does not intend “amateur” to mean incompetents bungling around the developing world. rather, she uses the word in its original meaning for one who loves, or people who engage in a pursuit from amor (love) rather than on a paid, professional basis. schnable contrasts the organizations such amateurs create, which she calls “grassroots” international nongovernmental organizations (ingos), with more formal ingos staffed by development professionals. run by volunteers whose motivation is primarily personal and expressive rather than result-oriented and technical, these small, amateur groups comprise a rising tide in international development. while this new breed of volunteers is made up of amateurs in the sense that they are neither trained in development nor part of organizations like world vision or the peace corps, the term is not intended to imply that they are unskilled in the services they provide internationally. indeed, participants in grassroots ingos may be, among other things, water quality engineers, educators, businesspeople, or doctors by profession. unlike employees of professional ingos, however, who are paid and likely live in the countries where they serve, amateurs “remain embedded in their careers and communities in the united states” (4). while the much larger professional ingos have grown into impersonal bureaucracies run by professional managers, grassroots ingos rely on personal relationships with both supporters and recipients. schnable identified grassroots ingos from the u.s. tax rolls of international 501(c)(3) organizations. the book reports on (1) what schnable finds from those rolls, (2) a content analysis of the websites of a random sample of 150 of them, and (3) her in-depth case studies of five. the number of ingos with taxexempt status, both grassroots and professional, has grown rapidly, from 1,000 in 1990, to 13,030 in 2015. most of these organizations are small, with annual budgets of $25,000 or less. among the examples of grassroots ingo projects in developing countries are those that provide clean water, solar energy, medical equipment and requisite training to use it, vocational training, scholarships, markets for arts and crafts, schools, orphan projects, and sanitary products that allow girls to attend school. given that opportunities to participate in professional efforts are extremely limited, and that the cost of working internationally has been dropping rapidly, schnable’s study provides the important insight that grassroots ingos are likely to play an increasingly large role in international humanitarian outreach. in addition, for practitioners, her observations about the limitations of amateur organizations offer relief from the pressures of trying to be what they are not. for example, leaders of amateur agencies can be overwhelmed by suggestions for marketing and fundraising offered by enthusiastic friends and growth consultants. yet schnable finds that amateurs’ funding and labor come “almost exclusively [from] individual donors within the leaders’ personal networks” (160). this suggests that amateurs may do better to focus on developing those relationships, rather than wasting time creating instagram or facebook appeals that no one outside their network will ever see. christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(1), summer 2022 miles, book review 44 because most grassroots ingos focus on personal relationships and providing goods and services, schnable considers them to offer charity rather than actual development programming. lacking knowledge of the practices of development, as well as any in-depth knowledge of local culture, language, and previous development programs, amateur efforts, schnable argues, can be inefficient. on the other hand, her discussion of the goals of professional development suggests that professional ingos are not efficient either. citing the inside-back cover material from the 1991 volume of world development, schnable finds a statement of development goals that lists improving standards of living, and the human condition generally, by examining potential solutions to problems such as: poverty, unemployment, malnutrition, disease, illiteracy, lack of shelter, environmental degradation, inadequate scientific and technological resources, trade and payments imbalances, international debt, gender and ethnic discrimination, violation of human rights, militarism and civil conflict, and lack of popular participation in economic and political life (“aims and scope”). in answer to the question of what development professionals “actually do, day to day, to bring about” their goals, schnable replies, “mainly, they talk.” meetings and trainings are their primary activity (79). in the meantime, schnable admits, too much of the delivery of the kind of aid originally offered by ingos, such as wells, food, and education, which seem to be what recipients really want, falls to the amateurs (80). schnable includes a chapter on the role of religion in these organizations, noting that many grassroots ingos are associated with churches and that recipients of their services are usually local congregations (chapter 7). religious networks provide support for amateur organizations on numerous levels, including providing the conceptual framework for understanding what they offer, initial contact in the host country, financial support, volunteer labor, and, finally, ongoing supervision of projects in the global south. one item crda readers might take as a caution is her observation that as religiously-motived ingos become more professionalized and dependent on government grants, they lose much of their religious identity and begin to operate much like their secular counterparts. in general, however, when schnable discusses the role of religion in amateur agencies, she seems to get things backwards, implying a deliberate intent on their part to “use” religion in service of their charitable goals. such an attribution overlooks the possibility that the motives driving these amateur aid-agencies are not a thing separate from religion, but an integral part of it. if there is a weakness in schnable’s analysis, it is that by attributing amateurs’ dependence on personal relationships to their personal preferences, she misses the better explanation found in the structural constraints amateurs face by virtue of being amateurs. amateurs have, by definition, no established infrastructure to give them entry into their target country. they must, of necessity, rely on personal contacts even to get started. in addition, because grassroots ingo volunteers do not live in the country they serve, any project that continues in their absence requires the involvement of nationals, who also participate in the project through personal relationships. without marketing departments, advertising budgets, or grant-writers, amateurs must, once again, rely on personal relationships for financial support and volunteer labor. although schnable later notes that religious amateur groups “use” religious networks to replace the infrastructure of professional agencies for initial entry and for sustaining action in the host country, she appears unaware of the extent to which these connections themselves spring, by necessity, from personal relationships. schnable continues by describing grassroots ingos as “supply-driven with strong expressive characteristics,” writing that amateur organizations “emerge from the entrepreneurial initiative of a founder whose own tastes and energies play a determining role in shaping the organization” (184-5). she is certainly right, to a degree; yet being supply-driven does not necessarily distinguish amateur from professional, and expressive needs ultimately have little to do with how amateurs operate. schnable offers clear evidence that professional ingos are also very much driven by taste, not that of their staff, but of their funders. she cites monika krause (2014), who writes that professional ingo employees spend much of their time on the look-out for “good projects” – i.e., new programs that meet the demands of possible funders rather than the needs and interests of the recipients. it may be that one of the problems is that in some cases the “goals of development” are abstract/intangible, and the programs funders support often lack practical value for their intended recipients. unable or unwilling to miss a day of work to attend a program of no perceived value to them, potential recipients may be understandably reluctant to attend. schnable probably did not come across this practice in her case studies, but in some countries, professional ingos motivate attendance at their programs by paying participants a “per diem” stipend (jones 2006; ribakare n.d.). grassroots ingos, however, do not have the resources to get away with offering services that their national partners do not want. those that survive beyond the expressive christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(1), summer 2022 miles, book review 45 enthusiasm of an initial trip abroad must balance what they want to provide with what their intended recipients would like to receive. otherwise, nothing happens on the ground. having the flexibility to work with recipients to meet these needs is, in my opinion, the strength of the amateur ingo movement. despite this quibble, amateurs without borders offers valuable information and insights. i have already recommended it to several friends who run such “amateur” agencies and i recommend it to the crda community. references “aims and scope.” inside the back cover of world development 19, no. 6, 1991, no page number. jones, ann. 2006. kabul in winter: life without peace in afghanistan. new york: metropolitan books. krause, monika. 2014. the good project: humanitarian relief ngos and the fragmentation of reason. chicago: university of chicago press. ribakare, pontien. private conversation with the author. carrie a. miles is a non-resident scholar at baylor university, executive director of empower international ministries, and the author of the redemption of love; new man, new woman, new life (2006); and face-to-face (2015). she studies family and development in africa, india, and the u.s. author email: carriem@fastmail.com mailto:carriem@fastmail.com christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(2), winter 2023 jatau, mutonono, soerens, and spradlin, oneaccord 2022: a synopsis 69 oneaccord 2022: a synopsis emmanuel jatau, dwight s.m. mutonono, thomas s. soerens, and becca spradlin a brief overview of the accord network’s 2022 annual summit’s main plenary sessions and the three associated one-day “pre-conference intensives” of the accord research alliance (ara), christian economic development network (ced), and water, sanitation, and hygiene alliance (wash). the accord network held its annual oneaccord summit at the ridgecrest conference center in north carolina this past october 11-13, 2022. here is a partial summary of the hot topics that kept our attention in the plenary presentation and the three one-day intensives. the three main plenary sessions were led by brian fikkert, jayakumar christian, and mindy caliguire. the first two are well-known in christian development circles, and caliguire is director of spiritual formation at willow creek community church in the chicago area. for several decades, mindy caliguire has helped the christian community see the importance of caring for our souls, and in this session, she began with the warning that the most threatening humanitarian crisis we are facing globally is the health of our leaders’ souls, many of which are suffering through such common ailments as exhaustion and the severe depletion of their faith-oriented energy; in other words, burnout. when jesus said “what good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?” (matt 16:26), he was talking to his disciples, not the crowd. caliguire noted that a neglected soul experiences disconnection with god. symptoms include anger, bitterness, rage, insomnia, muscle tensions, digestive problems, fear, panic, dread, isolation, and self-hatred. well-connected souls, on the other hand experience joy, love, compassion, peace, hope, resilience, motivation, and kindness. for those whose souls are connected, these virtues can exist even in the direst circumstances. ultimately, she offered the vital reminder that life does not really depend on us and our own resources, but that it arises in conjunction with our connection to god. no surprise then that everything hinges on remaining connected. who makes the choice to disconnect or reconnect? we do. the soul’s well-being drives everything else, and care of the soul is thus critical. for his part, brian fikkert reviewed key lessons from his and kelly kapik’s 2019 book, becoming whole: why the opposite of poverty isn’t the american dream (see crda review here). fikkert’s main point is that so much of humanitarian aid depends on a theory of change that is not rooted in god’s story. that is because the dominant theory (or story) of change in the global north derives from western naturalism, which is imbibed by the humanitarian community and then imposed on the rest of the world. the main character in this story is “homo economicus,” a self-centered, materialistic, autonomous creature whose goal is consumption. it is true that we should cheer the fact that global material poverty has declined as the market system inspired by this story has spread, but we must also acknowledge that, in the most prosperous parts of the world, as people become materially wealthier, they do not become happier. now, as globalization spreads western-style markets and capitalism to the rest of the world, these same patterns are emerging. along with so many others, christians too have bought into this story. we totally emphasize the material, ritualistically praying to god on sundays, but adopting the american dream story at the same time. consequently, christians too are ever more anxious and depressed. contrast this with the biblical story that focuses on a relational, trinitarian god, in whose image we are also made. since those early days in the garden of eden, humans have witnessed a five-fold set of changes. first, a false story of change and well-being is accepted (many different ones have found favor throughout history); second, image-bearing humans become gradually more broken, which leads to destructive formative practices, broken systems, and, finally, to the entrance of demonic forces. the biblical solution to this dilemma is for jesus to usher in the kingdom and https://crdajournal.org/index.php/crda/article/view/409/309 christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(2), winter 2023 jatau, mutonono, soerens, and spradlin, oneaccord 2022: a synopsis 70 reverse this story of decline so that the story turns from one of increasing brokenness to one of restoration of our relationships with god, self, others, and the creation, through christ. this is the story that accord members need to adopt and do their best to spread. in the third plenary session, jayakumar christian promoted the construction of a theology of transformation, requiring us to search the mind of god. a theology of transformation challenges the tendency of so many of us to play god in the lives of others. when people play god in the lives of others, poverty, oppression, injustice, and abuse are birthed. like fikkert, christian argued that secular ideologies have hijacked the humanitarian industry. we need to heed the message of 2 cor 10: 4-6, in which we are called to demolish any ideology that does not properly honor god. such a theology requires us to challenge the system itself with the “scandal of the cross,” which challenges today’s dominant worldviews. the story of the demon-possessed man in mark 5:1-13 provides four transformational principles for constructing this theology: 1. a shift from the crowd to one person. the poor, oppressed, and abused are often so marginalized that they are not called by name. god invites us to the margins where each person is known by their name. 2. status quo reversal. if the poor rise, or are blessed or developed, the mainstream becomes disturbed. when we work with the poor we are in the business of challenging and reversing the status quo. 3. he is calm and they were afraid. when the poor are blessed, the rich become disturbed. the poor’s identity should not be marred through dehumanization and instrumentalization. they are made in the god’s image, not outcasts or cursed or a statistic. our presence with the poor must be an incarnational presence. not necessarily geographically present. incarnation can be defined as giving up what rightly belongs to one. it is an investment of life. our character and spirituality matter. time with god matters. 4. empowerment is not just about transfer of power; it is redefining power itself. the agent of transformation in this story was the demonpossessed man. it causes us to encounter the god of the kingdom, to go and tell others what god has done for us. in addition to plenary sessions, there were three one-day “intensives,” each organized by one of three thematic groups, wash (water, sanitation, and hygiene) alliance, ara (accord research alliance), and ced network (christian economic development). in each of these sessions, invited speakers shared their ideas, after which participants talked them over in small groups, shared their own experiences, and ultimately tried to learn from each other. the wash alliance intensive addressed the theme of “innovations in water delivery” in a session attendees referred to informally as “revenge of the engineers” due to an intentional focus on the technical. even so, technicallyand practically-minded people in the session continued to root their hopes for clean water and sanitation in a broader vision of god’s kingdom coming. citing evidence from world vision’s experience, ray norman spoke on the need to include christian and muslim faith leaders in the implementation of wash programs. as trusted and credible authorities in communities, they are key to the successful implementation of health programs (norman and odotei 2019). abe wright and michael cook from design outreach updated their progress on fighting against a global epidemic of handpump maladies, noting that way too many handpumps around the world are broken and inoperable. among the technical innovations discussed during the day were the following: • remote monitoring of hand-pumps that provides real-time information on handpump performance • solar-powered water system (spws) that include design tool software for designing solar water pumping systems. • effective community water pumping stations. • best practices in water well drilling. • working through ever-present challenges. thomas soerens closed with reflections on “what engineers can learn from missionary pioneers” pointing out that the most successful missionaries have always followed what today we call “holistic” or “integral mission” strategies. brian fikkert kicked off the ced network intensive by challenging and encouraging participants in their pursuit of transformative economic development. fikkert’s opening talk led into a highly participatory learning session that revolved around five communities of practice that fall under the ced umbrella: 1) microfinance, small and medium enterprises, and impact investing, 2) savings groups, 3) agriculture, 4) integral mission, and 5) business training and mentoring. group conversations were initiated by presentations on cases from member organizations. under the theme “innovation to overcome challenges in christ-centered economic development,” christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(2), winter 2023 jatau, mutonono, soerens, and spradlin, oneaccord 2022: a synopsis 71 participants formed teams that built off of the case studies presented. these groups enjoyed the opportunity to practice using holistic, design-thinking principles in a session facilitated by tabitha kapic, chalmers center’s director of innovation. the innovate curriculum she used, which is available at the chalmers center for both majority world deployment and main office contexts, fed into rich and sustained discussions among all the participants. as ced steering committee chair, becca spradlin, said, “god answered our many prayers for this event. brian and tabitha were incredibly intentional in their preparation and shared generously with participants from their rich, global experience." to learn about future ced events and to join for free, visit cednetwork.org. special thanks to hope international for their many years of sponsoring the ced network and generously providing event support staff to make this gathering a success! the accord research alliance’s focus for its 2022 intensive was the issue of decolonization, with the theme being “nothing about us without us: a kingdom perspective for sharing love & power in evaluation and research practice.” through presentations by jayakumar christian, nina kurlberg and jo cribben from tearfund; video case studies that included presenters from both the global north and south from tearfund, sustainable medical missions, and 4africa; and a panel consisting of jayakumar christian, nina kurlberg, jo cribbin, david snyder (sustainable medical missions), and christian marin (4africa); the main points of the day were the following: 1. when used in relation to relief and development (r&d), the term decolonization today refers to the undoing of colonial rule and empire. it describes how colonialism continues to influence r&d through logics dependent on structures, systems, and organizational cultures developed in the world’s previous colonial centers. 2. decolonization is a commitment to giving power away, a commitment to the process of inclusion. previously marginalized people who were the passive recipients of benevolence need to be treated as fully human and able not only to contribute to the discussion about interventions, but to lead the process. 3. for christian organizations, this task is especially complex because of the way that the world of humanitarian assistance has been highjacked by secularism. based on 2 cor 10: 4-6, christians are called to pull down strongholds and cast down arguments raised against the knowledge of god. this means challenging structures, processes, and the worldviews behind them. the kingdom of god is based on the relationship of the triune god. we should therefore focus on relationships. monitoring and evaluation (m&e) should not just be program-based, but relationally-driven, inclusive, and collaborative. 4. the decolonizing approach to research and m&e points us toward seeking epistemic justice. research must be mutually beneficial, mutually constructive, and justice seeking. justice comes through moving to margins and decentering power. the process should place the voices and epistemologies of people from the “global south” in the center. 5. tearfund has developed a theological framework for inclusion. they have also discovered interpreting inclusion depends on the context. access, participation, and acceptance are some of the words researchers found people using to describe it. tearfund’s theological framework includes the following components: a. power analysis to identify marginalized voices, we first need to identify where power sits. where does power sit? how is it used? who sets the research objectives? b. intentional listening as we identify these voices, we need to make sure we are listening. c. co-construction – are we working beyond colonial languages? for example, who decides what rich, high-quality research looks like? who defines such concepts as “well-being,” “quality of life,” or “development?” is our research explicit about the context that it is developed in and for? what will participants gain from the research? d. rhythms and practices of discernment creating spaces for colleagues to discern both individually and collectively. recognize that discernment prayer and fasting are tools. e. the legitimacy of difference – giving up power, and hearing from many different people. 6. one risk of moving to the margins is that new structures of colonizing power can be established. new dominant voices can arise. things can continue to be done in the same way, and listening can stop. finally, in consideration of the role of spiritual metrics, jayakumar christian proposed the thesis that poverty is embedded in people's spirituality, meaning that sustainable impact is not possible unless spirituality is addressed. spirituality is people’s articulation of profound issues like god’s purpose and the purpose of life. these conceptions are embedded in our worldviews. the moment a separate slice or domain https://chalmers.org/training/innovate/ https://www.cednetwork.org/ https://www.hopeinternational.org/ https://www.hopeinternational.org/ christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(2), winter 2023 jatau, mutonono, soerens, and spradlin, oneaccord 2022: a synopsis 72 called spirituality is created, it can be co-opted into a program and even relegated to the periphery. spirituality needs to be at the center of the conversation, because it is about restoring the sense of god-imaging, and we should not slice off the measuring of spiritual impact from the whole. the presentations for the ara and wash intensives are available here. references fikkert, brian and kelly m. kapik. 2019. becoming whole: why the opposite of poverty isn’t the american dream. chicago: moody publishers. norman, ray and odei odotei. 2019. “faith integration and christian witness in relief and development: reflections and practical guidance for field teams.” christian relief, development, and advocacy: the journal of the accord network 1(1): 31-43. emmanuel jatau is a doctoral student at asbury theological seminary. dwight s.m. mutonono serves on the international council his church, faith ministries. thomas s. soerens is professor of civil and environmental engineering at messiah university. becca spradlin is the founder of on mission advisors. https://accordnetwork.org/about/member-alliances/ https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3a__onmissionadvisors.com_&d=dwmfag&c=4rz6npiete-le5i2kbr4rw&r=v7spit7skrws5onskxknh0rpjlukfo9ha-y3vmucbxg&m=aww5hg1iyyoib3t2th6yaeokhkpk8mflfr2haiodtfyyse4bs35hibeb1y5btnfd&s=lezp47jyeo3zx4bbx32vwojanmtvchx5zelflobdunu&e= https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3a__onmissionadvisors.com_&d=dwmfag&c=4rz6npiete-le5i2kbr4rw&r=v7spit7skrws5onskxknh0rpjlukfo9ha-y3vmucbxg&m=aww5hg1iyyoib3t2th6yaeokhkpk8mflfr2haiodtfyyse4bs35hibeb1y5btnfd&s=lezp47jyeo3zx4bbx32vwojanmtvchx5zelflobdunu&e= christian relief, development, and advocacy 3(2), winter 2022 i hoksbergen and bronkema, editors’ introduction editors’ introduction: gangs, m&e, special issues, and editorial changes roland hoksbergen and david bronkema we open this sixth issue of crda with notes about the two articles in this issue, announcements on future issues, and information about changes to the editorial team and editorial board. we encourage you to look at what lies ahead and to consider participating. two articles the first article addresses the difficulty of implementing transformational development strategies in gang-entangled communities like the ones in el salvador. author david bueno, who grew up in el salvador and has engaged in development work there for thirty years, realistically conveys the trials of development work interventions when gangs seem to control the communities and have penetrated even churches and christian schools. he lays out the challenges, and ultimately asks others to join him in discovering how to be a redemptive presence in gangcontrolled communities. what combination of work with individuals, community action, and advocacy for structural change should churches and christian ngos take on? bueno closes the article by inviting “the broad development community” to join him in the conversation about how best to go about this work. what ideas do you have? if you feel moved to respond to bueno’s article, we invite you to send us your thoughts and comments at crda@accordnetwork.org. we plan to publish a selection of this commentary/discussion in an upcoming issue. we are also planning for at least one virtual conversation with bueno and those offering additional ideas after that issue comes out, opening up the conversation to a wide range of interested parties. the second article, written by subodh kumar, chief data officer at world vision international, makes the case that christ-centered organizations (ccos) should engage in monitoring and evaluation (m&e) work that intentionally aims at extending god’s kingdom here on earth. after explaining how important such m&e work is, kumar argues for a seven-point theological foundation upon which kingdom-oriented m&e work should be based. building on these foundations, he argues, ccos can structure m&e efforts according to what he calls a “kingdom impact measurement framework.” kumar is responding to the many advances in m&e strategies in the secular development community, many of which are excellent and helpful for christian organizations, but he still wonders how christian organizations are different in their mission, their work, and the way they evaluate their work. while some ccos are already working hard to implement m&e strategies that are faithful to their christian mission, for many others this is relatively new territory. in this first of two articles, kumar lays the groundwork, but much of the work of building practical methods upon these foundations remains to be done. in the second article, to be published in the summer issue, kumar, along with some colleagues, will draw from their experiences at a variety of ccos to present practical examples of methods that measure kingdom impact. special issues the most fundamental issue for the crda community is how a holistic gospel inspires, motivates, and shapes our mission to love our neighbors as ourselves, love god with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, integrate the spiritual with every other part of life, discern the character and role of evangelism, and learn how to make disciples of all nations in a multicultural world. the integration of faith and life has been addressed throughout christian history, including in recent decades, in both practice and theory, and it is vital that we continue this tradition of continuous, prayerful, spirit-led reflection and discernment, partly because we must keep up with the ever-changing world, but also because each new generation needs to keep learning from the best of what has come before, even as they generate new ideas and bring their christian faith to life in their own times. a sample of relevant questions to be addressed include the following: • what guiding principles and strategies are the most useful in this integration? • what are the major struggles organizations face in their attempts to be faithful to their christian faith christian relief, development, and advocacy 3(2), winter 2022 ii hoksbergen and bronkema, editors’ introduction in their work, and what are the reasons for these struggles? • what is unique about the christian response to present-day challenges in social change and transformation? • how does christian faith lead us to face such challenges differently than would secular organizations, or those of other faiths? in our first special issue, likely to be published in the winter of 2023, the journal will tackle this topic straight-on. if you have done some serious thinking about how christian faith impacts our approach to life and mission, please consider submitting an essay for this special issue. beyond this foundational special issue, we are also aware of how perspectives on faith and development are activated in the real-life issues that face us every day. as we consider the relevant issues, we are amazed at how much the development landscape is changing. for example, covid-19 burst onto the scene in 2020, the impacts of climate change grow every year, and now the russian invasion and war in ukraine seem destined to change global relationships everywhere and at all levels. in an effort to develop a list of key contemporary issues, our january crda board meeting held a brainstorming session on the many issues we need to address more intentionally and more faithfully. we came up with the following topics around which we are planning a number of special issues in coming years. each issue crda takes on will wrestle with the overall question of faith integration as it comes alive in practical, real-world ways: refugees, advocacy, and resettlement. these are big issues the world over, both in countries that have received much press, such as now in ukraine, but also in less-publicized situations like lebanon and uganda. decolonization and racism. these are uncomfortable topics, but often seem to be lurking behind many of the interactions between north and south. can we discuss these openly? honestly? inclusively? redemptively? the impact of covid-19. how it impacts the poor and the possibilities for development, especially among specific groups including those of different faith traditions. youth, gender, and development. many in the crda community work specifically with youth in development, while others emphasize programs that work with women/girls. what is, or should be, unique about our christian efforts in these fields? efforts around the world (e.g., india) to restrict religious institutions. this includes, but is not limited to, christian institutions. such suppression is often witnessed in how governments restrict funding from abroad for religious institutions. how are christian ngos responding? the rise of christianity around the world. while not a new topic for mission organizations, how christianity has been taken on, owned, and then modified by christians from many cultures is a topic of interest for crda organizations. this is what happened with african american christianity, but is happening now with christianity in africa and elsewhere. what does relief, development, and advocacy look like through the lenses of these still-forming christian traditions, and how does this relate to issues of decolonization and race? troublesome trends in wealth, inequality, migration, and authoritarianism. ngos have long battled poverty, but that fight has often taken place at a micro level. do we need to take a more macro look, and focus on the broader context within which communities exist, especially in the context of trends toward authoritarianism and the decline of democracy and civil society, in which evangelical ngos might be in some unintentional ways aiding and abetting these trends? changes in mental health. these can be related to the loss of meaning, hope, and purpose, the interior life, and the life of faith. this is a problem in some countries of the global north. how about in the global south? how should the christian community respond? environmental health. disease, climate change, melting glaciers, and climate adaptation in urban areas all are issues that need to be addressed in one way or another. some argue that there is no more fundamental issue. are we dealing with it adequately? urbanization, shelter, and homelessness. as cities all over the world expand, are they becoming more livable? are we finding solutions for the people who seem simply to be cast aside by the workings of our urban centers? transition of many churches and small ngos out of orphan care. orphanages are closing around the world and many of these organizations are shifting toward integral community development. how are christian ngos handling this transition? core humanitarian standard (chs). do christian ngos affirm and accept the nine commitments of the chs? do they live up to them? are there commitments beyond these that motivate christian ngos? cryptocurrencies. what new possibilities for the crda community are cryptocurrencies christian relief, development, and advocacy 3(2), winter 2022 iii hoksbergen and bronkema, editors’ introduction introducing? what ethical and other challenges might exist? wildlife and farm animal welfare. what are our ethical and practical commitments toward the animals god created for us to live among and, in some cases, to shepherd and care for? as global food needs push the world toward factory farming, how is the christian community responding? can the global south teach the rest of the world how to live harmoniously with the animal kingdom? technology development. how are today’s ubiquitous technological innovations, such as television, antibiotics, the interstate highway system, automobility, commercial aviation, the pill, a.i., the internet, rampant digitalization, the human genome project and genetic screening, in vitro fertilization, organ transplantation, personal computers, smartphones, and instant messaging, changing our lives? what role do and should they play in the integral development or people everywhere? how do we channel these great forces for good and avoid misuse? inter-religious cooperation. the world is divided into several great religions. how can/should we work in such a multi-religious context? can/should we collaborate? how do we address the thorny issue of christian/church exclusivity? role of the church in responding to the shifting burden of disease. in recent decades, the global burden of disease has shifted towards noncommunicable diseases (ncds), resulting in more than two-thirds (71%) of deaths caused by ncds, which kill 41 million people each year. of this number of deaths, 15 million people are aged between 30 and 69 years. many of these conditions are preventable through early interventions and prevention activities (see the world health organization website). how can the church respond to this shifting burden of disease? school education post-covid-19. we saw encouraging statistics on primary education in 2020 when 90% of the world population completed primary education. but this percentage was only 66% when it came to attending secondary education, and it continues to decrease for the higher levels of education (see statista website). how has covid-19 affected this situation, and what should be the strategies to address this apparently new normal? this is, of course, only a partial list. many more could be mentioned. do you have something to say about any of these or other important topics? are you engaging in research on any of them? if so, please contact us at crda@accordnetwork.org so that we can start thinking together about how to construct some special issues on these and other topics in years ahead. changes to the editorial team six years ago, when crda was little more than an imagined possibility, david bronkema was among the group of half a dozen collaborators who led the journal through the birthing process. he now joins roland hoksbergen as co-editor. david is an anthropologist, bringing the skills, knowledge, and wisdom of that disciplinary perspective to join the economics background that roland brings to the table. david currently serves as an associate professor in eastern university’s organizational leadership program, where he spends much of his time mentoring ph.d. students as they research and write their dissertations. in years past he has worked with a number of christian development ngos and has spent many years working in countries throughout latin america. over the last decade he has become well-known in crda circles as a leader in the area of spiritual metrics. to contact either david or roland, write to crda@accordnetwork.org. at our january board meeting, we also welcomed the following scholars and practitioners to the crda editorial board: sharon gramby-sobukwe, associate professor, political science; chair, department of social transformation; director, campolo institute for applied research in social justice, eastern university, st. davids, pa. sp kalaunee, country representative in nepal, blinknow foundation. subodh kumar, chief data officer, world vision international. nina kurlberg, theology development officer (diversity and inclusion), tearfund uk. mike mtika, professor of community, economic, and political sociology, eastern university, st. david’s, pa. rebecca redfield, senior listening, monitoring, and evaluation manager, hope international, lancaster, pa. kurt verbeek, professor of sociology, calvin college; founder and president, asociación para una sociedad más justa (asj). as crda co-editors, we are thankful for the opportunity to serve the accord network, the crda community, and our sisters and brothers around the world. roland hoksbergen and david bronkema https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/themes/topics/topic-details/gho/ncd-mortality#:~:text=noncommunicable%20diseases%20(ncds)%20kill%2041,%2d%20and%20middle%2dincome%20countries https://www.statista.com/topics/7785/education-worldwide/#:~:text=around%2090%20percent%20of%20the,had%20attained%20a%20secondary%20education. about:blank about:blank christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(1), summer 2022 aguilar, response to bueno 5 how asj integrates work in communities with advocacy efforts at the macro-level to pursue transformational development in honduras: a response to david bueno edgar aguilar in response to david bueno’s accurate description of how hard it is to work toward transformational development in gang-entangled communities (bueno 2022), i would like to share with readers the innovative work of the asociación para una sociedad más justa (asj in english, association for a more just society). asj is a honduran non-profit organization that promotes sustainable development in communities controlled by gangs. asj’s multidimensional work embodies the concept of transformational development to which bueno aspires. according to its mission statement, asj’s aim is to work “in alliance with civil society” toward “structural changes in the security, health and education sectors to achieve a more just society in favor of the most vulnerable” (asociación para una sociedad más justa 2022). the work of asj brings to light ways in which the larger development community can support and work alongside those who live and work in gang-entangled communities. asj was created in 1998 by a group of christians. originally, the organization started to engage in development work in nueva suyapa, a marginal, semiurban neighborhood in tegucigalpa that for years has suffered high levels of poverty and criminality. during its twenty-four years of service, asj has expanded into other communities that display similar characteristics. during these years, asj discovered that efforts at the community level to make progress toward sustainable development were not enough, due to the influence of corrupt policies, groups, and individuals, which and who promoted only the interests of a few, while negatively affecting the vast majority of the population (asociación para una sociedad más justa 2022). through experience and its own growth, asj has evolved to employ a methodology that effectively integrates programs and interventions in gang-entangled communities with its work at the macro level. at the macro level, asj pursues systemic and structural changes through research, advocacy, and even direct support of policy changes that guarantee effective public services for the most vulnerable. comunidades fuertes (strong communities) and paz y justicia (peace and justice) are two specific examples of programs that asj manages in communities controlled by gangs. both programs impact communities directly, while also providing input for national-level efforts directed at achieving structural change. both programs are consistent with the strategies and goals of transformational development. this is evident in two ways. first, both work toward long-term sustainability by partnering with community members, leaders, and local churches to advocate for systemic change in such areas as health, education, and security. second, asj´s interventions through these programs, such as youth impact clubs, family guidance, and psychological assistance, foster an understanding of sustainability among community members that, as bueno says, “include(s) the physical, mental, social, and spiritual dimensions” (bueno 2022, 42). asj´s work thus embodies active support for communities so that they can build their own capacities to pursue changes that ensure a better future. the programs that asj organizes in these communities are quite different from each other. on the one hand, comunidades fuertes, focuses on strengthening “the protective and resiliency factors in children and teenagers through working with families and community leaders” (asociación para una sociedad más justa 2019). comunidades fuertes works with both youth and families. paz y justicia, on the other hand, aims to assist crime victims in pursuing justice through legal and psychological assistance. this program helps victims navigate the justice system. asj manages this by collaborating with victims and witnesses in a confidential manner. close collaboration with community members is key to the success of both programs. the comunidades fuertes program employs three main interventions and activities: impact clubs, familias fuertes (strong families), and organization of local leadership. impact clubs hold weekly meetings with atrisk youth (between 10 and 18 years old) through which christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(1), summer 2022 aguilar, response to bueno 6 they are taught about healthy family relations, mental health care, skills for successful school performance, human rights awareness, gender equality, and self-risk protection. furthermore, community leaders are trained on how to promote a culture of peace from the different arenas in which they participate. through familias fuertes, the program employs psychoeducational family interventions with a biblical approach. one of the main objectives is to reduce levels of family conflicts and other behaviors that compromise the well-being of the kids. this intervention also contributes to further strengthening the practices promoted in impact clubs. finally, through the organization of local leadership, comunidades fuertes brings community leaders together and trains them in the use of tools that promote community development. beyond the interventions in the communities and assistance given to vulnerable individuals and families, asj works to promote sustainability at regional and national levels. through its work with families and children, for example, asj trains community leaders how to conduct careful evaluations of public institutions, like schools and medical centers. comunidades fuertes’ coordinator says that “through these efforts, community members get empowered to pursue changes in their local communities that might lead to sustainable development” (nuñez 2022). for a few years now, community medical centers have been periodically evaluated on the quality of service to users. these evaluations have led to the creation of improvement plans that have been adopted by the local centers. when these plans are implemented, the same community members monitor their progress. the data from these evaluations also feeds asj’s macro efforts to pursue public policy changes. in these efforts, asj works directly with high-ranking government officials, joins national level advocacy coalitions, and participates in public forums that discuss challenges and solutions in key areas of the country’s development. for example, through the oversight of local medical center in nueva suyapa, community leaders noted that nurses and doctors were consistently not showing up during the time that they were expected to give service. this led community leaders to include the installation of punch clocks in their improvement plans for the centers. doctors and nurses were thus carefully monitored on their compliance with established work hours. community leaders have continued their monitoring, which has led to improvement in medical attention at the center. one example of how community monitoring led to systemic change was in the vaccination program against covid-19. community leaders organized to monitor the process and highlight any irregularities. one irregularity they found at the beginning of the process (when access to vaccines was more limited) was that protocols on prioritization by vulnerability were not followed. responding to asj’s advocacy, the ministry of health provided clearer guidelines on the order of vaccination, making sure those at higher risk were vaccinated first. in the same way, through paz y justicia, which supports crime victims in gang-entangled neighborhoods, asj gathers data that show shortcomings and flaws in the honduran justice system. through the acompañamiento (accompaniment) of crime victims through the entire judicial process until justice is finally served, asj experiences firsthand how the justice system operates, especially when serving individuals from these communities. the coordinator of paz y justicia states that while “other organizations only hear about shortcomings of the system, in a way, asj has lived them.” this, he also says, “gives asj authority to ask for changes to the government” (varela 2022). from these asj experiences in the communities, two new management models emerged that the government is now adopting and asj continues to support. one strengthens the methodology used by public prosecutors, specifically the way they gather and analyze information. the other improves the performance and effectiveness of the model used by judges. asj’s work at the structural level would be less effective and less well-informed if it were not so present within communities where vulnerable hondurans live. one factor contributing to asj’s success at a community level is its christian identity and the way this facilitates their partnerships with local churches. for example, for the comunidades fuertes program, which focuses on strengthening the protective and resiliency factors in children and teenagers, asj partners with local churches to carry out activities like impact clubs and meetings with families. bueno is correct in stating that “…churches cannot individually address and/or manage all the social ills fomenting gang proliferation and coexisting with gangs is increasingly difficult as gangs gain greater control” (bueno 2022, 40). yet asj has, up to now, managed to pursue transformational development in gang-controlled communities through partnership with local churches. on the other hand, the evolution of the role of gangs in these communities has increased the challenges to pursue transformational development. the evolution of gangs in honduras has shown similar trends as those discussed by bueno in el salvador. gangs in honduras have likewise made the leap from criminal groups that focused mostly on identity and status, and whose membership was hard to access, to organizations with the capability to employ thousands of young men and women (asj; pnprrs; pnud 2019). one of the main elements that has defined the evolution of gangs in honduras is their expansion of territorial control. this seems to be one of their primary concerns as it allows them to protect christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(1), summer 2022 aguilar, response to bueno 7 themselves from rivals or state security forces (asj; pnprrs; pnud, 2019). this impacts most activities and transactions that involve gang-entangled communities. the threat of violence and high surveillance that gangs exercise has had implications in the protocols and considerations that asj has had to adopt to work in these communities. comunidades fuertes, the program that is more publicly known in the communities, has had to operate completely independent from asj. this way they are seen only as an intervention aimed to support families in the communities and not as a potential threat for criminal groups. additionally, staff and volunteers for comunidades fuertes that enter the communities use vests that identify them with the program. similarly, cars that enter the communities to aid the program have stamps that show their association with the project. paz y justicia, on the other hand, because of the nature of its work maintains a low profile and works confidentially in these communities. they collaborate closely with victims and witnesses from the communities who find in the program an ally to help them pursue justice. the participation of community members as staff and volunteers in comunidades fuertes, and as collaborators with paz y justicia, has been helpful in defining the protocols and considerations that contribute to everyone’s safety and security in these communities. amid the limited access that the presence of criminal gangs creates in some communities in honduras, asj has found a way to keep working toward transformational development. four specific elements of that work can be highlighted. first, asj’s ability to actively carry its mission for twenty-four years has been enabled by its close collaboration with members of those communities who keep asj staff informed and connected to the communities. second, the support and partnership with local churches has provided a necessary standing and respect in the community. third, asj supports communities in a way that empowers community members to advocate for their rights so that the government guarantees them. and finally, asj has been effective at using data and input gathered from its engagement in the communities to advocate for changes at the structural level. not wishing to argue that any of this is easy or straightforward, i do want to say that these elements nevertheless shed a bright light on how the international development community can continue to work toward the transformation of gang-entangled communities. references asociación para una sociedad más justa. (2019). manual de metodología: programa comunidades fuertes. asociación para una sociedad más justa. (2022, septiembre). sobre nosotros. retrieved from https://asjhonduras.com/webhn/sobre-asjhonduras/. asj; pnprrs; pnud. (2019). estudio de la situación de maras o pandillas en honduras. tegucigalpa, honduras. bueno, d. (2022). “gangs and development: the difficulties of transformational development in gang-controlled communities in el salvador.” christian relief, development, and advocacy 3(2):37-50. nuñez, e. (2022). programa de asj en comunidades #1 (comunidades fuertes). interview with the author. varela, j. (2022). programa de asj en comunidades #2 (paz y justicia). interview with the author. edgar aguilar is a researcher on human security, economics, and energy at the asociación para una sociedad más justa in honduras. author email: eaguilar@asjhonduras.com about:blank christian relief, development, and advocacy 3(2), winter 2022 bueno, gangs and development 37 gangs and development: the difficulties of transformational development in gangcontrolled communities in el salvador david bueno gangs’ ability to exert territorial control in el salvador is changing the social dynamics in marginal communities, and pentecostal churches are one of a few remaining social institutions surviving in this context. in the past ten years, gangs have transitioned from local criminal cliques to an influential social phenomenon. pentecostals’ familiarity and access to gangs has many development practitioners looking to faith-based empowerment initiatives to solve broad social issues influencing gang expansion. at the same time, gang entanglement poses a distinct threat to the security and stability required to achieve sustainable development. as a practitioner of transformational development in el salvador for over thirty years, i have recently observed the increasing isolation gang control is having on marginal communities. this article takes a closer look at the effects gang entanglement has on sustainable transformational development approaches in el salvador, specifically examining three programs in the community of san martín. the challenge is to identify transformational development policies, advocacy approaches, and support resources that best suit gangentangled communities. to accomplish this, a larger discussion on transformational development in gang-entangled communities is critical. introduction marginal communities in el salvador have experienced the growth of evangelical churches (primarily pentecostal), community associations (including nongovernmental organizations/ngos), and gangs. as a practitioner of transformational development engaged in el salvador over the past thirty years, i have recently witnessed a troubling shift in the social dynamics in marginal communities. gangs have transitioned from local criminal cliques to an influential social phenomenon. previous efforts to diminish gang influence, whether mano dura (law enforcement) or mano suave (structural reforms), have had limited success in reducing the growth of gangs and decreasing violence. gangs’ ability to exert territorial control is leaving many marginal communities isolated from external support systems, and pentecostal churches are one of the few remaining social institutions surviving in this context. the hope is that transformational development can bring sustainable results in gangaffected communities. this article takes a close look at the effects of gang entanglement on transformational development, specifically examining three faith-based programs in the community of san martín. san martín is a community with a substantial gang presence and a long history of church and parachurch engagement in transformational development. my research is primarily empirical, and based on in-depth conversations with community members, development practitioners, and church leaders working in transformational development. the programs in question are focused on achieving transformational development at the individual or community level. while these programs have been successful, in terms of positively affecting the lives of many young people and families, they have had little impact on broad structural issues that perpetuate the expansion of gangs. sonja wolf, after researching gang prevention programs, concludes that the necessary societal change will be difficult without the cooperation of the most powerful strata of salvadoran society (wolf 2017, 223). at the moment, however, transformational development practitioners working in gang-entangled communities cannot count on such cooperation. in light of these limitations, achieving sustainable transformational development is severely hindered by christian relief, development, and advocacy 3(2), winter 2022 bueno, gangs and development 38 gang-created insecurity and instability. the challenge is to discover how transformational development can best be achieved in gang-entangled communities. transformational development in gangentangled communities in el salvador the challenge for many community initiatives is that gang control makes the long-term prognosis of a better future untenable. sustainable socio-economic development requires a base level of security and stability. paul collier suggests creating a policy environment at the international level that encourages economic growth and good governance. if these measures fail, then the use of external force may be required to ensure stability (collier 2007, 124). unfortunately, both these measures have been applied to no avail in el salvador. both heavy-handed police tactics and subsequent structural social adjustment strategies have not mitigated the growth of gangs (wolf 2017). desperate for results, many are turning for answers to local churches. the connections between gangs and pentecostals have been well-documented in brenneman’s book, homies + hermanos. for example, he explains how one of the only ways gang members are allowed to leave the gang is through religious conversion. brenneman explains how ex-gang member converts found pentecostal evangelicalism to be both advantageous and effective (brenneman 2012, 16). despite the power of these conversions, the prospect of leveraging these relationships to achieve greater societal change is improbable. the current dynamics between gangs and faith-based communities expose the practical limitations to achieving sustainable transformational development. practitioners of transformational development in these environments are experiencing a regression toward addressing basic needs, and longterm community objectives are threatened by the insecurity. in gang-controlled communities, common-good initiatives require gang consent, or minimally, gang indifference. independent of what community leaders determine, the gangs’ need for control overrides common good objectives. for example, in the community of san martin the community water system is on the verge of collapsing. technicians and water committee members are unable to access certain communities controlled by the gangs. yet collaborating with gangs to sustain the village water system is problematic on many fronts. any arrangements with the gangs come without guarantees, and further legitimize their authority. it also begs the question of who is transforming whom? church and community members face the difficult reality that gang control creates an environment unsuitable for their vision of the future. evolving gang dynamics the degree of influence by local gangs in the marginal communities of el salvador has been a major development over the past ten years. something is changing in the way gangs operate, and it is altering the power structures in marginal communities. gangs are evolving from los angeles-style neighborhood cliques to a broader national phenomenon. the common narrative that gang members are disenfranchised young people motivated by criminal enterprise has been challenged by criminologist steve dudley. dudley’s years of research on ms13 gangs lead him to suggest that the biggest motivator for gang affiliation in el salvador is not criminal enterprise or money, but rather social connectivity and a sense of belonging. dudley argues that as criminal enterprises, gangs are relatively unsophisticated (dudley 2019). yet despite their relatively small budget, they have grown in size and influence throughout the country. dudley also points out that no matter how hard previous governments have tried to undermine gangs’ financial support systems, the gangs keep multiplying. dudley concludes that gang issues in el salvador are not going to be solved with law enforcement tactics; they must instead be addressed at a societal level. the changes in gang behavior over the past few years are a bit of a paradox. at one level gangs are becoming more inclusive groups that have reduced entry barriers and offer more levels of affiliation. for instance, not all new recruits are required to submit to a thirteen-second beatdown to join the gang (insight crime 2021). these original requirements may still exist at higher levels of gang leadership, but new recruits can opt for less committed levels of engagement. young people can fulfill entry-level functions, like being neighborhood sentries, without being full-fledged gang bangers. many new recruits are also instructed to avoid getting tattoos or other gang markings, so as to be more inconspicuous. this broader approach seems to contradict the fact that gang control of the local community has become more exclusive. access to their communities is closely monitored. their internal organization has improved to the extent that gangs now manage national networks to vet outsiders. as gangs grow in number, become better organized, and gain territorial control, their influence increases. the turf war between 18th street gangs and mara salvatrucha (ms) is not simply about neighborhood pride, but about controlling strategic territory that ensures safety and creates opportunity. what role government, police, and organized crime play in this battle for territory is still unclear. there are indications that gangs leverage territorial control to create alliances at the highest levels of national authority. for example, a recent article in the salvadoran newspaper el faro describes how gangs manage to influence elections by christian relief, development, and advocacy 3(2), winter 2022 bueno, gangs and development 39 controlling access to heavily populated marginal communities (martínez and valencia 2018). there are also signs that gangs are leveraged by more sophisticated players. dudley points to the fact that during the recent covid-19 pandemic much of the government aid in many marginal communities was delivered through the gangs (dudley 2019). regardless of who is leveraging whom, gangs now boast of determining elections, having connections at every level of society, and operating as a parallel security force in marginal communities. in such a context, transformational development efforts cannot ignore gangs’ growing influence. local pentecostal churches and gangs the role of the local church in shaping a better future is a foundational aspect of transformational development, but in el salvador’s marginal communities, the church’s relationship with gangs is complicated. not surprisingly, these social groups overlap in many areas (the economist 2018). manuel vásquez highlights how the same conditions that make joining a pentecostal church appealing to the poor also make joining a gang appealing to disenfranchised young people (vásquez 2003, 134). stephen offutt’s application of social entanglement theories reveals the complicated environment in which church and gang members are connected by familial, economic, and social relationships (offutt 2020). both churches and gangs create patrimonial communities that help address feelings of isolation. it is important to highlight that there are varying degrees of gang entanglement. churches in marginalized communities most affected by gang control are typically small (100 members or fewer) neighborhood churches that belong to traditional denominations. the degree of entanglement is correlated to physical location and extended history in the community. for instance, churches in residential neighborhoods have to abide by strict gang protocols, such as driving with windows down or paying “renta” (protection fees). emerging independent churches, however, are typically established in areas zoned for commercial use. pastors and congregation members enter and leave these churches more freely. in tightlycontrolled communities, gang consent is required for any non-local to enter. another important distinction is that the familiarity between pentecostal churches and gang members does not imply that the relationship is of mutual consent. pentecostal churches are also constrained by gangs’ territorial controls. luis huezo mixco has noted that salvadoran pentecostalism contributes to the “dynamism of the special,” which creates a paradoxical similarity to the gangs, whose worlds overlap and place them in tension (huezo mixco 2020, 231). pentecostals are entangled with gangs, but are by no means coconspirators in a new social order. they share an ecosystem that facilitates the growth of both pentecostal churches and gangs, but their ability to coexist is precarious. pastors must decide whether to accommodate gang authority or risk the consequences. this is a deviation from the past, when the margins of society provided less contested social space for pentecostal churches. in a previous article (bueno 2001), i identified the margin as a place of refuge, an environment conducive to the development of alternative support structures critical for a local expression of faith and community. the pentecostal movement’s cacique style leadership, autonomous organizational structure, and holy spirit empowered moral authority have all been integral to building local capacity. today, however, marginal communities are not conducive to building and sustaining alternative support systems. pentecostal evangelicals who once sought independence from a restrictive macro social system are now looking for external support to help address the insecurity and violence that affect their communities. pentecostal churches and gangs share an increasingly hostile margin, and surviving has required new methods of adaptation. r.r. reno (2019) describes the postmodern crisis that contributes to the emergence of nationalism, populism, and other strong loyalty-based affiliations. his work focuses primarily on the global north, but has relevance on the emergence of both gangs and pentecostalism in el salvador. reno describes society’s current crisis as a disquietude born of homelessness. “we distrust the social system as ineffective, economies as volatile, and political institutions as self-serving. we climb without safety nets, there is no stability, no rest – no home” (reno 2019, 103). reno proposes that in an unstable society the emergence of what he calls “strong gods” is predictable. the perennial up-rootedness of the human condition – and the homelessness intensified by modernity – magnifies the craving for strong loyalties and conceptions of truth (reno 2019, 105). strong beliefs and loyalties can be useful for restoring identity, but can also lead to distorted and destructive ideologies. gangs view disenfranchisement as arising from the lack of money, power, and respect. all may contribute, but when the solution is loyalty rooted in fear, and control based on violence, these strong gods become oppressive. for pentecostals, the crisis begins with the condition of the soul. “cast out of eden, we are always homeless” (reno 2019, 105). pentecostals look to restore their identity through a process of salvation and sanctification. bryant myers points out that a major reason why charismatic and pentecostal christians are the fastest growing christian relief, development, and advocacy 3(2), winter 2022 bueno, gangs and development 40 expression of the church today is that they have an answer for whose god is more powerful (myers 2011, 10). gangs and pentecostals both yearn for strong gods that provide a sense of belonging, but their methods of operation could not be more different. gangs’ use of violence, drugs, and satanic imagery is suspiciously counter to pentecostals’ nonviolent, austere, and spiritfilled ways. still, gang preference for “genuine” converts does not suggest some simple form of youthful rebellion, but rather that the violence they embrace must be attributed to a more profound darkness born of fear, abuse, and neglect. pentecostal churches cannot individually address and/or manage all the social ills fomenting gang proliferation, and coexisting with gangs is increasingly difficult as gangs gain greater control. most pastors and church members strive to maintain cordial relationships with gang members, and do their best to avoid direct confrontations. while community-based churches, comprised of the poor and marginalized, have the potential to influence gang members, they are also the most affected by the gangs. pentecostal churches in these communities have the daunting challenge of being a refuge from and for gang members. the recent killing of an elim church pastor by gang members underscores the volatile nature of these environments (alfaro and marroquín 2021). despite a growing realization that coexistence with gangs is hardly sustainable, most churches still instinctively embrace a cautious approach to social engagement. pentecostal churches and social engagement as communities become more affected by gangs, will pentecostals move beyond their traditional focus on individual salvation to begin addressing structural social issues? the general perception is that pentecostal churches’ influence in public discourse is still not representational. some large independent churches take a somewhat active role in voicing concerns about current conditions, and many pentecostals participate individually within broader social institutions. yet a collective approach to social action is still limited. pentecostal churches’ social engagement is mostly private and local. a recent thesis by my brother, ron bueno, cofounder of enlace, raises the question of whether social action among pentecostal churches in el salvador is a “contested ritual” (bueno 2019). his work, primarily among rural and semi-rural pentecostal churches, reveals resistance to social engagement at many levels. he notes a general hesitation when it comes to getting involved with issues that seem political or embrace the broader community. for example, joining the local adesco (government sanctioned community association) is contested by traditional pentecostal churches. r. bueno describes the current process that pastors use to ritualize, like adding prayer or evangelism, to justify social action. this approach creates “contested rituals” by reticent church members who are trying to avoid secular entanglement. in the early 1930s, evangelical churches (predominantly rural) had few options other than to build suitable socio-religious structures in the less contested margins of society. david martin describes this tendency as a “haven” from society (martin 1990). by creating alternative social structures on the periphery, they were able to avoid the contentious public square dominated at the time by a triad of power; a military state, the catholic church, and wealthy landowners. the goal of being a separate and holy people with a strict code of behavior was not intended to have a broad appeal. “true christians” chose the narrow path, which, by definition, made the rise of a popular movement unlikely. pentecostals, however, understood how empowering a direct experience with god is for those who feel forsaken. what was not foreseen, even by most pentecostals, was how many people felt marginalized. for pentecostals in el salvador, isolation would not be a long-term strategy. by the 1950s, pentecostals had begun to adopt more evangelistic social outreach strategies aimed at church growth. in the 1980s, a division between urban and rural social perspectives became more evident. as the economy transitioned from agrarian to industrial, urban areas began to grow. in the urban context, pentecostal churches gained traction with working and professional middle classes. pentecostals began to develop schools, universities, and clinics that provided alternatives for underserved communities. at the same time, most churches in el salvador’s rural and marginal communities remained relatively poor and small. recent estimates indicate that 33% of salvadorans live in conditions of extreme poverty, of which the majority are found in rural areas (world bank group 2021). in contexts with limited resources, pentecostal churches tend to favor internal approaches to holistic ministries. it stands to reason that communities directly affected by crime, poverty, and marginalization would prioritize the needs of the congregation instead of broad social issues. by the 1990s large independent neo-pentecostal churches began to emerge and exhibit greater economic and social influence. concurrently, international aid and evangelical parachurch organizations also began to proliferate. social programs that emphasized community engagement received support from external parachurch organizations. many pentecostal churches independently established partnerships with aid organizations to implement social programs directed at the broader community. many schools, clinics, and childcare initiatives were established in marginal christian relief, development, and advocacy 3(2), winter 2022 bueno, gangs and development 41 communities with the support of international aid organizations. in the 2000s, gangs began to appear in marginal communities heavily populated by pentecostal churches. gangs were initially viewed by church members as a public nuisance that could be mitigated with a strong police presence, but by 2010 it had become evident that larger social forces were at work. managing the social effects gangs have on their communities is a challenge most pastors and church members are not equipped to confront. instead, pastors and church members in gang-dominated communities apply their theology in a format akin to moral triage, negotiating principles of holiness and righteousness under conditions of extreme duress. one youth pastor i interviewed expressed how conflicted he is by the gang situation in his community. “it is hard not to feel compassion for young gang members who have routinely been left exposed by their families, society, and even their own gangs. yet the gangs’ use of violence and fear to control the community is a direct threat to the church and its members” (youth pastor, september 24, 2021). on the margins of salvadoran society, law and order are no longer provided by the public authorities. in heavily entangled communities, gangs and community members are left to negotiate their own rules of engagement. the police and military are viewed with distrust, and stories of gang infiltration become more common. without a clear understanding of who is in control, especially in marginal communities, churches are even more reluctant to develop strategies that rely on government support. not knowing whom to trust makes broad social collaboration problematic. at present, the moral imperative for churches is to survive rather than thrive. pentecostal churches as the solution for gang domination in scenarios typical of the bible’s david and goliath story, small, poor, and increasingly isolated pentecostal churches are asked to solve the growing social problems that perpetuate the growth of gangs. we seem to be at the end of a development cycle in which macro-level structural adjustment policies turn their attention back to local empowerment strategies. this is not an ideological shift, but rather a pragmatic attempt to pivot toward more effective ways of addressing the growing gang problem. as described previously, mano dura (law enforcement) approaches have not been effective in reducing the expansion of gangs. in the wake of these failures, government and international organizations began to focus more resources on structural social change policies. based on world bank data, stephen offutt points out that from 2013-2021 el salvador received well over $1 billion in foreign aid (offutt, forthcoming, 240). while not all the funds specifically targeted the reduction of gangs, it was the express belief of the government and international aid organizations that changing the structural conditions of society, by creating a thriving economy and good governance, would mitigate gang membership. offutt describes “a crowded field of actors involved in gang prevention efforts in el salvador. multilateral organizations, national governments, and humanitarian organizations, all seeking, and willing to fund, solutions” (offutt, forthcoming, 239). and yet, local and international macro structural efforts to improve el salvador’s political economy have not stemmed the growth of gang influence in el salvador. many christians are not surprised. bryant myers asserts that modern worldviews – materialistic, technocratic, and technology-reliant – do not include spiritual elements that can help the poor (myers 2011, 45). this view seems to ring true in el salvador. the experience with gangs has exposed the limitation of materialistic approaches. there are signs that international aid organizations are increasingly open to faith-based solutions. for example, the moody foundation received a glowing endorsement from marcy sanchez (director of narcotics and legal compliance for the us embassy) at the inauguration of “vida libre,” a faith-based gang rehabilitation program. kenton moody (pentecostal missionary and founder of moody foundation) echoes myers’ sentiment that the challenge is for christians to come out of our selfimposed exile and contribute our faith material to the conversation (myers 2011, 45). the local church as a key player in transformational development is currently based on its familiarity and access to gang-entangled communities. the challenge is to determine if local churches have the capacity to free their communities from gang control. defining transformational development for many christians engaged in social work, transformational development approaches have guided our efforts. and yet, understanding how transformational development can help marginal communities disentangle from gangs is unclear, partly because there is no definitive path to social transformation. wayne bragg argues that transformation is the best biblical term to describe a christian view of development. bragg’s paper is not a development theory per se, but a list of characteristics of transformation, each a transformational frontier (myers 2011, 153). with his path-breaking book, walking with the poor (1999, 2011), bryant myers builds on bragg’s seminal ideas by consolidating and expanding the principles and best practices of transformational development that have now guided christian relief, development, and advocacy 3(2), winter 2022 bueno, gangs and development 42 many christian ngos since the turn of the millennium. this includes the ngos i have worked with in el salvador. myers uses the term “transformational development” to distinguish it from a purely material connotation common to development. transformational development addresses the whole of human life: material, social, psychological, and spiritual (myers 2011, 3). for myers there are several critical contributions to transformational development that only the church can provide, especially the restoration of spiritual wholeness. the goal is to achieve a process of change (transformation) that restores our identity and vocation. a process that is achieved when we establish right relationships with god, humanity, and creation. one big question emerging from gang-entangled communities, therefore, is what role local churches and parachurch organizations can play in achieving sustainable change. myers defines sustainability in two ways: first, transformational development should end in a transition to sustainability, moving from dependence to independence. second, the community’s understanding of sustainability must include the physical, mental, social, and spiritual dimensions (myers 2011, 193). this multi-dimensional approach to defining sustainability means we must evaluate the effectiveness of transformational development at both a structural level and a community project/program level. achieving lasting results is contingent on developing support systems that enable communities continuously to build toward a better future; and on building the local churches’ capacity to be trusted, continuing sources of moral influence that challenge the community’s social values toward healthy and productive relationships. the local church as a partner for transformational development is both a principle and a practical decision. leslie newbigin states: “it is surely a fact of inexhaustible significance that what our lord left behind was not a book or a creed, nor a system of thought, nor a rule of life, but a visible community” (quoted by myers 2011, 191). research by gerard clarke also calls attention to the practical fact that faithbased civil society organizations are major, if not the largest, contributors to social welfare in much of the global south (clarke 2006, 837). poignantly, in gangentangled communities, the local church is one of the few remaining options to solving the gang crisis. unfortunately, it is no small task, especially considering that local government and international aid organizations, with all their resources and expertise, have failed to resolve it. how the local church can fulfill this role is a concern for many practitioners engaged in transformational development. myers’ framework for transformational development does not propose a one-size-fits-all formulaic approach, but rather suggests that if we take each frontier seriously, we can take another step toward a more comprehensive, holistic view of transformation. building on abhijit banerjee’s and esther duflo’s work, myers suggests that by avoiding simplistic diagnoses and listening more carefully to affected communities, we may understand the logic of their choices and possibly develop more effective policies to support their development efforts (myers 2011, 40). by applying a suitable social learning approach to our specific fields of engagement, we can discover the best human future, which for myers is the kingdom of god. myers concludes that, at the most fundamental level, the cause of poverty is relationships that do not work for human well-being, that do not allow everyone to flourish (myers 2011, 295). this framework has guided church and parachurch initiatives in el salvador, yet the recent increase in gang influence has left many development practitioners wondering if current transformational development strategies are enough to restore healthy community relationships. understanding how pentecostal churches can address gang entanglement is more than academic research. it is an attempt to shed light on a critical conversation presently taking place among church leaders, development workers, and community members committed to being agents of transformation in their communities. reflecting on how gangs have flourished in the shadows of the church is a soulsearching exercise. in one such conversation, a pastor shared with tears how his son had been recruited by the gangs, and how devastating it was for him (care worker 2017). it is in such settings that a fuller, more authentic understanding of transformational development must materialize. gang-controlled communities in el salvador pose a unique challenge to pentecostal churches implementing transformational development strategies. there are two common and conflicting assumptions about the role pentecostal churches can and should play in addressing gangs. first is the notion that because pentecostals are present in gang-entangled communities they are ideally suited to be agents of transformation. second, however, is the question of whether typically small, poor, and socially cautious pentecostal churches in gang-entangled communities have the capacity or desire to address broad social issues. required is an understanding of how gang control is affecting transformational development and vice versa. in the community of san martín, both pentecostals and gangs are active and have a strong presence. as myers states: “it is hard to talk about how to continue the journey to where we want to go if we do not know where we are” (myers 2011, 290). right now, communities in el salvador are increasingly controlled by gangs, so this is where the churches and parachurch organizations are and where we begin. christian relief, development, and advocacy 3(2), winter 2022 bueno, gangs and development 43 transformational development in gangentangled communities of san martín the following three examples in the communities of san martín, a municipality in the capital city of san salvador, highlight the conundrum of practicing transformational development in gang-controlled communities. san martín has many characteristics of semi-urban contexts that are heavily entangled with gangs, like poverty, rapid growth, and crime. its administration is divided into eight townships and thirty-seven hamlets. according to the government’s projections, the population in 2020 was 92,027 (digestyc 2021), a little fewer than 30% of whom are adolescents (ages 10-24). the gangs are already strong in san martín, but this means that some 25,000 young people are at prime gang recruitment ages. i have often heard it said, “isn’t it funny how day by day nothing changes, but when you look back, everything is different?” initial conversations with community stakeholders regarding the influence of gangs echo this observation. my conversations with people who live and work in san martín highlight one of the challenges with social learning approaches. it is difficult to take the time and resources needed to assess big picture issues when one is struggling to execute daily tasks. for instance, to the question of “how is the gang situation presently affecting your community?,” the most common response was: “about the same as always.” residents in san martín describe the gang situation with a degree of normalcy and accommodation. yet, as the conversations progress, people begin to describe how gangs are increasingly gaining control and influence in their communities. they describe a context in which there are varying degrees of gang control, which dictates how much access and freedom they have in their communities. in some neighborhoods, gangs have complete authority, such that not even the police can enter. in most cases, the local inhabitants’ movements are restricted and people have to adjust their behavior to coexist with the gangs. what they describe is not a static crime problem, but a community negotiating unstable social arrangements. communities are awakening to the realization that they belong to gang-controlled territories. the gangs have divided the country into territories controlled by numbers or letters. numbers are areas controlled by 18th street gang (18), and letters belong to mara salvatrucha (ms). any unknown person entering a gang-controlled territory can be stopped and required to show their id. if the address on the id is from a territory controlled by rival gangs, the bearer is either deterred from entering or heavily monitored. the level of control also affects where one can work. a teacher who applied for a position at a school in one of these communities was persuaded to look elsewhere, because she lived in a neighborhood controlled by rival gangs. community members instinctively appreciate the realities of gang entanglement, but struggle to articulate a clear definition of their relationship with the gangs. consider the example of a local christian school. christian academy the christian school in san martín has approximately four hundred students and was established in the 1980s by a traditional pentecostal denomination. the director of the school is the son of a local pastor and a former student at the school. when asked about how gangs affect the school, he explained that in the initial stages of gang activity, the school was able to control gang incursion by screening out children involved in gangs. parents chose to send their children to the school because it protected them from gang recruitment common in public schools. now, as communities become more entangled, it is increasingly difficult to keep the gang element out of their schools. gang influence is no longer just about the students, but parents and neighborhood friends as well. there is now a second generation of gang members. a culture of fear permeates the whole community, because no one knows who can be trusted. “i have had students join gangs who are now in prison or have been killed, and i have also personally been affected by gangs” (school director, september 9, 2021). once, as a teacher, he was falsely accused of sexual harassment by a student who was dating a gang member. he asked the girl to stop talking on her cell phone during class. in retaliation, the student was instructed by the gang how to file a sexual harassment complaint. three months later the charges were dropped due to insufficient evidence, but the message had been sent: do not challenge the gangs. amazingly, he testifies of god’s protection and faithfulness while awaiting sentencing in prison. he explains how he was protected by former students who had been imprisoned for gang crimes. his relationship with gang members in his community is complicated. he says it is an opportunity to influence, but it also comes with risks. the school director cannot articulate clear protocols that guide his engagement with gang members, but he does point out that being known in the area is important. he describes how on one occasion the school milk supplier was detained at gunpoint by gang members. they were demanding an extortion fee. the director was informed of the situation and was able to negotiate his freedom. he explains that “when there is a conflict, i can sometimes approach the gang members if i know them or they know me. if i worked in a different community, i would not have the courage to confront gang members” (school director, september 23, 2021). he explains christian relief, development, and advocacy 3(2), winter 2022 bueno, gangs and development 44 that local credibility and a humble demeanor can provide some sway with gang members, but their response is not predictable and one should approach them with wisdom. the school director proceeds to explain how and when he feels at liberty to approach gang members. “you can confront them with sound advice, and even preach to them about the ills of a gang lifestyle. to some extent, they expect that from a christian, but it must be done in the right spirit. if you are condescending or threatening, you might not make it out alive.” he believes that young people know if you’re for them or against them. but he also points out that there are no written rules of engagement, and when you approach a gang member “te la tienes que jugar” (you roll the dice). in san martín, troubled young people have gone from being neglected and/or bullied, to being feared and given preference. gang members have gained the upper hand using intimidation, and the school staff are adjusting by using relational persuasion to the best of their ability to resolve conflicts that affect the school and its students. the school director once mustered the courage to ask a favor from the local gang leader, who had been a childhood friend. he asked if he could paint over the gang graffiti on the school walls, but the gang leader said “i can’t give you permission, because the younger gang members are crazy and wouldn’t understand” (school director, october 29, 2021). gang leadership is a tenuous position that requires one to constantly engender member loyalty. the personal relationship the director has with the gang leader gives him a degree of accessibility, but there is a collective system that overrides their personal relationship. gang organization is local and fluid. from the outside, gang organization appears chaotic, but gangs have unwritten rules, codes, and tactical procedures that preserve and guide the collective. as a collective, gang members have power, but as individuals they are highly exposed. the gangs’ ability to control territory is foundational to their growth and safety. their ability to control who can access the community significantly hinders the school’s ability to operate efficiently. the director states that school enrollment and attendance are down. “a student from the altavista neighborhood had to drop out because it was controlled by the rival gang.” “it is also hard to recruit new teachers if they’re not from the community. outside suppliers hesitate to provide the school with delivery services. our community is considered to be in the red zone by service providers” (school director, october 29, 2021). many basic services, like internet, water, and electricity can go weeks without being repaired, because repairs require security measures. the school is becoming increasingly isolated from external support systems. the school still receives external subsidies for scholarships, uniforms, and school lunches from charitable partners, but the ability to be self-sustaining is increasingly difficult in this environment. the director’s concern for the young people in his community is evidenced by the risks he takes to serve his students and community. as a transformational development practitioner, his heart and capacity are what have allowed him to keep the school doors open. at times, he has been able to leverage his good reputation in the community to negotiate small concessions. his relationship with individual gang members is a local currency in san martín, but it has its limitations. the school, as an institution, cannot negotiate general agreements with the gangs. there are certain gang principles they will not violate for anyone, and the volatile dynamics of gang organizations makes establishing formal negotiations impossible. for example, when the school tried to get permission from the gangs for the student who lived in altavista to attend the school, they could not even determine who within the gang had the authority to approve it. therefore, trying to establish common-good agreements with the gangs is challenging. despite the growing limitations experienced by gang entanglement, the positive effects the school, and especially by the director and school staff, have on young people is evident. the community’s situation would surely deteriorate if the school had to close down. without the school’s positive presence in the community and the acknowledged benefits of education, the gang situation would certainly be worse. the real challenge arises when looking to the future. it is hard for the director of the christian school and community leaders to envision a way out of gangentanglement on their own. the transformational development framework acknowledges the importance of structural and macro level approaches critical for creating sustainable conditions. what is not clear is how the director and the school can capitalize on their local knowledge and positive history to strengthen a more collective response to gang control. what is conceivable to them is a transformational development strategy that continues to shape the future by changing young people’s outlook, while changing the broader social conditions affecting their community seems improbable. community water project another arena in which local development practitioners experience the challenges of gang entanglement in san martín is the community water project. i interviewed the program coordinator of a christian ngo that oversees the water project. the water system serves three townships in san martín. the project originally served 1,200 residents, but is currently serving 750. at the moment, the project is limping christian relief, development, and advocacy 3(2), winter 2022 bueno, gangs and development 45 along, and the future sustainability of the project is in jeopardy because of gang dynamics. this water project was started in 2012 with the help of a christian ngo. the project is called “el milagro” (the miracle), because for many years the national water authority had told community members that potable water in the area was not feasible. after years of desperately seeking to access water, the community finally attained the support of a christian ngo and local mayor to sponsor the water project. the project’s goal was to serve eleven communities in the area. it was completed in 2018, at a cost of $1.8 million usd. the quota for each household is currently $10/month, much less than the $40/month people used to pay when the water was supplied by trucks. a water association was legally registered and trained to operate and manage the water system. the project brought clean potable water to approximately 250 families. unfortunately, the water association now has to deal with the effects of increased gang influence. three of the eleven communities refuse to pay their water quotas. the program coordinator explains that “in el rincon most families are gang-related and do not pay their water quotas. water association staff no longer enter or visit the community. the gang also demands free water for their soccer field. “solo conocidos pueden llegar” (only known people can enter). we (external aid workers) cannot enter these communities or exert any pressure for payment because of the gangs” (program coordinator, august 18, 2021). economic conditions in san martín are also affected by local businesses and services that are forced to pay “renta” (protection money) to the gangs. this puts an additional financial burden on community members already struggling to make ends meet. about 30% of families that use the water system are not up to date on their payments. “the water project is collapsing because they cannot pay their bills” (program coordinator, september 24, 2021). if this trend continues, the sustainability of the project will be compromised. the program coordinator believes that they must raise water quotas to $15/month to keep the system afloat. the committee president expressed his concern that current leadership cannot get people to agree on raising rates. the water committee has financial problems and there are not enough funds to maintain and operate the system. when the water committee association was confronted with the growing reality that the system was going bankrupt, they tried to solicit external assistance from government and international aid organizations. unfortunately, there is no external assistance on the horizon. the territorial control by the gangs and the government’s inability or unwillingness to address it, make it very difficult to convince external entities to invest in a project that has a low probability of being sustainable. any immediate solutions to the community’s water challenges will thus have to be internal. the program coordinator recently spoke with water association members to explain that no external funding was imminent, and that if they cannot agree to raise rates and devise methods to reduce delinquent payments the system would collapse. in light of this reality, two board members gathered the courage to approach the gangs in one of the delinquent communities. the outcome of this effort is not yet known, but the future of the water project hangs in the balance (program coordinator, december 23, 2021). the program coordinator says most communities in san martín now have a limited vision of the future because of the insecurity caused by gangs. the communities focus primarily on immediate needs, like houses and latrines. they have no vision of the future for their community (program coordinator, october 29, 2021). their only dream is to escape, preferably to the united states. they have resigned themselves to the reality that they will not improve their economic wellbeing in their current environment. unlike the christian school that receives some external support, the water project depends completely on community support. initially, many resources were invested in capacity building to ensure the maintenance and operation of the water system. no one anticipated a context in which gangs would gain so much control they could put a stranglehold on community initiatives. church and parachurch after-school program the final example is an after-school program connected with the good shepherd pentecostal church. the church is located on the border of two rival gangs. this church has a long history of serving the broader community. in 2005, it began hosting an afterschool program (centro desarrollo infantil cdi) funded by an international ngo. the child sponsorship program serves approximately three hundred children, from 0–18 years of age. the focus is primarily on tutoring, but they also sponsor vocational workshops and a soccer program. the cdi program has also invested in three micro-enterprises that aim to create employment and generate internal revenue. when i asked the pastor what results the afterschool program is having in the community he stated: “the program benefits many children, and it has been useful in preventing kids from joining gangs. for example, one child in the program began to hang out with gang members, and by working with his parents we were able to rescue him from the gangs” (pastor, november 3, 2021). he also believes that parent workshops are beneficial for gang prevention. he laments that the program has not had the desired spiritual results. despite the program emphasizing christian formation, he calculates that less than 3% of christian relief, development, and advocacy 3(2), winter 2022 bueno, gangs and development 46 the children who have gone through the program are actively attending a church. i followed-up on why the spiritual aspects are missing, if the parachurch organization encourages the church to engage in it? he initially attributed the spiritual deficit to a lack of prayer (spiritual commitment), but he also admitted that the church did not always support the program as it should. church and cdi program activities are not completely integrated and operate semi-autonomously. to illustrate his point, he gave the following example: “the cdi has a vocational training program for music, yet the church itself does not have a worship group.” the good shepherd church had once been a “leader church” in the community of san martín. but today the pastor’s vision of the church’s role in the community is more cautious. in 2020, the national director of after-school programs informed the church that they would no longer be expanding operations in el salvador. according to a statistical report, the community was no longer considered to be in conditions of extreme poverty. after more than fifteen years of operating in the community, the program is beginning a process of transition toward self-reliance. i asked the pastor if the church and established micro-enterprises could sustain the current program. “the program has a monthly budget of $6,000 usd,” he said, “and the microenterprises are currently generating about $250 per month. with a 50-member church it would be difficult to sustain the program without external support” (pastor, december 22, 2021). the priority is to get currently enrolled children through the program. the after-school program in san martín is part of a direct partnership between the local church and the international parachurch organization. there is no formal agreement with the national church organization. pentecostal churches’ autonomous associational structure lends itself to these hub-andspoke alliances with parachurch organizations. whether direct partnerships are done for expediency or principle, the net result is that local churches’ ecclesiastical support systems are often unaware of their activities or unable to support them. from an institutional perspective, the national church plays a limited role in sustaining these programs. in addition, the fact that the local congregation cannot sustain the children’s after-school program without parachurch sponsorship is concerning in a local economy controlled by gangs. one of the hallmarks of transformational development strategies is that they connect projects with a local church. it becomes a major challenge when local churches (primarily in lowincome communities) do not have the support systems to sustain initiatives. much like the christian school, the benefit of this program for the three hundred plus children is undeniable, and it is especially critical for keeping more children from joining gangs. the challenge is keeping programs operational when current indicators used to determine need do not take into account the effects of gangs. this program is critically important for gang prevention, but because this is not the primary focus of the program it may lose its financial support. the type of poverty inflicted by gangs cannot always be measured by traditional standard of living metrics. overall, church and parachurch organizations’ transformational development projects and programs in san martín have been effective in addressing individual needs of children and families. their presence in the community also provides a glimmer of hope that there is a way out of gang entanglement. unfortunately, without major macro/structural change the gangs will continue to deprive these communities of the stability that makes sustainable development possible. the need for a more collective response is thus critical. churches and parachurch organizations have unique access to gang entangled-communities, but they cannot be expected to transform them alone. analysis pentecostals and gangs in el salvador share space, family ties, and cosmology, but their contrasting responses to marginalization put them in tension. there is no common vision of the future and their methods of influence are diametrically opposed. yet in spite of the volatile environment, local pentecostal churches and parachurch organizations have managed to survive by taking a cautious approach to social engagement. as a result, they are among the few remaining social organizations in increasingly isolated, gang-controlled communities. their presence and local empowerment programs provide valuable assistance to many vulnerable families. at the same time, the increase in gang influence exposes the limitations of these approaches. as gangs expand their networks of influence, sustainable transformational development initiatives are increasingly stifled. the need to address gang issues is paramount for the well-being of these communities. unfortunately, there is no gang specific transformational development approach to guide churches and parachurch organizations to achieve sustainable change. before considering transformational development strategies for gang-entangled communities, it is important to situate the analysis within the day-to-day environment. rehabilitation and reintegration programs are clearly part of a comprehensive gang mitigation strategy, but they have little effect on gang control and violence. for this reason, the focus of this research is on the effects gang entanglement has on the sustainability of transformational development efforts in the community. as witnessed in the community of christian relief, development, and advocacy 3(2), winter 2022 bueno, gangs and development 47 san martín, most established transformational development programs are currently following program strategies and procedures that were developed prior to, or independent of, gang entanglement. program criteria and methods did not anticipate how increased gang control would affect their long-term goals. at present, local churches and parachurch organizations are in tension with gang influence, and there are few, if any, ongoing sustainable transformational development approaches that address gang entanglement. a review of different gang mitigation strategies applied to date can be disheartening. aggressive police tactics, macro-level structural adjustment polices, and gang rehabilitation initiatives have all proven largely ineffective (wolf 2017, 208). gang-entangled communities are in development limbo. there is no immediate solution to the structural concerns feeding gang growth, and increasing gang control in marginal communities affects the stability required for sustainable development. for transformational development practitioners it is hard to find right-fitting strategies. the community water project in san martin provides an example of an ngo that, in the absence of a suitable strategy, simply stays the course. the water project continues to pursue a standard programmatic progression from dependence to independence. yet increased gang control affects the stability required to achieve sustainability objectives. ignoring these social dynamics can create misaligned goals and strategies, and put added strain on local stakeholders. considering the organizations that adjust or initiate new programs in gang-entangled communities, the vast majority focus on addressing immediate needs. in san martín, the instability caused by gang control caused the christian ngo to instinctively focus new efforts on addressing basic needs, such as latrines. development organizations commonly adjust their programs when a major disaster strikes a community. in cases where wars break out or natural disasters strike, policies and procedures shift toward disaster relief and/or refugee assistance. similarly with gang entanglement, in the absence of stability, many development practitioners gravitate toward providing direct assistance. after all, violent social crises caused by terrorism or crime are typically classified as disasters (wisner 2015). unfortunately, in the case of gang entanglement, the social crisis has no clear ending point. in many communities, gang entanglement has become the new norm. also, in cases where emergency relief methods are employed, they do not create any kind of systemic and permanent change in the social conditions that can help stabilize the community. church and parachurch organizations that utilize emergency relief tactics must be mindful that the situation may not improve any time soon. finally, let us consider conflict theory approaches to addressing gang violence. there is ethnographic research in other parts of latin america that reveals that residents in conflictive communities can and do stand up to violence by state and non-state actors. but in el salvador, open confrontation of the gangs is rare (wolf 2017, 229). what makes some forms of civil resistance possible in some contexts and not in el salvador is unknown. but what is clear is that anyone confronting gangs without government support is likely vulnerable to both legal prosecution and/or gang reprisal. similarly, non-confrontational structural strategies also seem destined to fail. alex de waal suggests that “people need to develop a sense that, as part of a larger political community, they have rights on which they should insist – to development, to a sustainable livelihood, to respect for civil and political rights” (quoted in myers 2011, 196). still, these rights are irrelevant to gangs, because gang members do not belong to formal international systems in which they can be held accountable. at present, transformational development practitioners in san martín and elsewhere continue to apply grassroots empowerment initiatives without a clear long-term strategy. going forward: how the international development community can support gang-entangled communities. in marginal communities, the churches’ capacity to affect broad change correlates with their external alliances with international development organizations. yet in gang-controlled communities current partnership models are hindered by hostile conditions, contested rituals, and limited capacity, all of which make the employment of formal development strategies impractical. one surmises that achieving sustainable transformational development will take time, that outside support will be essential, and that stakeholders, including even small pentecostal churches, will have to work together. along these lines, i believe there is a way forward if we can commit to finding better ways to support local initiatives when there is limited access. ignoring or applying existing protocols will not achieve desired results. the challenge is to define transformational development policies, advocacy, and support resources that specifically suit gang-entangled communities. the first decision transformational development practitioners face when confronted with gang-entangled communities is whether to engage. the trend has been that as gang control and violence increase, external development agencies withdraw. gang-entangled communities thus become progressively more isolated from external support systems. for example, médecins sans frontières (msf) temporarily suspended its operations in el salvador after one of its teams came christian relief, development, and advocacy 3(2), winter 2022 bueno, gangs and development 48 under attack from armed gangs (rentería 2021). as evidenced by this incident, when organizations are affected by gangs, they are left to consider their policies and procedures on their own, without the benefit of any gang-specific strategy. decisions by international organizations to engage in el salvador are being made in offices isolated from gang-affected communities. at the moment each organization must negotiate its own gang-entanglement strategy. the magnitude of the gang problem in many communities of el salvador also affects how ngos operate. for example, homies unidos (a peer-based ngo) had its funding suspended because formal evaluations could not be carried out by independent observers (wolf 2017, 236). gang suspicion of outsiders hinders many formal funding protocols. whether it is the gangs that restrict access, or the staff of donor agencies who decline to visit gang-controlled communities, the net effect is increasing isolation. increasingly, only local institutions remain active in these communities, but it seems unreasonable to expect them to address gang issues on their own. development specialist alan fowler points out that micro-level development empowerment approaches must be combined with macro-level institutional support. myers reinforces this point by stating: “every community is part of a family of social systems that are regional, national, and finally global” (myers 2011, 189). local church leaders, community members, and transformational practitioners need support from the international development community. identifying better ways to support local initiatives that are inaccessible because of gangs is a critical first step. the next step in identifying a better way to address gang-entangled communities is adjust the lenses through which we assess the problem. by applying offutt’s social entanglement theory, we can better understand who we are engaging and what the challenges are. in the case of the after-school program in san martín we see how development practitioners use a generic standard of living index to determine if the program meets their criteria. based on these criteria, the program has begun a phase-out process, despite the fact that the program is very valuable in preventing young people from joining the gangs. appropriate transformational development strategies in el salvador’s marginal communities require us to view gangs as a form of poverty. communities entangled by gangs may not always appear to be materially poor, but they lack freedom, peace, and employment prospects. also, the economy in marginal communities in el salvador is heavily reliant on remittances from family members who have migrated. this can skew the perception of need, because those resources are externally generated; migrating parents may solve their immediate financial needs, but may also expose their children to gang recruitment and does not create prospects for future employment. the effects of poverty in gang-entangled communities go beyond the financial. transformational development assessment criteria must integrate physical, social, psychological, and spiritual effects of gang entanglement. finally, with a degree of optimism, we can attest to the importance the local church plays in any long-term transformational strategy. but how churches go about identifying kingdom principles in gang-entangled communities is critical. the moral question of when to engage or disengage from gang members is complex. for example, polígono (a catholic development agency) terminated its micro-enterprise program directed at gang members. the program was controversial because some believed it incentivized joining the gangs. young people witnessed how much support and resources were directed at gang members. building healthy relationships is a challenge in the best of circumstances. determining when to engage or disengage from gang demands is an ethical matrix only the truly vested can decipher. it brings me back to the words of the school director in san martín: “they know when you are on their side.” this statement is not about being pro-gang or anti-gang. it is about an awareness of the person and context one addresses. any moral or ethical guide for navigating gang entanglement must emerge through the diligent pursuit of truth from kingdom-minded stakeholders. a kingdom mindset for san martín must be fleshed out by those who live and work there. the international development community can help facilitate this process, but local participants must be centrally involved. the gang situation in el salvador foreshadows the prophetic vision of children turning on their parents. many aspects of transformational development work are tested by the social reality of gangs. the experiences in san martín highlight the importance of long-term relationships, support systems, and right-fitting strategies. insular empowerment strategies are not enough to mitigate gang influence. a more robust and collective approach is necessary. the larger development community has the unique challenge of increasing support in less accessible communities. these are just a few of the important elements to consider in gang-entangled communities. many other macro-level transformational development policies and procedures need to be examined in light of this social phenomenon. the hope is that by integrating the broad development community into the conversation of those who live and work in gang-entangled communities, we will find the best ways forward. about:blank christian relief, development, and advocacy 3(2), winter 2022 bueno, gangs and development 49 references alfaro, xiomara and david marroquín. 2021. “supuestos pandilleros asesinan a pastor de la iglesia elim en apopa.” el salvador.com. april 1. https://www.elsalvador.com/noticias/nacional/apop a-violencia-homicidios-pastor-ricardo-mejia-iglesiaelim/823047/2021/. brenneman, robert. 2012. homies + hermanos: god and gangs in central america. new york: oxford university press. bueno, david. 2001. “the struggle for social space: how salvadoran pentecostals build communities in the rural sector.” transformation 18(3), 171-91. bueno, ronald todd. 2019. translating pentecost into transformed communities in el salvador: pentecostal churches, social engagement and social change in el salvador. phd dissertation, university of middlesex. care worker. 2017. interviewed by steve offutt who shared this with the author on february 3, 2021. clarke, gerard. 2006. “faith matters: faith-based organizations, civil society, and international development.” journal of international development 18(6), 835-48. collier, paul. 2007. the bottom billion: why the poorest countries are failing and what can be done about it. new york: oxford press. dudley, steven. 2019. “ms-13: america's most notorious gang. modern wisdom podcast 316,” youtube. https://youtu.be/q94ng1m1mzi insight crime. 2021. “ms13: el salvador.” last updated september 22. https://insightcrime.org/elsalvador-organized-crime-news/mara-salvatruchams-13-profile/. digestyc dirección general de estadística y censos, ministerio de economía. 2021. 06_san_salvador_proyec_grupos_de_edad_2020 -2025_rev2021 en excel. http://www.digestyc.gob.sv/index.php/novedades/av isos/1023-proyecciones-y-estimaciones-depoblacion-municipal.html. huezo mixco, luis r. 2020. “empoderados en el espíritu. una aproximación al pentecostalismo en el salvador moderno.” in mansilla, miguel ángel and mariela mosqueira, directors. sociología del pentecostalismo en américa latina. santiago: ril editores, 213-243. martin, david. 1990. tongues of fire: the explosion of protestantism in latin america. oxford: basil blackwell. martínez, carlos and roberto valencia. 2018. “mara salvatrucha: ‘fue un error haber aceptado dinero de los partidos político.’” elfaro. april 15. https://elfaro.net/es/201804/salanegra/21718/marasalvatrucha-%e2%80%9cfue-un-error-haberaceptado-dinero-de-los-partidospol%c3%adticos%e2%80%9d.htm. myers, bryant l. 2011. walking with the poor: principles and practices of transformational development. maryknoll: orbis books. offutt, stephen. 2020. “entangled: evangelicals and gangs in el salvador.” social forces 99(1), 424-45. offutt, stephen. (forthcoming). evangelicals and gangs in el salvador. new york: oxford university press. pastor. 2021. name omitted for safety. interviewed by author on november 3 and december 22. program coordinator. 2021. name omitted for safety. interviewed by the author on august 18, september 24, october 29, november 3, and december 23. reno, r. r. 2019. return of the strong gods: nationalism, populism, and the future of the west. washington, dc: regnery gateway. rentería, nelson, with editing by diane craft. 2021. “doctors without borders suspends work in el salvador after attack.” reuters, january 31. https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/doctorswithout-borders-suspends-work-el-salvador-afterattack-2021-02-01/. school director. 2021. name omitted for safety. interviewed by author on september 9, 17, 23, october 29, november 2, 6 and december 2. the economist. 2018. “el salvador's violent gang members are finding god in prison.” youtube, may 22. https://youtu.be/7deancj6lzw. vásquez, manuel a., marie friedmann marquardt, and ileana gómez. 2003. “saving souls transnationally: pentecostalism and gangs in el salvador and in the united states.” in manuel a. vásquez and marie friedmann marquardt. eds. globalizing the sacred, 119-44. new brunswick: rutgers university press. wisner, ben. 2015. “community resilience to disaster.” in james write. ed. encyclopedia of the social & behavioral sciences, 2nd. ed, 354360. elsevier. wolf, sonja. 2017. mano dura: the politics of gang control in el salvador. austin: university of texas press. world bank group. 2021. “poverty & equity brief, latin america & the caribbean: el salvador.” april. https://databank.worldbank.org/data/download/po verty/987b9c90-cb9f-4d93-ae8c750588bf00qa/am2020/global_poveq_slv. pdf. youth pastor. 2021. name omitted for safety. interviewed by author on september 24, 25. about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank christian relief, development, and advocacy 3(2), winter 2022 bueno, gangs and development 50 david bueno is executive director of water for the world, and serves on the board of fundación esteban. he has lived and worked in el salvador for more than 30 years. his work focuses on sustainable socio-economic development. author email: david@water4world.net about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank christian relief, development, and advocacy 3(2), winter 2022 adelekan, book review 51 book review christian compassion: a charitable history by monty l. lynn reviewed by tokunbo adelekan eugene, or: wipf and stock, 2021. $35.00 it takes a unique sensibility of historical consciousness, ethical imagination, and pastoral wisdom to write the kind of history found in compassion: a charitable history, where every section, in some cases every paragraph, requires capturing befuddling dramas, many-stranded ideas, and evolving moral practices. yet in many ways, monty lynn, professor in the department of management sciences at abilene christian university, is up to the task, providing a readable map of christian charity that reflects an admirable knowledge of the variegated catholic and protestant contributions to christian social understanding and progress. lynn invokes the biblical metaphor of a “river” (psalm 46:4) to mold a fluid portrait of compassion that courses around three epochal developments; 1) from the inauguration of the church in 1st-century roman palestine to the 4th century, 2) from the fall of rome through the medieval period into the period of the reformation, and 3) from the early modern enlightenment project/experience to today's capitaldriven north atlantic-centric theatre. as a primer, lynn’s work not only maps the ways in which compassion has been imagined, but tactically (if not always evenly) implemented through a complex patchwork of historical, geographic, cultural, and even continental theatres. lynn’s account embodies the witness of the great hymn “thro' many dangers, toils and snares, i have already come; 'tis grace has brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home.” lynn begins the book by setting a foundational framework for defining and understanding christian compassion through the ages. combining insights from social science and theology, lynn argues the divine nature of compassion can best be understood as being comprised of five facets, all ensconced in christ: seeing, feeling, hearing, acting, and desiring. the more these facets are present at the individual and communal level, the more energized christian compassion becomes. as lynn uses these to choose and frame what, who, and how to include in this history, he traces the evolution of christian compassion through the epochs, from small-scale individual and communal efforts geared to those in need, to the development of the church as the patron of the poor, to the institutionalization, professionalization, and specialization of care during christendom, and to the explosion of parachurch organizations fostered in a significant way by the globalized and competitive missions movement that has resulted in what lynn sees today as three streams of christian charity: the liberation and justice stream, peace and humanitarianism, and mutual aid and community development. the book can be read in at least three distinguishable, yet inseparable ways. first, it can be read as a prismatic attempt to capture the church’s priestly and prophetic role in alleviating human suffering en route to shaping the contours of civilization. it can thus be read as a treatise on how christians of different stripes have lived out the beatitudes in the sermon on the mount. second, it can be read as a treatment of compassion as a malleable, elastic, polyvalent category whose peculiar and protracted manifestations stress how institutional and individual actors have revised the boundaries of the church’s ethical vocation. for example, what may be read as aid to the poor under a specific set of conditions may be construed as fomenting sloth, curbing moral and intellectual potential, and draining on institutional or national economies under a different moral regime. therefore, given the radical contingency and intractable christian relief, development, and advocacy 3(2), winter 2022 adelekan, book review 52 changeability of all human affairs, it is important that we approach the grand scheme of christian witness with a degree of epistemic humility and philosophical irony. third, the book can be read as a mission-evangelism manifesto; a bold appeal to those who are disenchanted with arid forms of christianity and who wish to reclaim the soul of the church’s earthly witness, to plumb the faith for its rich reserves of coping and care, and for its ethic of defense and deliverance from repulsive and retrograde systems. lynn’s work is dialectical, discursive, and disciplinary. it is dialectical because it highlights the creative interplay between the heart of a loving god and the fallen, yet faithful, witness of christian heroic actors. accordingly, christian mission is foremost a declarative act of participation in god’s mission in the world. the discursive dimension of the book is seen through the manner in which lynn deploys the social sciences to interpret the prism as stated above of desiring, seeing, feeling, hearing, and acting as the five distinguishable yet inseparable nodes through which compassion is imagined. finally, compassion, for lynn, is disciplinary. it is the formed and lived witness of a dynamic ethic of self-surrender and self-overcoming—an idea conveyed not just in our confessions, creeds, policies, and pronouncements. therefore, compassion is curricular as well as liturgical behavior. three interwoven dimensions of compassionate practice delineated in the text are 1) the ministry of spiritual direction often informed and inspired by the biblical faith and sacred texts, 2) the problems and possibilities that describe and prescribe the existential affairs, moral habits, and spiritual disciplines of christian communities as they navigate specific social conditions, and 3) the exploration of the links between sacrificial leadership and heroic communal practice in overcoming the myriad dimensions of our human fallenness and finitude—as they serve as signs of the kingdom of heaven. in short, lynn’s narrative trumpets the truth that “they will know we are christians by our love.” though rife with explanatory sobriety and interpretive power, lynn’s study is essentially a chapter on the compassionate witness of the church to north atlantic civilization. lynn’s “river” may be an apt metaphor, but it bends curiously and unsettlingly outside of the “global south”—africa, asia, and latin america. this restrictive outlook not only fails to meet the ambitious goal that lynn has set for himself, but it also overlooks the colorful and burgeoning waterfalls that could provide substantive and sophisticated fauna and flora for his otherwise salutary “riverful” account. to what degree have the contributions of pentecostals and charismatics fostered and expanded the church’s compassionate witness—much of which highlights the undeniable role of the red, yellow, black, and brown peoples, also, perhaps more importantly, the astounding role of women in the flourishing of the christian story? any “charitable” map of christian compassion must come to terms with these ennobling and expanding missional “theatres,” instead of treating them as merely tributary to the western currents of christianity. needless to say, at present, the western mainline church is at a crossroads, thus compelling deep selfinterrogation, reformation, and perhaps even repentance when necessary. we can no longer take as axiomatic (and it pains me deeply to confess) that the church is a regenerative force in society—especially because some of the evils of modernity, such as slavery, the holocaust, and colonialism, to name a few, have had partial roots in christian institutional identity. this requires an acknowledgement of how issues of knowledge, privilege, power, and status have shaped not only the charitable practices of christian communities, but also the animus against the church that lingered and seems to have deepened in the present moment. overall, this book is resourceful and relevant to christian practitioners in all areas of the global church, including those working in relief, development, and advocacy organizations. specialists will doubtless find omissions and oversimplifications, but it is important to remember that lynn has understood and attempted to chart a course, not to provide an encyclopedic mosaic. the inclusion of stories, images, and charts adds a personal element that prevents the work from becoming a dry, laborious academic exercise. the work can be a guidepost for those who seek to mine the judeo-christian faith for tools and templates needed to demystify and decenter the hierarchical and repressive systems that continue to degrade and devalue human creative potential—i read it as an accessible and applicable exploration of doing mission in the real world. as augustine reputedly quipped, “tolle lege,” take up and read. tokunbo adelekan is associate professor of theology and ethics at palmer theological seminary (eastern university) and teaches courses in ecclesiology, globalization studies and african american studies. he is also senior pastor of the tabernacle baptist church of dayton, ohio. author email: olumo101@gmail.com about:blank christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(2), winter 2023 slimbach, asking tough questions about transformational development 51 asking tough questions about transformational development richard slimbach the disaffection of young adults from traditional religious beliefs and institutions challenges christian relief, development, and advocacy agencies to re-evaluate long-held assumptions on at least three topics: how the christian faith informs development work, how it interprets the dominant politicaleconomic model, and how it structures partnerships with other development actors. the essay underscores the importance of making conversation on consequential issues across generational, gender, racial, socioeconomic, religious, and political differences. three sets of “tough questions” are offered to facilitate open and respectful dialogue, potentially leading to more inclusive and collaborative models of faith-inspired community development work. “…i would like to beg you, dear sir, as well as i can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. and the point is, to live everything. live the questions now. perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.” [italics added] (originally written in 1903) by rainer maria rilke (2004). christian relief and development agencies have long played a significant role in improving human wellbeing worldwide. as a response to the humanitarian crisis caused by the second world war, and ones that followed, hundreds of christian relief, development, and advocacy (rda) organizations were founded to discharge the christian community’s errand to the world. some of the largest were catholic relief services (1943), christian aid (1945), lutheran world relief (1945), compassion (1952), world vision (1950), catholic agency for overseas development (1962), and tearfund (1968). their provision of aid and support to communities affected by natural disasters, conflict, poverty, and disease has been truly extraordinary. in addition to providing emergency relief, christian agencies have also been at the forefront of campaigns to address human rights issues ranging from child labor and gender inequality to religious 1 british historian david bebbington, in his classic 1989 book evangelicalism in modern britain, put forth four descriptive qualities of evangelicalism popularly referred to as the bebbington quadrilateral: (1) biblicism (a focus on the bible as the sole and supreme rule of faith and practice), (2) conversionism (an emphasis on the necessity of the new birth by the holy spirit), (3) crucicentrism (stressing the centrality of christ’s death for human salvation), and (4) activism (the responsibility to share the christian faith with others). these four interlocking traits distinguish evangelicals from mainline protestants, catholic, and orthodox christians. persecution and the use of torture. the christian development community has also played a crucial role in promoting community-based and church-driven empowerment aligned with their broader spiritual mission and values. this essay explores how the changing landscape of religion and spirituality among young adults calls for a re-examination of some fundamental assumptions and biases that have historically helped define the identity and mission of evangelical relief, development, and advocacy organizations. a series of tough, intentionally provocative questions on three familiar topics invite members of the accord network and christians everywhere to take a hard look at some of the theological and ideological underpinnings of their work. our discussion of fundamental issues is considered in view of the waning of evangelicalism 1 within the global north. christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(2), winter 2023 slimbach, asking tough questions about transformational development 52 examining cherished ideas with a critical eye can be a demanding task. we often form our beliefs and biases based on our personal experiences, values, and emotional attachments, which can be reinforced by our religious community. dissenting opinions and doubts may be met with resistance or rejection. when asked to re-evaluate longstanding assumptions, it can feel like a personal attack, triggering defensive reactions. and yet, holding on to comfortable ways of thinking no matter what runs the risk of hardening ourselves, and our organizations, to new learning and improved approaches to development. conversations of this kind are especially important, albeit more difficult, across racial, ethnic, gender, ideological, and theological differences. over the last few years, social justice activism has pressed us organizations of all types–corporations, the military, the cia, universities, media conglomerates, political parties, and philanthropic foundations–to expand their racial and gender diversity. in hollywood, for example, there is more diverse casting, more minority-led projects, and a certain premium on nonwhite and female-centric narratives. this is a positive development, long overdue. and yet demographic diversity, however desirable, is no guarantee of perspectival diversity. the lives of native americans did not improve when charles curtis, the us’s first native american vice president, pushed through legislation mandating assimilation and revoking tribal land titles. the fact that the five officers who stopped 29-year-old tyre nichols in memphis on january 7, 2023, were black, and the city’s police department was headed by cerelyn davis, a black woman, did not prevent another modern-day police lynching. the perpetuation of a permanent war economy has not been checked by having lloyd austin, an african american, as secretary of defense. nor has the weapons industry become more transparent and accountable in the manufacturing and sale of weapons because kathy j. warden, a woman, is the ceo of northop grumman. an exclusive focus on proportionate representation can easily leave core organizational culture intact. evangelical organizations struggle to create a workforce that reflects the society they operate in, much less to effectively incorporate diverse viewpoints. the national association of evangelicals (nae), for example, was founded in 1942 as an umbrella organization to represent a broad cross-section of evangelical theological and sociopolitical views. yet 2 barna research (kinnaman 2011) reports that nearly two-thirds of 18–29-year-olds who grew up in the u.s. going to church have dropped out, citing boredom and a feeling that god is “missing.” pew research center (2019) notes that more than one-third (34 percent) of generation z are religiously unaffiliated, a significantly larger proportion than among millennials (29 percent) and generation x (25 percent). eighteen percent of gen z affirmatively identify as either atheist (9 percent) or agnostic (9 percent). major african american denominations and churches continue to be conspicuously absent. black evangelicals exist, but ideologically and sociologically they have never fit a white evangelical box that has consistently ignored linkages between christianity, racism, wealth inequality, and imperial expansion. all to say, lacking representational and viewpoint diversity, organizations risk becoming insular and stagnant, limiting their ability to address complex development challenges in a swiftly transforming world. leaving the fold christian rda organizations encounter the same obstacles to effectiveness that hamper non-religious organizations: a focus on short-term thinking and funding, limited local ownership of projects, a lack of transparency and accountability, bureaucratic inefficiencies, and destructive competition (vs. collaboration) with other ngos and government agencies. as a result, they can find it difficult to demonstrate measurable, long-term improvements in the quality of local community life, compromising their witness for christ. but one challenge is unique to christian development agencies: the growing disengagement of the younger generation from traditional christian beliefs and affiliations. since the early 2000s, barna research and the pew research center have regularly tracked the declining interest of young people in institutional christianity. 2 the reasons are complex and multi-faceted. some of the disaffection, to be sure, is due to liberalizing cultural norms and lifestyles, which can lead to a decreased interest in organized religion. science has also eroded confidence in spiritual or supernatural explanations for everything from the origins of the universe to sexual orientation. moreover, being exposed to people of different faiths and cultures has made it difficult for young adults to view their inherited faith as the sole path to truth or salvation. i have taught for over thirty years at an evangelical christian college. over time, an increasing number of students have expressed their belief that religion in general, and evangelical christianity in particular, appears obsolete and superfluous, largely out of touch with the realities of the modern world. these are not twenty-somethings in youthful rebellion against moral responsibilities. most have clear spiritual yearnings and hungry minds. what they find maddening is the avoidant silence they experience within churches on christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(2), winter 2023 slimbach, asking tough questions about transformational development 53 issues of greatest consequence to the planet’s future. i find myself largely sympathetic to their complaint. in my fifty years of attending evangelical churches and hearing more than two thousand messages, i cannot recall a single sermon that tackled the topics of climate change, biodiversity loss, artificial intelligence, the legacy of white supremacy, wealth inequality, and the costs and consequences of us america(n) militarism. moreover, a growing number of earnest and fairminded young adults increasingly regard many of the teachings identified with evangelical faith to be archaic, if not offensive. they find some especially difficult to accept: an inerrant bible or infallible papacy. young earth creationism. sin transmitted from the first parents to the rest of humanity through dna. rigid gender roles. gay sexuality as essentially a perverse lifestyle choice. racial inequality as primarily resulting from defects of personal character and culture. nonchristian religions as “prisons of disobedience” that are corrupted in their inner heart. an unmistakable bornagain experience as the indispensable evidence of being “saved.” the natural world as a dead “resource” that humans are superior to and have the right to dominate. hell as a literal chamber of eternal fire and torment awaiting all who fail to confess jesus as lord before they die. that the true church will be “raptured” once the gospel is proclaimed throughout the whole world. and that the modern state of israel deserves unconditional military support because the jews are god’s chosen people. there are others. many others. suffice to say that a complex matrix of cultural, ideological, and theological factors has caused a considerable number of emerging adults from evangelical backgrounds (and even some of their elders) to reject many of the theological tenets and church affiliations of their parents and grandparents. when they go looking for christian spirituality, they don’t go to the church. they may embrace the core of jesus’ teachings, but then opt to describe themselves as ecumenical christians, progressive christians, christian humanists, exevangelicals, or post-evangelicals. their aspiration appears to be for a christ-centered faith that transcends the highly masculine rigidity of traditional evangelicalism and the relativism of a postmodern culture–one that is intellectually honest, spiritually 3 numerous theological and literary figures have been particularly influential among “post-evangelical” leaders. they include anne lamott, walter brueggemann, lesslie newbigin, c.s. lewis, wendell berry, bell hooks, jurgen moltmann, howard thurman, marcus borg, n. t. wright, diana butler bass, richard rohr, frederick buechner, cornel west, miroslav volf, and stanley hauerwas. 4 development agencies with well-established affiliations with white evangelicalism include world vision, samaritan’s purse, compassion international, food for the hungry, tearfund, world concern, and christian aid, and various members of the accord network. meaningful, and socially engaged with issues vital to planetary flourishing. 3 christian rda agencies could be significantly impacted by the rising generation's search for a more relevant christian faith. 4 as millennials and gen zs become less religious in the traditional sense, they may also be less likely to support organizations typically associated with white male leaders, conservative political views, and exclusionary beliefs and practices. this could lead to a decline in volunteers, funding, and advocacy activities within christian rda organizations, impacting their ability to carry out their mission. moreover, as younger generations come to view religion as peripheral to their lives, they may be more likely to support non-religious organizations and social movements–like oxfam, doctors without borders, black lives matter, #metoo, and sunrise movement – that more closely align with their commitment to women’s rights, marriage equality, anti-racism, environment protection, and non-interventionist foreign policy. the possibility of unfavorable outcomes compels christian rda agencies to reexamine their theological and strategic assumptions, as well as the development models that arise from them. conversations about hard things the process of deconstructing traditional evangelical beliefs and assumptions brings to the fore a whole new set of intricate and weighty questions on issues that once were considered settled. the focus of our present conversation will be on posing tough questions surrounding three controversial topics, inviting us to consider these issues in fresh and nuanced ways. in turn, we will probe (1) the role christian faith plays in development work, (2) how christian faith relates to the operating system and effects of the modern political economy, and (3) how faith-based development ngos relate to local churches and other development actors–specifically governments and social movements. following brief subject introductions, a set of evocative questions will be posed. our aim is to kindle meaningful and intellectually invigorating discussion that embraces diverse viewpoints. while christian rda organizations are hardly uniform in their theological orientation, organizational structure, or development strategy, they do share a common agreement: “our christian faith is christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(2), winter 2023 slimbach, asking tough questions about transformational development 54 at the center of our identity, motive, and manner of being” (hammond 2018). in other words, “faith integration” in the context of international development is seen as much more than a dispassionate, intellectual exercise. rather, grounded in an imitation of christ, it indicates a moral imperative to use resources and relationships to prevent or alleviate the suffering of others and to declare, in both word and deed, the gospel message. the critical questions become: what faith are we integrating? what is its vision for the world? and how does it empower transformational development? faith and development one of the most recurrent debates within the christian relief and development community has to do with the role of faith in development work. some argue that bringing people to life-changing faith in jesus christ through evangelism, baptism, and the process of discipleship ought to be at the forefront of their work. others insist that priority should be given to poverty alleviation, social development, and justice-seeking. at present, the christian rda community lacks definitive agreement on what, if anything, should differentiate expressly “christian” relief and development work from the work of non-religious development organizations. members of the accord network endorse either the apostles’ creed or the nae statement of faith, along with the integral/ transformational model of mission based on the work of john stott, lesslie newbigin, rené padilla, orlando costas, and bryant myers, among others. terms like holistic, integral, and transformational aim to resolve the stubborn division between soul-saving evangelism (the primary focus of evangelical mission agencies) and society-improving development (the focus of christian social action and community development agencies). several christian theologians and philosophers have elaborated upon the hebrew concept of shalom to envision a response to jesus’ prayer: “your kingdom come, your will be done, as in heaven, so on earth.” 5 as a social imaginary, shalom conceives “development” as the restoration of right relationships–with god, with self, with fellow human beings (especially “strangers” and “enemies”), with the various community institutions (“powers”) that fix social existence, and with the natural world that sustains all life. shalom indicates a vision of earthly justice and joy, cooperation and 5 key authors include e. stanley jones (1972), nicholas wolterstorff (1983), brian walsh and richard middleton (1984), cornelius plantinga jr. (1995), miroslav volf (2011), and bryant myers (2011). 6 nussbaum’s list of ten central human capabilities, presented on pages 33-34 in creating capabilities, are as follows: 1. life: being able to live to the end of a human life of normal length; not dying prematurely. harmony, prosperity and hope standing against a social order based on hyper-individualism, labor and sexual exploitation, extreme wealth inequality, and the glorification of military power and profit-making over the needs of people and planet. in short, it is the world as it ought to be. some evangelical development thinkers, concerned that the inward and theocentric dimensions of shalom might suffer from the concept’s expansiveness, have sought to preserve an emphasis on personal conversion through an encounter with the gospel. a generation of evangelical missionaries and development workers has been influenced by missiologist donald mcgavran’s famous assertion that when individual persons are transformed, society will be transformed also (1980, 240). by this he means that when people become disciples of jesus and undergo moral and spiritual transformation, their changed attitudes, behaviors, and values naturally influence their families, communities, and ultimately, the society they live in. in walking with the poor, bryant myers (2011) also stresses the indispensable role of evangelism– declaring the good news–in holistic development: for the christian development worker … there can be no practice of transformational development that is christian unless somewhere, in some form, people are hearing the good news of the gospel and being given a chance to respond… if this news is not accepted, there is a sense in which those who refuse sit wrapped in chains of self-imposed limitations. (145) the evangelical framing of integral or transformational development overlaps, to a large extent, with the capabilities approach set forth by martha nussbaum in creating capabilities: the human development approach (2011). both development models focus on the importance of empowering individuals with the capability to pursue goals and lead lives they value and choose. both insist that a high quality of life is more than increasing one’s income and standard of living, as jesus taught (luke 12:15). where the two approaches diverge is in their religious assumptions (or lack thereof). whereas integral or transformational development may prioritize spiritual growth and the spread of christian faith over other aspects of development, nussbaum proposes ten irreducible and universal human capabilities. 6 christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(2), winter 2023 slimbach, asking tough questions about transformational development 55 grounded in a purely secular understanding of human nature (i.e., the power of moral choice within people), they are not contingent on the acceptance of any religious doctrine or conversion experience. any human being with developed “practical reason” (capability #6) can step back from their actions, reflect upon their reasons for doing things, evaluate their behaviors (whether it conforms to standards they willingly endorse), and determine whether there are legitimate reasons for acting the way they do. religious faith can be an important source of meaning, value, and fulfillment for some individuals. but it is not a requisite pathway for everyone to achieve a high level of flourishing. 7 this leads to our first set of difficult questions. tough questions 1. how important is a christian conversion experience to the formation of deep morality and optimal human development? religious conservatives often claim that a society without a strong foundation of faith would necessarily be one bereft of ethics, values, and transcendent meaning. in society without god (2020), sociologist phil zuckerman challenges these claims. zuckerman’s fieldwork with residents of nordic countries reveals that they generally enjoy strong economies, low crime rates, 2. bodily health: being able to have good health, including reproductive health; to be adequately nourished; to have adequate shelter. 3. bodily integrity: being able to move freely from place to place; to be secure against violent assault, including sexual assault and domestic violence; to have opportunities for sexual satisfaction and for choice in matters of reproduction. 4. senses, imagination and thought: being able to use the senses, to imagine, to think, and to use one’s mind in ways protected by guarantees of freedom of conscience, expression and religious observance. 5. emotions: being able to love, to grieve, and to experience longing, gratitude, and justified anger; to not have one’s emotional development blighted by fear and anxiety. 6. practical reason: being able to form a conception of the good and to engage in critical reflection about the planning of one’s life. 7. affiliation: being able to live with and toward others; to freely engage in various forms of social interaction; to imagine the situation and show concern for other human beings; to be treated as a dignified being whose worth is equal to that of others (this includes non-discrimination). 8. other species: being able to live with concern for and in relation to animals, plants, and the world of nature. 9. play: being able to laugh, to play, and to enjoy recreational activities. 10. control over one’s environment: being able to participate effectively in political choices that govern one’s life (e.g., protections of free speech and association); having the right to hold both land and movable goods (property) on an equal basis with others; having the right to seek employment on an equal basis with others. 7 human flourishing is understood as the sum of the conditions of social life which allow people, whether as groups or individuals, to achieve the life that they value and choose. this ideal state of life, whether one uses religious terms like shalom or kingdom of god, or non-religious terms like development, wellbeing, happiness, capabilities, or sustainability, is accessible to individuals of all faiths or no faith at all. high standards of living and social equality, and the highest levels of subjective happiness in the world. and yet they remain largely unconcerned and even incurious about questions of faith, god, and life's ultimate meaning. they no longer have an active concept of sin, do not particularly fear death, and believe that science has convincingly disproved the case for religion. most declare themselves atheists or agnostics. furthermore, many of the world cities boasting the highest quality-oflife are among the least religious in the western world. these include tokyo, taipei, auckland, melbourne, copenhagen, zurich, and vancouver. conversely, many of the world’s most “christianized” countries, including the us, brazil, the philippines, mexico, russia, haiti, and south africa, continue to be riddled by systemic racism, extreme wealth inequality, gang wars, corruption, and violence against women and lgbtq+ people. considering these realities, how valid is mcgavran’s 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? christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(2), winter 2023 slimbach, asking tough questions about transformational development 56 the seventeen sustainable development goals (sdgs), to some extent, encourage cooperation at the level of service delivery. still, many mainstream development workers maintain deep ambivalence toward the clannishness that is apparent within closeknit religious communities. they suspect religious leaders involved in community development will favor their own beliefs, their own believers, and their own projects instead of working for universal benefit. are their suspicions well-founded? faith & political economy over the last 75 years, us american evangelicals have shown themselves particularly enthusiastic about the prospects for christian faith in the context of usdirected globalization and militarism. economic globalization and military power are viewed as two sides of a single coin. globalization promotes the conditions that lead to profit maximization and capital accumulation for global corporations, while militarism avails its considerable resources to assert geopolitical dominance, stabilize energy markets, and suppress anticapitalist movements (see chomsky 1993 and kinzer 2006). washington currently maintains roughly 800 overseas military bases spread over 150 countries and territories. and since its founding, the us has launched over 400 foreign military interventions. 8 the $858 billion us defense budget for 2023, forty percent of the 8 these interventions include drone strikes, coups, political assassinations, brutal counter-insurgency campaigns, and us-sanctioned massacres. since it gained independence in 1776, the us has relentlessly sought expansion by force: it slaughtered native peoples and expropriated their lands (1834-1934), waged war against mexico (1846), attempted the annexation of the dominican republic (1870), annexed guam (1898) and puerto rico (1898) and hawai’i (1900), took possession of the philippines (1899-1902), engineered the overthrow of mossadegh in iran (1953), and occupied haiti (1915–1934). during the cold war period, the us bolstered friendly regimes through military aid and trade agreements, and opposed or toppled regimes through military confrontation, covert actions, regime change, assassination, trade, and economic sanctions. the record includes the murderous overthrew of the guatemalan government in 1954; the bay of pigs invasion in cuba enacted by the kennedy administration in 1961; lyndon johnson’s orchestration of the 1965 military invasion of the dominican republic, and then south vietnam, north vietnam, laos, and cambodia from 1961-1974. richard nixon installed pinochet in chile in 1973, while ronald reagan armed the contras in nicaragua in the 1980s. the cia and us military replaced oppositional leaders and installed receptive political leaders in iran and guatemala, but also in congo (1960), brazil (1964), chile (1973), and lebanon (1982). in response to the 9/11 suicide attacks, the us launched a global war on terror (gwot), invading iraq and afghanistan on the pretense of neutralizing saddam hussein’s arsenal of weapons of mass destruction (wmds), dismantling al qaeda, and bringing osama bin laden to justice. the costs of war project at brown university calculates that the pentagon and the department of defense spent an almost unimaginable $14 trillion on the gwot during the period 2001-2021. as much as 50 percent of that amount went directly to major weapons manufacturers and other defense contractors like general dynamics, lockheed-martin, mcdonnell douglas, raytheon technologies, halliburton, and blackwater. today, washington appears intent on waging a cautious proxy war in the ukraine aimed at degrading the russian military and driving vladimir putin from power. meanwhile, the us “pivot to asia” announced by former president obama, has expanded the reach of the us military in the asiapacific to 400 military bases, all of which are meant to contain china and ultimately cripple it to the point where it is no longer capable of regional dominance. in short, the us has demonstrated throughout the nineteenth, twentieth, and now into the twenty-first centuries its determination to remain the world’s sole global superpower. world’s total, is not for defense, per se. the us military is the de facto guarantor of oil and natural gas shipments from us partners in the persian gulf to china, the offshore factory for corporate us america. the united states department of defense (2000) frankly states its strategic goal: “full spectrum dominance” over all land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace, with “overwhelming precision firepower” and “pervasive surveillance.” this appears to be us america’s new manifest destiny, one that christian ethicist reinhold niebuhr warned against in moral man in immoral society (1932). niebuhr argued that empires and nations have the tendency to fight wars, not for altruistic reasons (i.e., to defend the innocent or promote democracy), but to secure their own national (economic, geopolitical, and cultural) interests. to oppose war, then, is to oppose the very instrument by which nations secure imperial rule and become an object of self-worship. although “self-interest and the interest of others are inextricably intertwined in all human relations” (3), making it difficult to distinguish between the two, the “collective egoism” of the nation is capable of far greater evil than that of the individual. “the nation is always endowed with an aura of the sacred, which is one reason why religions, which claim universality, are so easily captured and tamed by national sentiment, religion, and patriotism merging in the process” (96-97). some evangelical mission and development leaders may find the record of us military interventionism ethically disquieting. but for the christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(2), winter 2023 slimbach, asking tough questions about transformational development 57 majority, militarized capitalism 9 and christian orthodoxy are favorably conjoined: the us american imperium being reflexively celebrated as the highest earthly and heavenly good. to live in the us is to be steeped in the belief that us americans are an exceptional people, living in an exceptional country, at an exceptional time, fighting an exceptional enemies in exceptional wars, requiring the use of exceptional tactics. this has been the rationale for state violence from the days of “felling indians,” only now the “fierce savages” and “untamed wilderness” of old have been replaced with low wage producers and foreign energy and mineral deposits. global military and diplomatic dominance keep profits and stock prices high, while suppressing popular movements for justice. toward the end of his life, dr. martin luther king, jr. spoke out fearlessly about the indivisible links between the “three evils” of white supremacy (racism), the growing divide between rich and poor (poverty), and the use of state violence (war) to secure us economic interests. in his famous “a time to break the silence” speech in 1967, given exactly a year before he was assassinated, king connected the dots: capitalism was built on the exploitation and suffering of black slaves and continues to thrive on the exploitation of the poor—both black and white, both here and abroad… the evils of capitalism are as real as the evils of militarism and racism. the problems of racial injustice and economic injustice cannot be solved without a radical redistribution of political and economic power. king explicitly condemned what he called “the madness of militarism.” he knew that us america’s permanent war economy not only robbed the country of financial resources to fight poverty within our own hemisphere; it also perpetuated a system that disrespected, dehumanized, and brutalized brown, yellow, and black people throughout the world. by any reasonable standard, that madness can be diagnosed as pervading us foreign policy in 2023. if king were alive today, i am quite certain he would have added a fourth evil: ecocide. the term describes the criminal destruction of the biosphere, and 9 in his 2003 book incoherent empire, british sociologist and historian michael mann uses the term “militarized capitalism” to refer to a system in which military power is used to promote and protect capitalist economic interests. in this system, states invest heavily in military power to secure access to resources, markets, and labor, and to protect their economic interests from potential rivals. 10 among the most definitive descriptions of the current crisis of capitalism is david harvey’s seventeen contradictions and the end of capitalism (2014). for a description of the environmental and climate crisis resulting from the expanding demands of humankind in a finite world, see naomi klein’s this changes everything: capitalism vs. the climate (2014) and david wallace-wells’ the uninhabitable earth: life after warming (2019). how low-income communities of color are forced to bear the disproportionate harms. notwithstanding all the hoopla about the “greening” of corporate capitalism, the growing consensus among both economists and ecologists is that the global political economy is unsustainable by its very nature. predicated on over-production, infinitely expanding markets, and growing levels of consumption among privileged portions of humanity—all on a finite planet-—perpetual economic growth has brought us to the threshold of abundance and the brink of ruination. ice sheets are melting. crop yields are diminishing. “strange” weather events are increasing. ninety-seven percent of the world’s native forests and 90 percent of large fish in the oceans are now gone. permanently gone. meanwhile, deserts are expanding, and sea levels are rising. water in much of the world is in short supply while the era of cheap oil is gradually coming to an end. elites continue to debate possible remedies within the current system, like a mandatory carbon tax, green market incentives and subsidies, alternative technologies, and stricter environmental rules. but it is unlikely that such “fixes” will take root with sufficient speed and sufficient spread to keep the world’s most vulnerable populations safe. the most optimistic scenario is for average temperatures to rise by between two and two and a half degrees by 2100 (ipcc 2022). while that is a level that most nations of the global north might endure, although with great disruption, it will cause great misery for peoples of the global south. in the context of international development, this means slow and agonizing suffering or death for hundreds of millions of people. 10 the health of the planet and the health of humanity are inextricably linked, and neglecting the former will ultimately compromise the latter. the profound changes needed to sustain human and earth communities in the future will require not just new machines and regulations, but a new consciousness. “for some,” says yale professor james speth in bridge at the edge of the world (2008), “it is a spiritual awakening—a transformation of the human heart. for others it is a more intellectual process of coming to see the world anew” (4). many other writers and thinkers, notably pope francis (2015) and david korten (2006), argue that without some moral, christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(2), winter 2023 slimbach, asking tough questions about transformational development 58 religious, or spiritual imperative, the kinds of changes required to solve the questions cannot be addressed with any sort of urgency, if at all. unfortunately, the possibility of a broad spiritual transformation faces off with what economic historians and political scientists call “path dependence” (see north, 1990). once a specific economic and political path is taken, it can be difficult or impossible to reverse course, leading to the creation of self-reinforcing patterns and lock-in to certain outcomes. capitalism is not just a mode of production, but what ethicist daniel m. bell, jr. (2012) calls an “economy of desire.” few people today desire to minimize, much less relinquish, what they have come to regard as “the good life.” once our bodies and psyches are habituated to a way of life based on overproduction and overconsumption, it is hard for us to imagine an alternative. it is simply easier, cheaper, more convenient, and more comfortproducing to do the wrong thing: to drive private cars and trucks, to travel the world in airplanes or on cruise ships, to eat fast food, to build and furnish large houses, to spend hours on end in front of screens, and to buy loads of non-essential goods from amazon or walmart. moreover, most people in poor countries want all the stuff that defines “normal” and “success” in rich, industrialized nations. no one seems to know how to turn the system off, or even down, without economic collapse. if it goes well for the world’s poor, it is going to go very badly for the planet. “our economic system and our planetary system are now at war” (klein 2014, 17). that, in short, is the ultimate conundrum facing the international development community. our excursus on militarized economic power is intended to emphasize the urgency of systemic reforms in the global political economy, a largely neglected dimension of advocacy for christian development organizations. in his day, jesus stood with the poor and marginalized against political and economic interests that privileged the wealthy and powerful. additionally, christian teaching on stewardship of the earth challenges the notion that the natural world exists solely for human exploitation and economic gain. providing aid and assistance to those most in need is certainly important, but they are not sufficient to address the root causes of poverty and environmental damage bound up with an economy at war with many forms of life on earth, including human life. 11 11 theologians that include walter brueggeman, walter wink, daniel m. bell, kathyrn tanner, and ched myers have written extensively on the intersection of faith and politics, and the prophetic role of the church in critiquing shalom-betraying political and economic systems. myers’ book binding the strong man: a political reading of mark's story of jesus (2008) offers a trenchant critique of us foreign policy and predatory forms of capitalism, along with a theological framework for resistance to these systems. tough questions 1. in what ways has your family background, theological education, and ideological leanings shaped your perspectives on us foreign policy and the global us american military ‘footprint’? 2. are policy advocacy, community organizing, and other actions that prioritize economic justice, environmental sustainability, and human rights legitimate areas of public engagement for christian ngos? 3. what does our theology say about the importance of environmental responsibility? why must the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor be heard together? what keeps christian organizations from tackling big environmental issues like climate change, biodiversity loss, deforestation, and resource (oil, gas, and mineral) depletion? what goals might christian ngos set for themselves in these areas? although the integral mission/transformational paradigm seeks to reconcile soul and body, the spiritual and the social, personal salvation and community development, the “ecological” and “geopolitical” have been woefully under-theorized. the most popular sources of christian development theory—books like walking with the poor, when helping hurts, toxic charity, and the shrewd samaritan—are strikingly silent about the ecological crisis, militarized globalism, and how the dominant extractivist worldview has led to the destruction of ecosystems, the displacement of communities, and the exacerbation of climate change. 4. given the realities of global poverty, increasing income/wealth inequality, and excessive levels of consumption and material waste in the global north, what is expected of christian organizations committed to the welfare of the poor and dispossessed? 5. our current economic system works to create immense wealth and to grow economies, but morally, how does it work? what does it do to people and planet, not just for them? do the internal mechanisms of capitalism act to preserve and protect the earth’s ecological processes and biodiversity? do they enable people to live in caring relation to animals, plants, and the world of nature? do they encourage people to christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(2), winter 2023 slimbach, asking tough questions about transformational development 59 desire and delight in god? do they strengthen the world’s cultural and religious traditions and identities that provide meaning, direction, and joy in life? in other words, in what ways does advanced capitalism nurture and/or hinder transformational development? faith and field partnerships within evangelical circles, one of the rarely disputed principles of community change is “the centrality of the church.” appeal is made to paul’s letter to the ephesians: “that through the church, the manifold wisdom of god should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms….” (3:1012; see also matthew 13:31-33). what interpreters of paul typically have in view is the church as a social institution, constituted by collective worship, the reading of scripture, preaching and sacraments, its care for the afflicted, and its embodiment of the character of jesus. in other words, it is a visible, organic, organized local church. such location-specific congregations are regarded by many as the primary, if not exclusive, agent of the kingdom of god on earth, and central to an evangelical understanding of transformational development. this position is concisely conveyed by lesslie newbigin in the gospel in pluralist society (1989): “the primary reality of which we have to take into account in seeking for a christian impact on public life is the christian congregation… the only answer, the only hermeneutic of the gospel, is a congregation of men and women who believe it and live it” (227). one strength of newbigin’s argument is its emphasis on living out the gospel in community. the church is not just a repository for ancient beliefs and rituals; it exists to form christ-like people who manifest, in deed and word, the healing of creation (the kingdom of god). at its best, the local church is an incubator for growing sinners into saints. “saints cannot exist without a community,” insists stanley hauerwas. “they require, like all of us, nurturance by a people who, while often unfaithful, preserve the habits necessary to learn the story of god” (1981, 89-90). at the level of human association, then, churches (and other communities of religious conviction) share a belief in the dignity and freedom of persons. they represent one of the few sanctuaries, especially in poor communities, where human care, kindness, forgiveness, hope, sharing, healing, and character formation can be witnessed. their focus is on what is good for human beings as such, and not on what is good exclusively for a nation state, much less an empire. this moral and political autonomy enables them to concentrate on shaping honest, trust-worthy, and compassionate people. the question remains of precisely how local churches can and should be involved in community transformation efforts. tim keller, in generous justice (2010), calls upon dutch theologian abraham kuyper to provide an answer. kuyper’s conviction is that local churches are designed to support the physical, spiritual, psychological, and social welfare of congregants. but kuyper thinks that robust community development and social reform are best left to specialized agencies. he refers to this differentiation of tasks as “sphere sovereignty.” while he believes “there is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which christ, who is sovereign overall, does not cry: ‘mine!’,” sociologically he recognizes that local churches are not designed to directly impact all spheres of society. kuyper distinguishes, helpfully, between the institutional church (believers gathered in worship, instruction, sacraments, and service) and the organic church (believers scattered to live out their faith in various spheres of society). the institutional (local) church has a particular “sphere” of responsibility: to assemble believers and form disciples, who will then take their faith into their own family and community spheres of influence. while the institutional church could be expected to nurture and support congregants as godly city planners, physicians, agronomists, and filmmakers, these persons would not be expected to impact the community through the local church. their primary social influence and development impact would take place through the private enterprises, government agencies, and specialized ngos in which they serve. keller reminds us that the local congregation, like any voluntary organization, cannot do all things well. in when helping hurts, corbett and fikkert (2012) offer an intervention framework for christian agencies working in disadvantaged communities. at one stage of aid there is relief—the provision of immediate, temporary assistance to people affected by crises, such as natural disasters, conflicts, or epidemics. relief may include emergency food and water, medical care, and search-and-rescue operations. then there is rehabilitation, which focuses on rebuilding critical infrastructure (e.g., homes, hospitals, electrical and water supply systems) and bringing persons or communities to self-sufficiency through agriculture, education, job creation/training, and the like. finally, there is development, which aims to support long-term community wellbeing through activities that may include improving access to education and healthcare services, promoting economic growth by giving microloans to low-income individuals or groups, and community-based conservation initiatives. unsurprisingly, community interventions undertaken by local churches in urban and rural poor communities tend to cluster around relief (charity) efforts rather than rehabilitation and development initiatives. most congregations in disadvantaged communities simply lack the resources and technical christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(2), winter 2023 slimbach, asking tough questions about transformational development 60 expertise needed to undertake long-term development programs that require sustained investment, planning, and coordination. moreover, relief activities often provide more immediate and visible benefits to local communities as faith-based organizations use their grassroots reach and highly motivated volunteers to provide practical assistance to those in need. local churches tend to excel in three dimensions– the spiritual (self ➔ god), the psychological (self ➔ self), and the interpersonal (self ➔ others). it is when they attempt to act outside these three capacities that they face severe limitations. again, this is especially true within resource-poor areas of the world. but even within the us, with approximately 385,000 religious congregations and an abundance of assets, the worlds of business, law, politics, higher education, and popular entertainment remain intensely materialistic and secular. furthermore, although hundreds of thousands of christian congregations and denominations are involved in innumerable community betterment projects, i am not aware of any that have catalyzed community transformation with scale and impacts comparable to specialized ngos like bangladesh rural advancement committee (brac) and grameen bank in bangladesh; the edhi foundation and orangi pilot project in pakistan; and organizations like partners in health, the fistula foundation, amref health africa, and slum dwellers international (sdi), which work in multiple countries. this may indicate two things. first, that god’s gifts of wisdom and service can, and often are, exercised in ways consistent with god’s design for creation largely apart from the institutional church and oftentimes without leaders from the organic church. “common grace” teaches that god’s goodness is the “light that lightens everyone coming into the world” (john 1:9). the operations of the holy spirit, “poured out upon all flesh,” act to both restrain evil in the world and to enable unbelievers to do good works (see also rom. 2:15; acts 17:22; luke 6:33). secondly, the institutional church shines brightest when it cultivates among members a vital spirituality that can then drive and sustain them as they deploy their hope, passion, and talent in non-churchly structures whose sphere it is to understand technically complex things like how to lay sewage lines, establish high-quality schools and health clinics, and administer savings co-ops. this does not mean that non-churchly structures don’t have their own challenges, especially when it comes to forging truly authentic partnerships between northern and southern/eastern organizations. mission 12 exposés like michael maren’s the road to hell (1997), dambisa moyo’s dead aid (2009), and william easterly’s the white man’s burden (2006) argue that ngos often sustain a system of dependency and self-perpetuation that undermine local initiatives for self-reliant development. agencies and development ngos are often touted as the perfect non-church solution to the world’s development challenges. aren’t they altruistic, nimble, and flexible, involving highly trained and highly committed workers? haven’t they proven their capacity to mobilize funds and people to address community problems? while careful distinctions must be made among the astonishing number of ngos (in uganda alone there are an estimated one thousand registered foreign and indigenous ngos), we should not assume, a priori, that they are more grassroots, more participatory, more responsive, more credible, and hence more effective than local churches. to be sure, many do inspired work, making a concrete difference in impossible places. but ngos are also businesses— some of them big businesses–that aim to maximize clients, market share, donor funds, and political influence. in many parts of the world, ngos have also become the latest vehicle for upward mobility among gifted national leaders who often learn from their foreign counterparts how to pose children for photographs, handle donors, create websites and brochures… and make a good living. 12 if productive collaborations between ngos are challenging on many levels, partnering with local or national government agencies adds even more complexity to the development mix. although contracts between governments and development ngos are increasing, both parties may not be sure that the potential benefits outweigh the risks. evangelical churches and parachurch agencies legitimately wonder: will the opportunity for increased scale and state financing come with the imposition of regulations and restrictions on our religious activities? government agencies, too, have good reason to ask: will faith-based ngos prioritize the spread of their religious over official development goals? and will they threaten the government’s authority and legitimacy in places where religion and politics are tightly intertwined? suspicion can run in both directions. my own experience suggests that governments everywhere are generally supportive when communitybased organizations or federations substitute state services like education, safe drinking water, electrification, housing, health care, education, and job training. their discomfort grows in proportion to ngo success in empowering people to demand (or resist) changes in the structure of society. government’s first concern is almost always to retain power and defend the status quo. consequently, few political officials will lend their support to independent, protest-oriented grassroots movements that seek to raise public christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(2), winter 2023 slimbach, asking tough questions about transformational development 61 awareness about a particular issue. at that point, they may appear more of a threat than an ally. this suggests that people-centered, self-reliant development, if successful, will inevitably experience an ebb and flow of cooperation and tension within the high politics of state relations with civil society. like all development, selfhelp is inherently political: it is the struggle to control the future. advocacy work that addresses the root causes of poverty, injustice, and inequality necessarily involves political action. this may help to explain why evangelical christian churches and development agencies have historically shied away from direct involvement with social movements. the majority were absent from, or even opposed to, the trade union movement, the suffragette movement, the civil rights movement, the nuclear disarmament movement, the united farmworkers movement, the disability rights movement, the animal rights movement and, more recently, the occupy, black lives matter, and climate action movements. 13 the same was true with evangelical support for brazil's land equity movement, the german peace movement, the mobilization against apartheid in south africa, the campaign against blood diamonds in sierra leone, the women’s movement in liberia, and the “food riots” in burkina faso and cameroon. the reasons are no doubt complex and may depend on a variety of factors, including political conservatism, an emphasis on personal piety over structural change, concerns over political correctness, and historical-cultural context. but it is noteworthy that these movements all envisioned some form of “transformational development,” i.e., a fundamental change in the nature, values, internal relationships, and social functions of institutions. they also echo the kind of non-compliance with ruling authorities and their false values that is illustrated throughout the new testament (see acts 4: 18-20; acts 5:29; rev. 13). to sum up: one of the most significant opportunities for churches and other faith-based organizations in development contexts is to forge strategic linkages with non-churchly ngos, government agencies, civic elites, and social movements to influence public policy and pressure decision-makers to act consonant with kingdom goals. on several occasions jesus eagerly welcomed signs of faith among women and men outside the house of israel and urged jews to learn from their example (lk. 4:14-30; lk. 7:110; mt. 15:21-8; lk. 10:25-37; lk. 17:18). not only does this reveal a witness of common grace in the heart, 13 this has begun to change in recent years. numerous faith-based relief and development organizations are now involved in social and environmental justice activism. these include the mennonite central committee, tearfund, caritas internationalis, catholic relief services, christian aid, international justice mission, the national council of churches, and interfaith power and light. conscience, and reason of every creature, regardless of culture and creed; it also provides the common ground needed to labor side-by-side with allies (other believers) and co-belligerents (sympathetic non-believers) on behalf of community shalom. newbigin underscores the necessity of engaging every sector of society in the work of creational healing: the christian will be eager to cooperate with people of all faiths and ideologies in all projects which are in line with the christian’s understanding of god’s purpose in history… every day of our lives we have to make decisions that we cannot take without regard to the others who share the story. they may be christians, muslims, hindus, secular humanists, marxists, or some other persuasion. they will have different understandings of the meaning and end of the story, but along the way there will be many issues in which we can agree about what should be done. there are struggles for justice and freedom in which we can and should join hands with those of other faiths and ideologies to achieve specific goals, even though we know that the ultimate goal is christ and his coming in glory and not what our collaborators imagine (1989, 221). tough questions danladi musa (2012), a regional advisor for tearfund nigeria, complicates the idea of “the local church as primary development agent” in an article published by the micah network: what usually happens is that development departments are set up at the church denominational levels and are given the responsibility to carry out development programs at the community level. in other cases, para-church organizations employ staff to carry out development programs through local churches to reach the broader community. typically, local churches see themselves as beneficiaries of development programs, not instigators of them. the local church supports the efforts of the development department or the para-church organization. most local churches see their ministry as limited to evangelism, teaching, christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(2), winter 2023 slimbach, asking tough questions about transformational development 62 and discipleship. social work is often limited to financial and material assistance to the needy. little or no efforts are made to mobilize communities to take action to solve common problems that affect the community. 1. does musa accurately portray typical ngo-local church relations? how should christian ngos from the global north relate to local churches in the global south? what are the best ways to approach such partnerships? what are the major pitfalls? 2. why do many christian congregations and development agencies tend to shy away from partnerships with non-christian faith communities, non-sectarian grassroots ngos, municipal government agencies, and non-violent protest movements? how accurately does james davison hunter diagnose the problem, and what implications might it have for the work of christian ngos? christians tend to believe that cultures are shaped from the cumulative values and beliefs that reside in the hearts and minds of ordinary people… this is why christians often pursue social change through evangelism and conversion… but the hearts and minds of ordinary people are relatively insignificant if the goal is to change cultures at their deepest levels… cultural change at its most profound level occurs through dense networks of elites operating in common purpose within institutions at high-prestige centers of cultural production… thus, for all the talk of world changing and all the good intentions that motivate it, the christian community is not, on the whole, remotely close to a position where it could actually change the world in any significant way (2010, 234-235). 3. what missiological, theological, sociological principles (“theory of change”) are implicit within your organization’s external relationships (partnerships, networks, alliances, etc.)? conclusion christian rda agencies are, among other things, learning organizations. as such, they depend on constructive discussions on sensitive issues, representing differing perspectives, to continuously refine their approach to addressing global problems. a younger, more racially diverse generation of christian workers is preparing to assume leadership positions within our organizations. many have distanced themselves from evangelicalism as a “theo-political brand” and now identify as “evangelical-adjacent,” “post-evangelical” or “ecumenical.” this broader ecclesiological and theological shift prompts christian rda organizations to re-evaluate their internal culture and operational strategy in accordance with the eschatological vision of “a new heavens and a new earth” (isa. 65, rev. 21). the “tough questions” posed in this essay only begin to tap the conceptual and strategic complexities involved in world betterment on a christian basis. our hope is that organizations will give them sufficient airtime in honest conversations around conference tables or virtual tables to build more nuanced understandings, strengthen relational bonds, and ultimately help shape more thoughtful, inclusive, collaborative, dynamic, and impactful organizations. references bebbington, david. 1989. evangelicalism in modern britain. london: routledge. bell, daniel m. 2012. the economy of desire: christianity and capitalism in a postmodern world. grand rapids: baker academic. chomsky, noam. 1993. year 501: the conquest continues. boston: south end press. corbett, steve and brian fikkert. 2012. when helping hurts: how to alleviate poverty without hurting the poor and yourself. chicago: moody publishers. easterly, william. 2006. the white man's burden: why the west's efforts to aid the rest have done so much ill and so little good. new york: penguin press. hammond, wendy. “are missions organizations you support excellent?” crcna network, september 4, 2018, https://network.crcna.org/topic/church-strategymission/global-mission/are-missions-organizationsyou-support-excellent. accessed march 24, 2023. harvey, david. 2014. seventeen contradictions and the end of capitalism. oxford: oxford university press. hauerwas, stanley. 1981. a community of character: toward a constructive christian social ethic. notre dame, in: university of notre dame press. hunter, james davison. 2010. to change the world: the irony, tragedy, and possibility of christianity in the late modern world. new york: oxford university press. intergovernmental panel on climate change (ipcc). 2022. “nationally determined contributions under the paris agreement. synthesis report by the secretariat.” geneva: ipcc, november. jones, e. stanley. 1972. the unshakeable kingdom and the unchanging person. nashville: abingdon press. keller, timothy. 2010. generous justice: how god's grace makes us just. new york: dutton. https://network.crcna.org/topic/church-strategy-mission/global-mission/are-missions-organizations-you-support-excellent https://network.crcna.org/topic/church-strategy-mission/global-mission/are-missions-organizations-you-support-excellent https://network.crcna.org/topic/church-strategy-mission/global-mission/are-missions-organizations-you-support-excellent christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(2), winter 2023 slimbach, asking tough questions about transformational development 63 king jr., martin luther. 1967. “a time to break the silence” sermon. riverside church, new york, ny, april 4. kinnaman, david. 2011. you lost me: why young christians are leaving church and rethinking faith. 2011. grand rapids: baker books. kinzer, stephen. 2006. overthrow: america's century of regime change from hawaii to iraq. new york: times books. klein, naomi. 2014. this changes everything: capitalism vs. the climate. new york: simon & schuster. korten, david c. 2006. the great turning: from empire to earth community. san francisco: berrett-koehler publishers. lupton, robert d. 2011. toxic charity: how churches and charities hurt those they help (and how to reverse it). chicago: moody publishers. mann, michael. 2005. incoherent empire. london: verso. maren, michael. 1997. the road to hell: the ravaging effects of foreign aid and international charity. new york: free press. mcgavran, donald a. 1980. understanding church growth. grand rapids, mi: wm. b. eerdmans publishing. moyo, dambisa. 2009. dead aid: why aid is not working and how there is a better way for africa. new york: farrar, straus and giroux. musa, danladi. 2012. "the church and community development in nigeria." in bessenecker, scott a. chris j. h. wright, and lon allison. eds. integral mission and the micah mandate: a call to compassionate witness, justice, and service, 82-90. waynesboro, ga: authentic media. myers, bryant. 2011.walking with the poor. 2nd ed. maryknoll, ny: orbis books. myers, ched. 2008. binding the strong man. maryknoll, ny: orbis books. newbigin, lesslie. 1989. the gospel in a pluralist society. grand rapids: wm. b. eerdmans publishing co. niebuhr, reinhold. 1932. moral man in immoral society: a study in ethics and politics. new york: charles scribner's sons. north, douglass c. 1990. institutions, institutional change and economic performance. cambridge university press. nussbaum, martha. 2011. creating capabilities: the human development approach. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. pew research center. 2019. in u.s., decline of christianity continues at rapid pace. retrieved from https://www.pewforum.org/2019/10/17/in-us-decline-of-christianity-continues-at-rapid-pace/ plantinga jr., cornelius. 1995. not the way it’s supposed to be: a breviary of sin. grand rapids: eerdmans. pope francis. 2015. laudato si': on care for our common home. vatican city: libreria editrice vaticana. rilke, rainer maria. 2004. letters to a young poet. translated by m.d. herter norton. new york: w. w. norton & company. https://genius.com/rainer-maria-rilke-letter-fourannotated. speth, james gustave. 2008. the bridge at the edge of the world: capitalism, the environment, and crossing from crisis to sustainability. new haven: yale university press. united states department of defense. 2000. joint vision 2020. washington, d.c.: department of defense. volf, miroslav. 2011. a public faith. grand rapids: brazos press. wallace-wells, david. 2020. the uninhabitable earth: life after warming. new york: crown. walsh, brian and richard middleton. 1984. the transforming vision: shaping a christian worldview. downers grove: intervarsity press. wolterstorff, nicholas. 1983. until justice and peace embrace. grand rapids: eerdmans. wydick, bruce. 2012. the shrewd samaritan: faith, economics, and the road to loving our global neighbor. chicago: moody publishers. zuckerman, phil. 2020. society without god: what the least religious nations can tell us about contentment, 2 nd ed. new york: new york university press. 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 ph.d. 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 about:blank about:blank https://genius.com/rainer-maria-rilke-letter-four-annotated https://genius.com/rainer-maria-rilke-letter-four-annotated mailto:rslimbach1@gmail.com christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(2), winter 2020 kiš, cabus, romo, and welch, “we are poor, but we are developed” 93 “we are poor, but we are developed:” differential perceptions of “development” among key stakeholder groups in the philippines adam d. kiš, jovy conde cabus, tzaddi romo, and cheyanne welch this mixed-methods study conducted in the philippines explores the perceptions of various stakeholders in the international development process on the meaning of the word “development.” it also measured the extent of differences between stakeholder groups (adventist development and relief agency [adra] employees, government liaisons, and beneficiaries) on their perceptions of what “development” means. results show that approximately half of the self-generated indicators associated with the word “development” overlap between stakeholder groups, and approximately half are unique to each stakeholder group. in addition, the differences measured between stakeholder perceptions are statistically significant using anova and manova procedures. the implications for these different perceptions according to stakeholder group are discussed. furthermore, the implications for faith-based ngos working in development (such as adra) are also discussed. introduction and literature review “development.” this single word has inspired countless humanitarian efforts, spawned a multibilliondollar industry, and impacted every country in the world. one might expect such a powerful term to have a universal definition; alas, it does not (heryanto and lutz 1988; arndt 1981). one of the major divisions is whether to view it from a macro or micro perspective; is development about gdp growth and the institutions that support (or hinder) it, or is it about small agencies and local governments addressing the specific needs of the poor? much theoretical discussion has taken place around these questions, but ultimately “development” is an “essentially contested concept” (gallie 1956). in addition to these theoretical discussions, abundant anecdotal evidence repeatedly affirms that the concept of “development” is not understood in the same way by everyone. to show this conclusively, rigorous academic research is required. even if perceptions differ between individuals, there may be some commonality between groupings of people that share certain characteristics. what is salient when it comes to defining the term “development,” is 1) whether there is cohesive perception within stakeholder groups involved in the development process, 2) whether there is commonality between stakeholder groups, and 3) what the implications of any differences between stakeholder groups might be for long-term outcomes of development interventions. this study focuses primarily on the second question, while touching upon the first and third. a fair amount of literature addresses similar – though not identical – questions. we have organized that literature into classes, each one progressively fulfilling more criteria that we deem important for a rigorous empirical study on the meaning of “development” to have (these are the same criteria upon which we designed our own study). for example, studies should ideally address the meaning of “development” directly, and not simply through associated terms. ideal studies should also compare at least two perspectives on what “development” means. we are especially interested in studies that include beneficiary perspectives, and not just the perspectives of those on the giving end of development assistance. finally, it is important that studies that meet all of the previous criteria also be empirically-based rather than reason-based; we sought studies that were field-tested, and not just conceived through rational means. these search criteria are summed up in table 1. christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(2), winter 2020 kiš, cabus, romo, and welch, “we are poor, but we are developed” 94 c la ss 1 c la ss 2 c la ss 3 c la ss 4 c la ss 5 c la ss 6 defines “development” x x x x includes multiple perspectives x x x includes beneficiary perspectives x x x field researched x table 1: literature search criteria and classes of studies found class 1 studies are those that do not directly address the definition of “development” itself, but rather explore concepts related to development. additionally, these studies did not consider multiple perspectives and they are not field researched. nevertheless, they are included in the literature review because they highlight the substantial scholarly activity around the semantics of key development terms. studying the meaning of development terms is clearly not a fringe exercise. examples include cornwall and brock (2005), who consider how “participation,” “empowerment,” and “poverty reduction” have morphed over time to mean very different things than before, and how this change in meaning impacts those terms’ ability to engender development. holmberg and sandbrook (1992) argue that “sustainable development” needs to be more precisely defined. tipple and speak (2005) advocate for defining “homelessness” in situ so that homeless people can be accurately identified and targeted for development assistance. eyben and napier-moore (2009) discuss how the meaning of “women’s empowerment” within the context of international development has many shifting meanings, depending upon who is wielding it and what their intentions are. and campbell and vainio-mattila (2003) posit that “participatory development” and “community-based conservation” are related terms, and advocate for further exploration and clearer definition of those terms as a means of making them function synergistically. 1 the organization for economic co-operation and development’s development assistance committee. the oecd-dac serves as a forum for the world’s most developed countries to discuss and coordinate aid strategy. there is much overlap between g7 and oecd-dac membership, although oecd-dac membership is considerably larger. being a member of oecd-dac is a tacit acknowledgement by other members that they consider the country to be fully developed, implying that its only role in development intervention should be that of an aid donor and not a class 2 studies continue in the same vein as class 1, but also consider the perspectives of beneficiaries. examples include marcus (2001), in which the impact of conservation projects in madagascar upon beneficiaries’ perceptions of the meaning of “conservation” are investigated. lipi (2016) explores the meaning of “dignity” and “empowerment” to beneficiaries of a women’s microcredit program in bangladesh. and quinn et al. (2003) assesses local perceptions of “environmental risk” in tanzania. class 3 studies begin to address the meaning of “development” itself. seers (2010), for example, defines “development” in the context of government priorities. he writes, “the questions to ask about a country’s development are therefore: what has been happening to poverty? what has been happening to unemployment? what has been happening to inequality? if all three of these have become less severe, then beyond doubt this has been a period of development for the country concerned” (seers 2010, 12). ingham (1993) analyzed how the meaning of “development” has shifted in response to the spirit of the times (people-centered development, sustainability, and so forth). yet all of her examples focus exclusively on the perceptions of those on the giving end of development assistance. blowfield (2005) reports on how some have redefined “development” as corporate social responsibility (csr), and suggests that such a redefinition may not be warranted. offutt and reynolds (2019) look at how “development” is defined by leaders of faith-based organizations (fbos), finding that many subscribed to the transformation paradigm: development as restoring broken relationships (human to human, human to god, etc.). diallo and thuillier (2004) discuss the success of “development” as defined by the perceptions of development project coordinators in africa. and sen (1999) elaborate upon “development as freedom” in a book by that title. class 4 studies take the focus on “development” of class 3 studies and include multiple perspectives. examples of this include horn and grugel’s study which reports that the sustainable development goals (sdg’s) are understood and prioritized differently according to stakeholder groups in ecuador (horn and grugel 2018). in this particular case, the two stakeholder groups under comparison are national government and quito city government officials. and a cluster of studies all pointed out the differences between oecd-dac 1 and non-oecd-dac donors christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(2), winter 2020 kiš, cabus, romo, and welch, “we are poor, but we are developed” 95 on what “development” means, highlighting how this can get in the way of streamlining cooperation and harmonizing work toward a common goal (zimmerman and smith 2011; bräutigam 2011; chandy and kharas 2011). class 5 studies move beyond simply including multiple perspectives to specifically including beneficiary definitions. for example, cavalcanti (2007) reports on the conflicting views of what “development” means to a development agency and its beneficiaries in brazil. cavalcanti do not, however, explore those perceptions directly with beneficiaries; instead, he speaks with development technicians and reports their negative opinions of beneficiaries for not getting on board with the project. bell and morse (2011) reveal how indicator selection for “development” can be tyrannical if exercised by powerful external agencies upon beneficiaries who don’t contribute to that definition. their article strongly advocates on behalf of the inclusion of beneficiary voices, but is not itself based upon field research with beneficiaries. finally, scheld (2018) discusses how the difference between ngos and the common people in defining haiti’s development trajectory ultimately holds back haiti’s development. class 6 studies meet all of the criteria specified by table 1: they focus on defining “development,” they include multiple perspectives, they specifically include beneficiary perspectives, and they are based upon field research. parkinson (2009) presents a case study of a development program in uganda, describing a mismatch between the assumptions of the government implementers and beneficiaries on what the goal of “development” is for the project. the impacts of this mismatch are analyzed in light of participatory monitoring and evaluation (pm&e), with the finding that beneficiaries do not buy into program implementers’ visions and feel that bureaucratic and accountability requirements are not their responsibility. carroll-bell (2015) analyzes three case studies of ngos in timor-leste that explore strategies for development that take local definitions into account. citing lewis and mosse (2006:9), carroll-bell writes, “the authors argue that significant ethnographic research is needed to elucidate ‘the ways in which development meanings are produced and negotiated in practice and how development processes and interactions have different significance for the various actors involved’” (2015:314). the present study is one such research project, though it differs from parkinson (2009) and carroll-bell (2015) in its methodological approach, avoiding the case study method in favor of an ethnographic survey. recipient. nevertheless, some countries play the role of donor, despite not being considered developed enough to merit oecd-dac membership (and, of course, many countries play only the role of aid recipients). it should not be construed that any of the foregoing literature that did not meet all of the criteria in table 1 is somehow deficient or inaccurate. the criteria in table 1 were merely used to highlight the characteristics of the research study that we aimed to do, and to demonstrate that many of the previous studies did not take the particular approach that we deemed necessary to fill a specific gap in the literature. background all of the foregoing contested meanings of “development” and its associated terms have an impact on the day-to-day operations of development agencies at all levels. even if large institutions don’t pay much attention to differences in perception at the grassroots level, differences of perception can still impact the rollout of development plans and programs. thus, this study was designed around one particular development agency and its associated stakeholders in order to understand the nature of perceptions on “development” at various levels, to highlight areas where those perceptions may differ, and to propose ways in which differential perceptions can be transformed from barriers into opportunities. the adventist development and relief agency (adra), with headquarters in the united states, is a faith-based international ngo that works in the domain of humanitarian relief and international development in more than 120 countries around the world. it is the official humanitarian arm of the seventhday adventist church. although it is motivated by love for god and concern for fellow humans, adra does not discriminate in its programs; one does not have to be a church member in order to benefit from adra’s projects, and church membership is not even a criterion for beneficiary selection. furthermore, adra does not discriminate by religion in its hiring practices, save for the most senior positions which do require membership in the seventh-day adventist church. finally, adra is explicitly non-proselytizing; there is no expectation of conversion on the part of beneficiaries, and such conversion is neither actively sought nor explicitly discouraged. though owned and operated by the seventh-day adventist church, adra exists to serve the needs of all humanity regardless of religious persuasion. to explore perceptions of the meaning of “development” by various stakeholder groups in the development process, we undertook a research project in leyte province, philippines in 2016. although the principal investigator (pi) never worked for adra in the philippines, he did work for adra in sub-saharan christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(2), winter 2020 kiš, cabus, romo, and welch, “we are poor, but we are developed” 96 africa for six years. having lived in the philippines for three years himself, the pi’s personal acquaintance with the management team, and adra philippines’ openness to research s helped the pi select the philippines as a research site. adra philippines provided logistical support for various aspects of the research project, but they neither commissioned it nor financed it. the research project was born entirely of the pi’s initiative and was completely paid for through research funding from the pi’s north american academic institution. this minimized research influence from adra philippines while providing access to adra philippines’ personnel and project sites. in consultation with the adra philippines team, leyte province was identified as a prime location to conduct this study. adra was heavily involved in disaster relief projects following typhoon haiyan (known locally as yolanda) which ravaged the province in 2013. over time, adra’s interventions transitioned to long-term development projects as the province was restored to previous operating levels by both national and international actors. as the majority of humanitarian agencies moved on to other disaster zones around the world, adra stayed behind, aiming to improve the quality of life for leyte residents beyond pre-haiyan levels. this means that adra has had a significant presence in the province – among the criteria deemed important for a study such as this. at the time of this study, adra philippines worked primarily in two regions of leyte province. the province occupies the northern three-quarters of leyte island, which is located on the east-central side of the philippine archipelago, facing the pacific ocean. in the city of tacloban and its environs (located in northeast leyte), adra operated the erl project (economic recovery in leyte), a livelihoods project that aimed to restore (and possibly supersede) previous levels of economic self-sufficiency for residents impacted by the storm. in the municipality of bato and its environs (located in southwest leyte), adra operated the masiglahi maternal and child health project (an acronym in the local language that means “better nutrition for mothers and children”), which “aims to reduce acute and chronic malnutrition among children within their first 1,000 days to prevent irreversible effects of malnutrition” (http://adra.ph/index.php/causes/masiglahi/). it is in these two project regions that the current research study was carried out. methodology this research study used a mixed-methods design. the initial qualitative phase took place in bato and its environs as a way to understand the nature of development stakeholders’ perceptions. open-ended methods were used to elicit descriptions of what people perceive when they hear the word “development.” from those descriptions, quantitative surveys were developed and administered in tacloban and its environs in order to determine the extent of differing perceptions among the various stakeholder groups. the hypotheses tested were as follows: h0: there is no significant difference between stakeholder groups on perceptions of the meaning of “development.” h1: there is a significant difference between stakeholder groups on perceptions of the meaning of “development.” creswell and clark (2006) describe a number of different models for mixed-method studies. some studies are primarily quantitative with the qualitative portion serving a supplementary role; others are primarily qualitative with the quantitative portion serving a supplementary role; and still others are equally weighted, with qualitative and quantitative portions serving complementary roles. this study falls under the first type: a study in which the primary aim is to measure quantitative differences between stakeholder groups in their perceptions of “development,” but where the qualitative phase was a necessary preliminary step which enabled better quantitative measurement. creswell and clark define this as an exploratory sequential design where the qualitative phase provides data upon which to build and test the quantitative phase. they write that this method is appropriate when one wants to “explore a phenomenon in depth and then measure its prevalence” (creswell and clark 2006, 75). since data collection occurred sequentially (qualitative first, then quantitative) and because development of the quantitative survey was dependent upon the results of the qualitative phase, both methods and results are presented in the same order in which they took place during data collection: qualitative methods then qualitative results, quantitative methods then quantitative results. but first, a word about the languages of data collection and how that impacted understanding of the word “development” for both stages. all interactions with adra personnel were conducted in english. knowledge of english is a prerequisite for most jobs at adra, and since english is one of the official languages of the philippines and is widely taught in schools, anyone with a substantial amount of education speaks english with a fair amount of fluency. the language in which most qualitative interviews and focus group discussions in the field were conducted, however, was cebuano, the local language in southwest leyte, and most quantitative surveys were conducted in waray-waray, the local language in northern leyte. christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(2), winter 2020 kiš, cabus, romo, and welch, “we are poor, but we are developed” 97 this is because beneficiaries have substantially less fluency in english than do adra employees. this raises an important concern: different languages were used to conduct a study on the conception of a single word, “development.” by the very act of translation, “development” becomes another word – one that has an infinite range of possibilities for correlation with the precise meaning in another language. still, the extent to which the inexactitude of translation may have affected our results in no way surpasses the extent to which the same inexactitude of translation impacts the sharing of a common perception by all stakeholders in the international development process. in other words, whatever challenges this introduced into the validity of our study were exactly mirrored by the challenges all development organizations face when working across a language barrier. that is precisely part of the point: beneficiaries may not understand the purpose and intent of development interventions in the same way as implementing actors partly due to linguistic difficulties. by entering that same murky netherworld of linguistic imprecision that adra philippines and other international development agencies dwell in on a constant basis, we could conduct a sort of participantobservation on how this affects communication and the sharing of perceptions and ideals pertaining to “development.” one might wonder why we chose to enter into this linguistic quagmire in the first place; why not interview all filipino study participants in their local language? the reason is that cebuano and waray-waray are only two of many languages spoken in the philippines, and they are not spoken by many adra employees, who hail from all regions of the philippines and speak a variety of mother tongues. thus, conducting research in english, cebuano, and waray-waray was the minimum number of languages possible to accomplish this study as designed. qualitative methods in order to generate descriptions of what development looks like in each stakeholder’s mind, semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions were held with respondents from each of three stakeholder groups: 1. adra philippines employees; 2. local government officials who directly liaised with adra projects; and 2 a barangay is a local government unit below the level of province, akin to counties or townships in north america. 3 although barangay health workers are technically government employees, these respondents were also beneficiaries of the adra project, and so were included in the focus group. 3. development beneficiaries in communities where adra was working. interviews of beneficiaries and government officials took place within the communities where adra was working, while interviews of adra employees took place within adra offices. eleven adra employees, one government official, and eighteen beneficiaries were interviewed one-on-one. across the thirty individuals interviewed, twenty were female and ten were male. professions of respondents varied from positions within adra to occupations within the communities, such as nutritionist, farmer, fisherman, nurse, housewife, and small business owner. the average years of education for beneficiaries was 7.8 years, for adra employees 15.2 years, and for all respondents 10.7 years. of particular concern was the low number of representatives from the local government. it was difficult to find them in the communities where adra was working because they frequently circulated within their jurisdiction, some of which fell outside adra project areas. thus, a focus group was convened in conjunction with a regularly-scheduled meeting of government officials as a way to boost the number of respondents from this category. this focus group consisted of seven individuals, all female. the professions within this group included barangay councilors 2 , government-employed nurses, and experts on agriculture and nutrition. the average years of education were 11.9. finally, although the overall number of beneficiaries who participated in individual interviews was adequate for our purposes, we conducted a focus group discussion with beneficiaries. the format of a focus group is such that it can elicit different kinds of information than would be generated during an interview. consequently, we convened a focus group of 10 beneficiaries in order to discuss what they perceive “development” to mean. all participants were female. the majority identified as housewives, while the others were seamstresses, single parents, and barangay health workers 3 . this group averaged 9.8 years of education. given that the interviews and focus group discussions were semi-structured, all respondents were asked the same initial questions, but were allowed to diverge as necessary in order to give a more complete picture of their perceptions. research assistants were also allowed to ask follow-up questions that were not part of the initial list in order to explore answers further. the starter questions were as follows: christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(2), winter 2020 kiš, cabus, romo, and welch, “we are poor, but we are developed” 98 1. when you hear the word “development,” what images/descriptions come to your mind? 2. describe for me what you think a developed country or society looks like. 3. describe for me what you think a developed community looks like. 4. describe for me what you think a developed person looks like. 5. do you consider yourself to be a developed person? why, or why not? the first question was intended to elicit free lists of association with the specific term “development.” it was also meant to get the respondents’ minds thinking about development generally before delving into more and more specific questions. questions 2 through 4 asked respondents to think about development at three successively narrower levels: large (country or society), medium (community), and small (individual). once the focus was on the individual, it set the stage for question 5, which asked about development on a personal level. qualitative results the primary purpose of the qualitative phase was to develop a list of terms that could be used to describe the meaning of “development” to various stakeholders. we were also interested in illustrative quotes that could expound upon those short descriptors. but in terms of qualitative analysis, we initially restricted ourselves to extracting specific terms from interviews and focus group discussions and then merging terms that were synonymic. for example, if one respondent said “cell phones” and another said “mobile phones”, we would consider that an identical response. we were not creating categories so much as standardizing terms. that being said, some respondents listed discrete items (i.e. “cell phones”) whereas others spoke in categories (i.e. “technology”). thus, our list of terms derived from respondents includes a mix of specific items and general categories. in all, we identified 75 discrete responses from across our sample, though not all were mentioned with the same frequency. some were mentioned by nearly all respondents, whereas others were mentioned by only one or two. table 2 lists those responses that recurred with relative frequency 4 . because we were particularly interested in comparing stakeholders’ perceptions, we listed each stakeholder group separately. responses from all five starter questions are collapsed in table 2, because the questions were all 4 relative frequency was subjectively defined, but in most cases, there was a clear threshold. for example, some terms elicited from one group might have two or three mentions, and then the next closest cluster had seven or eight. all inclusion decisions were made as a research team, and do not reflect the bias of a single person. designed to elicit different dimensions of the same concept. b e n ef ic ia ri es g o ve rn m en t a d r a employment/livelihood opportunities x x x good infrastructure x x x financial security x x x good transportation x x x support from the government/ngos x x x peace and security (crime-free) x x x improved living x x well-dressed people x x organized/clean society with working systems x x happiness/good attitude x hard-working citizens x community/family unity x self-control x good health knowledge and systems x x good governance x x progress/improvement x x technology/communication x success x high-quality people x polite/well-mannered people x intelligence/knowledgeable people x independent people x table 2: development is… response extraction of beneficiary data yielded 39 distinct terms; 14 were recurring and appear in table 2. response extraction of government data yielded 31 distinct terms; again, 14 were recurring and appear in table 2. response extraction of adra employee data yielded 52 distinct terms; coincidentally, exactly 14 were also recurring and appear in table 2. looking at the table, one notices some overlap among the three stakeholder groups. but there is also some difference. figure 1 is a venn diagram of how much overlap there is between stakeholder groups on christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(2), winter 2020 kiš, cabus, romo, and welch, “we are poor, but we are developed” 99 the meaning of “development.” it is based upon the data presented in table 2. figure 1: venn diagram of overlap between stakeholder perceptions (a = beneficiaries; b = government; c = adra) from figure 1, it becomes clear that slightly less than half (6 out of 14) of the perceptions of “development” are shared in common across all three stakeholder groups (abc). if one compares any two stakeholder groups (ab + abc, for example), slightly more than half of the perceptions are held in common. thus, for each stakeholder group, slightly less than half of their perceptions are completely unique. given that this was not a representative sample, however, one must be cautious about making overly extensive conclusions about any overlap in the general population’s perceptions on the meaning of the word “development.” such confidence is better suited to the quantitative analysis which took place during the latter phase of this study (see “quantitative results” below). it should be noted that exclusion of certain terms that were hardly mentioned by a particular stakeholder group does not mean that nobody from that group mentioned it at all. only that it was not a major recurring term. thus, for example, one should not read table 2 to say that nobody from the beneficiary group mentioned anything about good governance at all, only that it was not a major recurring term for beneficiaries, whereas it was for government workers and adra employees. digging deeper having completed our primary task of distilling vast amounts of information into discrete terms, we looked again at the narrative descriptions our respondents provided during interviews and focus group discussions. some illustrative quotes help place responses in context, and understand where respondents are coming from when they mention certain key terms. for example, when expounding upon her response that employment (one of the terms listed in table 2) is a key component of her definition of “development,” a 29-year-old female nutritionist officer from adra said that a developed person is someone “with a source of income, with a stable job, one who is independent and can provide for the people who are dependent on him without outside help or forces.” this also touches upon the themes of financial security and independent people. good infrastructure, on the other hand, means “good highways, a nice [taxi] terminal, a baywalk, [public] comfort rooms, and a good marketplace.” according to a 27-year-old beneficiary housewife. “many big houses, basketball courts, gymnasium, school buildings, and public comfort rooms,” added a 33-year-old beneficiary housewife. for one 33-year-old male adra employee, good infrastructure took a very specific shape: “uniformity of houses.” the concept of support from the government/ngos, while being shared across all three stakeholder groups, appears to be perceived differently, even if it was mentioned in common. many beneficiaries listed some form of external care as a sign of development, such as government projects to help poor people, ongoing support from international organizations, or remittances sent from relatives abroad. a 38-year-old beneficiary housewife said that, to her, development means getting “support from the government, many programs, and help from the president, especially during disasters.” note that beneficiaries did not speak of outside support as a means to attain development, but rather as a sign of being a developed society, community, or individual. developed people, in this conception, are those who are well-cared for on a long-term basis by benevolent external agencies. contrary to western conceptions of development bringing independence and selfsufficiency (see the following paragraph), many beneficiaries saw development as bringing ongoing dependence. although this study did not set out to establish whether or not the philippines is a clientelistic society, the belief that permanent dependence upon a wealthy benefactor is a marker of success is one hallmark of patron-client relationships, which is welldocumented in the literature (kiš 2014; hutchcroft 1997; auyero 2000; sun, zhu, and wu 2014; szwarcberg 2013). in contrast to the beneficiary view of social support, adra employees stressed that it was only to be a safety net for the poorest of the poor. a 35-year-old male adra employee emphasized that in a developed society, the government “supports those who are not well off,” but that such a society still “has poor people who haven’t taken full advantage of the opportunities afforded to them.” in other words, government support is a stop-gap measure, not a permanent fixture. many christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(2), winter 2020 kiš, cabus, romo, and welch, “we are poor, but we are developed” 100 adra employees mentioned the closely related theme of independence, stating that it is a necessary criterion for development. a 29-year-old female nutritionist officer said that “education is not a criterion because some are graduates but not developed because they are dependent.” social support and independence are not contradictory in this view; those who are developed are independent and don’t need social support; but social support exists to take care of those who are not developed yet. elaborating upon the idea of improved living, a 41year-old beneficiary housewife said, “development means there is hope to have a better life.” well-dressed people, according to a 24-year-old beneficiary housewife, means, “clothing, jewelry, accessories, physical appearance or grooming, having an education, being fluent in conversation, and having a good attitude.” happiness/good attitude was expressed by one 19-year-old female beneficiary student as “bundles of joy shared.” not only did beneficiaries view dependence upon wealthy benefactors as a positive marker for development, they also favored dependence upon each other as a sign of good development. many beneficiaries spoke of a developed society as being characterized by unity, sharing, cooperation, and caring within families and communities. a 52-year-old male farmer said that development means “being able to help others financially when needed, being able to easily lend money.” a 23-year-old female nutritionist officer described development as good health, saying that a developed person is “tall or the right height (or standard normal height), normal weight, has pimple-free skin, is knowledgeable about nutrition facts, has a complete set of teeth, and has clear vision.” good governance was described by a 27-year-old male adra nutritionist as “commitment and involvement of community leaders to any program, even though it’s not profitable to them.” a 25-year-old female social worker said that in a developed society, you have “visible government officials.” when asked to elaborate, she said that meant that they were out in the community doing their jobs, rather than holing up in an office somewhere refusing to mingle with their constituents. and a 32-year-old male accountant said that in a developed society, people “trust local government officials; they can see where their taxes go, and there is less corruption, more peace, and more security.” one member of the government focus group alluded to technology/communication as “having nice gadgets,” which she elaborated to mean cell phones, computers, and tablets. this idea was reinforced by the other members of the focus group; throughout the discussion, reference to technology and communication came up repeatedly. the government group also talked about development being associated with high-quality people, or “good-looking people”, as one respondent put it. a developed person is one with “good looks and gains weight,” said another. finally, when talking about intelligence/knowledgeable people, a 23-year-old female adra nutritionist officer said, “developed people are knowledgeable, living in reality.” self-perceptions of development given the wide range of definitions of “development,” it is perhaps not surprising that beneficiary answers to the final starter question – “do you consider yourself to be a developed person? why, or why not?” – were split almost equally three ways between “yes,” “partially,” and “no” (yes = 7 respondents; partially = 5; no = 6). of those who answered “yes” or “partially,” they frequently cited having achieved a satisfactory level on one or more dimensions of development that had already been identified. for example, “we are poor, but we are developed,” declared a 62-year-old beneficiary housewife. “my children managed to find good work and to give an example to others; they respect us very well. we are poor in money, but rich in manners.” this response acknowledged her poverty in one sense – financial – while affirming her wealth in another – having good manners and respect. “finding extra income is easy,” said a 35-year-old female small business owner. “many people are coming and asking for help, i have a good source of income, i am able to pay my debts and shop for clothes, and i am able to provide for the needs of my children.” and a 36-yearold male fisherman stated that he is developed because “i am doing my best to improve so i can be able to buy the things i want; i am happy because i have a fishing boat.” among adra employees, answers to the final question about personal development were mostly spread between “yes” and “partially” (yes = 5 respondents; partially = 4; no = 2). reasons given for being developed included “because i am independent,” “i have a good source of income,” and “i have (material possessions).” those who were more tentative about their personal development status equivocated that “development never stops; it’s continuous,” “i’m still learning and developing skills,” and “i’m still not developed enough.” quantitative methods the qualitative phase produced rich information that gave us insights into how development is perceived by the stakeholders under investigation. it also gave us christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(2), winter 2020 kiš, cabus, romo, and welch, “we are poor, but we are developed” 101 a list of terms to be used to illustrate perceptions of “development.” but it cannot tell us the extent of any differences in perception, nor even confirm whether there is any difference at all. since the respondents for the qualitative phase were not drawn using a probability sample, we cannot rule out that any apparent differences between groups are actually the result of sampling bias and not any real underlying variation. for that, we need a quantitative survey using an unbiased probability sample. that is the focus of phase two of this study. in order to test our hypotheses, we required a structured survey instrument that could be administered to each of the stakeholder groups, and that would detect similarities or differences of perception in the meaning of “development.” moreover, we wanted a locally relevant instrument which referenced ideas and artifacts from everyday filipino life. finally, we wanted our survey prompts to be standardized. for these reasons, we decided upon a pictorial survey. with words (“let me describe a scenario, and you rate how developed that image seems to be”), everyone would evaluate a different mental picture. with photographs, everyone would have the same image and would be evaluating the same survey prompt. because a survey of this kind has never been done before in the same way and same place, we developed a pictorial survey of our own. in the qualitative phase, respondents had converted the images in their heads into words; for the quantitative phase, we converted those words back into images. first, we took all 75 responses – including those that did not recur – and grouped them into categories. as described in the beginning of the “qualitative results”, we noted that some of the responses were discrete items (such as “cell phones”) and others were categories (such as “technology”). for clarity, we categorized all responses; those that were already categories remained so, and those that were discrete items were classified into categories. this was conducted through pile sorting of the 75 responses written out on index cards and was a team effort. after we had pile sorted all responses, we ended up with 22 categories, some containing as few as one item, others containing as many as eight. this process guided us when developing the pictorial survey. we ultimately depicted discrete items and images in our survey, rather than abstract categories. but we selected the items in such a way that they represented the full spectrum of categories. this way, we could avoid having, for example, ten survey prompts about technology and none about health. after selecting the items for the pictorial survey, we staged a series of photographs with props and local volunteers (who gave their informed consent, as did all interview and survey participants) in order to depict the selected terms. for example, figure 2 is the survey prompt for category 6 (technology/communication), item g. (cell phones); figure 3 is the survey prompt for category 15 (organized/clean society with working systems), item a. (garbage segregation). figure 2: survey prompt 6g figure 3: survey prompt 15a in some cases, we used several images to represent a category, such as 6.a. (computers) and 6.g. (cell phones), which both represented category 6 (technology/communication). notice also how the image in figure 3 is local in origin; recycling and garbage bins around the world look very different from those in leyte province. if we had simply used a wordbased survey, differences in mental image might mean that respondents weren’t evaluating the same thing. in all, forty pictures were produced that depicted terms derived from the qualitative phase. we did not want the survey to be too short to detect significant differences in perceptions, nor too long to maintain respondents’ attention. when administering the survey, we showed each of the pictures (printed on large photo paper) to respondents one at a time (figure 4), read the caption (such as “cell phones” or “garbage segregation”), and asked respondents, “on a scale of 15, with 1 being very underdeveloped and 5 being very developed, how developed does this image appear to christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(2), winter 2020 kiš, cabus, romo, and welch, “we are poor, but we are developed” 102 you? why?” the “why” was a way of triangulating back to the first phase of the study to see if a new set of respondents picked up on the same themes that the qualitative respondents had identified. it was also a way of validating the survey itself; if respondents regularly identified other elements in the images unrelated to the caption that influenced their responses, we could know that the images were not good depictions of their underlying themes. in practice, this never took place. this confirmed the face validity of our survey instrument. in addition, five of the survey questions were reversed; that is, they depicted scenes that we expected to be rated as not developed (such as slums or street beggars). inclusion of some reversed questions usually helps to increase the validity and reliability of a survey instrument because it measures the same concept from different angles. figure 4: survey data collection finally, we shuffled the stack of pictures among respondents to eliminate ordering bias, which can occur when survey prompts are always given in the same order. people may be influenced to answer questions in specific ways if they are preceded by certain other questions; shuffling the order of question administration canceled out this ordering effect. our initial cronbach alpha reliability measurement was .896, which is exceptionally good. however, all five reversed items presented problems; four of them had negative item-total correlations, and one of them had a very low positive item-total correlation (.069). our survey reliability analysis also indicated that the cronbach alpha could be significantly improved by deleting these five items from the questionnaire. having done so, we ended up with a cronbach alpha of .924 and no remaining problematic items. what this means in practical terms is that survey respondents didn't consistently understand reversed questions. far from improving the reliability of the survey, adding reversed items only muddled its comprehensibility. thus, our final survey questionnaire contained 35 items that were reliably understood by respondents. as with the qualitative phase, quantitative surveys were administered to each of the three different stakeholder groups: surveys of beneficiaries and government officials took place within the communities where adra was working, while surveys of adra employees took place at adra offices. the geographical separation of the primary locations of qualitative data collection (bato) and quantitative data collection (tacloban) minimized potential data contamination between the two groupings of respondents, as the two areas are approximately 150 km apart. the survey was administered to 249 adra project beneficiaries, fifteen local government officials, and thirteen adra employees. this represented the totality of adra employees not interviewed in the qualitative phase, the majority of local government officials liaising with adra projects in the area, and approximately 10% of the beneficiary population in the area (2,500 people were targeted by the erl project in the vicinity of tacloban). the sex ratio (female/male) for beneficiaries was 69.5/30.5, for adra employees was 35.7/64.3, and for local government officials was 73.3/26.7. as with the qualitative phase, professions of respondents varied from positions within adra to occupations within the communities, such as farmer, student, laborer, housekeeper, and small business owner. the average years of education for beneficiaries was 7.5 years, 14.5 for adra employees, and 9.1 for government officials. quantitative results after administering the surveys, we ran anova in spss to compare mean responses across stakeholder groups on each of the 35 questions (see appendix 1 for details). out of 35 survey questions, there were 11 (31.4%) with significant differences between at least some of the groups under comparison, which represents nearly a third of the survey questions. table 3 lists those variables with significant group differences, and also indicates which groups had significantly different means from the others. as can be seen from the table, question 6a was an anomaly; its test statistic indicated that there would be a significant difference in means between at least two groups, but its post-hoc test did not find any group differences. nevertheless, for the remainder of the group differences, it is clear that the adra group always differed with at least one of the other groups, and nearly always differed from both groups. the beneficiary and government groups, however, never differed significantly from each other. adra was clearly the standout group. christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(2), winter 2020 kiš, cabus, romo, and welch, “we are poor, but we are developed” 103 q u e st io n c ap ti o n g ro u p d if fe re n ce s5 2a getting support from different organizations 3a(2) having public comfort rooms 3e having a nice house 3h having a public market 5c owning a business 6a having computer access ??? 8e having basic furniture 12a studying well for school 14a(2) having a hospital nearby 20a having bus service 22a owning land table 3: significant differences between groups recall that the hypotheses under investigation were as follows: h0: there is no significant difference between stakeholder groups on perceptions of the meaning of “development.” h1: there is a significant difference between stakeholder groups on perceptions of the meaning of “development.” thus, table 3 is not a measure of agreement, but of difference. the remaining 24 out of 35 questions that do not appear on table 3 were those for which no significant differences appeared. the anova results 5 b = beneficiaries; a = adra; g = government. if groups are listed with a line between them, that means there was a significant mean difference between those groups. for each of the 35 questions could be viewed as testing 35 distinct sub-hypotheses; for some questions, the null hypothesis was rejected, whereas for others, the null hypothesis failed to be rejected. in order to make a determination on the overall hypothesis, we needed to look at the 35 questions collectively. for this, we ran manova (see appendix 1 for details). the manova test was highly significant. this means that when considered collectively, we can answer our overall research question: there is a significant difference between stakeholder groups on perceptions of the meaning of “development.” we reject the null hypothesis. as we saw with anova, about a third of the survey questions were responsible for this overall significant result. thus, stating that there is a significant difference between stakeholder groups on perceptions of the meaning of “development” does not mean that their perceptions differed in all cases, or that they always disagreed. it simply means that their perceptions differed often enough to be statistically significant. discussion and conclusions the qualitative phase provided useful terms for quantitative survey elaboration, as well as demonstrating the nature of differences in perceptions on key terms associated with the meaning of “development.” the quantitative phase confirmed that significant differences in perception about the meaning of “development” do exist between stakeholder groups, and those differences were always manifested between the adra group and the others. two particularly noteworthy findings are that beneficiary respondents focused on personal attributes (rather than structural ones) when defining “development,” and beneficiaries perceived “development” as meaning greater dependence on a benefactor (be it adra or the government) rather than greater independence. the reasons for these noteworthy findings could be varied. although we did not measure the wider population during this study, the default assumption is that adra beneficiaries do not significantly differ from the general population in their values and perceptions, meaning that these ideas and attitudes are widespread. indeed, the fact that the beneficiary group never differed from the government group (who were not adra beneficiaries) suggests that beneficiary perceptions are not solely a function of being recipients of adra’s aid. further evidence of adra’s significantly different perception of what “development” means is the fact (already noted) that two-thirds of beneficiary respondents answered “yes” or “partially” when asked if they themselves were developed persons. one can christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(2), winter 2020 kiš, cabus, romo, and welch, “we are poor, but we are developed” 104 presume that if adra is a development agency and it has selected those individuals as beneficiaries, then adra probably does not share the view that they are developed. what could account for those differences in perception? some possible explanations: 1. adra employees’ level of education is much higher than the average population. this is by virtue of the fact that adra jobs require minimum levels of education that exceed the average in the philippines. in school, adra employees may have been exposed to more new ideas. 2. once a person is employed by a development agency, much effort is typically expended to train them to see the world through the organization’s lens. adra employees may have simply learned to see things differently than their compatriots through explicit training. 3. finally, the adra group reported significantly more exposure to developed contexts than either of the other two groups. 6 perhaps exposure to developed countries alters one’s perception of what is possible, and what a developing country should aspire to. regardless of how one explains the differences in perception between adra and the other groups, an additional important question centers around what those differences mean for adra’s programs. how can adra’s means and ends reflect that the organization takes the perspectives of other stakeholders seriously? without being privy to the internal workings of adra philippines, we (the authors) do not presume to say whether or not adra philippines already does this, but we do suggest that development organizations working anywhere in the world should at least consider the possibility that their perceptions of “development” may differ from those of their fellow stakeholders. responses that take those differences seriously could include confirming stakeholder perceptions via a study (much like ours) and then crafting means and ends in such a way that they satisfy multiple stakeholder priorities. as a practical example, if adra philippines aims to diversify livelihoods for the sake of disaster resilience whereas beneficiaries desire to diversify benefactors that they can depend upon, then both ends can potentially be met by not only training beneficiaries in new professions (e.g. training some farmers how to run small businesses) but also by plugging them into existing 6 one demographic question asked respondents to indicate if they had ever been to what they would consider a developed country. although a few beneficiaries and government employees responded in the affirmative, the vast majority had not, whereas about half of adra employees had. professional networks (potential benefactors) which support those professions (e.g. a local small business association). in other words, taking beneficiary perspectives seriously doesn’t have to mean completely revamping programs and abandoning development agency goals. it can mean simply expanding program objectives to include goals that matter to beneficiaries as well. beyond explaining differences and considering how to take those differences seriously in programmatic terms, a third dimension is what those differences mean for evaluation. supposing one studies whether any differences in perception exist among stakeholders on the meaning of “development,” and supposing an organization adjusts its programs to satisfy multiple stakeholders, what will be the measures of success? will the organization focus merely on those aspects of development that interest its donors, or will the organization also hold itself accountable to beneficiary expectations? much has been written about how development agencies run the risk of feeling beholden only to their donors, as that is the source of continued financing and existence (see easterly 2007). faith-based ngos such as adra are not immune from these pressures, but we suggest that this is an area where faithbased ngos can take the lead in promoting and demonstrating an ethical treatment of fellow stakeholders than is greater than the norm. this is one way that a faith-based orientation can add value – integrating beneficiary community concerns into all phases of the development cycle (including evaluation) instead of simply going through the motions as a sort of tokenism just to please donors. this threefold approach to addressing differences in perception when they are discovered – explaining them, integrating them into development programs, and allowing them to inform and expand measures of success – can be applied at multiple levels. the most immediate level, of course, is the organization that participated in this investigation, adra philippines. next, the worldwide adra network may consider how to apply this approach elsewhere. finally, other agencies (particularly faith-based ones) may contemplate whether this is an appropriate model for them to follow as well. this study was noteworthy not only for its findings, but also for what it didn’t find. specifically, it is curious that spirituality did not appear significantly in respondent answers about what “development” means to them. adra is a faith-based ngo and the philippines is an overwhelmingly christian country (the only christian-majority nation in all of asia). while christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(2), winter 2020 kiš, cabus, romo, and welch, “we are poor, but we are developed” 105 spirituality did register in respondents’ answers, it did not register significantly, as one would expect. table 2 included only those items that had recurring mentions when voluntarily freelisted by respondents. and table 3 reported only those items for which there were statistically significant differences between groups. during freelisting, at least one respondent did mention that developed people are those who pray more often and are more faithful in going to church; but this was a rare mention, and therefore didn’t make the cut for table 2. nevertheless, the research team thought it might still be worthwhile to include at least one spiritual item on the quantitative survey, so we included an image of a woman praying as one of our survey prompts for respondents to evaluate on a scale of 1-5 (very undeveloped to very developed). this spiritual item did not make it onto table 3 either as being one of the items that differs between groups, but this does not mean that it wasn’t rated as highly developed. in fact, all three groups rated “prayer” as a 4 or above on average, meaning that they considered it an aspect that was either “developed” or “very developed.” since table 3 was looking for significant differences, and all stakeholders rated spirituality similarly, it didn’t appear on table 3, but this does not mean that it wasn’t considered important. it is not unprecedented that an item that was so rarely mentioned during freelisting scored so highly when presented as a fixed survey option. people do not always immediately think of things that are important to them when asked to freelist. for example, if one were to ask respondents who the most important people are in their lives, few respondents might list their boss, but if one presented respondents with fixed response options which included “boss,” more respondents might rate their boss as highly important. another explanation is also plausible: given adra’s non(religiously)-discriminatory stance in programming and hiring and its non-proselytizing orientation, respondents may have been initially reflecting what they thought adra wanted to hear. in fact, given that many ngos operating in the philippines are non-sectarian, perhaps the default assumption on the part of beneficiaries is that their benefactor is secular in nature and not interested in hearing about (or addressing) respondents’ spiritual welfare. only when the door is opened to the spiritual dimension by the benefactor do beneficiaries feel comfortable to go there themselves. this has implications for faith-based ngos. if they desire to address beneficiaries’ spiritual needs as well their physical ones, they must be explicit about their openness to address spirituality. if, on the other hand, faith-based ngos wish to focus primarily on the physical, leaving the spiritual aspect in the realm of motivations, then beneficiaries may perceive them as secular. clear communication in this area may help in better aligning understandings of “development.” in conclusion, definitions and understandings of what it means to be developed differ significantly between stakeholder groups, specifically between ngos and the others (beneficiaries and government liaisons). recognizing and addressing these differences is a stepping-stone to more ethical humanitarian efforts. references arndt, h. w. 1981. “economic development: a semantic history.” economic development and cultural change, 29(3):457—466. auyero, j. 2000. “the logic of clientelism in argentina: an ethnographic account.” latin american research review 35(3):55—81. bell, simon, and stephen morse. 2011. “sustainable development indicators: the tyranny of methodology revisited.” consilience, 6(1):222— 239. blowfield, michael. 2005. “corporate social responsibility: reinventing the meaning of development?” international affairs (royal institute of international affairs 1944-), 81(3):515—524. bräutigam, deborah. 2011. “aid ‘with chinese characteristics’: chinese foreign aid and development finance meet the oecd-dac aid regime.” journal of international development, 23(5):752—764. campbell, lisa m., and arja vainio-mattila. 2003. “participatory development and communitybased conservation: opportunities missed for lessons learned?” human ecology, 31(3):417— 437. carroll-bell, sam. 2015. “development alternatives in timor-leste: recasting modes of local engagement.” bijdragen tot de taal-, landen volkenkunde, 171(2/3):312—345. cavalcanti, joabe g. 2007. “development versus enjoyment of life: a post-development critique of the developmentalist worldview.” development in practice, 17(1):85—92. chandy, laurence, and homi kharas. 2011. “why can't we all just get along? the practical limits to international development cooperation.” journal of international development, 23(5):739—751. cornwall, andrea, and karen brock. 2005. “what do buzzwords do for development policy? a critical look at 'participation', 'empowerment' and 'poverty reduction'.” third world quarterly, 26(7):1043—1060. christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(2), winter 2020 kiš, cabus, romo, and welch, “we are poor, but we are developed” 106 creswell, john w., and vicki l. plano clark. 2006. designing and conducting mixed methods research. thousand oaks, ca: sage. diallo, amadou, and denis thuillier. 2004. “the success dimensions of international development projects: the perceptions of african project coordinators.” international journal of project management, 22:19—31. easterly, william. 2007. the white man's burden: why the west's efforts to aid the rest have done so much ill and so little good. new york: penguin books. eyben, rosalind, and rebecca napier-moore. 2009. “choosing words with care? shifting meanings of women's empowerment in international development.” third world quarterly, 30(2):285—300. gallie, w. b. 1956. “art as an essentially contested concept.” the philosophical quarterly (1950-), 6(23):97—114. heryanto, ariel, and nancy lutz. 1988. “the development of ‘development’.” indonesia, 46:1—24. holmberg, j., and r. sandbrook. 1992. “sustainable development: what is to be done?” in making development sustainable: redefining institutions, policy, and economics. edited by johan holmberg. washington: island press. 19—38. horn, philipp, and jean grugel. 2018. “the sdgs in middle-income countries: setting or serving domestic development agendas? evidence from ecuador.” world development, 109:73—84. hutchcroft, p. d. 1997. “the politics of privilege: assessing the impact of rents, corruption, and clientelism on third world development.” political studies 45(3):639—658. ingham, barbara. 1993. “the meaning of development: interactions between ‘new’ and ‘old’ ideas.” world development, 21(11):1803— 1821. kiš, adam d. 2014. “non-political clientelism: a lesson in confusion for sustainability.” oida international journal of sustainable development 7(7):75—80. lewis, david, and david mosse. 2006. “theoretical approaches to brokerage and translation in development.” in development brokers and translators: the ethnography of aid and agencies. edited by david lewis and david mosse, west hartford, ct: kumarian press. 1— 26. lipi, rahima k. 2016. “dignity and empowerment: an exploration of the microcredit experiences of women in rural bangladesh.” journal of international women's studies, 18(1):230—259. marcus, richard r. 2001. “seeing the forest for the trees: integrated conservation and development projects and local perceptions of conservation in madagascar.” human ecology, 29(4):381—397. offutt, stephen, and amy reynolds. 2019. “christian ideas of development: understanding the current theories, networks, and priorities of accord organizations.” christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(1):1—14. parkinson, sarah. 2009. “power and perceptions in participatory monitoring and evaluation.” evaluation and program planning, 32:229—237. quinn, claire h., meg huby, hilda kiwasila, and jon c. lovett. 2003. “local perceptions of risk to livelihood in semi-arid tanzania.” journal of environmental management, 68:111—119. scheld, patrick. 2018. “who controls haiti's destiny? an examination of haiti's underdevelopment, endless poverty, and the role played by ngos.” master’s thesis: the university of vermont. seers, dudley. 2010 [1979]. “the meaning of development.” in development theory: four critical studies, edited by david lehmann. new york: routledge. sen, amartya. 1999. development as freedom. new york: oxford university press. sun, x., j. zhu, and y. wu. 2014. “organizational clientelism: an analysis of private entrepreneurs in chinese local legislatures.” journal of east asian studies 14:1—29. szwarcberg, m. 2013. “the microfoundations of political clientelism: lessons from the argentine case.” latin american research review 48(2):32—54. tipple, graham, and suzanne speak. 2005. “definitions of homelessness in developing countries.” habitat international, 29:337—352. zimmerman, felix, and kimberly smith. 2011. “more actors, more money, more ideas for international development co-operation.” journal of international development, 23(5):722—738. adam d. kiš is an associate professor of anthropology at burman university in canada. dr. kiš has also lived in benin, guinea, sao tome and principe, madagascar, the philippines, and the united states. he worked for adra for six years. author email: adamkis@gmail.com jovy conde cabus is an independent consultant who has worked with a variety of organizations over the years, including adra philippines. she is currently a mailto:adamkis@gmail.com christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(2), winter 2020 kiš, cabus, romo, and welch, “we are poor, but we are developed” 107 tutor at rarejob, inc., an organization that teaches the english language to japanese clients. author email: cabusjovy26@gmail.com tzaddi romo is an independent research consultant in the philippines. he holds degrees in secondary education and theology. he has worked in the marshall islands and has served on the editorial staff of the research journal of mountain view college. author email: romotzaddi7@gmail.com cheyanne welch is a recent graduate of burman university’s international studies program. she is a freelance journalist who has lived in egypt, the marshall islands, and the united states. she has worked for a better world canada as an intern. author email: cheyannewelch@burmanu.ca mailto:cabusjovy26@gmail.com mailto:romotzaddi7@gmail.com mailto:cheyannewelch@burmanu.ca christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(2), winter 2020 kiš, cabus, romo, and welch, “we are poor, but we are developed” 108 appendix anova details because sample sizes were not equal among the three groups, we had to be careful about which procedures we used. levene’s test told us whether each question violated the assumption of homogeneity of variance. if it did not, then we used the usual f-test to any significant differences among groups, and we used hochberg’s gt2 post-hoc test – which is recommended for different group sample sizes when equal variances are assumed – to identify which groups were different from each other. if levene’s test did indicate that a particular question had violated the assumption of homogeneity of variance, we then used welch’s f to identify significant differences among groups, and we used the games-howell post-hoc test to identify which groups were different from each other. both welch’s f and the games-howell post-hoc test are robust to violations of the assumption of equal variances. ultimately, however, all the anova tests measured the same thing. manova details rather than a single f-statistic as in anova, manova has four tests: pillai’s trace, wilks’ lambda, hotelling’s trace, and roy’s largest root. these all test a single hypothesis which has multiple components. significant debate continues over which test statistic is most appropriate to apply in various situations, but these are irrelevant to our particular case, as all four test statistics were highly statistically significant (p<.000). christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(1), summer 2022 redfield, book review 46 book review theologies and practices of inclusion edited by nina kurlberg & madleina daehnhardt reviewed by rebecca redfield 2021. london: scm press. £35.00. in a society where diversity, equity, inclusion, justice, and belonging are buzz words, theologies and practices of inclusion serves as a reminder and call to action grounded in the reality that followers of jesus have a biblical mandate to follow the example of our king and actively participate in his just and beautifully diverse kingdom coming, where all are welcomed and the last will be first. theologies and practices of inclusion, masterfully edited by nina kurlberg and madleina daehnhardt, practices what it preaches as the twenty contributing authors span many countries and first languages, and more than half are women. this book offers a refreshing balance of theological grounding – looking to scripture and the example of christ as our guide – and case studies to demonstrate how these practices are lived out. i commend tearfund’s staff for its humility in openly sharing the joys, challenges, and lessons learned for the benefits of the larger faith-based community. this book is relevant and important today. we need to be reminded of scripture’s clarion call to engage in the work of inclusion and justice -that it is not optional for followers of jesus. we need to be reminded of why inclusion is essential to development work. we need to be reminded that inclusion is achieved in the presence of justice. we need to learn from examples of inclusion in practice, especially in the world of development work. here we explore these four key gifts to the community from the book. first, why inclusion matters to christians. scripture undergirds the entirety of this volume, grounding the “why” and fueling the “how.” we see that ethnocentricity has no place in the kingdom and that there is no superiority or supremacy in the kingdom of god apart from that of jesus christ himself (philippians 2: 9-11). his body is made up of beautifully diverse image-bearers from “every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages” worshipping him eternally (genesis 1:26-27. revelation 7:9). we see and experience god through the beauty of diverse experiences and cultures of his image-bearers and, consequently, as jocabed solano and juana condori remark, “when a people group with their own specific culture dies, something of god dies” (314). we follow a king who welcomes all, confronting and disrupting cultural norms of exclusion (john 4: 1-42, luke 10: 2537, luke 19:1-10). we follow a king who breaks down (has broken down and continues to break down) the walls that divide us – not by exalting one group over another, but by centering the king himself (ephesians 2:14-22). theologies and practices of inclusion contends that our theology must not be divorced from our practice, advocating for faith-based organizations “to develop theological thinking and programming in parallel, and not in isolation” (13). beginning this work with a biblical understanding of why it matters for followers of jesus and organizations centered on him builds a solid foundation to withstand pushback (both internal and external) that the work of inclusion and engaging in justice is mission drift. selina palm’s chapter highlighting theological vantage points and cultural perceptions on inclusion from a variety of regions is especially insightful in pointing out that, with the bible as our guide and jesus as our model for the work of inclusion and justice, incorporating culturallyinformed views and associations can serve as guideposts and lenses through which to engage across cultures. second, why inclusion matters in the development space. with a clearly outlined scriptural precedent and expectation to be people and organizations of inclusion, it is perhaps redundant to address why inclusion and christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(1), summer 2022 redfield, book review 47 justice matter in the realm of development. yet, i have observed in this space an assumption that discussing and engaging in the work of inclusion is “nice to have,” rather than a “must have” that is integral to the work. as we will see, addressing inclusion and systemic injustice is integral to achieving holistic development outcomes. exclusion, injustice, and poverty are often mutually reinforcing– strengthening and deepening the pull into isolation. as bryan stevenson says, “my work with the poor and the incarcerated has persuaded me that the opposite of poverty is not wealth; the opposite of poverty is justice” (stevenson 2014, 18). further, drawing from bryant myers’ seminal work on the four core relationships reflected in walking with the poor: principles and practices of transformational development (2011), we see the insidious work of exclusion and injustice rallying together to inhibit flourishing relationships with god, self, others, and creation. and as liz muir reminds us, “poverty and racial injustice are inextricably linked” (76). inclusion matters if we are seeking to support the holistic flourishing of all people. i was struck by the case study on including the ageing in the rwandan church, and the observation of how often development practice prioritizes investing in the younger generation to build the future, to the exclusion of the older population. this also serves as a reminder that at its core, inclusion is about people. chapter 9, by oenone chadburn, highlights the role of localization in the work of inclusion, through an emphasis on partnerships, expounding on the roles of time and trust, funding and finance, dignity and delivery. there is a strong call for local organizations to be at the decision-making table! let us remember that welcoming people into community often cannot be done without addressing systemic injustices. third, why inclusion does not end with building relationships. inclusion addresses injustice. the theological framework for inclusion outlined in the book builds on miroslav volf’s work in explaining a theology of embrace (volf 1996), which highlights the role of relationships and acknowledging interpersonal power dynamics, through explicitly calling out that relationships are impacted by systems and inclusion requires justice (62). in her own contribution to the book, editor nina kurlberg adds to the theology of embrace the concept of “inclusion as shalom justice through the power of the spirit of god” (66). relationships are critical and yet insufficient to inclusion. they must be paired with systemic justice and breaking down barriers that exclude. in a chapter on gender issues, for example, prabu deepan joins kurlberg to argue that “inclusion requires the active interrogation of systems, processes, norms and attitudes in order to challenge unequal values, power and status” (194). we must acknowledge oppressive systems and structures that inhibit the fulfillment of the kingdom call to inclusion and justice. exclusion roots in injustice and perpetuates injustice. the work of addressing systemic injustice requires collaboration and partnership. case studies throughout the book highlight how critical it is to partner with diverse stakeholders – including local churches, christian and other faith-based organizations, local governments, and communities. fourth, what inclusion can look like in practice across contexts. the book is rich with case studies from diverse contexts and provides a unique contribution to the literature by showcasing diverse ways of fostering inclusion and addressing oppressive cultural norms and systems. this includes a look at peacebuilding and religious diversity, emphasizing the roles of imagination, hospitality, and embrace, and continuing with exploring the pilgrim identity, reflecting on the prevalence of migration throughout scripture, and solidarity with migrants through recognizing how all christ-followers are spiritual pilgrims on this earth. there are also case studies on the latin american campaign “as born among us,” fostering hospitality to migrants within churches and communities, and tearfund’s transforming masculinities approach, casting a new vision for masculinity grounded in the example of jesus, that “is not about maintaining the status quo or teaching people how to use their power well: it is about dismantling unequal systems” (193). in chapter 11, jessie fubara-manuel explores building welcoming, honoring, and inclusive churches and communities for the elderly in rwanda. she tells how she learned from women living with disability and hiv in nigeria, and how a holistic view of healing included both a transformed identity and physical healing. theologies and practices of inclusion provides a thorough and thoughtful exploration for those seeking to learn about inclusion grounded in theology and embodied in development practice through partnership with local communities. i closed the book with a refreshed vision for the work of inclusion, inspired by the example of our friends and colleagues at tearfund, reminded that this work is not optional for people who follow jesus and is critical in the development sector (in addition to our own selves, families, neighborhoods, and churches!). may we be people who follow the example of our king, creating welcome for those excluded and on the margins through dismantling unjust systems, following the examples of trailblazing brothers and sisters around the globe who are ushering in a more inclusive kingdom. references myers, bryant. 2011. walking with the poor: principles and practices of transformational development. new york: maryknoll. christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(1), summer 2022 redfield, book review 48 stevenson, bryan. 2014. just mercy: a story of justice and redemption. new york: one world. volf, miroslav. 1996. exclusion and embrace: a theological exploration of identity, otherness, and reconciliation. nashville: abingdon press. rebecca redfield serves as the senior listening, monitoring, and evaluation manager at hope international and as a co-chair for the accord research alliance. she and her husband, jordan, reside in lancaster, pa. author email: rredfield@hopeinternational.org about:blank christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 rokhum, book review 103 book review a liberation for the earth: climate, race and cross by a.m. ranawana reviewed by kuki rokhum london. scm press. 2022. £22.50. this provocative book by a.m. ranawana, although just 135 pages long, is packed, not only with a detailed history of the climate activists from spaces that are usually “silent,” but also with an explanation of the connections between climate, race, and the cross. drawing on her own background/identity as a woman from the formerly colonised and environmentally ravaged small island nation of sri lanka, ranawana approaches the issue of climate change from the perspective of rage—a theology of rage that she believes will lead to a “place of collective repentance, to engaging robustly with the concept of ecological sin and through this to being able to build what keri day calls ‘beloved communities’” (4). 1 ranawana uses the terms “global north” and “global south,” but also the “third world.” i find it notable that many, especially from what we call the global north are hesitant to use this term and replace it with perhaps a more politically correct way of using the terms global north and south. this echoes the thought of another sri lankan, theologian r.s. sugirtharajah, who says that “for my part, i feel the term third world is still serviceable because it encapsulates a particular way of existence and experience. it is a suitable semantic metaphor which conveys a relationship, especially the unequal relationship that exists between the strong and the weak. it refers to people who have been left out and do not have the power to shape their future. it defines a relationship marked by power and mediated through old colonial ties, and currently through the economic and cultural presence of neocolonialism” (sugirtharajah 2001). the book is laid out in five chapters. the introduction presents a detailed narrative of the author’s personal experiences and the present practices that have caused her grief and anger. the book results from ranawana’s attempt to bring back the justice narrative of how christians approach our shared humanity. as the author says, “what is written in this book is not my own original scholarship, but an attempt to bring together the work of activists, academics and theologians who are all endeavouring to argue for a project of multiple and complex justices” (3-4). ranawana does this by pointing to the voices of liberation and “third world” theologians and faithbased activists from the global south and their insistent demands. 1 her rage stems from the lived experience of people subjected to systemic injustice in both the past and present and who suffer today what we know of as “ecological violence.” she presents clear arguments that one cannot separate the history of injustice from the impact of the climate crisis and builds a case for the need to analyse broader social and political processes, including structural racism. she also critiques the shortsightedness of movements that do not understand the challenges faced by people from the global south, for example when during the “extinction rebellion” they encouraged protestors to get arrested, while ignoring the risk people from the global south would run of being deported (9-10). in the first chapter, entitled “the cry of the earth: understanding ecological sin and ecological conversion,” ranawana states that “it is a critical time in our history on this earth, a time for radical reimagining, and is why this book attempts to sit within christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 rokhum, book review 104 the spaces of political theology and liberation theology, rather than eco-theology” (17). tracing the contributions of different voices, ranawana notes the importance of the concerns that have long been voiced, especially by those from the global south. one highlight of this chapter is her drawing out the connections between christian faith and a concern for the earth, which she achieves through an exploration of catholic social thought, including the most recent encyclical by pope francis, laudato si (2015). it is within this framework that she discusses ecological sinfulness and ecological conversion. she acknowledges that ecological conversion is not likely to be immediate, but rather a journey of transformation that must happen at all levels of society. chapter two, “all these bleeding wounds— liberation theologies and the ecological crisis,” brings together the work of many theologians, proponents of liberation theology, and of other “third world” theologians. ranawana narrates the history of how these theologies developed over time and tells of their crucial contributions. the title of the chapter is drawn from leonardo boff’s call to pay attention to “two bleeding wounds;” first, poverty that breaks the social fabric of millions, and second, the systemic assault on the earth that breaks down the balance of the planet. through the experiences and reflections of these theologians, ranawana stresses the interconnectedness between the ecological crisis and other forms of injustice. she emphasises how faith requires us to look after both our neighbour and the earth. “‘the plantation is always with us’: the histories and presents of extraction and domination” is the interesting title of the third chapter. ranawana argues that “it is the retelling of histories and presents that must trouble and affect our theologising and our existence as persons of faith” (66). she traces the relationship between power and knowledge, stating that the injustice we see today is not just a current event, but is steeped in our theologies, systems, and structures, an argument she links both to social scientists and liberation, black, feminist, and indigenous theologians. she calls on us to recognise “… the enduring nature of colonial logics, and the fact that history of the disposable human and the disposable ecology are bound up in one another” (70). she points out too that it is not just about what the west did to the rest, but also how local upper class/elites have played a major role. with powerful stories and cases, she tells how the new goal of capital accumulation turned people and nature into little more than resources to be harnessed. she urges readers to engage in their own exploration of the links between ecological injustice, labour exploitation, and the crises we find ourselves in (83). chapter four, “a rainbow coalition: faith-based mobilisations in northern and southern spaces,” focuses on faith-based movements, not only christian, but others that have contributed to the overall movement. through her own experience of working in such organisations, ranawana notes that responding to the gospel implies responding as well as to the urgent demands of the communities that agencies partner with for development projects (96). faith is often a key motivator in encouraging people to donate to environmental causes or to demonstrate for the environment. pointing to the need for environmental justice movements and policies to be mindful of the long arm of history and the need for reparative justice, she refers to “white myopia,” an indifference to historical extraction and exploitation as well as a reluctance to foreground the knowledge and struggles of “southern” as well as indigenous movements (100). citing examples of movements in the global north, she points out that these movement are concerned about the impact on “future generations,” which she believes dismisses the experiences of those who are already baking, drowning, and starving every day (101). acknowledging the complexity of the climate crisis, ranawana urges the formation of a revitalized “rainbow coalition.” the book concludes with a brief final chapter, “a theology of rage.” rage seems to have become a key element in justice movements. ranawana makes a short and stark statement, “this dying world is angry” (118). while she sees grief as a valid response to the current crisis, she points also to the privilege of being able to grieve and how, for communities in the global south and in indigenous spaces, surviving is more urgent than grieving. instead of grief that can easily turn inwards and into the self, the author suggests that we look at the history and present of the world and feel prophetic rage (122). referring to “righteous anger” displayed by jesus, she also uses the term “good anger.” “such anger is important because it seeks to critique and reform, and also because it stands with those who are most oppressed” (123). for ranawana, rage is key to think and act differently and to turn away from the colonial narrative. ranawana has managed to pack three key elements into this very small book: 1) to be christ-like is to be in a right relationship with god, neighbour, and creation; climate activists most often start from a position of fear and try to elicit responses through that fear or focus on the need to do good. ranawana argues that our response to the ecological crisis is not optional, but the very core of the christian faith. she demonstrates this clearly with the powerful support christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 rokhum, book review 105 of the church leaders and theologians she cites. she is certainly right that to elicit a sustained response from people of faith we must return to this crucial aspect of the christian faith. in my own experience, i have found that the most genuine responses come only when people are convinced that this is what god requires of them. 2) the importance of history, both past and present: ranawana compiles the uncomfortable history of colonialism (both historical and present), the struggles of communities and indigenous nations, and the extraction and exploitation of the past that continues to impact us to the present day. the horrific interconnectedness of all forms of injustice is a good reminder of the fact that we cannot deny or ignore history and how it is naïve simply to try and address the ecological crisis apart from all other injustices. this is an important reminder for anyone involved in projects and/or activities that address the climate crisis. are we fully mindful of these histories that have had not only ecological impact, but have changed societies in so many other ways too? could we be complicit in this neo-colonialism without even bothering to question it? 3) who/what dictates climate activism: ranawana refers to the “whiteness” of many movements and the insensitivity of movements driven by western narratives that completely ignore the challenges faced by those from the global south who would participate in these movements. the basic reason for involvement can be starkly different for each group; in the north, a fear for the future, and, in the south, ongoing struggle steeped in several layers of injustice. this is one reason why she moves away from grief and guilt to rage. she talks of the “…needs of an anxious west that must yet be the problem solver, the saviour from the catastrophe” (104). i too have grappled with this issue, when major global movements seem driven by ideologies of the global north and people from the global south are “invited” to share their stories to boost the campaign. perhaps it is time to re-look at what drives these movements and take on the challenge to make it a real “rainbow coalition” with multiple actors playing important roles. ranawana’s book must be read, by those from the global north so they can grow in their understanding and perhaps even change the way movements are built and propelled, and by those in the global south so they can understand systems better and can avoid becoming part of them. there is no denying the horrendous impact of colonialism, much of which is still felt today, even if in different forms. yet ecological movements are still based in the global north, where the power still resides. but not everything from the global north is evil, and it may help to mention some of their contributions. it might also be helpful to suggest what both halves of our world might do together to ensure the survival and flourishing of all. ranawana has indeed shown the nexus between climate, race, and the liberative potential of the cross and as she suggests may the making of rage central make people think and act differently. references pope francis. 2015. laudato si’: on care for our common home [encyclical]. r. s. sugirtharajah. 2001. the bible and the third world: postcolonial, colonial and precolonial encounters. cambridge: cambridge university press. lalbiakhlui rokhum, popularly known as kuki, served for over twenty years in the evangelical fellowship of india commission on relief. kuki is passionate about issues of justice and is involved in teaching integral mission and issues such as creation care and climate change, organisational development, and hiv&aids. she recently joined a rocha international as the director of church engagement. author email: rokhum@gmail.com mailto:rokhum@gmail.com christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(1), summer 2019 31 faith integration and christian witness in relief and development: reflections and practical guidance for field teams ray norman and odoi odotei this paper examines practical opportunities to strengthen faith integration within relief and development field teams through intentional development of a shared understanding of christian witness, leveraging christian identity (through the development of messaging statements), recognizing “sacramental moments,” engaging faith leaders and understanding unique opportunities that exist when working with mixed faith teams. field teams often struggle to effectively and consistently integrate their christian faith in their technical programs. many are comprised of staff who have professional training and/or technical backgrounds, but little theological training or experience with how their christian faith can practically inform the way their field programs are implemented. field teams may also be comprised of individuals with diverse denominational backgrounds and christian faith traditions, and some team members may even be of another faith, which can present challenges in developing a team-owned approach to christian witness. moreover, field teams may work among mixed-faith, or other-faith communities, which can present unique challenges for how christian faith is appropriately integrated in the relief or development milieu. in addition to examining the aforementioned opportunities, this paper suggests best practices, along with practical considerations and steps to develop applicable methods, especially for restricted contexts. while these suggested practices have been developed in the context of world vision’s water, sanitation and hygiene (wash) programs, the methods presented should be easily adaptable for field activities in other development sectors. introduction this paper offers perspectives and approaches for the integration of christian witness in relief and development work. it provides some practical suggestions and guidance on how to assist technical field teams to better “own” the responsibility of christian faith integration and more consistently engage in effective forms of christian witness within the unique yet often challenging contexts in which they work. furthermore, the paper draws on initiatives developed in world vision’s water, sanitation and 1 in this paper the term “other-faith communities” refers to those that are predominantly of faiths other than christianity, and where more explicit or direct forms of open christian witness are generally restricted. world vision’s internal preference is to use “otherfaith” terminology, rather than “non-christian” terminology which can carry connotations that seem negative or exclusive. “mixedfaith” communities are those comprised of both christians and individuals of another faith, such as muslim, hindu, or buddhist. hygiene (wash) program, where intentional steps have been taken to integrate aspects of christian faith into field programs. in addition to world vision’s aim of integrating its christian values in its approaches to relief, development, and advocacy work, the wash program has been compelled to develop these initiatives and guidelines for two primary reasons. first, many of the communities where wash programs are implemented are other-faith majority contexts, where explicit or direct forms of christian witness may be inappropriate or even illegal. 1 second, when world vision begins work in new communities, wash is often the first entry point. it is during these periods of initial entry that curiosity (and expectations) run the christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(1), summer 2019 32 highest – especially in communities that have had little or no exposure to any form of christian ministry. community members are often curious about who we are and why we want to help. these contexts, while potentially challenging, can present unique opportunities that can be strategically leveraged, not only for needed trust-building, but for christian witness. the way we represent christian faith is critical, as it sets the stage for ongoing community engagement (including understanding and acceptance) as we move on to other community development initiatives. what follows are practical reflections, guidelines, and suggested initiatives to be considered by field teams working in these contexts to integrate their christian faith into their work as they engage in technical programs among communities. an underlying assumption is that organizations that stand to benefit most from these recommendations are those that uphold a commitment to express god’s unconditional love in their work, pursue justice for all people, work without discrimination with all people regardless of their faith, and hope that people served through their ministries will live as followers of jesus christ. while these recommendations were developed in the context of wash programs, the methods that follow may be easily adapted for field activities in other development sectors, as well as in some relief contexts. defining christian faith integration in its current global strategy, one of world vision international’s strategic imperatives is for the organization to “live out its christian faith and calling with boldness and humility” (world vision international 2018). to achieve this aim, four objectives are defined to support the practical outworking of christian witness and christian faith integration into the ministry of the organization. • equip leaders and staff to live out their faith as appropriate in their context, by providing training, mentoring, and guidance. • further develop and scale guidance and evidencebased models for integrating faith in ministry practice and tackling the roots of poverty, vulnerability, and injustice. • ensure that all entities consistently and clearly communicate our christian identity and mission, with messaging adapted for their different audiences. • expand and deepen our partnerships with churches and faith leaders, acting as connectors, and mobilizing christians and the church together with other faith leaders. world vision has also defined sets of tools and guidelines to help equip leaders and staff achieve these objectives. using the above objectives and resources, all world vision entities have been asked to develop a strategic plan for christian faith integration into their work. predicaments challenging field teams’ christian faith integration field teams represent the “front edge” of relief and development work. they occupy the interface where our organizations intersect with the communities they are called to serve. therefore, their capacity and disposition to both “own” and proactively engage in faith integration is crucial. often, when implementing technical programs, field staff operate under dire and urgent circumstances, with challenging schedules and agendas in hard-to-reach, remote locations. field staff may also face challenges of high staff turnover or understaffed teams. as a result, engagement in, and maintenance of, a clear faith integration strategy can often take a back seat to the more pressing needs of technical program implementation by over-extended field teams. there is also a tendency for this to happen among field staff with largely professional training and experience. these staff may be dedicated christians with a deep commitment to the mission and values of the organization, but may have little theological training or limited understanding of how their christian faith can be integrated into their professional work. in such cases, field staff may tend to defer to other organizational staff charged with spiritual or missional formation and integration (or to local church partners, if they exist) to ensure that some form of staff care and values teaching/reflection, as well as faith engagement and witness, occur during field operations. moreover, field teams may also be composed both of persons from diverse christian faith traditions and persons of other faiths. as such, these individuals may have very different perspectives on the meaning of christian witness. proclamation and demonstration of the gospel christian humanitarian organizations (chos) generally agree that their humanitarian work alone does not fulfill the great commission (matthew 28: 19-20). these organizations work out of a belief that proclamation of the gospel is inconsistent with the full mandates of scripture and the examples of jesus’ earthly ministry if, at the same time, the organization ignores needs and injustices in a broken world (see luke 10: 25-27). most of these organizations adhere to christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(1), summer 2019 33 the principle of integral mission, which emphasizes the importance of both proclamation and demonstration of the gospel. this principle is perhaps best detailed in the micah declaration and one that many chos affirm, as does the accord network. the micah declaration defines integral mission (or holistic transformation) as the proclamation and demonstration of the gospel. it is not simply that evangelism and social involvement are to be done alongside each other. rather, in integral mission our proclamation has social consequences as we call people to love and repentance in all areas of life. and our social involvement has evangelistic consequences as we bear witness to the transforming grace of jesus christ (micah network). in cho field work, the connection between “proclamation” and spiritual consequences is usually clear, as is the connection between “demonstration” and social consequences (as well as physical, economic, and psychological consequences, see figure 1: a and b). staff may proclaim the gospel (or bear witness to the good news of the kingdom of god) in the hope that people will be transformed by jesus christ and experience spiritual renewal. the cho drills a water well and the community’s physical and economic wellbeing is dramatically enhanced (figure 1: a). but do field staff sufficiently understand the important connections between “proclamation” and social, physical, economic, and psychological consequences (figure 1: d), and between “demonstration” and spiritual consequences (figure 1: c). for example, the hope that comes with new life in jesus christ can also result in stronger families, enhanced well-being of children, and more caring communities. on the other hand, acceptance of jesus christ and the christian faith may also lead to confusion, isolation, and cultural dissonance in families and communities. moreover, many who have suffered long without a source of clean water may feel god has abandoned them or does not care. the drilling of a new well in such circumstances may serve to inspire community members to believe that the cho’s actions are, in fact, a demonstration (and provision) of a loving and caring god. to adequately carry out such an integral mission, field staff, regardless of their professional backgrounds, need to be familiar with the principles of integral mission and how it plays out in their work. they need to recognize and communicate that “every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the father of lights…” (james 1: 17). 2 when they reason that the god of creation is the source of all things, including their own work, it anchors their witness in a concrete world view. 2 unless otherwise noted, all biblical quotations are from the english standard version (esv). staff should understand not only the importance of both proclamation and demonstration of the gospel, as well as the various connections between these and the spiritual and social/physical well-being of communities served. providing field teams regular opportunities to discuss and share examples of these connections is crucial to helping them think more systematically about how they can integrate christian faith into technical programs. this exercise can also provide an important platform for reflection about how christian witness occurs through their field programs. figure 1. integral mission – outcomes of proclamation and demonstration of the gospel (holistic transformation). organizational integrity. developing and owning a shared understanding of christian witness addressing predominant and diverse views of christian witness among field teams most christians own an individual understanding of what christian witness means, which is usually conditioned by their own experiences of christian tradition and denominational affiliation. cho staff likely come from a variety of christian faith traditions (evangelical, catholic, orthodox, etc.), and interpretations of the organizations’ views (or policy, if it exists) on christian witness may be viewed through the lens of each of those traditions. similarly, views on the most effective approach to christian witness may often be strongly conditioned by the predominant christian faith tradition from which the majority of staff come. for example, in many chos, an “evangelical” view of christian witness dominates – one that is primarily focused on witness through word – while different forms of witness valued by other team members from less predominant christian faith traditions may be downplayed or ignored in terms of strategic importance. this default approach may serve to isolate christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(1), summer 2019 34 minority faith staff from others on the team, and thus limit the development of a broader, more inclusive understanding of witness. it may also limit the team’s potential spiritual impact. we suggest that, in many settings, field teams may benefit from a well-rounded and holistic understanding of christian witness – one unfettered by denominational experience and traditions, yet fully anchored in the biblical narrative. moreover, field teams should approach their witness with a willingness to listen and learn from the experiences of their peers and the community members with whom they work. world vision’s core documents state that “witness to jesus christ by life, deed, word, and sign” (world vision international 2019). among organizations that readily associate with “evangelical” faith traditions, staff are more familiar (and comfortable) with witness through verbal witness (word), and less so through the benevolent work they do (deed). in these settings, many staff may have less understanding, experience, or comfort with forms of witness through life and sign, or even deed – such as the potential impact of the way we live our lives among communities, and the importance of prayer (and answers to prayer) in their work. even those who view their “deeds” as their primary form of “witness” may not be equipped to do it with the kind of grace, love, and decorum that reflect a christ-likeness so that their field approach is relational and not just transactional. christian staff should appreciate how witness is viewed and lived out in christian faith traditions other than their own. when field teams are dominated by a single or limited view on how to engage in christian witness, and when teams fail to value and draw upon the diversity of christian faith traditions among themselves, opportunities for the team to own a much broader and richer appreciation of forms of witness provided for us in the biblical narrative may be precluded. furthermore, many of these other forms of witness (such as through life and deed) may well be the most appropriate methods to employ initially in sensitive contexts. an example: developing a team-owned understanding of christian witness a powerful example of the development of a shared vision of christian witness comes from a major cho in ethiopia that wrestled with these issues in a context that featured orthodox and evangelical christians as well as muslim communities. leadership among field teams was dominated by individuals from largely evangelical backgrounds, and thus more “evangelical” (i. e. proclamation) forms of witness were valued. yet these methods were not always effective especially among orthodox and muslim communities. at the same time, orthodox christians on the team often felt excluded or undervalued when it came to issues of the spiritual impact of their work. orthodox staff felt their most important contribution in terms of witness was the way they faithfully (and quietly) served and lived out their lives, in ways that glorified christ, among poor communities. most evangelical staff felt this relational approach was not a true form of witness; instead, it was evidence of a lack of conviction and/or courage. evangelical staff valued and employed bolder, more direct forms of verbal witness, which many orthodox staff felt were culturally inappropriate and fostered both offence and suspicion in orthodox and muslim communities. eventually, during a day-long retreat facilitated by the organization’s spiritual nurture and formation staff, the team was able to listen to each other’s views and values on christian witness, and then explore the biblical narrative that supported each viewpoint. in the end, the team was able to adopt a broader, enriched view of how to engage in witness, resulting in each group’s enhanced appreciation and value for the other’s contribution to this important aspect of their work. practical steps for developing a team-owned understanding and statements for christian witness field teams benefit from intentional efforts to explore, understand, and value the breadth of how christian witness is viewed across the spectrum of traditions and denominations represented. teams thus develop more inclusive and team-owned views of how values about witness can be lived out in their work. suggested steps for such encounters are as follows. 1. this initiative is best begun by first reviewing the organization’s core documents that speak to christian witness. many technical field staff may not be familiar with these documents (or policies), and organizations need to ensure that all field team members are familiar with them. 2. team members are given the opportunity to present the views on witness of their own christian traditions and comment on how those views align with the biblical narrative and the organization’s policies. 3. taking into consideration the organization’s policy statement(s) on witness, their own experience and views on witness, and the cultural/religious contexts of the communities they serve, the team then develops a jointly-owned christian witness statement that reflects the breadth of the team’s understanding of how it will engage in witness through its field work. consideration can also be given to the type of christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(1), summer 2019 35 sector work the team engages in. for example, for wash teams, the statement may be enriched by linking biblical themes around water and health to approaches to witness. 4. a final step is the development of messaging statements, which are a practical means by which field teams can be helped to appropriately articulate their christian identity in varying contexts (this exercise is detailed later in this paper). 3 organizational staff charged with spiritual nurture and formation can assist the team with this initiative. steps 1-3 can usually be done minimally during a halfday session, or during 1-2-hour sessions over a longer period, while step 4 generally requires at least an equal amount of time. this team statement on christian witness should then be used for orienting new employees. it can also be incorporated regularly into meetings, devotional agendas, and team capacitybuilding exercises – so as to ensure continued ownership and understanding of the team’s approach to christian witness (similar exercises for the very different context of mixed-faith field teams are addressed later). changing team views and mindset for many over-stretched, technically-oriented field teams, the prospect of folding in additional expectations around christian witness can be daunting, with expectations of more work or a heavier agenda being the norm. what is needed is not the addition of witnessfocused tasks, but rather a “cultural shift” among the team – a change in views and mindset around what it means to faithfully integrate christian faith into technical aspects of their field work. field teams should understand that by addressing the spiritual root causes of poverty through witness and working with local faith leaders the likelihood of sustained change in communities also increases. moreover, teams need to change their thinking and understanding of witness in the specific context of their technical endeavors. for example, they can discuss how existing service and community dialogue events (in which the team regularly engages) can be better leveraged as opportunities for christian witness. examples in the wash sector are borehole site selection dialogues with the community, community volunteer training for hygiene promotion, and other community events, where discussion about technical work can be naturally combined with opportunities for christian witness. 3 by definition, “messaging” is how you tell the story of your organization and your brand (especially in business contexts), and is closely related to “positioning,” which in business terms identifies the benefit of your product or service and its uniqueness in the market. the dangers of domination and ethnocentrism many sincere christians entertain the belief that witness is most effective if those to whom they witness become like them. subconsciously, this may be considered the ultimate mark of success for one who witnesses to their christian faith among non-believers. care must be taken, however, as this tendency may often be borne out of an intuitive or instinctive desire to control others with one’s beliefs, or out of one’s own insecurities, ethnocentric tendencies, and the fear of having their anchor pulled from their familiar christianfaith moorings. just as technical field teams need to develop an approach to christian faith integration that provides for a rich and diverse application of christian witness methods, staff also need to embrace a broader set of expectations on the outcomes. by being sensitive to the realities of the contexts they work in, staff need to temper both their approach and desired outcomes of their witness. we must remember that we each view jesus through different filters of scriptural understanding and experience, but when we witness to others, the outcomes may differ from our own experience. even so, we must remember that it is the same jesus who is at work in other people, though perhaps in new and unfamiliar ways. leveraging our christian identity mixed-faith and other-faith predominant contexts chos have the opportunity to engage and work with people of other faiths, because they are called to address the well-being of needy communities around the world without discriminating on the basis of faith. at the same time, these organizations must remain committed to their christian identity and to the impact of their work. these two commitments often create a tension with one another, especially in mixedand other-faith predominant contexts. most chos have developed mission and vision statements in documents that detail their core values. these underpin all the organization does. they define the organization’s identity as an institution and the perspectives and behaviors expected of the organization’s leaders and staff members. this understanding is of particular importance where the organization’s programs intersect with the communities they serve. in many field programs, there remain significant opportunities to better connect the organization’s work with its christian identity, and, when the organization’s field staff consistently understand, articulate and integrate christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(1), summer 2019 36 christian faith into their work, this can be their most effective tool for christian witness, especially in restricted environments. as such, it behooves field programs to identify ways to be intentional and consistent in how this identity is owned, articulated, and demonstrated. furthermore, efforts should also be extended to equip field teams to recognize the strategic opportunities where their christian identity can and should be leveraged. examples of how to equip teams in this way are provided below. the problem of proselytism: knowing what it is and isn’t as a policy, most chos do not use their influence to coerce people to listen or respond to a message about the christian faith, nor do they provide humanitarian assistance on the condition that people respond to a message or adhere to the tenets of the christian faith. such practices are often referred to as proselytism. 4 the commitment to avoid proselytism is particularly important in restricted contexts, and the organization’s assurances on this point are at times required for being allowed to work in other-faith communities. but such a policy does not need to preclude open, consistent, and sensitively communicated articulation of the organization’s christian identity in such contexts. at some point in the implementation of field work, all communities – and especially other-faith communities – are curious as to why the organization does what it does. even in the most restricted environments where there may be cultural, religious, or legal constraints on the expression of christian faith, community members are rarely offended when staff explain openly and winsomely their reasons and motivation for assisting communities in need. when the organization is clear and transparent about its identity and motivation (notably that we follow the commands of jesus to help those in need regardless of their religious or political affiliations) other-faith communities are often more at ease with the cho’s presence. moreover, transparent and open articulation of christian identity, when done sensitively and respectfully, is not usually viewed as proselytism. true, open or direct forms of witness may be inappropriate and/or restricted in many communities, but rarely are there cultural or religious restrictions on responses to sincere questions from community members. as such, when christian identity is leveraged in this way, over time it can serve to quietly and faithfully provoke, as bryant myers says, “a 4 proselytism, which at times is carried out coercively, takes place whenever assistance is offered on the condition that people listen or respond to a message, or as an inducement to leave one religion or part of the christian church to join another religion or church. 5 these statements come from an internal wvi communication framework, made available to wvi employees. it is called “giving word to our faith” question to which the gospel is the answer” (myers 2006a, 8). a helpful strategy: messaging statements a simple and practical means by which field teams can be helped to appropriately articulate their christian identity in varying contexts, is through the development of messaging statements. we would suggest that chos’ national offices (as well as the organization’s spiritual formation and nurture staff) facilitate opportunities for field teams to develop these statements for the varying contexts which may exist among communities within the national program (e.g., mixed-faith, other-faith and/or multi-denominational). such statements should draw from the organization’s core documents, including statements of faith and mission and vision. they serve to help technical field staff unapologetically leverage their christian identity in ways that are transparent, accurate, and contextually appropriate. moreover, these statements may serve to help beneficiary communities better understand the connection between the organization’s christian faith and its work. it is helpful to base these statements on shared human values and challenges, such as caring for neighbor, love, justice, compassion, mercy, the desire for healthy families, secure livelihoods, and hope for the future. the organization’s broader values can be reflected in such statements as: “we believe in upholding, restoring, and honoring the dignity, value, and identity of every human being,” and, “we believe that god works through all people.” 5 written to be appropriate for the context, these statements can also provide explicit connections between christian faith and the organization’s motives. here are three illustrative examples: • “our motivation for serving this community flows from our understanding of the commands of christ to help those in need.” • “we are here to serve because of our faith’s calling and not to manipulate people about their faith.” • “the services we provide are a reflection of god’s unconditional love for this community.” in some contexts, it may also be useful to consider how to connect biblical concepts to the type of sector work the field team does (e.g., wash, health, education). christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(1), summer 2019 37 we suggest developing these short statements during team building exercises or workshops for staff. one effective way of demonstrating the need for such statements is through a brief role-playing exercise where one or two volunteers from the group are asked to place themselves in a hypothetical setting where the organization is preparing to begin work in a new community. the volunteers have been sent to the community to speak to the community leader to explain the organization’s proposed program, as well as articulate the organization’s identity and motivation for its work. one of the workshop’s organizers then plays the role of a belligerent community leader who does not trust the motivation of the organization, and has concerns about having a “christian” organization working in his other-faith community. the objective is to have the village leader repeatedly pose challenging questions to test field staff on their preparation for providing appropriate and accurate answers, answers that leverage the opportunity to articulate the organization’s christian identity and motivation in an appropriate way, and thus pave the way for future dialogue about these issues. this exercise usually demonstrates how poorly prepared field staff are to handle such situations in an effective way. it also sets the stage for workshop participants to reflect on the types of messaging statements they need in such contexts. the resulting messaging statements should be brief and limited to specific contexts the field teams expect to encounter. moreover, brief, simple statements serve to help field teams memorize and employ them when opportunities arise (even if their employment of the statements is essentially paraphrased). all field team members should be well acquainted with these statements. as with the above-proposed christian witness statement, messaging statements should be used in orientation of new staff hires and regularly incorporated into reflection/devotional agendas and capacity-building exercises. these exercises are more effective if there is ample opportunity for repetition and practice in articulating these statements. increasing familiarity will help staff feel more prepared for those moments when they are needed. opportunities to leverage our christian identity in general, our experience shows that many more strategic opportunities exist to tell the story than are typically leveraged in programs managed by our field teams. there are certainly multiple opportunities to leverage our identity during one-to-one encounters with community members, but we also encourage staff to take advantage of leveraging opportunities when the community is gathered for purposes related to program implementation (e.g., events related to training, community sensitization, and commissioning or certification). at many of these gatherings not only are community members present, but also community leaders and government representatives who also stand to benefit from a better understanding of our identity and motivations. the more they come to understand how a cho’s faith identity informs its work, the better these stakeholders can articulate that perspective to others in their networks, thus helping to spread that understanding throughout the community. at such gatherings, it is always strategic for field teams to consistently seize the opportunity to say a word about the organization’s identity and reasons for the work it does. messaging statements introduced in the previous section can often be effectively employed during these settings. it is important during individual or group encounters to be prepared to address perceptions held by the community (or its leaders). for example, in world vision’s wash programs we often hear expressions of gratitude from served communities for the provision of safe water. yet we always encourage our field teams to be prepared in such circumstances to leverage the opportunity through responses (based on developed messaging statements) that articulate what we believe has happened in the community. we intentionally note that it is not solely out of sheer altruism or benevolence that world vision has come and provided water. rather, it is god who has motivated and enabled world vision to assist in the provision of water because of his love for the community and its people. it is god who has provided this water, not world vision. recognizing and leveraging “sacramental moments” in the rollout of field programs it is important to faithfully infuse among staff an acknowledgment that god is in the process, because staff need to better understand (and outwardly affirm) that their technical knowledge is in fact a reflection of the activity and character of a loving god. in our experience, throughout the process of field implementation, most field teams need to be better equipped to identify sacramental moments that can be leveraged to reveal god’s hand in the organization’s work. a sacrament is an event that has a sacred character or spiritual (or mystical) significance. for example, jesus leveraged the annual passover meal to unpack the spiritual significance of his impending death (and resurrection). some two thousand years later, the church remains impacted by that “sacramental moment” when we celebrate communion or the eucharist. other examples of sacramental moments include jesus’ encounters with the woman at the well in samaria and zacchaeus in christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(1), summer 2019 38 jericho. examples from world vision’s wash programs would be geophysical work and borehole site location, the process of well drilling, pump installation, and software rollout (e.g., borehole and pump maintenance, as well as hygiene training). at times, communities assume geophysical work to be acts of magic or the miraculous. field staff can leverage this part of the process as a time to stop and give thanks to god for his gift of knowledge of how best to use his creation. when world vision engages in project agreements with the community, we can recognize these as more than legal agreements on paper; we can also leverage them as covenant agreements that reflect something sacred, emphasizing god’s caring relationship with his people. (myers 2006b, “reflections…”) field staff must develop the sensitivity to identify potentially sacramental moments, as well as learn to discern how best to leverage such opportunities. this comes through prayer and preparation of the heart. we thus encourage field teams to spend time regularly to reflect upon, explore, and share their experiences of identifying and leveraging such moments in their work. in world vision, employees participate in a “mission immersion program” that helps them consider how the organization’s mission, vision, and core values, with a particular emphasis on its christian identity, practically inform how they approach their work. world vision senior leadership teams of field and support offices also conduct a biennial reflection and learning process focused on how staff and external partners (including adults and children) familiar with world vision’s work collaborate to live out the organization’s christian identity. in general, technical interventions can be leveraged as “sacramental moments” in which the community encounters the tangible fingerprints of god. field teams and the community can capture stories and other qualitative information of how the community has experienced god’s love and care through this work. these stories, in turn, can be used to construct case studies about how faith is expressed and produced through the cho’s work. if field teams become so preoccupied in the implementation of the organization’s technical programs, and do not pause long enough to identify these potentially sacred moments, they may be missing out on the reason god has brought them to these communities. engaging faith leaders why engage faith leaders there is a growing body of literature that confirms the importance of development organizations’ efforts in adopting approaches that bring together social and spiritual considerations (united nations 2012). engagement with faith leaders plays a major role in these approaches (le roux, et al. 2016). nearly 85% of the world’s people consider themselves to be religious, a percentage that tends to be much higher among poor communities where chos focus their work (pew forum 2012). as faith-based organizations, chos are thus in a position to engage with the spirituality of the communities they serve. in some respects, faith-based organizations are much better positioned than many secular humanitarian organizations to engage in this way, even across different faiths (backues 2009). as with most chos, world vision never puts pressure on people to change their faith, nor does it use people’s faith orientation as a condition for the aid it provides. world vision employees are simply expected to acknowledge jesus christ as the source of, and the strength behind, all of its work. this perspective is generally respected by faith leaders, be they christian or of another faith. this approach opens remarkable doors of opportunity to mobilize local faith leaders as community advocates for relief and development initiatives, especially in the challenging domain of attitude and behavior change needed for improved community health. local faith leaders are often the gatekeepers in their communities, and engaging them as collaborating advocates and agents of change in their communities can be strategic (bbc world service 2005). methods of engaging local faith leaders chos are increasingly exploring the benefits of engaging with faith communities, especially through faith leaders. for its part, world vision has championed the engagement of faith communities through its channels of hope (coh) model to promote child well-being. the coh model mobilizes faith leaders and other community leaders in a 10-day training program to “move the heart, inform the mind, and motivate a sustained and effective response” to core issues affecting their communities, such as hiv and aids, maternal and child health, gender equity and gender-based violence, and child protection. the training equips faith leaders to break down walls between faiths in their own communities, and to better understand and apply their sacred texts to key social issues (world vision international 2013; lee 2016). building on the coh model, world vision’s wash program has developed a two-day workshop that targets local faith leaders in communities where new wash programs are being initiated. faith leaders gather to reflect on their own faith perspectives and to discuss aspects of good hygiene practice. the goal is to mobilize them as advocates for wash initiatives in their communities. during these workshops, faith leaders learn about the technical aspects of water and christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(1), summer 2019 39 sanitation, and the science of good hygiene (usually through a presentation by a cho field team member). a leader from each represented faith is then invited to share about aspects of wash from their own faith perspective (as supported by their sacred texts), providing a unique time of exchange and learning for all. faith leaders discuss how they can work together to enhance the health of their communities. finally, they develop and present action plans detailing how they can collaborate to promote good hygiene practice in their communities. most morning and afternoon sessions are opened in prayer (with a focus on prayer for the community and for god’s guidance during the workshop), with faith leaders from different faith orientations or church denominations (e.g., imam, pastor, priest) given equal and alternating opportunity to lead the prayers. faith leaders typically complete these workshops with greater respect and trust across faith boundaries and better equipped to effectively address their respective congregations on matters of hygiene, and to collaborate with world vision field teams in a range of hygiene promotion efforts. various adaptations of this method of faith leader engagement (and mobilization) can be applied to most any type of community development program, and field teams should be encouraged to consider employing a method appropriate to their local contexts. as in other faith integration exercises, field teams may wish to engage organizational staff charged with spiritual nurture and formation to assist and moderate these workshops. naturally, workshop participants should be encouraged to avoid sensitive and/or divisive topics around theological differences, keeping in mind that it is the well-being of the community that brings them to a common table. the implementation of successful workshops among leaders of different faiths therefore requires that certain rules and standards of engagement are established to assure that the exchange remains respectful and fruitful for all. these rules (or boundaries) should be clearly articulated at the onset of the workshop, along with the workshop’s objectives and expected outcomes. outcomes during these workshops, field teams and local faith leaders learn that when they are intentional about bringing their respective knowledge and perspectives to the same table, trust and common ground can be established among people of diverse faith (and denominational) backgrounds, especially when united around a shared desire to impact the lives of vulnerable communities. during the process, field teams and local faith leaders come to know one another and develop habits of working together, which provides a unique and strategic platform to achieve program objectives in the community. in world vision’s wash program, and through the action plans developed in these workshops, we have seen faith leaders develop sermon outlines on hygiene, create and broadcast hygiene promotion talks on local radio and television, and conduct joint presentations (e.g., an imam and pastor together) on good hygiene practice among district schools in mixedfaith communities. this type of engagement also provides another opportunity for the cho to demonstrate its christian identity and values among faith leaders of other faith groups in ways that are appropriate and sensitive to the diverse milieus where chos serve. it provides local christian leaders (especially in other-faith majority contexts) an opportunity to learn in a profound way about the culture and views of the communities. for leaders of other faiths, it provides a unique opportunity to be exposed to christian scripture and the cho’s biblical values and motivation, especially the cho’s perspectives on the nature of a loving and caring god. moreover, engaging other faith leaders in this manner serves to fulfill our biblical mandate to “love our neighbor” and fulfill the role of “peacemakers” (see matthew 22: 37-40, i john 4: 7, matthew 5: 9). we encourage field teams to also pray intentionally for faith leaders during these exercises – not only that they would build trust and habits of working together for the good of their communities, but that leaders of other faiths would experience “sacramental moments” during times of learning and working together. perhaps the most poignant example of this in scripture is jethro’s encounters with moses, which began at a well in midian and finished in moses’ tent after the exodus (exodus 2: 15-22, 18: 1-12). jethro, a priest of another faith, was so impacted by the encounter and narrative of moses that he declared. “now i know that the lord is greater than all gods, because in this affair they (the egyptians) dealt arrogantly with the people.” jethro then “brought a burnt offering and sacrifices to god; and aaron came with all the elders of israel to eat bread with moses' father-in-law before god” (exodus 18. 11-12). reciprocally, this “priest of midian” provided advice and counsel on establishing a system of delegated, legal decision-making. this story reinforces that god can work through all people, of all faiths, to establish his work and fulfill his purpose. boundaries and thresholds through this type of engagement, we have learned that the boundaries among people of diverse cultures and faiths are not always as restrictive as often perceived. while boundaries certainly exist, we have learned that the landscape among these boundaries is actually wide and far-reaching. when this landscape is christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(1), summer 2019 40 explored together, as it is in faith leader engagement, faith leaders, along with cho staff, build trust and learn to value each other. unsurprisingly, the biggest challenges occur where there is a history of tensions among various faith groups, ethnicities, and even church denominations. these tensions and the lack of trust they engender can, at times, also be found among cho staff, who may come from very different backgrounds and life experiences. in such settings, there is often a hesitancy or ambivalence to take the initial, often intimidating, step across the threshold of interfaith or interdenominational dialogue. as such, faith engagement work often begins by helping staff take courageous steps instead of succumbing to the understandable temptation to stay on safe ground. once this initial threshold is traversed, the intimidation factor usually begins to dissipate. as stated earlier, world vision’s new global strategy calls us to “live out our christian faith and calling with boldness and humility” (world vision international 2018). we are learning that boldness calls us to step across these initial thresholds without fear, while humility compels us to do this with sensitivity and respect for others, always listening and ready to learn. some may wonder if such interfaith engagement represents a step towards compromising our christian values and identity. they ask what the contours and boundaries of interfaith engagement should be so such compromise does not take place. we suggest that, minimally, interfaith engagement should respect, but not promote other faiths. for example, in world vision we often share prayers among people of other faiths – inviting people of other faiths to pray for our work and the outcomes of our community interventions. but during interfaith engagements our staff do not participate in joint acts of worship together. we believe that inviting people of other faiths to pray reflects our belief that god hears the petitions of all people who pray with a sincere heart. as chos explore possible methods of interfaith engagement, and its associated contours and boundaries, a helpful and simple measure is the question, “will this type of engagement serve to lead people towards christ or away from him?” mixed-faith field teams context many chos hold to a policy of engaging in their field work through partnership with the local church, and many of these organizations hire only christian staff, usually local christians, to implement their field programs (narducci 2019). this approach certainly has its merits in christian majority countries, and in countries where there is a strong christian presence and a sufficient cadre of christians well-trained in various professional disciplines. yet many communities in need of both humanitarian work and exposure to the gospel are found in countries where local churches do not exist and where few local christians are qualified for key types of development work. a policy of exclusive employment may therefore limit opportunities to impact some of the world’s neediest and least-reached communities. in such cases, the costs and risks involved in bringing christian expatriates to do such jobs, expatriates who may have limited understanding of local culture, may not always be the best stewardship of limited resources, especially when we are in the urgent business of trying to save and improve people’s lives among communities in other-faith contexts. some chos, like world vision, adopt this model when appropriate, especially in christian majority contexts. but in contexts where people of another faith are in the majority, they may hire staff of other faiths in order to accomplish urgent humanitarian tasks and to make effective use of the organization’s resources. some worry that this approach compromises the organization’s christian identity and limits the opportunity for christian witness. we would like to suggest another perspective. first, it is important that chos find ways to engage effectively in other-faith contexts, so as to address the needs of all people facing injustice and crisis. second, few opportunities may exist for a legitimate and faithful christian presence other than through the provision of humanitarian assistance. in order to meet such humanitarian needs in effective, timely, and sustainable ways, the work of chos can be enhanced by the engagement of qualified staff of other faiths. granted, when field teams include persons of other faiths, some obvious challenges can arise, like intra team conflicts stemming from religious differences, and mixed or unclear messaging from field teams to target communities. while these challenges must certainly be addressed, we suggest that chos give attention to both understanding and leveraging the opportunities mixed-faith teams can provide. expectations, orientation and team building for staff of other faiths when staff of other faiths are employed by chos, it is often done to fill strategic positions for which qualified christian staff are not available, like truck drivers, public health workers, or well drillers. in general, staff of other faiths do not occupy management or senior level positions in chos. as such, there are often limits to how far they can progress in the christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(1), summer 2019 41 promotion process of the organization. these conditions should be made clear during the hiring process. during the orientation process, the cho should ensure that staff of other faiths are well-exposed to the organization’s christian identity and core values. prospective employees must willingly commit to working within the context of an organization that follows the mandates of scripture and the example of jesus to engage the poor, regardless of their religious, social, or cultural status. adherence to certain lifestyle expectations for all cho staff should also be made clear. concurrently, these staff should be assured that there are no expectations that they convert to the christian faith, and that their work performance will be assessed independent of their faith orientation. during ongoing staff training and capacity building, it is helpful to provide opportunities for staff of other faiths to reflect on how their own faith values can be lived out through the ministry of the cho. these helpful connections are often found around such shared values as helping those in need, addressing societal and economic injustices, and community building. at these times it is helpful to provide opportunities for these staff to reflect and exchange experiences on challenges they may face as employees of a christian organization, and how they can effectively provide constructive feedback to community members who may question this association. it is important that christian staff be involved in these transparent exchanges, as it helps them better understand the challenges their colleagues may face – thus strengthening the coherence and impact of the entire team. we also suggest providing opportunities for these staff to develop messaging statements which articulate why they work for a christian organization, and what values they share with their christian colleagues. this exercise can be done when the team works on messaging statements on their christian identity. when world vision wash teams work on christian identity messaging statements, there is a separate, concurrent session for other-faith staff to work on messaging statements more appropriate for their context. all capacity and team building exercises among mixed-faith teams should include the building of understanding, tolerance, trust and mutual respect among their members. opportunities when chos engage with majority other-faith communities through mixed-faith teams, numerous opportunities emerge for the organization to be uniquely effective in its humanitarian work, leverage its christian identity, and live out its biblically inspired values, and thus demonstrate the love of christ for all people. in a number of world vision’s programs, we have found that the only way to sustain access to communities in some very restricted environments is to work with mixed-faith teams. when other-faith communities observe the mutual respect that exists within our mixed-faith teams, trust-building and acceptance of the presence of a christian organization working in their community is often accelerated. when delicate issues of distrust arise due to our christian identity, it is often other-faith staff who are able to best articulate our motives, dispel misunderstandings, and initiate the building of trust that paves the way for effective and long-term community interaction. when communities observe the mutual respect that exists among mixed-faith teams, a powerful message is sent about our christian values of love, respect, and honoring/recognizing the dignity of each individual. frequently, community members note that the cho’s willingness to engage staff from their faith indicates a deep respect for their culture and values. this, in turn, can earn the cho the right to be listened to as it seeks to impact behaviors and practices that make for more healthy communities. this facilitates the community’s perception of the chos work of building a healthier community as a reflection of the work of a loving and caring god. even in the most restricted contexts, as the community observes the work, comportment, and attitudes of the field team, they will over time be exposed (often in discreet and winsome ways) to the organization’s christian values. this in itself can be a significant and impactful witness in communities that may otherwise have none. the individual impact on staff of other faiths working alongside christians should also not be ignored. when staff are consistently exposed to the cho’s identity and core values, scripture, christhonoring prayers and devotional reflections, and when they feel respected and appreciated by christian staff, they can be deeply affected. in turn, the impact of these experiences invariably spills over to the community as they interact with our other-faith staff. in summary, the engagement of mixed-faith teams can serve to facilitate the cho’s ability to be a sustained, faithful christian presence in otherwise very restricted environments and among communities with little or no previous exposure to christian work or the gospel. in these contexts, where forms of open witness are forbidden or ill-advised, developing such a sustained presence can nevertheless serve to awaken the community to the notion of a caring and loving god, and, perhaps more strategically, gently provoke “a question to which the gospel is the answer” (myers 2006a, 8). christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(1), summer 2019 42 measuring impact as with all aspects of relief and development work, it is important that priority be given to evidence-based interventions. for this reason, there is a need to build evidence which demonstrates the effectiveness of our efforts in leveraging our christian identity and in christian witness. the same holds true for how effectively interfaith engagement impacts our community development outcomes. presently, while there is qualitative evidence that supports this work, quantitative evidence remains scant. one reason for this is that development organizations have, in years past, not prioritized gathering this type of evidence. another, perhaps more compelling, reason is the complexity of establishing and measuring such indicators. we therefore encourage chos to consider how this evidence can be gathered. it is especially important for chos crafting new initiatives to give attention to these faith-driven issues during initial planning. when the cho begins to think about how it will leverage its christian identity and engage in witness, we suggest as a first step that field teams be asked to think about their desired spiritual impact(s) in the community. once these goals are established, the next, and more challenging, step is to consider how these desired spiritual impacts can be measured (see bronkema forthcoming). in faith leader engagement, the intended impact is often tied to desired changes of attitude, behavior, and practices in the community. such changes must be measured in the community. they must also be linked back to the influence of local faith leaders (as opposed to, or distinct from, other influences such as cho staff, government agents, and other community workers and/or influencers). as chos begin exploring these metrics, we encourage dialogue and exchange with others so that these experiences and learnings can be shared. concluding remarks we hope the reflections, experiences and suggestions shared here will serve as a practical tool for cho field teams as they look to integrate their christian faith in field programs in more intentional and effective ways. we also hope the contents of this paper will serve to broaden chos’ understanding of the many opportunities we have to leverage our christian identity and cultivate a more comprehensive appreciation for diverse forms of christian witness in our work, especially in mixedand other-faith contexts. finally, as chos engage in these initiatives, we remind them to consider the second (and less recalled) part of peter’s well-known admonition in i peter 3: 15: “always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. but do this with gentleness and respect” (niv). references accord network, “principles of excellence in integral mission,” last modified 2019, www. accordnetwork. org/integral/. rq=integral%20mission. backues, lindy. 2009. “interfaith development efforts as means to peace and witness.” transformation 26(2): 67-81. bbc world service. “gallup international poll reveals who runs your world.” press release, last modified september 15, 2005, http. //www. bbc. co. uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2005/09_sept ember/15/world. shtml. bronkema, david. forthcoming. “the challenges and promises of spiritual metrics. understanding the dynamics at play and guidelines for best practices,” in bronkema, david, ed. towards an understanding and practice of spiritual metrics. measuring spiritual impact faithfully and productively in christian development agencies, missions organizations, schools, and churches. lee, laura m. 2016. “establishing the contribution of faith communities in strengthening child protection,” channels of hope child protection global impact study. senegal – literature review, queen margaret university with world vision senegal (unpublished report). le roux, elisabet et al. 2016. “getting dirty. working with faith leaders to prevent and respond to gender-based violence.” the review of faith & international affairs 14(3): 22-35. micah network. 2019. “micah network integral mission.” https://www.micahnetwork.org/integralmission. myers, bryant. 2006a. “provoking the question. uniting christian witness and transformational development.” monrovia, ca: world vision international. _____. 2006b. “reflections. an exploration of faith and development.” monrovia, ca: world vision international. narducci, justin. 2019. “clean water or the gospel.” christianity today, january 22, 2019. https. //www. christianitytoday. com/edstetzer/2019/january/clean-water-or-gospelanswer-both-justin-narducci. html. pew forum. 2012. “the global religious landscape,” pew forum, december 12, 2012, http. //www. pewforum. org/2012/12/18/global-religiouslandscape-exec/. http://www.accordnetwork.org/integral/?rq=integral%20mission http://www.accordnetwork.org/integral/?rq=integral%20mission http://www.accordnetwork.org/integral/?rq=integral%20mission http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2005/09_september/15/world.shtml http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2005/09_september/15/world.shtml http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2005/09_september/15/world.shtml http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2005/09_september/15/world.shtml https://www.micahnetwork.org/integral-mission https://www.micahnetwork.org/integral-mission https://www.christianitytoday.com/edstetzer/2019/january/clean-water-or-gospel-answer-both-justin-narducci.html https://www.christianitytoday.com/edstetzer/2019/january/clean-water-or-gospel-answer-both-justin-narducci.html https://www.christianitytoday.com/edstetzer/2019/january/clean-water-or-gospel-answer-both-justin-narducci.html https://www.christianitytoday.com/edstetzer/2019/january/clean-water-or-gospel-answer-both-justin-narducci.html http://www.pewforum.org/2012/12/18/global-religious-landscape-exec/ http://www.pewforum.org/2012/12/18/global-religious-landscape-exec/ http://www.pewforum.org/2012/12/18/global-religious-landscape-exec/ christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(1), summer 2019 43 united nations children’s fund (unicef). 2012. “partnering with religious communities for children.” new york: united nations children’s fund. january. https://jliflc.com/wp/wpcontent/uploads/2017/07/partnering_with_religio us_communities_for_children_unicef.pdf. world vision international. 2013. “channels of hope: igniting a movement to transform communities.” https://www.wvi.org/sites/default/files/coh%20ign iting%20a%20movement.final_.pdf. _____. 2018. “our promise 2030. brighter futures for vulnerable children.” world vision strategy, last modified 2018, https. //www. wvi. org/ourpromise2030/. _____. 2019. “world vision mission & values.” https. //www. worldvision. org/about-us/missionstatement. ray norman is senior director, global wash operations, at world vision international. a development practitioner for 20+ years, he is also a scholar-in-residence and former academic dean at messiah college. he holds a phd from cornell university. author email: ray_norman@wvi.org odoi odotei is the technical director of learning & development for world vision international's global faith & development team. he has been a development practitioner for 16 years. author email: odoi_odotei@wvi.org https://jliflc.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/partnering_with_religious_communities_for_children_unicef.pdf https://jliflc.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/partnering_with_religious_communities_for_children_unicef.pdf https://jliflc.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/partnering_with_religious_communities_for_children_unicef.pdf https://www.wvi.org/sites/default/files/coh%20igniting%20a%20movement.final_.pdf https://www.wvi.org/sites/default/files/coh%20igniting%20a%20movement.final_.pdf https://www.wvi.org/ourpromise2030/ https://www.wvi.org/ourpromise2030/ https://www.worldvision.org/about-us/mission-statement https://www.worldvision.org/about-us/mission-statement mailto:ray_norman@wvi.org christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 buys and andrade v., abundant community theology: a case study in decolonial theological research 45 abundant community theology: a case study in decolonial theological research clark buys and maria a. andrade v. in 2018, tearfund embarked on an exploration of "economic and environmental sustainability" (ees) theology, seeking to adopt unconventional research methods shaped by latin american decolonial thought. the approach sought to amplify marginalised voices, embrace non-english perspectives, and acknowledge the significance of oral traditions. the journey unfolded through regional "missional listening," collective discernment, and intercultural synthesis. challenges included the significant time and financial investment, holding space for diverse ideas, and transitioning from collating global perspectives to articulating tearfund's perspectives on the subject matter. the resulting "abundant community theology" offers an alternative anthropology rooted in interconnectedness, challenging the historical legacy of dominion theology. this report reflects on the importance and value of the consultative, collaborative journey and the nuanced role of language in fostering ongoing conversations for social and environmental justice. an invitation to challenge and grow allow us to begin with a confession: this theological research project did not start because of decolonial theories, but rather because of decolonial intuitions. latin american liberation theology proposes a theological and pastoral method with three stages—“seejudge-act“—as a way of emphasising that reason is always a “second step,” as experience comes first. somehow, this is what happened with our theological research on economic and environmental sustainability: when we decided to undertake it, we did not have complete theoretical and methodological clarity, but we knew that we needed to build a process that could allow us to listen, honour, and learn from some of the voices that are usually left behind in the mainstream theological space. 1 once we had done this, decolonial thinking helped us make sense of our initial intuitions and provided us with a good theoretical framework to organise our findings. we also knew that this choice required an attitude of humility, a spirit of curiosity, and a dose of stubbornness, as the mainstream academic 1 here we use “mainstream” to refer to the part of society which is relatively more powerful (like the main part of a river). we use “margins” to refer to the part of society with less power; that is, those who tend to be excluded and left behind: “the mainstream are the ones who decide the rules of society, what is and is not acceptable, and how people should and should not behave. the mainstream sets the culture while the [margins] are those who have to abide by the rules that have been set for them” (tearfund 2020). 2 note the use of “decolonial”, proposed by latin american scholars, instead of “postcolonial.” which was proposed first by scholars such as homi bhabha, edward said, and frantz fanon, among others. space is usually dominated by cartesian rationality—“i think, therefore i exist”—which would not easily accept the lack of precision and control that we had at that point. on the other hand, we were fortunate that tearfund was open to support this innovative theological research process, with the promise of deeper, richer and more relevant outcomes. now, before moving forward, we want to state our place of enunciation: where we write from. this is important, because it helps the reader understand where our comments and arguments come from. one of the authors of this paper, maria ale, comes from latin america and has been part of this research process from its very beginning, which partly explains the bias in this article toward latin american decolonial perspectives, theories, and authors. 2 the other author, clark, comes from south africa but has lived in the uk for several years; he became involved in the project while the second report was being drafted and then coled the remainder of the project. christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 buys and andrade v., abundant community theology: a case study in decolonial theological research 46 tearfund, where the authors serve, is a christian non-governmental organisation born and established in the united kingdom; it partners with churches on issues related to development, advocacy for justice, and humanitarian response. tearfund’s christian identity has been affirmed and reaffirmed throughout its more than fifty years of existence and is foundational to the organisation’s why, how, and with whom. this is why the organisation has, historically, actively invested time and energy in reflecting theologically around its main areas of ministry, including issues related to poverty, church and community-led development, gender, disability, peace and reconciliation, migration, economic and environmental justice, among many others. as an organisation, our desire is to allow ourselves to be shaped—and when necessary shaken— by the scriptures. one of the concrete ways we do this is through conducting theological research, aiming to deepen and enrich our understanding on these topics as well as to contribute to the public theological discourse on them among policymakers, civil society movements, programmes, churches, and supporters. the process of undertaking theological research within tearfund has taken different forms throughout the organisation’s history, but for the most part it has been permeated by a global north perspective, expressed through the identity of the researcher(s), the language of the research, the methodologies used, the format of the outputs, and the use of the findings as true and valid to every context in which tearfund works. 3 one of the problems with this approach is the false assumption of “universality” that is subtle but quite common in mainstream spaces, keeping non-mainstream groups in the margins, invisible, and in silence. today, we recognize that there are ways of approaching theology that can contribute to legitimising power systems that perpetuate injustice; therefore, as a team, we have made a commitment to undertake theological research processes that, intentionally, contribute to challenge unjust structures and promote power-sharing dynamics. because we have been so accustomed to using certain research methods, we have had to be particularly creative, humble, and curious to learn from other epistemologies and approaches, and we have found decolonial thinking to be particularly insightful in putting together and reflecting on these types of “upside down” research processes. this paper assesses a concrete theological research process on the intersection of environmental and economic sustainability through the lens of decolonial theories in theological research. the first section explores the concepts of decoloniality of “power,” “being,” “knowledge,” and “belief,” proposed by latin 3 in this paper, terms such as “global north,” “global south,” and “west” refer to ideological and geopolitical constructs, not only geographic boundaries. american decolonial scholars, which provide a theoretical framework for assessing our research effort. the second section provides a quick overview of the process itself, highlighting those aspects that decolonial theory brings to light, as well as the phases of the research process. section three explains the essence of the theological proposal that arose as a result of this research process—which we have called “abundant community theology.” the fourth section addresses the positive impact that our decolonial intuitions made to the paper, both for the paper itself and for our own team. finally, section five of this paper acknowledges some of the challenges and limitations of our quest. decoloniality of “power,” “being,” “knowledge,” and “belief,” in latin american decolonial thought scholars and researchers from different disciplines and parts of the world have proposed diverse ways to approach culture and power. in the ‘80s and ‘90s, the “postcolonial theories” academic stream emerged with thinkers from india, the middle east, and the united states, such as homi bhabha, gayatri chakravarty spivak and edward said, who reflected on the heritage of british colonisation in the 19th and 20th centuries, but also on issues related to civil and political struggles (instituto de estudios sociales contemporáneos 2018). in latin america, these “subaltern” theories took their own essence and shape. they were called “decolonial theories” and reflected on the heritage of the spanish colonisation that took place between the 16th and the 20th centuries, that was sustained through exploitation, domination, and conflict, and that is still present today in different forms. for latin american decolonial thinkers, modernity and coloniality are two phenomena that emerged at the same time; they are connected and depend on each other, like the two faces of the same coin (instituto de estudios sociales contemporáneos 2018). decolonial theories conceive race as a central issue, because it is the first form of modern “otherness” connected to coloniality. as “colonisation” evolved into the ideological system of “coloniality,” it uses disciplines like history, anthropology, sociology, philosophy, and theology to build its case and justify the logic of domination of some peoples over others. latin american subaltern scholars conceive coloniality as being multi-faceted and identify different dimensions of it: “coloniality of power,” of “being,” of “knowledge,” and, more recently, of “belief.” “coloniality of power” denounces the living legacy of european colonialism in latin america, which is reflected in racial, political, and social structures. christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 buys and andrade v., abundant community theology: a case study in decolonial theological research 47 according to quijano, the relationships of dominion that took place during the european conquest were built on a false idea of racial superiority; that is, a supposed “biological” difference—with theological and political motivations—that situated the european conquerors over all non-european populations (2014, 778). as a result, conquered peoples were treated as “naturally” inferior, along with their phenotypic traits, their cultures and traditions, their ancestral wisdom, and their thinking (ibid., 780). that sense of inferiority is what anthropologist walter mignolo calls “coloniality of being” (mújica garcía and fabelo corzo 2019, 1-9), which began when colonised individuals were defined through the logic and lenses of the colonisers, and which led to the denial of their human condition, identity, autonomy, culture, and faculties. it affects individual self-identity. following frantz fanon’s thinking (ibid.), the colonised individual, dispossessed of their humanity, is also stripped of their capacity to practise the privilege of sharing their gifts. without the possibility to contribute to others, the colonised being was nullified and became a “condemned” being (ibid.). closely connected to the denial of the human condition is “coloniality of knowledge,” which refers to the denial of the presence and construction of authentic and “true” knowledge among colonised populations. portuguese anthropologist boaventura de sousa santos calls this process “epistemicide,” the silencing, replacement, and killing of ancestral knowledge, wisdom, stories, and memories in the name of european rationality, which became the only valid and true parameter (as cited in gómez quintero 2010, 87). as a result, most of the cosmogonies, worldviews, healing practices, and education rhythms already present among indigenous communities were either missed and neglected or demonised and prohibited. this perspective deeply affects today’s educational, cultural, and religious systems, with some small counter-cultural attempts to recognize, learn from, make visible, and revindicate ancestral identity and wisdom. finally, and more recently, other decolonial and postcolonial thinkers explored ways to name forms of coloniality that undermine worldviews, philosophies, religiosities, principles, and systems of life that reflect a way of life different from western constructs. ecuadorian sociologist and educator catherine walsh proposes the term “cosmogonic coloniality” to refer to this intercultural aspect (2009, 3). others, like theologian and anthropologist nicolás panotto, explores postcolonial theologies and talks about the need to dismantle the “coloniality of belief,” because the systems of belief, and religions in general have, historically, played a role of social, cultural, and spiritual control, which has been largely acknowledged and used by empires throughout history, including during the european conquest (2014, 144). in latin american decolonial thinking, these reflections invite us to consider the ways in which the spread of the gospel was experienced by colonised populations—indigenous peoples—as part of the whole colonial project. it also challenges the assumption that expressions of christianity brought by northern missionaries are the only possible way of experiencing “true” faith in the “true” triune god (ibid., 146). in fact, “decolonising belief” leads one to think critically about traditional methods of exegesis and hermeneutics because, as with every other science, they embody and respond to particular interests and parameters that have not always been those of the people left outside of the mainstream theological space. finally, an effort to “decolonise belief” is an invitation to pluralise theological subjects and identities, giving legitimate space to those faces and voices that have been, historically, in the margins of theological debates. this discriminatory system based on power, being, knowledge, and belief did not end with the abolition of slavery and the fights for independence around the world, but is still reflected in discourses, attitudes, behaviours, and decision-making at individual, social, and political levels. thinkers of subaltern and decolonial studies affirm that, as difficult as it can be to believe, after many centuries, the effects of colonialism persist in today's world; in people’s mindsets, educational and health systems, geo-political relationships, and systems of beliefs. dismantling this type of imperialism, one that permeates most of today’s modern world’s structures, requires an intentional choice for decolonization. this choice, for boaventura de sousa santos, needs to be made through listening to the “epistemologies of the south,” understood as multilocal ways to identify and validate knowledge born from the struggles against capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy, produced by social groups and classes that have suffered most from the injustices caused by such systems (2020, 118). the “epistemologies of the south” that de sousa santos refers to are the wisdom and knowledge coming from historically excluded groups in latin america, including indigenous communities (the direct descendants of the communities subdued by the spanish empire), afro-descendant peoples (whose ancestors were brought to the americas as slaves), women (who are still oppressed by our patriarchal systems), and other human groups excluded by capitalism and colonisation. de sousa santos’ (ibid.) concept of “epistemologies of the south” is neither finite nor geographically localised (as if “south” were a geographic place); it rather has three premises: 1) the world is much broader than the western understanding of the world; 2) the world’s diversity is infinite, in terms christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 buys and andrade v., abundant community theology: a case study in decolonial theological research 48 of the ways of thinking, feeling, and acting, as well as relating; 3) the world’s great diversity cannot be monopolised by one general theory, which is why it is necessary to find plural ways of knowledge (as cited in infante 2013, 406). in that sense, there should exist as many epistemologies as systems of thoughts or philosophies, which are expressed in the diversities of peoples (ibid., 404). in a similar vein, some philosophers, social scientists, and theologians have coined the concept of “epistemic justice/injustice.” philosopher miranda fricker, for example, defines “epistemic injustice” as “a wrong done to some in their capacity as a knower,” which prevents people in the margins from being heard and understood by others, as well as contributing to broader and deeper social understandings (fricker 2007, 1). to seek “epistemic justice” or to listen to the “epistemologies of the south” does not mean to replace or invalidate modern western knowledge; the aim is rather to question its claim to be the only valid epistemology and to advocate for the equal validity of other epistemologies. in that sense, we endorse de sousa santos’ affirmation that “there is no global social justice without global cognitive justice” (2020, 118). these critical reflections make us more aware of our own identity and the power that we, intrinsically, carry as a christian organisation that raises funds in the global north to support development, advocacy, and humanitarian response initiatives in the global south. it is through this lens of latin american decolonial thought that we will introduce and assess our theological research process. at the outset of the research, we were inspired to engage the sacred scriptures with curiosity, commitment, and intentionality, in order to enrich our understanding of the triune god and his presence in the world, through discovering god in some of the faces and voices that we felt have traditionally been absent in theological debates. we thought this approach could contribute to a broader power shift (or power share) in the theological space. an “upside-down” process in 2018, “economic and environmental sustainability” (ees) was identified as a corporate priority for tearfund and we began working towards a “global theological framework” on the topic. historically, the typical research methodology for tearfund has been for someone to conduct systematic research on a given topic and to produce a report out of that research. such research might include a literature review and consultations of some form. typically, the researcher is based in a global north 4 a “missional listening” spirit has been embraced by diverse christian ministries. it speaks about listening to people to discern what god is already doing and joining god in mission. baptists together uk defines it as having “one ear to god and one ear to the community” (lucas 2022). context and research material is largely written in english, published in the global north, and expected to be globally relevant. in fact, we used to call our frameworks “global,” not because they were built from listening to global voices but because they were meant to be used by audiences across the globe. this methodology creates a self-generating bias towards certain material and routinely overlooks, ignores, or is oblivious to many important ideas and theological conversations that exist in different forms and contexts. as a result, such theological frameworks are radically impoverished by exploring only this limited space of theological ideas and expressions. with our growing desire to contribute to shifting and sharing power in and through our work, we sought an approach that embraces a more decolonial spirit and allows us to engage in an honest, “missional listening” exercise. 4 we looked for a “contextual theology,” that, as anderson and mcgeoch suggest, speaks from and to the lived-realities of people, it speaks to the church and the academy, it involves dialogue and critique, it enters into a global conversation, and it is “performed”—that is, it is lived out, not simply written about. contextual theology does not start with theory or philosophical ideas which are then applied onto society. contextual theology develops and evolves through continuous conversation and expression. it is theology in motion (anderson and mcgeoch 2020, 6). a decolonial approach there were four key aspects of outworking this contextuality in our methodology that align with latin american decolonial thought. first, we needed to incorporate theology not just from academic theologians from all over the world, but also from practitioners. we wanted to bring perspectives from theory and practise together into dialogue. this approach to theology has been referred to in south africa as “people’s theology,” where “theology is not the exclusive preserve of professional theologians, ministers, and priests. ordinary christians can participate in theological reflection and should be encouraged to do so.” this includes women, youth, indigenous peoples, and other communities often left in the margins of theological spaces (kairos theologians (group) 1986, 34-35). the choice of the voices to which we wanted to listen was made in each region and therefore varied; however, women, young people, non-academic theologians, indigenous christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 buys and andrade v., abundant community theology: a case study in decolonial theological research 49 communities, and people who embody ancestral wisdom were identified across many regions as being those that this research needed to include. second, we sought to incorporate theological perspectives from non-english material. not all important and legitimate theology is written in english and the english language ought not hold in our minds and practise any hegemonic, neo-colonial restrictions over the scope of our theological exploration. that is, we should not expect all theology to be written in or translated into english in order to be incorporated into research like this. third, not only does theology exist outside english writing, but much theology is not necessarily even written at all, especially among non-western communities where knowledge, tradition, and culture are built and passed on orally. if our theology is “performed” and “lived out,” then we must explore and incorporate other forms of theology. jean-marc ela refers to this as “shade tree theology,” a theology that, far from libraries and the offices, develops among brothers and sisters…we must discover the oral dimension of theology, which is no less important than the summae and the great treatises. christian theology must be liberated from a cultural system that sometimes conveys the false impression that the word has been made text. why can’t the language of faith also portray song, game, art, [and] dance…? (ela 1986, 180-181). and finally, we sought for our theology to first be shaped and informed by perspectives from the global south and only then to bring that thinking into dialogue with perspectives from the global north. this “global south-first” approach was important for at least three key reasons. first, in order to shift power. of course, one hopes that research like this contributes to change in the world through new policies, changes to action and behaviour, new narratives, and altered discourse, yet when the research is biased towards particular contexts, it is likely that the resulting change in the world will not best serve those who have been marginalised through the research. to keep our research centred on a global north perspective is to keep power centralised in that context. it is to keep perpetuating a status quo that disproportionately serves the relatively powerful global north contexts. it reinforces the unjust legacies of colonialism and perpetuates a form of neo-colonialism. on the other hand, to adopt a “global south-first” approach is to shift power in ways that will hopefully lead to more equitable and fairer change in the world. a second reason for this “global south-first” approach to contextual theology is that there is a global asymmetry in “economic and environmental sustainability,” in that very often those geographic regions that have done the least to contribute towards climate change experience a disproportionate amount of its destructive effect. as we sought to theologically explore the intersections of economics and environment, it was important to hear first from those who tend to experience more of these harmful effects before hearing from those in global north contexts who typically experience more of the benefits of our current systems. the third reason relates to the other two, but emphasises and acknowledges the destructive role the global north has played in the environment, especially since the beginning of industrialization. in fact, indigenous communities from the global south claim that it is not “humans” who have destroyed the rest of god’s creation, precisely because many of these ancestral human communities have coexisted with other living beings for thousands of years without creating the same level of damage that the global north has created in a few centuries (naknanuk 2022). being responsible for so much environmental and social destruction, the global north may have more to learn from global south communities around the world than to teach on this topic. the phases of the research there were three phases to the research: regional “missional listening,” collective discernment, and intercultural processing. in the first phase—regional “missional listening” —we set out with plans to conduct distinct research in latin america, africa, the middle east, asia, and then finally in the global north, with each region in dialogue with the research in subsequent regions, and each culminating in a regional paper that would reflect particular voices, values, priorities, emphases, and contexts in each region. unsurprisingly, the research in each region looked different. missional listening: in latin america, tearfund worked with an external consultant from the region who designed a mixed and participatory methodology with an intentional desire to go beyond what has already been said about environmental and economic sustainability in the region. a literature review from key influential theologians and writers from the region yielded four key themes that seemed to require further exploration: creation and redemption, women and ecology, ancestral worldviews, and sustainability. in turning first to the ‘key influential theologians and writers’ from the global south context, we were subverting global north/south power dynamics, but arguably this initial reliance on contributors who were considered to be “key” and “influential” did not take into account the power dynamics within the global south. we were still gravitating to the mainstream christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 buys and andrade v., abundant community theology: a case study in decolonial theological research 50 voices, albeit within the context of the global south. however, the consultations that followed were more in line with latin american decolonial thought as they incorporated an intentionally diverse group with many more contributors from the margins. a diverse group of academic theologians, activists, musicians, pastors, youth, women, indigenous peoples, and ecological programme practitioners were invited into an online participatory process exploring these four themes in greater depth. this process lasted eight months, with a final physical gathering that produced a regional paper that was the first concrete contribution to tearfund’s research process and that set the tone in terms of research that contextualised and reflected local issues and concerns. the focus then turned to africa, where tearfund hosted three face-to-face consultations, again with a range of participants including grassroots practitioners and influential theological voices in the region. once again, a contextual participatory methodology was adopted by the external research consultants. a major methodological focus in the africa regional report was to present the research in an “emancipatory form.” as anderson and mcgeoch note, ...the research is led by the voices of grassroots practitioners and disciples of jesus, presented in a way that keeps those voices front and center without re-interpreting them, and understands that people read scripture in countless different ways. no single hermeneutic is placed above another” (2020, 6). in the african research, the broader literature review followed reports from the physical consultations. this was in line with latin american decolonial thought as it prioritised the consultations, which included many marginalised voices, and allowed the relatively diverse group of contributors to influence the selection of input from broader literature. it was at this point in the research that we were hit with the global covid pandemic, which significantly altered (along with so much else in the world) the degree to which the research could include in-person consultations. this was a major loss, as the group gatherings had significantly contributed to the richness of the research, creating rare spaces where various perspectives came together in one room for dialogue, debate, and discussion. very often, the value of theology is not only the final product, but the very process of grappling with different ideas together. as we discovered, the process was transformative for us as an organisation, and also for many individual participants. but we pressed on within the new emerging horizons of possibility. working with a consultant in asia, we adjusted the methodology to include a deskbased literature review of key works from the region, and several online, one-on-one interviews with key influential regional voices. limiting this research to deeper dives with fewer key influential people in the region reduced the scope of the research, but still offered vibrant and valuable research. this methodological shift meant that we were more reliant on published materials and contributors who were already well known. while we sought to ensure that the research still incorporated contributions not only from the mainstream but also the margins, this shift moved us further away from the ideals of latin american decolonial thinking. this new methodology was more reliant on key influential people who often were people speaking from the mainstream contexts. as such, this research was arguably less shaped by the margins in ways that align with latin american decolonial thought. sadly, after much effort and exploration, we were unable to find a suitable consultant for the planned research in the middle east. fortunately, some key middle eastern literature had already been identified and reviewed earlier in the process by consultants for the africa research. we were able to incorporate this albeit truncated contribution into the global framework. with this regional work completed in latin america, africa, asia, and the middle east, we brought these regional papers—with their ideas, challenges, and distinct emphases—into dialogue with theological perspectives from the global north. working with consultants from the theos think tank in the uk, the methodology was similar to that of the asia research in that it included a literature review and interviews with key influential voices from the global north and culminated in a regional written report. once again, the reliance on respected theologians meant a bias towards the mainstream that was arguably incongruent with latin american decolonial thought. retrospectively, we refer to this first phase of research as regional missional listening, meaning that in this research we were seeking to learn and listen from these various contexts. we were not initially trying to work out what we as tearfund could or should be saying in those regions, but rather listening to what was emerging in them, and we were intentionally seeking not only to listen to contributors who might be seen as mainstream, but also to voices from the margins. we see “missional listening” as recognising that our presence is never neutral and that we hope to host, facilitate, and steward these conversations in such a way that the spirit of god is at work and leading us all through kingdom transformation. discerning collectively: with the regional phase completed, we shifted gears into the internal dialogue phase of the research. this step meant bringing into christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 buys and andrade v., abundant community theology: a case study in decolonial theological research 51 dialogue this new regional research with tearfund’s existing published literature, as well as with tearfund staff who have experience or expertise in the topic. we wanted the opportunity to consider everything we heard and captured in the regional reports through the lenses of tearfund’s core beliefs and identity, especially around some complex and controversial theological issues. it was a process of collective discernment. for instance, we created a reference group made up of tearfund staff from the different contexts we work in. it included staff with theological, programmatic, and advocacy-focussed roles. we shared with them the regional research, as well as some preliminary summaries. we facilitated discussions around key topics, primarily centering around those for which we had noticed tensions, especially between various regional papers or between the regional research and tearfund’s historical publications. this process allowed us to reconsider, revisit, and grapple with various theological ideas and their implications for our various areas of work. it also helped add nuance and complexity to our thinking. it was in this process of bringing various ideas into the reference group dialogue spaces that we transitioned from talking about what we had heard others (outside tearfund) say, to what we felt we as tearfund wanted to say. as the tearfund staff overseeing this research process, we sensed a growing conviction that we have a valuable and meaningful contribution to public theological discourse on this topic. intercultural synthesis: the final phase was one of “intercultural synthesis,” in which we sought to bring all of the diversity of the research into one coherent framework. the goal was not to capture everything that we had heard, nor was it to say everything that is important to say about economic and environmental sustainability as a “final word” in the conversation. it was definitely not to summarise, compile, or synthesise the different regional reports, as each of them was unique and different from the others both in form and in content. rather, as the tearfund staff overseeing this research process, we sought to craft a framework that had “space” to incorporate much of the antecedent diverse thought, a framework that honoured the journey, the spirit of the whole process, and the content that had emerged so far. we sought a framework that reflected the heart of tearfund’s theology and corporate ethos, but was also coherent enough as an idea to be impactful and able to take a few steps to 5 thacker, justin. 2022. abundant community theology: working towards environmental and economic sustainability (ees). full version. https://learn.tearfund.org/en/resources/research-report/abundant-communitytheology-working-towards-environmental-and-economic-sustainability. forward the public theological conversation on this topic. considering the years of research and the hundreds of pages of material we had gathered, this process of synthesis was no small feat! we worked closely with a consultant who produced a number of drafts leading to a final paper that centred around the idea that we have titled “abundant community.” our final paper, “abundant community theology: working towards environmental and economic sustainability (ees)” (thacker 2022), 5 is understandably a lengthy affair. the benefit of this being a long report was that it allowed for detailed engagement with the research and ideas proposed, while the downside was that the length (seventy-six pages) was a barrier to engagement for many people. moreover, the paper was written in english. the ethos of our approach led us to first transpose the ideas into a short version (twenty pages) and a summary version (four pages). then, at significant cost (time and finances), we invested in translating these versions into tearfund’s core languages: french, spanish, brazilian portuguese, and african portuguese. we hope this not only increases engagement with the ideas and proposals, but also does some measure of justice to our desire to shift power and carry out theological research differently. the abundant community theology in the final “abundant community” paper we recognise that the way one conceives of humanity--what one believes about what it means to be human in this world--has huge implications for how we relate to one another and the wider creation. sadly, christianity’s legacy of “dominion theology” and the belief in human right to exploit and dominate our planet lies at the root of many of our environmental and economic challenges. the report outlines two alternative anthropologies. first, one can hold a theology, or mindset, of scarcity. this mindset fosters a sense of competition among life on earth. it means we view “individuals and the goods of the world as resources for us to exploit rather than as neighbours and friends whom we are called to love” (thacker 2022, 2). an anthropology founded on scarcity leads to a lifestyle that is consumeristic, individualistic, selfish, and exploitative. an alternative paradigm is proposed and championed as the heart of this paper: “abundant community.” this idea draws from ideas prevalent in global south communities, for example the african bantu notion of “ubuntu,” which is the idea that “a https://learn.tearfund.org/en/resources/research-report/abundant-community-theology-working-towards-environmental-and-economic-sustainability https://learn.tearfund.org/en/resources/research-report/abundant-community-theology-working-towards-environmental-and-economic-sustainability christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 buys and andrade v., abundant community theology: a case study in decolonial theological research 52 person is a person through other people” (giljam et al. 2021, 20). ubuntu emphasises our interdependence as humans and as life on earth. there is a sense that being human means to belong to and participate in a shared society. building on this, “abundant community” is a way of understanding our anthropology whereby we see ourselves not as individuals in competition living in a scarce environment, but rather as fundamentally relational beings created by god, living as members of a common humanity in a world of abundance: such communities believe that their identity is formed in relation to god, and this in turn defines their relationships with self, one another and the rest of creation. this represents a relational dynamic in which what matters is not just how we relate, but who we are in relating. it is about a different understanding of me, an expanded version of us, that leads me to conduct myself within our shared planetary home according to a household, rather than competitive market, mindset. this means we share and care abundantly, not just our wealth, but also our power, voices and lives, for we store our riches in the lives and wellbeing of our global neighbour and the world which god has provided (thacker 2022, 10). this idea of “abundant communities” forms the foundation of several challenges and proposals for different people and contexts. for example, when we really believe we are members of one household, sharing one common home with everything that god has created, then we view our wealth and resources as fundamentally belonging to this abundant community. this reframes the traditional donor-beneficiary dynamic. as the report states: it also helps us to recognise that the problem is not poverty over there to which the wealthy global north have the solution. rather the problem is the mindset of greed that bedevils many of us across the globe and to which a solution can be found in the ubuntu-like anthropology that is embodied in numerous communities in the global south (thacker 2022, 8). being transformed by the journey as we mentioned before, part of the uniqueness of this upside-down research process was that the “journey” (the different phases that include the regional consultations, the collective discernment and the intercultural processing) turned out to be as important as the “product” (the environmental and economic sustainability theological paper). in fact, there were at least two aspects in which this whole process enriched us; first, the theological content itself and second, tearfund as an organisation. in terms of the content, we realise that while some ideas are repeated in various regional papers, each paper raises distinct emphases and proposals. for example, the latin america paper offers a scathing critique of capitalism and emphasises the relationship between violence against women and against creation, as well as the unique contribution of indigenous communities. in the africa paper, there is a resounding call to reclaim the notions of “abundance” and “prosperity,” which have been considerably misused and have gained a quite negative connotation in the last decades in many religious spaces. the asia paper brought to the table interfaith dialogue and considered the impacts of “divination of nature,” arguing that such worship of nature itself has caused, in that region, harm and destruction to the wide creation, and suggesting that we should direct our worship only to the creator of this sacred world. the global north paper embodies an appropriately different tone, unique to all the other papers; it offers sober calls for lament and repentance, which are found to be pertinent and necessary in embracing the cause of caring for the wide creation. at the same time, the decolonial spirit underlying this research process brought unexpected lessons for us as an organisation. from the very beginning, we had clarity of the spirit and the intention with which we were entering into this task, but we did not have all the clarity of every aspect of the steps we needed to take and the challenges we were going to face. in a way, entering with such a spirit allowed us to grant ourselves the chance to build the process as we walked (as we mentioned earlier, not everything was completely defined from the very beginning, which was frustrating at times), and to be open to changes. these types of approaches have been explored by scholars such as elise rockwell (2009, 48) who argues that social anthropology is not an exact science, with exact methods that can be replicated anywhere, anytime; it is rather an attitude toward the research, an attitude towards the investigation, and not a gathering tool. the advantage of this flexible approach, which sometimes seems to lack rigour to the point that it can be considered to have a “methodological gap,” is that it allows the articulation between theory and research in a way that gives space for new discoveries to emerge. in that sense, ambiguity can become a strength. this is precisely what we experienced in our research; the attitude made the way. retrospectively, we realise that if we had wanted to design the whole process from the very beginning, without considering the different context, stakeholders, and realities, we would probably have replicated the same process in every region and would probably have christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 buys and andrade v., abundant community theology: a case study in decolonial theological research 53 chosen to impose a standardised format for every regional report, which would have killed the decolonial spirit of the attempt. in the same way, if we had not allowed the preliminary findings to inform the next steps, we would not have been able to incorporate new stages that happened to be very important to build ownership among key stakeholders, as in the collective discernment process. similarly with the language, we were not fully aware of the monopoly of english or even of the written language until we were challenged by the working groups. or with the format: we did not realise how important it was to honour the different ways of expressing knowledge and ideas beyond the western academic argumentative style; deep wisdom was shared through liturgies, songs, and stories, even if some people considered them an “unfinished” work. an intentional choice for a decolonial approach requires intentional flexibility and openness to the unexpected. for organisations like tearfund, which operates with a mostly westernised mindset, the “decolonial outcome” is seen as more important than the “decolonial journey,” even though in the long term, the latter can be even more important than the former. challenges and limitations while there were many benefits from the approach we took to this work, it was not without its challenges. one of the most significant challenges we faced throughout this project was how costly it was in terms of both time and money. for example, in-person gatherings were a major investment that included travel, visas, accommodation, and food for participants. undoubtedly, we could have chosen a much simpler, cheaper, and quicker route. we could have skipped many of the in-person consultations. we could have spent less time and money exploring the various global south contexts. we could have placed more emphasis on written texts that were easier to access. part of this challenge was navigating the environmental cost of the flights and other travel. not only does tearfund seek to reduce our flights, but we were wary about ironically contributing carbon emissions as part of our research into environmental sustainability! while navigating these costs and tensions was challenging, the research was certainly enriched by this process and much of the content in the final ees paper would never have existed were it not for the costly process we adopted. furthermore, as mentioned previously, we recognise that doing theology is not just about the final paper, but about the journey—of discussions, of grappling with different ideas. there was immense value in bringing people together to listen to one another, to grow, and to be transformed through these encounters. a second challenge we faced through this process was holding space for diverse ideas. as we brought many people together, we intentionally wanted to listen to different, sometimes opposing or contradicting perspectives. this occasionally put pressure on relationships at times when we incorporated into the regional reports some ideas or proposals that other participants strongly disagreed with, especially when the divergent ideas came from marginalised theological voices. this issue became even more tense when “new” ideas expressed in the regional reports confronted those holding a certain level of power (often implicit), which required additional levels of dialogue and, at times, the recognition that, sometimes, creating space for “new thinking” makes some people uncomfortable. in the future, perhaps we could help contributors by being more explicit about our intent to hear from and incorporate various perspectives in our “missional listening,” and to distinguish more clearly between what we heard from others and what we said/proposed ourselves. and this is linked to a third challenge, which was possibly the trickiest. after conducting all the regional research, we had the mammoth task of processing all those ideas and arguments into what would be “tearfund’s theological framework on the topic.” this stage meant a big shift in the process of moving from what we had heard to what we want to say as tearfund. that is, it was a shift from collating and presenting ideas we had heard from many around the world to articulating in “tearfund’s own voice” what we wanted to propose and advocate. as mentioned above, working with an internal reference group in an interactive, participatory way helped us make this shift. it helped us discuss new or challenging ideas and proposals, digest them, and eventually rearticulate them in our own voice while, as best we could, still honouring the original input from communities and theologians around the world. finally, in terms of analysing this research process through the lens of latin american decolonial thought, it is worth noting the challenge we experienced in identifying who and what literature should be included or excluded from the research. as already mentioned, we set out intentionally with latin american decolonial intuitions, which included a desire to incorporate a diversity of voices within the research, particularly voices from the margins as well as more mainstream voices. but the process of identifying such voices revealed further complex challenges. who gets to decide which people are appropriately “marginalised” or “respected” in a field of research? what specific criteria should we have in view when delineating between mainstream and marginalised voices? who sets those criteria? how should we approach voices who might be marginalised from a global perspective but might be considered more mainstream in local contexts? we recognise that as much as we were seeking something of a power shift in this work, we still wielded power (and along with that, our own biases) in christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 buys and andrade v., abundant community theology: a case study in decolonial theological research 54 the process of drawing lines of inclusion and exclusion within the research (even if those lines sought to be wider and more inclusive than tearfund’s previous research). in this we were faced with our own (conscious and subconscious) biases and the limitations of our knowledge, networks, and connections as we sought to identify appropriate voices to include in the research. to mitigate this somewhat, we worked closely with our local staff living in the regions of the regional consultations, and we leant heavily on the consultants for broader perspective and expertise. in the asia and global north papers, we asked the consultants to review a wide range of literature in the local context on the topic(s) and from that to identify some important voices with whom to do deeper research. this process meant that while the research remained undeniably coloured by our own biases, perspectives and limitations, it was at least a process that was stretching us to hear from a diversity of ideas and it incorporated voices that we would easily have excluded in a more traditional methodology. conclusion we are deeply grateful to god and every single person who participated in this broad process. we recognise that we had a unique opportunity to put together a process that allowed us to grow as a team and an organisation, as well as to produce a solid theological paper that makes a humble contribution toward meeting two of the major challenges of our time: social and environmental justice. we acknowledge that the challenges we faced in terms of time and funding resources may not allow this journey to be easily replicable, but we do believe we can learn from the spirit that guided us throughout the whole process, and that we can apply it in different forms and contexts, as it has proven to be incredibly enriching. engaging in this type of quest seems particularly important for organisations like tearfund that want to serve god and join in god’s mission to restore and reconcile the world in ways that honour life in its different forms and create less harm. as we closed this research, we realised how important language is, and how much words weigh in the way we move forward. as we have described and promoted the paper, we have sought to do so in ways that offer it as a theological proposal rather than the final word on the topic(s). our hope is that the paper becomes a catalyst of new conversations with other peoples and networks in the different regions of the world, toward a common goal; to worship our creator with the way in which we care for, protect, and nurture what our creator cares for. references anderson, valerie, and graham mcgeoch. 2020. exploring theologies of environmental and economic sustainability in africa. teddington: tearfund. de sousa santos, boaventura. 2020. “knowledges born in the struggle constructing the epistemologies of the global south.” in toward an aesthetics of the epistemologies of the south, manifesto in twenty-two theses, edited by boaventura de sousa santos and maria meneses, 117-125. new york and london: routledge. ela, jean-marc. 1986. african cry. eugene, or: orbis books. fricker, miranda. 2007. epistemic injustice: power and the ethics of knowing. oxford: oxford university press. giljam, miles et al. 2021. abundant africa: our decade to shape the african century. https://abundant.africa/wpcontent/uploads/2021/06/abundant-africa-ourdecade-to-shape-the-african-century.pdf gómez quintero, and juan david. 2010. “the coloniality of being and knowledge: mythologization of development in latin america.” el ágora usb 10 (1): 87-105. https://revistas.usb.edu.co/index.php/agora/article /view/366/126 infante, angel. 2013. “el por qué de una epistemología del sur como alternativa ante el conocimiento europeo.” fermentum, revista venezolana de sociología y antropología 23 (68): 401-411. https://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=705386710 07 instituto de estudios sociales contemporáneos. 2018. “teorías decoloniales en américa latina.” revista nómadas 26. https://nomadas.ucentral.edu.co/index.php/inicio/ 23-teorias-decoloniales-en-america-latinanomadas-26 kairos theologians (group). 1986. the kairos document: challenge to the church: a theological comment on the political crisis in south africa. grand rapids, mi: eerdmans. lucas, ben. 2022. “missional posture.” baptists together. https://www.baptist.org.uk/publisher/file.aspx?id =308599 mújica garcía, juan antonio and josé ramón fabelo corzo. 2019. “la colonialidad del ser: la infravaloración de la vida humana en el surglobal.” estudios de filosofía práctica e historia de las ideas 21 (2): 1-9. http://www.scielo.org.ar/scielo.php?script=sci_artt about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank https://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=70538671007 https://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=70538671007 https://nomadas.ucentral.edu.co/index.php/inicio/23-teorias-decoloniales-en-america-latina-nomadas-26 https://nomadas.ucentral.edu.co/index.php/inicio/23-teorias-decoloniales-en-america-latina-nomadas-26 https://nomadas.ucentral.edu.co/index.php/inicio/23-teorias-decoloniales-en-america-latina-nomadas-26 https://www.baptist.org.uk/publisher/file.aspx?id=308599 https://www.baptist.org.uk/publisher/file.aspx?id=308599 http://www.scielo.org.ar/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=s1851-94902019000200004&lng=es&tlng=es christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 buys and andrade v., abundant community theology: a case study in decolonial theological research 55 ext&pid=s185194902019000200004&lng=es&tlng=es. naknanuk, edson krenak. 2022. “indigenous peoples are essential to the rights of nature.” cultural survival, october 31. https://www.culturalsurvival.org/es/publications/cultura l-survival-quarterly/los-pueblos-indigenas-sonesenciales-para-los-derechos-de panotto, nicolas. 2014. “descolonizar lo divino. aportes para una teología poscolonial del campo religioso latinoamericano." in catelli, laura and maría elena lucero, eds. materialidades (pos) coloniales y de la (de) colonialidad. rosario, argentina: cietp. 143-155. https://www.academia.edu/9842442/_descoloniza r_lo_divino_aportes_para_una_teolog%c3%ad a_poscolonial_del_campo_religioso_latinoameric ano_pp_143_155_ quijano, aníbal. 2014. colonialidad del poder, eurocentrismo y américa latina. buenos aires: clacso. http://biblioteca.clacso.edu.ar/clacso/se/20140507 042402/eje3-8.pdf. rockwell, elsie. 2009. la experiencia etnográfica: historia y cultura en los procesos educativos. buenos aires: paidos. rodríguez reyes, abdiel. 2016. “el giro decolonial en el siglo xxi.” revista ensayos pedagógicos xi (2): 133-158. tearfund. 2020. “mainstream and margin.” https://learn.tearfund.org/en/resources/biblestudies/mainstream-and-margin. thacker, justin. 2022. abundant community theology: working towards environmental and economic sustainability (ees). full version. https://learn.tearfund.org/en/resources/researchreport/abundant-community-theology-workingtowards-environmental-and-economicsustainability. thacker, justin. 2022. abundant community theology: working towards environmental and economic sustainability (ees). short version. https://learn.tearfund.org/en/resources/researchreport/abundant-community-theology-workingtowards-environmental-and-economicsustainability. thacker, justin. 2022. abundant community theology: working towards environmental and economic sustainability (ees). research report summary. https://learn.tearfund.org/en/resources/researchreport/abundant-community-theology-workingtowards-environmental-and-economicsustainability. walsh, catherine. 2009. “interculturalidad crítica y pedagogía de-colonial: apuestas (des)de el insurgir, re-existir y re-vivir.” revista educação intercultural hoje en américa latina. la paz, bolívia. clark buys is a theology development officer at tearfund. clark leads tearfund's global young theologian program and has focused theological reflections on economic and environmental sustainability, prosperity gospel theology, justice, and integral mission. clark has previously served as a church pastor/elder for several years, has a ma in theology, and is a trained spiritual director. born and bred in south africa, clark now lives on the south coast of england with his wife and young children. maria a. andrade v. is ecuadorian. she is a sociologist, child specialist and theologian, with more than fifteen years of experience journeying with christian communities on issues around faith, justice and development. in more recent years, she has focused her interest on environmental justice, migration, gender, spirituality and decolonial theologies, and has published articles in books and journals around those topics. maria alejandra serves in tearfund as the theology and network engagement global lead and lives in ecuador with her husband and two sons, josé andrés and mati. author emails: clarkbuys@gmail.com; maria.andrade@tearfund.org http://www.scielo.org.ar/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=s1851-94902019000200004&lng=es&tlng=es http://www.scielo.org.ar/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=s1851-94902019000200004&lng=es&tlng=es https://www.culturalsurvival.org/es/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/los-pueblos-indigenas-son-esenciales-para-los-derechos-de https://www.culturalsurvival.org/es/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/los-pueblos-indigenas-son-esenciales-para-los-derechos-de https://www.culturalsurvival.org/es/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/los-pueblos-indigenas-son-esenciales-para-los-derechos-de about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank https://learn.tearfund.org/en/resources/bible-studies/mainstream-and-margin https://learn.tearfund.org/en/resources/bible-studies/mainstream-and-margin about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank mailto:clarkbuys@gmail.com mailto:maria.andrade@tearfund.org christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(1), summer 2022 chettri, book review 41 book review the gift of disillusionment: enduring hope for leaders after idealism fades by peter greer and chris horst reviewed by saroj chettri minneapolis: bethany house publishers, 2022. $22.99 in the gift of disillusionment: enduring hope for leaders after idealism fades, peter greer and christ horst provide a gift to leaders, particularly those in ministry, nonprofits, and humanitarian sectors, who feel burned out, stressed, and running low on hope. their basic argument is that disillusionment, a state of discouragement, is a gift for christians who are struggling because the idealism they once enjoyed, when they brimmed with optimism, hope, and visions of a better world, is fading. disillusionment comes because of inevitable challenges in ministry and personal life, including racial injustice, poverty, political polarization, and leaders' moral failures, including those of pastors, all of which involve crushed expectations and painful experiences. individuals cannot master these circumstances, engineer happiness, or find refuge from real pain, and, as a result, hardship and deep disappointment may become uncontrollable (15). yet god does not allow such despair to lead to cynicism, using it instead for good; that is if one allows him. and here is where the gift of disillusionment lies: it is an invitation to turn toward a closer relationship with god. greer and horst remind readers that disillusionment and cynicism need not win the battle, for god is always available and always at work. the book is divided into four sections. the first discusses false hope, faint hope, and forgotten hope, all of which lead to disillusionment. the second section explains how disillusionment leads to enduring hope in the midst of suffering, surrender, and commitment. the third section focuses on justice, sacrifice, and forgiveness. and the fourth speaks on moving onward with discernment, obedience, perseverance, and community. the authors remind readers that in experiences of lost hope, one should look upward, not inward. instead of relying on one’s own personal abilities, we do so much better to depend totally upon god, because he is the ultimate hope. one should not rely on personal strength and abilities but on god's strength. it is this type of rooted faith that nourishes what the authors call “enduring hope,” modeled by jesus and his disciples in suffering, and that is one of the distinctive features of the christian faith (85). the authors continuously remind us to focus on love, surrender, commitment, sacrifice, forgiveness, discernment, obedience, and perseverance. the authors’ insights come from the inspiring stories and challenges of christian leaders: pastors, doctors, financial experts, educators, and other leaders from guatemala, poland, the philippines, oklahoma, detroit, zambia, and elsewhere. they have all experienced the suffering of disillusionment, but were able to find hope by turning their respective crises into opportunities to place a deeper trust in god and to find there an enduring hope. each chapter contains a story of frustrated people in pain who manage to look upward and rely on god. their hope was rooted not in their circumstances nor in their ability to change them, but in their trust in god's infinite faithfulness (77). such trust ultimately helped them overcome the obstacles in their work and make them stronger and more effective. one highlight is the story of jo anne lyons, founder of world hope international. lyons was raised in a christian household and, along with her christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(1), summer 2022 chettri, book review 42 husband wayne, developed a wesleyan church in kansas city. during the civil rights movement, she found her church remained silent; the congregation wanted no role in the protests even if they were peaceful and just (44). church leaders ignored her pleas to become engaged in these matters of gospel-centered social justice, refusing to act on matters that, from her perspective, so clearly mattered to god (45). as a result, lyons grew cynical toward the church she once loved. but at some point she realized she should look to god for hope rather than to a church, and she found that god was the only reliable source of enduring hope. "she turned upward to god. she prayed, worked, and waited, and all the while, god sustained a vision in her heart for the church to bring the great commission and the greatest commandments together" (49). though lyons had every reason to stay cynical, she overcame cynicism when she relied totally on god and gained the courage to move forward by connecting gospel witness with social action. that connection evolved into world hope international. today, world hope international serves over thirty countries to alleviate suffering and injustice through provision of clean water and energy, global health care, human rights services, and social ventures. throughout the book, greer and horst draw on the prophet jeremiah’s journey, reminding leaders to seek god's guidance, even as they persevere and remain obedient. jeremiah had the extremely difficult and painful task of communicating god’s message to a people who did not want to listen. he was despised, rejected, humiliated, arrested, assaulted, and threatened with abduction and death. even his relatives conspired against him and betrayed him. through all of this, jeremiah often inspired hope in people during difficult times. through all of the turmoil, he remained faithful to god and his call. as the authors note, "jeremiah did not fully understand god's plan, yet he obeyed. he chose to kneel, bow, and submit" (174). they explain how jeremiah serves as an example of the gift of disillusionment in that self-reliance is an idol of illusion. the gift of disillusionment can help leaders and christians of all backgrounds move forward by reminding them to trust god regardless of their challenges. the real stories, along with the references to jeremiah, will help all those working in difficult situations and who have lost hope. while it would be wonderful to have more details of the personal challenges faced by the leaders mentioned, the accounts provided from different countries serve as models of direction and discernment for continuing to follow the call to participate in god's work in the world. i recommend this book because readers will feel inspired to seek god's presence regardless of their suffering, to resist the temptation to rely on their own personal resources, and thereby engage in honest evaluations of our human limitations and our ultimate dependence on god. saroj chetri is the love your block administrator at pottstown community action. he also worked as area manager at world vision timor-leste and area development program manager at world vision international nepal. currently, he is pursuing a ph.d. in organizational leadership at eastern university. author email: saroj.chettri@eastern.edu mailto:saroj.chettri@eastern.edu christian relief, development, and advocacy 3(1), summer 2021 hoksbergen, book review 21 book review international development and local faith actors: ideological and cultural encounters edited by kathryn kraft and olivia j. wilkinson reviewed by roland hoksbergen new york: routledge, 2020, $39.16 (ebook) some years ago, i encountered christian philosopher charles taylor’s idea that one key quality that differentiates human beings from other animals is that we are self-interpreting. that made sense as i took notice how often everyday conversations revolve around explaining and understanding who we are, what we do, how we should live, and why. those thoughts came back to me as i read this useful book, because in its consideration of faith-based development organizations (fbos), it strives to understand and interpret who fbos are, how they work, and especially, how fbos from the global north relate to local faithbased organizations among the poor and marginalized in the global south. as the editors point out, the global development establishment is largely dominated by a secular paradigm, which exercises a good deal of influence on people of faith engaged in development work. in this context, people of faith often accede to the secular paradigm and essentially ignore their faith as they emulate the work of the secular professionals in such areas as health, education, food security, and economic empowerment. for people who take their faith seriously, however, this resolution is hardly acceptable. if our faith is to be relevant to our work, then we must 1) learn how to integrate our faith into our work, and 2) do that in a world in which faith has many expressions, none more objectively legitimate than the other. it is this second challenge that the editors and contributors to this volume especially take on as they work toward understanding and improving the encounters among international faith-based organizations of the global north and the local faith actors (lfas) and local faith communities (lfcs) of the global south. to help us define and improve these relationships, the editors have assembled an experienced and thoughtful group of academics and practitioners to tell and/or evaluate stories of encounters between organizations in the north and those in the south. in the end, the sixteen contributions lay out the challenges and explain how those relationships succeed or fail to live up to the best descriptions of what north-south relationships should be. the question of how to structure relationships in the context of faith diversity is especially acute because of all the ways in which those relationships are fraught with the post-colonial power dynamics that tilt toward northern domination. it is indeed hard to disentangle issues of faith from differences and divisions that have roots in geography, culture, education, wealth, and power, many of which result from and still manifest the world’s history of northern colonial and post-colonial domination. yet if we are to form cooperative and respectful bonds of trust, solidarity, and community with our global neighbors, we must learn how to work together. the stories in this volume provide a welcome effort and many illuminating experiential lessons. unfortunately, there is little doubt about the tendency of those from the north to dominate, one recent example being how the development of the sustainable development goals was supposed to be inclusive, but failed badly in achieving that (ch. 12 by tomalin and haustein). sometimes it is more subtle, as when in the face of “female genital mutilation/cutting” (fgm/c) northerners too easily accept such terms as “harmful traditional practices” or “harmful cultural christian relief, development, and advocacy 3(1), summer 2021 hoksbergen, book review 22 practices” (htps or hcps), both of which firmly plant northerners on the moral high ground without acknowledging the htps in our own cultures. le roux and bartelink suggest that beauty pageants and pornography are among the hcps of the global north (ch. 15). the heart of the issue seems to be how those from northern fbos, with the money, technical knowhow, networking capital, and educational mastery engage lfas as peers and partners. the various authors thoughtfully engage this problem, but its depth is on display when the realization hits that all the assembled wisdom in this volume comes from people that robert chambers would call “uppers.” less a criticism of the book than an acknowledgement of what seem to be inevitable realities, this simply points to how hard it is to level the playing field. by now we can acknowledge that most northern development professionals, including those from fbos, have learned how important it is to listen, respect, walk alongside, and partner. to use one of today’s common colloquialisms, “we get it.” but still, this is all so much easier said than done, because at the end of the day, we still want to move beyond hunger, disease, conflict, child and maternal mortality, environmental destruction, gender-based violence, and other maladies that afflict our neighbors around the world. perhaps the main existential temptation in this climate is for northerners to treat their southern neighbors as instruments that can help achieve these good objectives. the strong temptation is for fbos and other northern organizations to work with lfas precisely because lfas have the local knowledge and local trust that allows them to achieve results. northern organizations (including fbos) don’t necessarily want to hear what lfas have to say. in such a world, however, partnerships are mostly for show and continue to embody structures of domination. they are not what some call “authentic,” meaning that all voices are not only heard, but also accorded equal weight. instrumental relationships must thus be transformed, and contributors to this book are united in their desire to find pathways toward authentic working relationships that respectfully include lfas even as they achieve significant gains in traditional arenas of development. many of the contributions revolve around a world vision framework for including all voices, especially those with a faith orientation, and especially when the groups working in a certain region or on a particular issue are of different faiths. the framework is called “channels of hope.” the book opens with a story of how world vision and islamic relief cooperated in lebanon to use the channels of hope methodology and then cooperated further to train others in the use of the methodology as the practice of working across faith difference spreads. participants are typically faith leaders and their wives from all relevant faiths in the local area. as eyber and jailobaeva explain in chapter 14, wives of local faith leaders are influential leaders in their own right, and their voices make a big difference through informal channels. the workshop of several days creates a safe space where participants share their values, their beliefs, and the scriptures that inspire them, and then work toward a common understanding of the issues in their community that they can work on together. the support this book expresses for the channels of hope strategy is based on allowing local participants to build programs that address issues of local concern, even when those are delicate and potentially controversial, like fgm/c, gender equality, or hiv/aids. such locally built and/or influenced programs have more staying power than programs brought in from the outside, almost certainly because local people imagine and build them in the context of their own cultures and belief systems. ownership and investment lead both to significant achievements and to long-term sustainability. in most of the stories, faith differences from north to south are contained under the umbrella tradition of christianity, which anyone in the christian community knows does not equal agreement on faith-based views and values, thus making channels of hope types of programs important even within the same overall faith tradition. other religions are also represented, but less so. there is one chapter each dedicated to communities of bahá’í and muslim faiths, and three chapters that focus on work in communities where christian and muslim communities are both strong. in spite of the many authors, there is a welcome continuity to the writing style and quality. the contributors are experienced, knowledgeable, and sensitive to the significant challenges of being faithful to their own deepest values and beliefs while also being respectful of those of others. i have two quibbles with the book. one is that world vision’s channels of hope program is never explained or presented in detail, though aspects of the program are brought up throughout. for those who would like a thorough description, you can find that here. the other is that the book, like others in the routledge series on religion and development, is expensive, though options are available online for both short-term rental and electronic versions. i fear the cost will be a significant barrier to wide readership. overall, the book is a helpful guide to faithoriented practitioners who want to work constructively in diverse faith contexts. the stories are mostly empirically based, from a diverse range of global regions, a variety of organizations, and an array of issues. there is an early chapter on wash as well as chapters on gender-based topics, child health and protection, peacebuilding, general community https://www.wvi.org/sites/default/files/channels_of_hope_project_model.pdf christian relief, development, and advocacy 3(1), summer 2021 hoksbergen, book review 23 mobilization, and more. something for everyone in search of an experiential guide to defining, understanding, and improving our developmentoriented relationships in a multi-faith world. roland hoksbergen taught in and directed calvin university’s global development studies program for many years. having retired in 2017, he now serves as chief editor of this journal, crda. author email: hoksro@calvin.edu christian relief, development, and advocacy 3(2), winter 2022 kumar, toward building evidence of kingdom impact 24 toward building evidence of kingdom impact subodh kumar the mission of all christ-centered organizations (ccos) is to extend god’s kingdom on earth. ccos, therefore, are in the business of inspiring, motivating, and engaging in mission to take the gospel to the whole world, a gospel that is holistic in nature. one of the main issues that arises in this kind of work is what kind of actual difference the cco is making, a difference that can be labeled as “kingdom impact.” this article argues that seeking evidence of kingdom impact, in other words seeking to monitor, evaluate, and measure the impact of programs and projects from what can be called a “kingdom impact measurement framework” (kimf), can be of great help in the work that ccos do as part of submitting themselves completely to the lordship of christ. it starts out by reviewing the potential benefits of seeking to measure kingdom impact, suggests the possible theological underpinnings for how to put that into practice, presents the “kingdom impact measurement framework” and its elements, and concludes with the prayer that this might help ccos differentiate their approaches from those used by secular counterparts. the hope and prayer is that what is shared here will be helpful for the range of ccos that are in their incipient processes of prayerfully discerning whether and how to engage in this endeavor, as well as those that are far along their way on that journey. introduction the mission of all christ-centered organizations (ccos) is to extend god’s kingdom on earth, which is manifested through individual and social transformation. increasing love for god and neighbors is evidence of moving toward this kingdom goal. individual transformation in christian mission involves releasing the person from whatever bondage prevents him or her from realizing god-given potential for abundant living. social transformation involves healing broken relationships to restore justice in all social institutions, while honoring gifts within the culture that promote life over death. the cco’s mission may contain visible developmental objectives such as improving the health of children, improving education for children, increasing access to safe water, working toward food security, or less tangible developmental objectives, such as improved biblical world views, increases in samaritan love, or increased generative hope. projects are god-given vehicles that achieve not only visible developmental objectives (transactional), but also intangible developmental objectives (transcendence). ccos, therefore, are in the business of inspiring, motivating, and engaging in mission to take the holistic gospel to the whole world. in particular, their thinking and acting is grounded in the belief that spiritual realities are inseparably interwoven with dayto-day “ordinary” living (bradshaw 1993). understanding the local dynamics of sin and grace is central to both planning and implementation of missional activities. the kingdom vision is at odds with worldly visions for a better future. for ccos, measuring kingdom impact (success from a kingdom perspective) is not only a strategic imperative, but also a biblical mandate required by a steadfast faithfulness to god. it is acting out of biblical love in every aspect of living. that is the essence of the kingdom impact measurement framework (kimf) presented in this paper. the kimf can help ccos submit themselves completely to the lordship of christ. the foundation for the conceptual construction of the kimf presented in this paper is laid out in my doctoral dissertation (kumar 2017). to a great extent, my thinking in developing the kimf is influenced by the fourth-generation model of evaluation (guba and lincoln 1989). in the construction of kimf, however, i have blended both the positivist and post-positivist paradigms with the fourth-generation evaluation model, and introduced reflexivism as a new paradigm into the framework. reflexivism does not necessarily mean reflection. a relatively new practice in evaluation, reflexivism is about self-awareness, i.e., questioning our values, prejudice, thought processes, habitual actions and assumptions to strive to understand our complex roles in relations to others. furthermore, there are two sets of essential features of fourth-generation evaluation christian relief, development, and advocacy 3(2), winter 2022 kumar, toward building evidence of kingdom impact 25 that i have adapted in the kimf. first, that the claims, concerns, and issues of stakeholders (mission staff, community members) serve as the basis for determining what should be measured (kingdom impact), which then becomes the basis of determining what data we should collect and what analytical insights we need. this is why the kimf is transformational, because the goal for kingdom people is to seek evidence of kingdom impact – the state of shalom. secondly, the methodological exercise is performed using constructivist and reflexive inquiry paradigms, involving the evaluators, evaluatees, and evaluands. that is why the kimf is also transformative as it seeks to renew the minds (rom.12:2, col. 2:2-8) of all stakeholders involved. the aim of this methodology is to develop consensus among stakeholders who previously may have held different, perhaps conflicting, constructions of realities. if knowledge exists essentially in the form of human constructions, then a paradigm that recognizes and accepts that premise from the start is to be preferred. my hope and prayer is that these ideas will be helpful for all ccos that are in the incipient processes of prayerfully discerning whether and how to engage in this endeavor, as well as those who are far along their way on this journey. benefits of measuring kingdom impact christian mission has a long history, and has engaged ccos, both independently and collaboratively, for centuries. by some estimates, global faith-based organizations (fbos), which include ccos, provide over $100 billion of privately donated funds for their mission activities (the giin 2020). in the last several decades the issue around measuring the impact and effectiveness of non-profit organizations as a whole has risen more and more to the fore. independent of these contextual pressures, there are at least five ways in which ccos might benefit significantly from undertaking the measurement of their kingdom impact: 1. providing credible evidence of who we are and what we do: by definition, ccos are influenced and motivated by the love of christ to show the love of christ through the programs they engage in. generally, this involves seeking to design activities that meet physical needs as well as the needs of the mind, body, and spirit in a way that is holistic and sustainable (offutt and reynolds 2019). our faith is an asset and an important ingredient in our work to end poverty, and collecting evidence that points to its holistic impact (the kingdom impact) helps us to better articulate who we are and what we do as disciples of christ. 2. capitalizing on the opportunity to witness for christ: it is our utmost duty to witness for christ in all we do. as jesus said to the disciples, "you will be my witnesses in jerusalem, in all judea and samaria and to the ends of the earth" (acts 1:8). measuring kingdom impact gives us additional opportunities to be such witnesses. biblical narratives are not simply stories, but evidence-based testimony of reliable witnesses; likewise, not only does measuring kingdom impact provide us with data that point to tangible evidence that christ continues to transform the world, but telling the story through discernible kingdom impact presents the face of christ without preaching a word. 3. securing a seat at the table with our secular and nonchristian counterparts: by gathering data of kingdom impact based on prayerful and clear-eyed strategies, ccos that are not already in a position to learn from and share evaluation and learning tools and methods with our secular colleagues can join the community of ccos who are already doing so. increasingly, ccos like food for the hungry, world vision, and many others have become important partners for the world bank and the united nations (haynes 2013). other ccos have joined networks like the joint learning initiative on faith and local communities (jli) that are seeking to learn from each other and influence policy. this seat at the table gives ccos increased access to resources of all kinds to expand their knowledge and programs, while also representing opportunities for additional witness as mentioned above. 4. build a common pool of knowledge of effective strategies for christian mission: closely related to #3, as ccos build up their capacity to measure kingdom impact they will also benefit from and contribute to the pool of knowledge and learning among ccos themselves, for example through established networks like the accord network and the accord research alliance (ara). larger ccos that invest in creating this common pool of knowledge also benefit smaller ccos as they can leverage this knowledge of successful missional strategies to create kingdom impact. not all ccos have resources to invest in research and evaluations, but if large ccos share their findings, small and often under-resourced ccos can also make the most of their funds and people-power by investing in what works. currently, most ccos collect more data than they realize, from donor management systems to statistics about who uses their services to the outcomes for those participants. with everincreasing amounts of evidence and knowledge pooled together, methodological, theological, and christian relief, development, and advocacy 3(2), winter 2022 kumar, toward building evidence of kingdom impact 26 theoretical tools and frameworks can be further developed, transformed, and shared to benefit ccos. 5. promote accountability and christian stewardship: christian stewardship is a theological virtue and an act of flourishing in the management of god’s call to live godly lives. christian stewardship demands that ccos wisely manage their resources, and measuring impact that feeds into designing evidence-based programming can be of great help. cco investment in evidence-building and using the evidence can lead to better decision-making and developing better mission strategies, and thereby give ccos the opportunity to create more “bang for the buck.” moreover, the kind of kingdom impact data referred to here will enhance the reputation of ccos and most likely make them more attractive to both donors and grantors. polling from gallup, for example, found that 57% of donors look for a solid mission and proof that the charities can accomplish that mission before they open their wallets (fritz 2020). foundations typically ask potential grantees to provide a section on evaluation in their grant applications. they follow up with site visits and frequent reporting expectations to ensure the effectiveness of the evaluation plan. the more datadriven the cco, the more likely that it will attract foundation grants. even watchdog organizations, such as charity navigator, include assessment platforms that incorporate performance or impact components. a theology of kingdom impact measurement having reviewed the benefits of measuring kingdom impact, it becomes crucial to identify the foundational underpinnings that inform its creation and practice. this theology of kingdom impact measurement consists of seven elements: 1. god delights in evidence, measurement, and evaluation: we serve a god who created a world of measurable things, and he seems to find delight in measurement. in fact, he takes measuring things very seriously, including the spiritual growth of believers. thus, measuring the impact of programs and projects is an important subplot in god’s story. for example, jesus speaks often of the measurement of faith, love, and hope (e.g., matt. 6:30, 8:26, 16:8, jn 15:13). similarly, throughout the bible, hope, joy, and knowledge are all referred to as measurable in the life of the believer. in fact, the bible itself is a source of big data, data as historical narrative, data in terms of law, data in poetry, and data in prophecies, all leading to one thing – the theos. “the more we explore data in the bible, the more we discover his purpose” (everitt 2009, 137). 2. evaluation is and must be treated as an instrument of spiritual discernment: as we do evaluation work, we need to walk with jesus. as we take up evaluation assignments, we must walk barefoot, because we will witness god at work; we will be in his holy presence. if we are to be highly professional, we must gird ourselves with prayer and fasting (foster 1998). we must use our gifts of the spirit as tools for collecting evidence of kingdom impact. evaluators need to wear the full armor of god, or else they can be easily attacked by the evil one, because he does not want the renewing of minds arising from the transformational work of christian missions (kumar 2017). 3. the evaluation of holistic christian mission must seek to be transformational as well as transformative: a transformational approach to evaluation has to do with ensuring that through measurements, the monitoring and evaluation (m&e) staff are looking for evidence of shalom the kingdom impact. if we do not engage in this process of discernment, our evaluation work may be indistinguishable from that of secular organizations, and would not be transformational in the spiritual sense of the word. in fact, transformational evaluation begins with seeing and discerning what god is doing in the communities in the midst of all the rigor involved in highly technically sound development programs. it begins with god and ends with god. typical developmental evaluation, on the other hand, begins with human effort and seeks to enhance human effort (cookingham 2015, kumar 2017). a kingdom approach to evaluation, however, must also be transformative, one that includes the objective of renewing the evaluator’s thinking and stakeholders’ views regarding what really matters in christian mission (cookingham 2015, kumar 2017). the image for transformative evaluation is a longer period of time that includes study, prayer, fasting, scripture search (foster 1998), and visioning interwoven with evaluation planning, data collection and analysis, and report preparation. the evaluation is an occasion for evaluation team members and others to grow spiritually as they seek god’s will for christian mission (kumar 2017). 4. an evaluation of christian mission should examine the motives, worldview, ideological underpinnings, and spiritual undergirding that drive development planning and interventions: among the aims of holistic christian mission are (a) awareness of how god relates to people, (b) repentance, or change in christian relief, development, and advocacy 3(2), winter 2022 kumar, toward building evidence of kingdom impact 27 thinking from self-centeredness to christcenteredness, and (c) commitment to community that is led by the holy spirit (cookingham 2009, kumar 2017). to understand awareness on (a) how god relates to people, the evaluation must ask questions such as: in local communities, what does god call staff and various groups of stakeholders to do about the present situation? participatory scripture exercises and transformative prayer (foster 1998) that aid a process of discerning appropriate recommendations are especially helpful here. also, what do staff, community members, and other stakeholders envision for communities that will make the establishment of god’s kingdom manifest? and how can this evaluation enable kingdom visioning (kumar 2017)? for (b) repentance, or a change in thinking from self-centeredness to christ-centeredness, questions such as “what aspects of sin in these communities are keeping people in bondage?” can be helpful. we should ask ourselves, “how can the content and style of the evaluation enable appropriate confession and repentance” (kumar 2017)? finally, for (c) commitment to community that is led by the holy spirit, it might be best to ask whether staff and community members (including church leaders) believe that god is powerful enough to transform these communities according to his overall purpose. or what does evaluation evidence say about their belief and unbelief (kumar 2017)? 5. evaluation is about telling the truth: evaluation is about truth-telling of the community’s life. it is about establishing truth in the public domain. furthermore, as john 8:32 reminds us, it is pointing in the direction of truth that sets every human being free. good evaluation helps people become aware of what they create when they live in ways inconsistent with the teachings of jesus. evaluations help in unmasking the deceptions (col. 2:7-8) of the principalities and powers, and they help expose the ultimate powerlessness of the principalities and powers in the face of god’s rule (cookingham 2009, kumar 2017). does our desire to be in control of things by setting and achieving goals reflect rebellion against god’s unfolding plan for salvation and redemption? there is a mix of motives that can be placed on a continuum from selfish gain to selfless service. there is a mix of perceptions about god that range from seeing god as being at work for the greatest good of people from a divine perspective, to understanding god as irrelevant for describing the dynamics of christian mission. there is a mix of faith touchstones from god being compassionate but single-mindedly focused on salvation, to people meaning to do good deeds, but getting diverted easily (cookingham 2009, kumar 2017). 6. evaluation should facilitate speaking about the most meaningful things witnessed: as followers of jesus, we speak about the most meaningful things we witness. a primary evaluation task should thus be to assist project stakeholders to use all of their senses to seek evidence in development work that illuminates the meaning of life, the word that was there from the beginning, and that is made manifest in the relationships of ordinary life. there are especially two kinds of evidence that need to be spoken. one is the deeds of darkness that need to be confessed, so that those involved can be cleansed and liberated to love god and neighbor. the other is the experience of walking in the light, the joy of being in the presence of god (cookingham 2009, kumar 2017). 7. in an evaluation, it is crucial that the culture and worldview of the community subject to evaluation be taken fully into account: it is extremely important that the evaluation be based on an understanding of the community’s worldview and core values that are manifested in thought, word, and deed in order to understand the significance of observations and information (bradshaw 1993). this calls for a deep level of cultural competence and discernment, especially in the process of analyzing the worldview of the poor and non-poor, including measuring behavioral changes (especially those that indicate love for god and neighbor in that culture). such deep understanding allows the evaluator to assess the extent to which the poor can imagine a different future and those with power are enabled to redefine power and challenge various aspects of reality that perpetuate poverty (cookingham 2009, kumar 2017). this can be very complex, but it is essential for holistic christian mission evaluation. we need to respect local cultures, and if we are going to engage in any evaluation within a particular culture, local people who are part of the culture should participate fully in the evaluation. this reinforces accord network principle #6, that we enter a community as guests, grow as partners, and continue as friends, demonstrating humility and a learner’s heart to understand poverty from their perspective and in their culture (accord network, n.d.). we can then envision culturally-sensitive project designs, measure progress, and celebrate together in culturally appropriate ways. a kingdom impact measurement framework with the theological underpinnings in place, we can now consider how to apply them in practice by christian relief, development, and advocacy 3(2), winter 2022 kumar, toward building evidence of kingdom impact 28 creating a guiding framework for kingdom impact evaluation. this framework, called the “kingdom impact measurement framework” (kimf), draws and builds on two sources, and bears some similarities to a third. first, it is a framework developed and used in food for the hungry under the name “evidence building capability framework.” second, it builds on the insights from the article “towards laying a foundation for christ-centered m&e” (check et al. 2020). third, it bears nomenclature similarities with eido research’s “kingdom impact framework” (eido research), a framework that eido has been developing with some members of the accord network and beyond. even though some terminology in this paper is similar to eido’s kingdom impact framework (kif), the kingdom impact measurement framework proposed here has different elements and perspectives. as seen in figure 1, this framework is made up of six components. the first, and overarching, component is the kingdom framework. the other five – program theory, evaluation design, the measurement of impact, advanced analysis, and biblical hermeneutics, are intimately linked together and influenced by the kingdom framework perspective. in what follows, each is presented in detail. figure 1: kingdom impact measurement framework seeking kingdom impact evidence requires a kingdom framework evaluation is about learning, which never happens in a vacuum. rather, learning always happens in some kind of cognitive framework, in some kind of basic conceptual model that structures and interconnects ideas together and helps us make sense of things. it is always important, therefore, to intentionally create frameworks that guide planning, implementation, and evaluation processes. in fact, there are excellent examples of kingdom frameworks that have already been created by christ-centered organizations (ccos). these include world vision’s transformational development framework, tear fund’s light wheel, eido research’s kingdom impact framework, and food for the hungry’s transformation framework (see box 1). the crucial function of all these frameworks is to help articulate the cco’s theology, theory, and practice, and to provide a foundation towards seeking, building, and using evidence for kingdom impact. cco frameworks built to guide the evaluation and measurement of the impact of programs are most helpful if they consist of three components: 1) the theological component that underpins the framework as a whole and drives the purpose and reason for the framework’s existence and the principles under which it should operate; 2) the theoretical component that gives additional insights into how and why things work the way they do; and 3) the operational component that transforms the conceptual elements of theology and theory into practice, including the practice of christian relief, development, and advocacy 3(2), winter 2022 kumar, toward building evidence of kingdom impact 29 measurement and the analysis of results. figure 2 gives a visual depiction of these components and their relationship to each other as they function in a constant process of feedback and flux to nurture, sustain, and transform the kingdom impact measurement framework as a whole. box 1: an example of food for the hungry’s (fh) kingdom framework* theological framework: god’s story – the foundation of fh’s work in relief and development (food for the hungry 2017) articulates the theological assertions that inspire, guide, and support fh’s mission. god’s story can be summarized through the four concepts of creation, fall, redemption, and restoration. god’s story starts with god’s creation to try to understand god’s intended design for his creation and our (humans’) role in it. to perform well in christian mission, fh must return to god’s design for the world and exercise its christian imagination for peace, justice, and abundant life (12). theoretical framework: fh believes that poverty is multifaceted and thus needs to be responded to holistically. fh’s definition of multidimensional poverty embraces a diverse range of characteristics, such as moral, emotional, and spiritual dimensions, and it is not limited only to financial resources, material deprivation, social isolation, exclusion and powerlessness, and physical and psychological ill-being (16). operational framework: when asking how fh makes its theological and theoretical frameworks operational, the answers lie in fh’s child-focused community transformation (cfct) program model. at the heart of this model is the welfare of the most vulnerable population in most societies — children. all programs and projects in fh use approaches as defined in cfct (19). measurement framework: it is through the measurement framework that fh is able to understand whether it is delivering on its mission, that is, the evidence of a trend of a community’s advancement toward flourishing and preparedness to continue their transformational development pursuit. this measurement framework is applied to all fh’s programs (20). results framework: the results framework for measuring the kingdom impact is what fh calls transformational outcomes or domains of change. there are seven domains of change that all fh programs are measured on, and these domains of change provide evidence of restoring broken relationships, which are based on fh’s theological and theoretical framework that defines poverty as the result of broken relationships (21). * all page numbers are from food for the hungry’s impact and learning report (fy 17-19) (2019b) figure 2: conceptual construction of the kingdom framework (source: fh’s impact and learning report, 2019b, 7) christian relief, development, and advocacy 3(2), winter 2022 kumar, toward building evidence of kingdom impact 30 the role of the first component (the theological framework) is to answer “the why” question. why a cco exists and why we do what we do should be answered by the cco’s theological framework. the second component in the kingdom framework is the theoretical framework that primarily answers “the what.” there are multiple perspectives and theories used to understand poverty; therefore, just as with the theological framework, the cco needs to ascertain its theoretical understanding of poverty. a theoretical framework provides conceptual clarity on the missional impact and outcomes the cco wants to achieve. ascertaining a better theoretical underpinning of the evidence they generate would also make this body of knowledge more useful. the need for the operational framework, the third component in the kingdom framework, is to answer “the how” question. ccos operationalize their theological and theoretical frameworks through an operational framework. in the absence of an operational framework, the danger is that theological and theoretical frameworks can limit themselves to mere abstract concepts. what is implemented needs to be measured. that is the purpose of the measurement framework and the results framework; to connect the “why,” the “what,” and the “how” by developing and focusing on metrics that matter (greer & horst 2014). it is through the measurement framework that the cco will be able to understand whether it is delivering on its mission. the results framework connects cco evidence back to what it defined in its theological and theoretical frameworks. seeking kingdom impact evidence requires sound program theory in order to guide the collection of the evidences of kingdom impact, it is essential to be guided by program theory. the program theory should be guided by both the theological and theoretical frameworks. program theory helps explore why (or why not) ccos missional activities are effective. program interventions should be underpinned by appropriate theory. a good theory helps to prevent overlooking factors that may be important determinants of program execution. program theory generally consists of two elements, the names for which are sometimes used interchangeably: a theory of change and a theory of action (funnel & rogers 2011). the theory of change explains why a certain set of activities leads to a certain set of results, whereas the theory of action describes in detail what those activities and results are. program theory, which is the combination of the theory of change and theory of action, becomes the basis for impact evaluation (funnel and rogers 2011). ccos are encouraged to develop a program theory for each of their programs, and to do so paying special attention to what they want to achieve both on the material and the spiritual side. grounding this process in the cco’s theological framework and biblical worldview is crucial; otherwise, cco programs will be no different from those of their secular counterparts. seeking kingdom impact evidence requires an appropriate evaluation design choosing an appropriate evaluation design is highly technical and the most overlooked part of any evaluation. again, the decision to choose an evaluation design should be guided by theological and theoretical frameworks. evaluation designs determine what and how to measure and validate the program theory. they can be created with a focus on collecting quantitative evidence, qualitative evidence, or both. the purpose of choosing an appropriate evaluation design is to ensure that the data collected can answer the evaluation questions that are most important for the organization and the community, and, as much as possible, provide evidence of the causal links between the interventions and the impact as defined in the program theory. the way the evaluation is designed has much to do with how accurate and reliable the results are, and how well those results can be used to improve program interventions. the design should be one that best addresses key threats to internal validity (whether the intervention caused the change) and external validity (the ability to generalize results to other situations, communities, and populations) (food for the hungry 2019a). in this process, four main objectives must be kept in mind: ● providing reliability, validity, and credibility to the results. ● choosing the right data collection methods to answer evaluation questions. ● identifying unintended consequences (both positive and negative). ● organizing the structure for the evaluation and a coherent evaluation plan. it is critical that the evaluation questions are defined before choosing an evaluation design. here again, the theological and theoretical frameworks help define evaluation questions. a specific design can be chosen by considering the following: ● what are the evaluation questions? ● what is the nature of the program? which design will better provide the information that can lead to valid and reliable conclusions? ● how valid and reliable do findings need to be? ● are there any ethical concerns related to choosing a specific design? christian relief, development, and advocacy 3(2), winter 2022 kumar, toward building evidence of kingdom impact 31 ● how feasible is each option? what is the time constraint and how much does each option cost? experimental designs such as randomized control trials (rcts) can be costlier than quasi-experimental or nonexperimental designs, but they are well-suited if the evaluation’s purpose is to answer questions around causality. rcts are not always needed. some alternatives to rcts are factorial designs and time series designs, which do a better job of answering change questions and whether the change is due to the programs in question. ccos that do not need rcts can use quasi-experimental, nonexperimental, factorial, or time-series designs. seeking kingdom impact evidence requires measuring impact one of the main traps ccos fall into with their measurement efforts is that they measure only what they actually do, or what they implement. this is sometimes referred to as “traditional” m&e. for example, measuring the number of bibles distributed, the number of children attending sunday school, or other such “indicators,” does not provide evidence of kingdom impact, nor does it provide an opportunity to learn and improve. the problem is that these are measurements of “outputs,” of the activities carried out, not of “outcomes” or “impacts” that actually represent the real transformation. in his book, impact assessment for development agencies – learning to value change (2005), chris roche defines impact as “significant or lasting changes in people’s lives, brought about by a given action or series of action” (21). he defines impact measurement as “systematic analysis of the lasting changes – positive or negative, intended or not – in people’s lives brought about by a given action or series of action” (roche 2005, 21). evidence of kingdom impact, therefore, is about capturing certain types of change: change in the beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors of people who are served by cco programs. these are the “results” that are actually sought, encompassing both the “outcomes” and the “impacts” of the programs. this is why “results-based management” (rbm) approaches have become so influential in the humanitarian relief and development world and have influenced m&e practices globally. rbm is a broad management strategy aimed at learning and achieving improved performance and demonstrable results. rbm differs from traditional m&e that focusses only on inputs, activities, and outputs as mentioned earlier, whereas rbm combines the traditional monitoring with assessments of outcomes and impacts (morra imas and rist 2009, 108). rbm has been demanded by major donors such as usaid and others for many years now. monitoring and evaluation based on rbm is especially well-suited for documenting the evidence of kingdom impact because it is designed to address the “so what” questions. for example, so what that outputs have been generated? so what that activities have taken place? so what that outputs from these activities have been counted? it therefore feeds into the process of assessing both measurable heart and well-being changes in the lives of the most vulnerable, especially children, providing feedback on the actual outcomes and impacts of missional strategies and projects. rbm also supports the performance of ccos and other stakeholders in relation to their obligations, functions, and relationships, and holds them accountable for results that demonstrate kingdom values. seeking kingdom impact evidence uses advanced analytical capabilities when quantitative approaches are employed when using quantitative evaluation approaches to evaluation, advanced statistical analytical capabilities are especially helpful in generating the most useful and farreaching insights and conclusions that help describe kingdom impact and also provide guidance for how to improve it. without insights, data are mere empty statistics. it is insights that help ccos leverage and harness value from their data and turn them into strategic assets. ccos can use what data science refers to as the "final frontier of analytical capabilities" (louchez 2016) to derive insights from their evaluation data. at the heart of this lies data analytics, a process that can be defined as taking raw data and transforming it in a way that it can generate actionable insights from that data. building capabilities in data analytics is key in creating a data-driven culture within any organization, and in understanding data at a deep level that some see as critical to organizational success (intel corporation, n.d.). louchez points to four analytical capabilities that ccos must invest in their organization: descriptive or exploratory analysis, diagnostic analysis, predictive analysis, and prescriptive analysis (walker 2014; louchez 2016). ● descriptive or exploratory analytical capability: this is primarily called “hindsight analysis” as it looks only at the historical data. descriptive analysis helps explore the data and answer the question of “what” is happening in the program (louchez 2016). most common in m&e, descriptive analysis has to do with identifying trends, with tracking change over time, and with understanding the extent to which progress is being made in achieving key indicators, and what problems might exist. limiting the process to descriptive analysis alone is not good enough, christian relief, development, and advocacy 3(2), winter 2022 kumar, toward building evidence of kingdom impact 32 because it uses univariate and bivariate analysis and provides information only on progress (trends). ● diagnostic analysis: this type of analysis helps answer the “why” of what is happening. (louchez 2016), and thus complements descriptive analysis. diagnostic analysis enables ccos to drill down to the root cause of the problems identified during descriptive analysis. also based on the evaluation design chosen, it provides the ability to isolate the confounding factors. the purpose of both descriptive and diagnostic analysis is to help ccos make operational, tactical, or strategic decisions, and to make course corrections based on the insights generated so that problems can be addressed or impacts can be sustained. ● predictive analytical capability: predictive analysis basically predicts “what’s likely to happen” (louchez 2016). predictive analysis is gaining more significance these days. use of artificial intelligence (ai) and machine learning (ml) is making predictive analysis easier. one can build predictive modelling using ai/ml algorithms. this type of analysis helps predict the likelihood of success or failure of a strategy or program interventions. it is carried out using multivariate methods, with odds ratios and relative risks being the most common statistical measures employed. ● prescriptive analytical capability: prescriptive analysis basically helps ccos answer the question, “so what do i need to do?” (louchez 2016). based on predictive analysis, prescriptive analysis deals with prescribing where a cco should specifically invest so that there is a high likelihood of kingdom impact – maybe even maximum impact. this analysis uses linear, logistic, multivariate, and multinomial regression modelling and is the most advanced of the four. the purpose of predictive and prescriptive analysis is to make informed choices so that better results can be achieved. it enables ccos (especially those with limited funding) to make decisions on how to concentrate their resources on mission activities most likely to yield kingdom impact. seeking kingdom impact evidence requires adopting a hermeneutical approach to learning and reflection. the final component of the kingdom impact measurement framework is a hermeneutical approach to learning and reflection. “hermeneutical” simply means interpretation and making sense, and this approach consists of interpreting the data with three tools: the theological framework, an awareness of different perspectives (a “constructivist” approach), and helping those different perspectives be in dialogue with each other (a “reflexive” approach). this approach basically takes results of the operational framework, which are measured using the results framework, and connects them back to the theological and theoretical framework to make sense of the data. first, without the right interpretation, quantitative and qualitative data are, at best, merely empty statistics and decontextualized opinions and, at worst, quite misleading. this is because the relationship between the data and its usefulness (value) depends on how we approach them interpretively. this “hermeneutical” approach has up to four levels of depth of understanding and abstraction, levels that make up what has been called a “hierarchy of data, information, knowledge, wisdom” (dikw framework), as depicted in figure 4 (kumar 2021). at the base level of this hierarchy lie the data, which are individual facts, statistics, or narrative items. they are raw and, without some transformation and interpretation, are of limited value. the second level of interpretation is information, which consists of data that have been applied to the context and understanding of one or more relational connections in the data. the third level is knowledge, an arranging of information in a useful manner based on an identification and understanding of observed patterns and trends. when meaning is provided to the information, it transforms into knowledge. knowledge differs from data or information. new knowledge may be created from existing knowledge using logical inference. the fourth and final level of interpretation is wisdom. when insights are generated from knowledge, the knowledge converts to wisdom. usually achieved over a long time span, wisdom helps us understand the principles that underpin patterns and relationships at the level of information and knowledge, and it helps in driving data-driven decision making. moving in the data value chain from data to knowledge is primarily enabled by data science practices, while moving from knowledge to wisdom requires a discernment process. seeking evidence of kingdom impact, therefore, is about discerning a compassionate use of knowledge and wisdom. it is at this point that we transition in our analytics from using data as transactional to transcendence and start gazing at the face of god (kumar 2021). christian relief, development, and advocacy 3(2), winter 2022 kumar, toward building evidence of kingdom impact 33 figure 4: the hermeneutical approach to data interpretation (kumar 2021) a hermeneutical approach is important not only for the analysis of data, but also for building the evaluation design itself. in other words, it pulls everything together. to this end, a key part of applying the hermeneutical insights to the process of seeking evidence for kingdom impact lies in recognizing the facts that (1) the actors involved in cco programs may have different perspectives on the central problems and their causes, (2) some outcomes of any program and missional activities are unpredictable, and (3) the process of transformation involves multiple pathways and interrelated factors that are not always apparent. this means that it is important for any monitoring and evaluation design to appreciate that people are the motor behind the development and societal change processes, and that it is only through sharing experiences from different perspectives by different people that one gets the full range of knowledge needed – a “constructivist approach.” it is also important to foster an inclusive “reflexive approach” that enables a collective learning process (in groups of actors and in projects), as well as to focus on results in terms of learning and institutional change (van mierlo 2010). a robust approach to building kingdom evidence combines the best of these constructivist (fourth generation models) and reflexive approaches with the results-oriented approach (positivist and post-positivist). a summary of the various tools available from each approach is provided in table 1. this kind of comprehensive approach would stimulate the exchange of perspectives enabling (1) mutual understanding among different actors, (2) exchange of experiences and support of collective learning, and (3) improvement and change in mission strategies. further, this approach provides good insights into research, tests approaches, and helps to collaboratively design context-sensitive, multi-sectoral mission activities that yield kingdom impact. conclusion one of the recurring questions among cco practitioners is what ccos bring to the table that is different from other relief, development, and advocacy organizations. after all, much (although not all) of the relief, development, and advocacy work done by ccos is through practical assistance that may not necessarily have a clearly evident “spiritual” dimension to it. just because ccos engage in relief, development, and advocacy work, does not necessarily make their work “spiritual,” except perhaps in the broad scope of their spiritual mission of “kingdom building.” it could be argued that much of what ccos give attention to is essentially employing “good science” through good evidence, and that if ccos would employ the same design, monitoring, evaluation, and learning that good secular organizations do, it would serve them well, and it would also reflect christ-centered values. in fact, the substantial overlapping of the principles of the american evaluation association with the accord network principles of excellence in integral mission christian relief, development, and advocacy 3(2), winter 2022 kumar, toward building evidence of kingdom impact 34 charted out by check et al. (2020, 61) show how this argument has some merit to it. and yet, ccos are called to engage effectively with the heart and spirituality of the communities they serve through engagement with faith leaders and actors (bornstein 2005), to address spiritual root causes of poverty, and to engage in multi-faith environments to achieve long-lasting positive changes in attitudes and behavior. and they are uniquely positioned to do so. these types of engagements can and should lead ccos to a different approach to planning for, implementing, and evaluating and measuring impact, precisely because of their call to be witnesses to christ. the hope and prayer of this article is that that the presentation of this kingdom impact measurement framework will help ccos at all stages of their engagement with measurement to think creatively about what the spiritual impact dimensions of their programs might be, and how best to seek evidence of both spiritual and material aspects as an integral whole. results-oriented approach constructivist approach reflexive approach use rct, other evaluation design, baselines and final evaluation, reporting on indicator performance tracking table (iptt) and detailed implementation plan (dip) progress identifying barriers to change, semi-annual and annual reviews, midterm evaluation, final evaluation periodic project management meetings, structured reflective events in the life of the project, research and innovation (r&i) workshops methods theory of change (toc), log frames, learning histories, responsive evaluation, most significant change, impact grid reflexive monitoring in action/reflexive process, monitoring/interactive learning approach data collection methodology quantitative qualitative qualitative role of data and m&e accountability, generating evidence to prove causality of pathways and supporting project management supporting strategic and tactical management, toc analysis, reasons-for-change learning from stakeholders, modifying processes, and support setting learning agenda evidence to support knowledge creation and adaptation. learning, change of practices, and their institutional setting focus results/predefined objectives or procedures meanings and values, based on negotiations calling existing practices and institutional settings into question paradigm reality exists and can be measured/defined objectively. reality is constructed through interaction and negotiation. reality has to be reconstructed, a new reality has to be developed. table 1: summary of approaches and functions of m&e to be used in the project note from the editor: readers will likely have noticed that no examples of what such an evaluation would actually look like are presented in this paper. if the argument in this paper has intrigued you, please check out the crda’s next issue (expected in august 2022), in which one or several such practical examples will be presented in part 2 of this paper. if you or your organization is interested in contributing to part 2 of this paper, please contact the editor or the author. christian relief, development, and advocacy 3(2), winter 2022 kumar, toward building evidence of kingdom impact 35 references accord network. “accord’s principles of integral mission.” https://accordnetwork.org/about/principles/. accessed march 31, 2022. accord network research alliance. https://accordnetwork.org/ara/. barna group. 2019. “why generations approach generosity differently.” june 19, 2019. https://www.barna.com/research/generationsgenerosity/. bloomberg. 2019. “morgan stanley survey finds investor enthusiasm for sustainable investing at an all-time high.” september 12. https://www.morganstanley.com/pressreleases/morgan-stanley-survey-finds-investorenthusiasm-for-sustainable-. bonem, mike. 2012. “measuring what matters.” christianity today. https://www.christianitytoday.com/pastors/2012/spr ing/measuringmatters.html. accessed april 09, 2020. bradshaw, bruce. 1993. bridging the gap: evangelism, development and shalom. monrovia, ca: marc publications. check, kristen, rodney green, and subodh kumar. 2020. “towards laying a foundation for christcentered monitoring & evaluation.” christian relief, development, and advocacy, winter 1(2): 61-69. https://crdajournal.org/index.php/crda/article/view/ 417. cookingham, frank. 2009. “introduction to transformative evaluation in area development programs.” world vision international, monrovia, ca. internal document. cookingham, frank. 2015. “transformative evaluation model.” world vision international, monrovia, ca. internal document. diiulio jr., john j. 2000. “godly people in the public square.” the public interest, fall issue, 110-115. everitt, brian. 2009. chance rules: an informal guide to probability, risk, and statistics. london, uk: springer science. eido research. https://eidoresearch.com. food for the hungry. 2017. god's story: the foundation for fh's work in relief and development. phoenix, az. chromeextension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/vie wer.html?pdfurl=https%3a%2f%2fs3.us-west1.wasabisys.com%2ffhmediacloud%2f2018%2f03%2fgodsstory.pdf&clen=1354692&chunk=true. food for the hungry. 2017. fh cfct toolkit #7a: cfct monitoring and evaluation manual, a toolkit for implementing fh’s child-focused community transformation (cfct) model. washington, d.c. food for the hungry. 2019a. fh cfct toolkit #7d: manager’s handbook for cfct mid term evaluations. learning and evaluation department. phoenix, az. food for the hungry. 2019b. impact and learning report (fy 17-19), learning and evaluation department. phoenix, az. foster, richard j. 1998. celebration of discipline: the path to spiritual growth. san francisco: harper. fritz, joanne. 2020. “how nonprofits benefit from measuring outcomes,” the balance small business. https://www.thebalancesmb.com/hownonprofits-can-measure-outcomes-and-why-theyshould2502307#:~:text=the%20benefits%20include%20 better%20decision,for%20all%20of%20their%20co mmunications. accessed may 20, 2021. funnel, sue c. and patricia j. rogers. 2011. purposeful program theory, effective use of theories of change and logic models. san francisco: john wiley and sons. greer, peter and chris horst. 2014. mission drift: the unspoken crisis facing leaders, charities, and churches. minneapolis, mn: bethany house. guba, egon g. and yvonna s. lincoln. 1989. fourth generation evaluation. thousand oaks, ca: sage publication. haynes, jeffery. 2016. “faith-based organizations, development and the world bank.” in gilles carbonnier, ed. international development policy: religion and development. london, uk: palgrave macmillan. 49-64. intel corporation. “what is data analytics” https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/analytics /what-is-data-analytics.html. accessed march 13, 2022. johnson, byron r., ralph brett tompkins, and derek webb. 2008. “objective hope: assessing the effectiveness of faith based organizations: a review of the literature.” waco, tx: baylor university. https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtuallibrary/abstracts/objective-hope-assessingeffectiveness-faith-based-organizations. joint learning initiative on faith & local communities. https://jliflc.com/. kumar, subodh. 2015. “devotion series on transformative evaluation,” food for the hungry, phoenix, az. internal publication. kumar, subodh. 2010. “impact measurement involving transformational outcome,” world vision india, chennai, india. internal publication. about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank#:~:text=the%20benefits%20include%20better%20decision,for%20all%20of%20their%20communications about:blank#:~:text=the%20benefits%20include%20better%20decision,for%20all%20of%20their%20communications about:blank#:~:text=the%20benefits%20include%20better%20decision,for%20all%20of%20their%20communications about:blank#:~:text=the%20benefits%20include%20better%20decision,for%20all%20of%20their%20communications about:blank#:~:text=the%20benefits%20include%20better%20decision,for%20all%20of%20their%20communications about:blank#:~:text=the%20benefits%20include%20better%20decision,for%20all%20of%20their%20communications about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank christian relief, development, and advocacy 3(2), winter 2022 kumar, toward building evidence of kingdom impact 36 kumar, subodh. 2017. measuring outcome of the diakonal mission, doctoral thesis, centre for contemporary christianity, bangalore, india. kumar, subodh. 2020. “the theology of data: devotion series on gazing upon the face of god through data.” food for the hungry, phoenix, az. internal publication. kumar, subodh. 2021. “the kingdom view of evidence.” key note address, ridgecrest, north carolina. one accord 2021. louchez, alain. 2016. “the case for a new final frontier in data analytics.” https://www.datasciencecentral.com/the-case-for-anew-final-frontier-in-data-analytics/. accessed october 9, 2021. morra imas, linda g. and ray rist. 2009. the road to results, designing and conducting effective development evaluations. the world bank, washington dc. mudaliar, abhilash and hannah dithrich. 2020. “sizing the impact investing market.” global impact investment market. april 1. https://thegiin.org/research/publication/impinvmarket-size. offutt, stephen and amy reynolds. 2019. “christian ideas of development. understanding the current theories, networks and priorities of accord organizations.” christian relief, development, and advocacy, summer 1(1), 1-14. https://crdajournal.org/index.php/crda/article/view/ 189/271. oracle cloud infrastructure. 2022. “what is big data?” https://www.oracle.com/big-data/what-isbig-data/#:~:text=big%20data%20defined,what%20exactly%20is&text=put%20simply%2c% 20big%20data%20is,just%20can't%20manage%20th em. accessed march 13, 2022. roche, chris. 2005. impact assessment for development agencies: learning to value change. london: oxfam. streeter, ryan. 2001. transforming charity: toward a results-oriented social sector. the hudson institute. westfield, indiana. van mierlo, barbara. 2010. “approaches and methods for monitoring and evaluation.” syscope magazine, summer, 31-33. walker, michael. 2014. “descriptive, predictive and prescriptive analysis.” data science association. world bank group. n.d. “the world bank group’s engagement with faith-based and religious organizations.” faith-based-flyer-4-14-15web.pdf. https://www.worldbank.org/en/about/partners/brief /faith-based-organizations. accessed march 13, 2022. “what is data analytics?” intel. https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/analytics /what-is-dataanalytics.html#:~:text=data%20analytics%20is%20t he%20process,data%20for%20practically%20any% 20purpose. accessed march 15, 2022. subodh kumar is the chief data officer for world vision international and formerly senior director, data for good with food for the hungry. he holds doctoral degrees in statistics and in missiology with a focus on evaluation. he is a member of the accord network board, the crda board, and the steering committee of the accord research alliance. author email: subodh_kumar@wvi.org about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank#:~:text=big%20data%20defined,-what%20exactly%20is&text=put%20simply%2c%20big%20data%20is,just%20can't%20manage%20them about:blank#:~:text=big%20data%20defined,-what%20exactly%20is&text=put%20simply%2c%20big%20data%20is,just%20can't%20manage%20them about:blank#:~:text=big%20data%20defined,-what%20exactly%20is&text=put%20simply%2c%20big%20data%20is,just%20can't%20manage%20them about:blank#:~:text=big%20data%20defined,-what%20exactly%20is&text=put%20simply%2c%20big%20data%20is,just%20can't%20manage%20them about:blank#:~:text=big%20data%20defined,-what%20exactly%20is&text=put%20simply%2c%20big%20data%20is,just%20can't%20manage%20them about:blank about:blank about:blank#:~:text=data%20analytics%20is%20the%20process,data%20for%20practically%20any%20purpose about:blank#:~:text=data%20analytics%20is%20the%20process,data%20for%20practically%20any%20purpose about:blank#:~:text=data%20analytics%20is%20the%20process,data%20for%20practically%20any%20purpose about:blank#:~:text=data%20analytics%20is%20the%20process,data%20for%20practically%20any%20purpose about:blank#:~:text=data%20analytics%20is%20the%20process,data%20for%20practically%20any%20purpose about:blank christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(1), summer 2020 green, mallonee, and check, merl in the time of covid-19: four case studies 1 merl in the time of covid-19: four case studies compiled and edited by rodney green, nathan mallonee, and kristen check with contributions from rebecca mentzer, dr. lincoln lau, kendall wilson, allan kakinda, peter ndungu, and dr. subodh kumar accord network organizations are facing many new challenges due to the covid-19 pandemic. this has required rapid adaptation in many areas, including in monitoring, evaluation, research, and learning (merl). in this paper, four case studies of christ-centered ngos are presented to provide a glimpse into how different organizations are adapting their merl approaches and utilizing their internal merl resources in new ways. the authors then reflect on these case studies and compare the approaches taken with emerging best practices from the broader international relief and development sector. in addition, the authors share guidance on how christ-centered organizations should adapt merl approaches according to good principles in a broader effort to discern god’s leading in the midst of challenging external circumstances, internal organizational constraints and opportunities, and an unknown future. introduction in april 2020, the accord research alliance (ara) hosted two webinars with accord members to discuss and learn about monitoring, evaluation, research, and learning (merl) responses to the covid-19 pandemic. the information gathered from the two webinars provides a good overview of the institutional context and background to the four case studies presented in this paper. the first webinar was facilitated as an open platform where participants from the ara community shared how covid-19 was affecting their monitoring, evaluation, research, and learning (merl) practices within their organizations, and how they were adapting to meet the challenges and changes required by their pandemic response. there were over fifty attendees, representing organizations such as food for the hungry, hope international, life water, living water international, hope walks, water mission, 1 the accord research alliance (ara) is an interest-based accord network member alliance designed to foster collaboration. the mission of ara is to facilitate a professional community that collectively improves how to build cultures of learning and measure what matters in christ-centered relief, development, and advocacy through various platforms of idea sharing to encourage, connect, equip, and/or inspire. professionals that engage with the ara may be part of organizations that are members of the accord network, but it is not required. compassion international, cure international, partners worldwide, eido research, and others. members shared resources with one another and discussed solutions. for the second webinar, which was open to the entire accord network (not just merl practitioners), 1 ara facilitated a discussion on how merl can be adapted in the age of covid-19 and serve as a powerful tool to address current realities. at the beginning of this webinar, participants were asked a series of polling questions to show how they were adjusting their merl practices to covid-19 realities. a majority of the forty-four participants who responded to the poll expressed they have had to adapt their approaches to data collection or evaluation (80%), while only a small percentage reported either postponing activities (14%) or that activities were still fully operational and unchanged (7%). https://accordnetwork.org/ christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(1), summer 2020 green, mallonee, and check, merl in the time of covid-19: four case studies 2 for those who are adapting their approaches, responses were almost evenly split on the ways in which those adaptations are taking place. the majority (74%) of participants indicated they were re-thinking their methods for collecting data during this time, likely due to lockdown restrictions and social distancing guidelines. interestingly, 60% of participants also said they were “re-thinking the ways the m&e function can support the wider organization.” participants were then asked to respond to the question poll with one word that best described how they were feeling about their merl response to covid-19. the word cloud in figure 1 below shows the responses, with the larger words being mentioned more frequently. the sentiments expressed most frequently were of uncertainty, being overwhelmed, and exhaustion, though there also were more positive statements around refocusing, hope, curiosity, and opportunity. figure 1: word cloud of feelings regarding merl response to covid-19 the feedback from the participants in the webinars indicated that, first, most organizations are adapting quickly to covid-19 and are rapidly re-thinking many of their standard approaches to merl. also, while there is an undercurrent of optimism and hope, many staff of accord network and ara organizations are also feeling overwhelmed or uncertain about the best approaches or paths forward. in an effort to provide some knowledge sharing and emerging best practices, the rest of this paper shares four case studies and additional guidance from the steering committee of the ara for how to use merl tools in ways that allow organizations to discern god’s direction and navigate these uncertain times. organizational responses within the ara, members are responding to the pandemic with the overall goals of continuing to learn about beneficiary and community needs, seeking to improve and learn from ever-changing program delivery models necessary in this vuca context (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous), and, in some cases, even re-envisioning the role of merl within their organizations. faith is a driving force pushing many christcentered organizations and local faith partners to gather quality data so that they can improve their work and serve vulnerable populations more effectively. the use of data is part of a larger framework within decisionmaking to discern god's direction. a helpful organizational metaphor for discernment is the sailboat, because it requires action and responsibility with a reliance and sensitivity to the wind that actually moves the boat. in the same vein, as part of regular activities, spiritual practices embedded within organizational practices acknowledge a dependence on god's wisdom and guidance. this fosters a heart posture of humility, christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(1), summer 2020 green, mallonee, and check, merl in the time of covid-19: four case studies 3 "for unless the lord builds the house, its builders labor in vain" (ps.127:1). 2 below are four case studies from three accord network organizations and one ara organization that are adapting merl practices during this time. hope international, an organization that has long emphasized the principle and practice of listening, shares why listening to the field is one of the first things to consider doing during this time, and how they have adapted their listening practices for this unique season. for more information on how to improve your organization’s listening practices during covid-19, visit feedbacklabs.org: “tips for improving your feedback practice during covid-19”. many organizations are switching to phone surveys or other mobile platforms in order to continue collecting data for program monitoring and evaluation or for conducting research. international care ministries (icm) is one organization that is rethinking ‘business as usual’ for their data collection during covid-19. in order to better communicate with their network of pastors and churches that serve vulnerable families, icm further developed a facebook messenger chat box, a tool that was already widely used. many resources for making these adaptations exist, such as this q&a on mobile phone surveys from geopoll. there are also organizations looking for guidance on whether and how to carry out merl activities safely in the context of covid-19. compassion international relies heavily on the best merl practices they had established before the pandemic in order to effectively monitor and evaluate new interventions in the covid19 era. their case study offers an example of how principles and best practices are especially important in times of crisis to “discern” god’s direction. finally, a number of organizations are repurposing their merl data and/or staff. the case study shared by food for the hungry illustrates how a crisis can prompt an organization to re-purpose their merl staff and practices to engage in different types of activities, such as big data or machine learning, in order more effectively to make decisions, move the organization forward, and serve vulnerable people. big data provide new opportunities for organizations engaging in relief, development, or advocacy, as outlined in the world economic forum report (2012) “big data, big impact: new possibilities for international development.” 2 for principles and best practices on christ-centered merl, see check, green, and kumar (2020). for a helpful resource on monitoring and evaluation guidance during covid-19, see catholic relief services (crs) (2020). for a pithy overview of the importance of discernment for organizations, see mellado (2019). case study 1: hope international the mission hope international invests in the dreams of families in the world’s underserved communities as they proclaim and live the gospel. in sixteen different countries, hope shares the hope of christ through biblically-based training, savings services, and loans that restore dignity and break the cycle of poverty. the challenge almost all countries where hope and hope’s partners operate have experienced significant disruptions to operations due to covid-19. during lockdowns and restrictions on gatherings, many savings groups adapted how they met to abide by social distancing measures, and some stopped meeting altogether. offices closed and transitioned to remote work, and field visits were limited. staff and volunteers innovated in creative ways to stay in touch with clients and members. many of the businesses of microfinance clients were shut down during government-imposed lockdowns. programmatic response as a development organization, hope savings group programs pivoted to supporting immediate relief through local church partners, while microfinance institutions demonstrated care for clients by extending grace periods and rescheduling loan terms for affected clients. programs also developed new loan products to help clients’ businesses recover from the economic shock. through these and additional efforts, hope has remained committed to rebuilding dreams together with churches and partners. merl adaptations hope’s core listening and evaluation tools and processes typically focus on better understanding stakeholder experience as defined by engagement and impact. hope believes listening is critical both as a posture and as a practice. hope paused existing activities to instead focus on the most relevant questions in this season and adapting the means of gathering information, both of which shifted significantly in light of covid-19. the initial priority was listening to understand how clients and members were being impacted, how they were responding to the situation, and what needs they had. by listening both presently and proactively, hope gained information to help understand immediate relief and future recovery needs. a key aspect was ensuring https://feedbacklabs.org/blog/tips-for-improving-your-feedback-practice-during-covid-19/ https://feedbacklabs.org/blog/tips-for-improving-your-feedback-practice-during-covid-19/ https://www.geopoll.com/blog/frequently-asked-questions-mobile-surveys-faq/ http://www3.weforum.org/docs/wef_tc_mfs_bigdatabigimpact_briefing_2012.pdf http://www3.weforum.org/docs/wef_tc_mfs_bigdatabigimpact_briefing_2012.pdf https://www.hopeinternational.org/ christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(1), summer 2020 green, mallonee, and check, merl in the time of covid-19: four case studies 4 information was accessible and analyzed quickly to rapidly inform strategy. adapting the process for savings groups: field visits are the typical method to gather information from savings groups. with most field visits cancelled, hope designed an entirely new monitoring system. a short set of questions was developed to understand if groups were still meeting, how members were supporting one another, and what their areas of need were. these questions were asked by telephone through the ministry structure. responses were entered into microsoft forms for rapid analysis by the local savings group program staff, who utilized the automatic data visualization within the platform and conducted further segmentation of results in excel. of over 5,000 savings groups surveyed, 85% reported that they continued meeting, many in an adapted way to abide by social distancing guidelines. in response to requests for guidance from the savings groups, hope developed and rolled out a toolkit to help groups adapt their meetings to adhere to best practices for group gatherings, social distancing, and hygiene during covid-19. adapting the process for microfinance institutions: a client impact monitoring tool was developed to understand the effects of covid-19 on clients’ businesses. this included asking questions around whether the business was open during a governmentimposed lockdown, exploring changes in income and expenses, and discussing the anticipated level of difficulty in reopening. programs used either microsoft forms or excel for data entry. in excel, a data entry template with drop-down options for multiple choice questions and conditional formatting was developed to automatically score responses for an overall impact rating. pivottables in the spreadsheet, needing only to be refreshed, enabled local decisionmakers to access information quickly. with feedback from over 11,600 entrepreneurs, hope learned that the majority of clients surveyed were not able to operate their business during country-wide lockdowns. for those who were able to continue operating, many experienced decreases in income and/or increases in expenses. for example, in rwanda, 72% of surveyed clients were not able to operate their business during the lockdown. of the 28% who were able to continue operating, 79% experienced decreases in sales and 41% experienced increases in expenses. this information was used to adapt budget expectations and better understand the need for recovery lending. rather than hiring third-party enumerators for independent listening, hope leveraged existing relationships and listening as an opportunity to reinforce and deepen relationships. loan officers were calling clients they support, and church volunteers were calling savings groups they support. in this sense, the listening, monitoring, and evaluation team has expanded exponentially as many staff across the globe are seeing the integral role the team continues to play in listening well. in summary, hope shifted its focus to answering the most relevant questions in this season — namely around understanding current realities, opportunities, and needs — and built tools and processes to listen and respond quickly. in an ever-evolving situation, relationships are critical, and timeliness essential in ensuring responses that are relevant and effective. the listening, monitoring, and evaluation team views this pandemic as a culture-shaping opportunity, where the and role of listening, monitoring, and evaluation are vital to providing relevant services in a changing world. hope has always believed that listening is a core part of the ministry, not just an evaluation of the ministry. listening is an opportunity to love our neighbors. hope listens to care for clients and members and support them in these challenging times. with over sixteen thousand responses gathered, hope was equipped to actively respond at program, regional, and network levels, and continues to proactively listen as lockdowns in many countries have lifted to continue building dreams together with clients and members. case study 2: international care ministries (icm) the mission international care ministries’ core program, transform, is targeted at households living in extreme poverty and offered in the philippines and uganda. it is a fifteen-week program that delivers a values, health, and livelihoods curriculum, in addition to a variety of integrated interventions that participants can receive depending on need. each program serves around thirty families at a time and is implemented in partnership with local pastors and churches. icm also provides the support to maintain a network of over ten thousand pastors called thrive. through these partnerships, transform has reached over 1 million family members in the last ten years, and the evaluations have shown significant improvements in household savings, income, health, and psychosocial indicators. the challenge as covid-19 emerged and the philippines implemented strict community quarantine measures, transform had to be paused due to limits on gatherings. yet communities were still in need of spiritual, nutritional, and medical assistance. https://www.caremin.com/ christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(1), summer 2020 green, mallonee, and check, merl in the time of covid-19: four case studies 5 programmatic response icm has shifted from transform to program interventions that deliver immediate aid and information during the acute phase of covid-19, and indirectly support or direct organizational resources to newly identified needs and gaps among beneficiary communities. articles and current events are frequently posted to widely utilized social media platforms in the philippines. for example, a basic version of facebook messenger can be used in the country without a data plan. based on the extensive use of facebook, icm initiated the thrive network chatbot to expand icm’s reach within thrive. the chatbot consists of preprogrammed answers and information that users can interact with, depending on their responses to specific questions. this format increases user engagement, allows information to be focused towards individuals meeting a specific profile, and has exciting options for automated follow-up, etc. icm has also developed and distributed other materials, including a video (on the icm website), a covid-19 information flyer (given to pastors) for infection prevention and safety, as well as health guidelines for churches. individuals with covid-19 infections in need of hospitalization and inpatient care can access icm staff for medical and financial support. in partnership with a number of universities and the canadian government, icm is co-leading the development of infection prevention and control guidelines for healthcare workers in hospitals and primary care settings (manilla bulletin 2020 and “icm healthcare…”), and is working to understand which communities are not being provided food and access to medical treatment so icm can assist in alleviating these needs, or connect communities to resources. merl adaptations monitoring, evaluation, research, and learning of icm’s transform and concurrent programs usually consists of in-person preand post-surveys to predominantly measure increases or decreases in earlychildhood education aptitude, income and savings, hope and self-worth, and illnesses and malnutrition. with covid-19, icm immediately embedded a covid-19 knowledge, attitudes and practice module into scheduled surveys (lau, et al. 2020), as well as shifting focus to monitoring the thrive network chatbot through linked working dashboards. as part of this process, icm ensures that registrants are sent devotional material and answers to covid-19, and that food supplies are given out after requests have been evaluated by staff. icm has a current project that solely utilizes phone call surveys to learn how covid-19 influences communities on a weekly basis. this project also has linked working dashboards and will again depict which communities require food provisions and will show whether future transform surveys could occur over the phone. icm has brought over 10 million meals to communities in dire need (“delivering…” 2020) and is tracking food, medical and other needs in communities through the thrive network chatbot and phone surveys. icm assists with mobile phone costs for community leaders in order to maintain communication and enable continual utilization of the thrive network chatbot and engagement in phone surveys. icm is continually working with the strategy and implementation teams to determine the appropriate time for the transform program to restart, or more likely, a variant of the program which decreases social contact and risk. icm is also looking to develop new mediums, through videos and/or a chatbots, as a programs and strategies must be adapted post-covid19. case study 3: compassion international the mission compassion international is a christ-centered and holistic child and youth development organization that partners with networks of over eight thousand churches in twenty-five countries to serve over two million vulnerable children through sponsorship. the mission of compassion is to release children from poverty in jesus’ name. the challenge the key challenge for compassion international in the midst of covid-19 is how to continue holistic child development programs when children are not physically attending church-based or center-based programming. in addition, compassion international has suspended all travel, and staff across the globe are working from home. in kenya specifically, government restrictions to reduce the spread of covid-19 put strains on a food security situation that was already challenging (“why covid-19…” 2020). additionally, the government banned food distribution on april 12 after there was a stampede (“kenya bans…” 2020), and the ministry of health advised the use of digital payment methods instead of physical cash (“corona virus – kenya…” 2020). these contextual factors provide a unique and difficult challenge to compassion kenya’s national leadership in addition to challenges being faced at a global level. programmatic response in order to continue supporting church partners that are serving children, but without face-to-face interaction and while working remotely, modes of communication have been adapted, at least where there is internet capacity, to include more phone calls, https://www.compassion.com/ christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(1), summer 2020 green, mallonee, and check, merl in the time of covid-19: four case studies 6 whatsapp communications, and zoom calls. national offices and church partners are adapting center-based program activities to home-based programming with children/youth and focusing their efforts on child protection, household security, spiritual and emotional counseling, health needs, and engaging beneficiaries and families in their new contexts. interventions by church partners in the face of covid-19 have included food and hygiene kit distribution, unconditional cash transfers, and print/digital forms of content delivery or spiritual/emotional counseling to beneficiary families. the new communication system, which has included whatsapp or social media, where available, or radio where beneficiary phone access is limited, is being used to supplement government health messaging and deliver adapted versions of compassion’s holistic child/youth development curriculum. in response to unique contextual factors in kenya, the compassion kenya leadership implemented unconditional cash transfers (ucts) through mobile money, agency banking, and other platforms to support income stabilization and food security among the most vulnerable beneficiary families, as selected by local church partners. compassion was able quickly to pivot to this intervention due to the large body of evidence from randomized control trials and impact studies of ucts in kenya in recent years, as well as evidence from other organizations, such as unicef, that recommend cash transfers when markets are functioning and food and other essential goods are available (gore and patel 2006). merl adaptations many normal merl activities that depended upon face-to-face data collection methods were paused and postponed, including impact evaluations, process evaluations, and feedback mechanisms. still, compassion is specifically implementing merl for several of the covid-19 related interventions to ensure the organization can continuously improve. compassion has leaned heavily on its merl standards and specifically the “carr” principles of data: credibility, actionability, responsibility, and relevance 3 in order increasingly to learn how to discern god’s direction during this season of covid-19 response. a merl toolkit and other resources were created as well to help encourage the usage of standardized indicators and questions for similar interventions, as well as establish consistent principles and effective practices with sufficient room for country contextualization, flexibility, and speed of implementation. 3 slightly adapted from the goldilocks challenge cart principles (karlan & gugerty, 2018). the goal of the evaluation on the ucts in kenya is to learn how livelihoods and food security situations are changing among beneficiary families as the transfers began and after the transfers finish. in addition, the evaluation will foster learning on how the cash was used, how satisfied the families were, whether there were unintended consequences (such as putting stress on relationships or domestic violence), and how the process could be improved. the principles of “actionability” and “relevance,” and a utilizationfocused approach (“utilization-focused evaluation” n.d.) were also applied in the logical framework and survey design phase by soliciting feedback from national office staff who would be using the results. this procedure highlighted the priority and interest in learning about the process of the cash transfers and how it could be improved. in order to apply the carr principle of “responsibility” and the ethic of “do no harm,” phonebased surveys have been employed in place of traditional face-to-face data collection (mani and barooah 2020). this allows ongoing data collection while mitigating the risk of spreading covid-19. phone surveys should only be utilized when information is essential for the ongoing learning and effectiveness of programming, especially new programming in compassion such as the ucts in kenya. in addition, health messages are incorporated in phone surveys, especially for those who are not able to charge their phones in the home and may have to put themselves at risk of spreading covid-19 by having to charge their battery more often as a result of spending battery life to answer the survey. informed consent was obtained, and respondents were fully aware of the risks of charging their phone outside the home. food security was a concern by compassion kenya’s national office leadership in april 2020, especially among those most vulnerable to the economic impacts of covid-19 and government restrictions (“covid-19 restrictions…” 2020), so the household food insecurity access scale (hfias) was used in both baseline and end-line surveys as part of the evaluation plan (coates, swindale, and bilinsky 2007). the hfias is a widely used scale that helps apply the principle of “credibility” and is also brief enough to be useful in a phone survey design. the ideal process would have been to conduct a baseline as part of the targeting procedure weeks before the first transfer, and to utilize recall periods of 7-days for food and market functionality related questions. with a 30-day recall period, however, the hfias fit within the urgent time https://www.forchildren.com/discover/monitoring-and-evaluation/monitoring-evaluation-research-and-learning-merl-standards http://www.forchildren.com/crisis-resources/ christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(1), summer 2020 green, mallonee, and check, merl in the time of covid-19: four case studies 7 frame of conducting a proxy baseline in tandem with the first transfers. 4 to apply the principle of data “credibility,” four enumerators who worked with compassion kenya in a previous study were hired and trained to conduct phone surveys from their homes. they were trained over zoom by the national office m&e specialist. a sampling methodology that combined randomization with stratified systematic sampling was employed to select beneficiaries to interview, ensure representativeness among urban and rural populations, and to account for an estimated 80% response rate with a maximum of 5 calls per household. cash transfers were made weekly and the sampling strategy was developed to accommodate weekly updates of beneficiary lists with contact information made by churches who filled out qualtrics forms for every transfer they completed to selected vulnerable households. as most transfers were done via mobile phone, the full target population was accessible by phone in principle and bias due to non-inclusion of those without phones was not really a concern. the enumerators recorded the number of calls to reach each respondent as part of their data collection procedure in order to help build stronger estimates for future sampling frames. the kenya national office m&e specialist conducts back checks to provide accountability for the enumerators. this involves calling a small random sample of beneficiary families to confirm that they had been contacted by the enumerators. over a 4-week period in april-may 2020, the enumerators collected data from 1,369 respondents, which was above the sampling requirement. 99% of respondents selected that they would be willing to be contacted again for the end-line survey, which will help save time in conducting the sampling for the end-line which will take place in august 2020. the response rate for the baseline was 81% with an average of 2.5 calls per beneficiary household to complete the survey. this result fit the sampling frame to ensure representativeness. in addition, 5% of households contacted had not yet received the cash transfer, which provides useful information to the kenya leadership team for follow up and improvement for subsequent cash transfers. the results were analyzed and visualized using excel and tableau by the global and kenya merl teams. the baseline and end-line will be analyzed using stata in order to investigate relationships between various variables using correlation or regression 4 see innovations for poverty action’s recovr hub for questionnaire examples: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1hkffwlhh6ynmhqa2nwo3lgvvykealzdkki6rpgnydx8/edit#gid= 1432795253 analysis. results on the process and outcome variables were visualized and presented to the kenya leadership teams in order to inform follow up and improving programming. one alarming result from the baseline was that over 95% of the respondent population were moderately to severely food insecure at the time taking the survey, with over 81% of the population in the severe category. on top of that, there 29% of the respondent population was not only food insecure but was also facing food inaccessibility. in addition, 90% of urban respondent families reported missing a meal in the previous 4 weeks, whereas the kenya population council’s knowledge, attitudes, and practice survey also conducted in april 2020 in five nairobi informal settlements, reported that 68% of families had reported missing a meal in the previous 2 weeks (population council, 2020). this indicated that the urban beneficiaries targeted by the uct were potentially more vulnerable than the general urban population. the results also showed a high degree of food insecurity among those with families with six or more members and who reported food inaccessibility. specific plans were used to follow up with the church partners and regions where this challenge was more prevalent. the results of the baseline will also provide immediate and actionable feedback, to apply the “actionability” principle, on the speed and ease to which the transfers were received, and whether there were any challenges, in order to make real-time improvements in implementing ucts. the results from the end-line will help inform decisions regarding the continuity of the intervention as well as discerning improvements to future interventions to support vulnerable households with income stabilization and food security. case study 4: food for the hungry the mission food for the hungry (fh) is a christian humanitarian organization that began in 1971 and now works in more than three thousand communities, reaching out to two million people in twenty countries in africa, asia, and latin america and the caribbean, responding to human suffering through relief and development. fh’s stated purpose is “together we follow god’s call responding to human suffering and graduating communities from extreme poverty” (https://www.fh.org/about/values-vision-purpose/). fh implements its work with the core intervention domains https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1hkffwlhh6ynmhqa2nwo3lgvvykealzdkki6rpgnydx8/edit#gid=1432795253 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1hkffwlhh6ynmhqa2nwo3lgvvykealzdkki6rpgnydx8/edit#gid=1432795253 https://www.fh.org/ https://www.fh.org/about/values-vision-purpose/ christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(1), summer 2020 green, mallonee, and check, merl in the time of covid-19: four case studies 8 of disaster risk reduction, education, food security and livelihoods, gender and child protection, health, leadership, and change in worldview. in 2019, fh's three thousand staff members impacted the lives of over twelve million children, women, and men. the challenge as the covid-19 pandemic unfolded in all the countries where fh works in march 2020, the normal programming of fh was interrupted due to lockdowns announced by governments around the world. due to the elevation of the risk level because of the increasing number of cases, fh had to put in place the work from home order in alignment with many national governments of all countries where fh operates. fh also had to impose a travel embargo due either to the closure of country borders or to travelling restrictions in those countries. financially, fh had to put in place a hiring freeze and freeze current pay rates in anticipation that there might be some challenges in the organizational cash flow. all discretionary spending was scrutinized and filtered through two questions: a. is this essential, b. is this essential now? fh had to address the interruption due to covid 19 at the organizational level and at the program level. the response at the organizational level was more strategic in nature, while at programmatic level it was to meet the needs of the most vulnerable who were impacted by the disruption due to covid 19. this case study will confine itself only to the organizational response. organizational response during the initial stages of covid 19, fh constituted a crisis management team (cmt) that met daily to monitor the situation globally and in each country where fh works. the cmt was responsible for decisions such as closing the offices, working from home, and travel restrictions, as well as providing approvals for any community level engagement such as food distribution. after only one month, the cmt was dissolved, because global data were making it increasingly clear that a new era will be defined by a fundamental schism: the period before covid-19 and the new normal that is emerging in the post-viral era: the “next normal.” in this unprecedented new reality, there is occurring a dramatic restructuring of the economic and social order in which humanitarian organizations have traditionally operated. at the organizational level, fh started seeking answers to the question being posed by leaders across the public, private, and social sectors: what will it take to navigate this crisis now that our traditional metrics and assumptions have been rendered irrelevant? to navigate this disruption, fh determined five stages (also called 5rs) as a strategic move that will lead fh from the crisis of today into the new reality: resolve, resilience, return, reimagination, and reform. resolve: to address the immediate challenges covid-19 presents to staff and communities where we serve resilience: to address near-term organizational cash management challenges and broader resiliency issues return: to create a detailed plan to return the organization back to scale quickly reimagination: to re-imagine the “next normal”— what a discontinuous shift looks like, and with implications for how fh should reinvent reform: to imagine how the environment in the industry (regulations, role of government) might evolve. the 5rs are a strategic response, for which fh needed implementation teams. different teams were repurposed under an overarching “team of teams” (also called 5ds), with clear roles, responsibilities, and decision authority. these 5d teams are expected to continue their work for the next few years to address the 5rs. the 5d teams are as follows: discover: the scenario planning team maintains multiple scenarios; it provides one planning scenario and facilitates future state exercises. design: the strategic moves team uses planning assumptions (& scenarios) to craft trigger-based portfolios of strategic moves. decide: the integrated operations team maintains operating cadence, risk maps, and situation reports, while also tracking progress and ensuring ownership. deliver: the implementation team ensures extreme clarity and builds a crossfunctional team to achieve outcomes. data: the data team supports all other d teams to analyze data at different levels from different sources and works cross functionally with all the d teams to provide insights based on data and pathways to better functionality. finally, the executive leadership team serves as a “nerve center” to ensure speed without sacrificing decision quality across these five dimensions (5rs and 5ds). as fh considers the scale of change that the christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(1), summer 2020 green, mallonee, and check, merl in the time of covid-19: four case studies 9 coronavirus has engendered and will continue to engender in months and, possibly, years ahead, fh feels compelled to reflect not only on a major health crisis, but also on an imminent restructuring of the global economic order. how exactly this crisis evolves remains to be seen, but the five stages described here offered fh leaders and staff a clear path to begin navigating to the next normal, a normal that, so far, looks very different from anything in preceding years. merl adaptations merl adaptations happened at two levels in fh. the learning and evaluation (l&e) team had a mandate to support merl at the country programs level while the data team, constituted as part of merl repurposing efforts, was mandated to support other d teams by providing them data and evidence to enable them to accomplish their roles and responsibilities around the 5r strategy. as part of this mandate, the data team developed a pandemic risk monitoring dashboard. the intention for this dashboard is for each country in conjunction with the regional offices to understand the risk that coronavirus poses and to adopt appropriate public health recommendations across all categories of risk to mitigate the exposure to covid19 for staff and beneficiaries. if the risk is high, stricter precautions are advised than if risk is low. two indicators of change (active cases in the last fourteen days and deviations from the peak) were monitored daily and risk status was updated weekly. to track the peak, the data team built the epidemiological data model to predict the number of cases based on the seir model (susceptible, exposed, infected, and recovered). the spread of infection is monitored through test positivity rate, while the pandemic reproductive rate is calculated based on mitigation measures, the testing capacity for each country, and the severity of the pandemic (the days it takes to double the number of deaths). this risk monitoring enables the country offices to take decisions on return to work or to resume field-level activities. the data team also monitors the key economic indicators at the global and country level to advise the leadership on how the economic scenario is unfolding and what impact the organization can anticipate. at the program level, all face to face data collection was put on hold as entire field operations were disrupted. the learning and evaluation team, in partnership with the relief and humanitarian assistance team (rha), which was steering the global pivoting for covid 19, developed the pandemic impact remote survey (pirms). the pandemic impact remote monitoring survey (pirms) is an open source, rapid, replicable assessment tool used to monitor the impacts of the covid-19 pandemic on affected communities. this data collection tool is not a formative research (diagnostic) tool, nor should it be confused with knowledge, practice and coverage (kpc) or knowledge, attitude and practice (kap) surveys, which are generally used for program monitoring. rather, the pirms consists of fourteen questions that investigate respondents’ knowledge of the virus and the changes they have noticed in their communities since the onset of the pandemic (e.g. access to services, changes in movement, availability of resources). the survey takes about ten to fifteen minutes to complete and is repeated in the same geographic area every fifteen days until conditions stabilize. it is not necessary to engage the same respondents each time the survey is administered. also, the interviewer may select any remote tool (e.g. mobile phone, whatsapp) to administer the survey, but responses are collected in remote data collection tools such as open data kit (odk). stakeholders, such as community leaders, local and regional government offices, and implementing partners should be considered for data dissemination. data can be presented in a manner that is appropriate for each stakeholder. based on the results, partners, alongside national stakeholders can use data to: ● initiate more detailed needs assessments in specific sectors and locations to design interventions and develop funding proposals. ● help fill information gaps expressed by donors and humanitarian agencies on community-level conditions and develop strong cases for targeted funding responses. ● engage partners to generate and share more data to gain a better understanding at broader levels (national, regional, and perhaps even global levels). the results of pirms can be accessed by visiting the pirms google site. analyses are presented as snapshots for any time interval, as well as trend and cross analysis. the pirms contains an interactive dashboard that helps country programs to gain insights from their data and adapt programs to address emerging needs due to covid-19. one key result from pirms thus far is that there has been a widespread and significant decline of income due to covid-19. respondents who indicated that they have witnessed or experienced a decline in income have higher prevalence of anxiety and instances of abuse. the survey also found that an increase in anxiety and abuse resulted in fewer children participating in home learning. findings and insights through this pirms will enable country program to pivot in response to arising needs as they plan for next year. one more tool fh designed and tested is a rapid remote assessment (rra) tool, a formative research tool to inform program pivots. data is collected through telephone interviews. a resource guide was developed https://sites.google.com/fh.org/pandemic-impact-survey/ https://sites.google.com/fh.org/pandemic-impact-survey/ https://sites.google.com/fh.org/pandemic-impact-survey/ https://sites.google.com/fh.org/pandemic-impact-survey/ https://sites.google.com/fh.org/pandemic-impact-survey/ christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(1), summer 2020 green, mallonee, and check, merl in the time of covid-19: four case studies 10 that explains the purpose, objectives, methodology, and scope of the tool. this resource will be used in virtual training for personnel who will collaborate in evaluations. in conclusion, through the repurposing of monitoring and evaluation in fh, the l&e and data teams have been able to support fh’s response to covid-19 by providing data and enabling evidencebased pivoting. this repurposing also brought new capabilities to the organization that will serve the mission in the long-term, such as predictive and prescriptive analysis that enable program pivoting. while the l&e team supports country offices through remote data collection and informing the need for pivoting, the data team takes a more strategic approach by relying on “big data” and machine learning. many global websites have large and complex data sets on covid 19. these and economic indicator data permit the data team to develop analytical models for decision making. these global data sets are so voluminous that traditional data processing software cannot manage them. other engines have been created for these massive volumes of data that are now available to address business problems in new ways. this is a new venture for fh and every day requires learning. the need to put all program evaluations on hold due to covid-19 provided the space necessary to develop these capabilities for advanced analysis and visualization that would otherwise not have been possible. these examples of repurposed merl in fh will enable meeting short-term and long-term challenges in an uncertain future. conclusions the accord member organizations featured in this paper offer a glimpse into the different postures, principles, and practices that have informed merl approaches in the midst of the global covid-19 pandemic. each has had to make quick decisions to respond to different contexts and challenges posed by the pandemic, and each offer lessons learned to consider for merl into the future. in addition, the cases provide inspiration on how organizations can emerge from the pandemic with stronger programs and approaches to merl as a result of the innovation and flexibility necessary for implementing development programs in a volatile setting. while these four cases are a small subset of a much larger network and industry, the cases reviewed together offer some unique insights for organizations seeking to utilize merl in order to serve people even more effectively in years ahead. 1. merl is more important now than ever – but it must deliver as many organizations adapt their programs and pilot new initiatives in response to the global pandemic, and other emerging challenges, merl offers the ability to listen to communities, stay relevant, prioritize learning, continue improving, and build trust and relationship. at the same time, the stakes are high for merl to deliver useful data and provide value. for some organizations, there may be a temptation to move too quickly in response to crisis and fail to prioritize appropriate merl design and investment. michael quinn patton, former president of the american evaluation association and evaluation expert, challenges evaluation professionals to “prepare to make the case for evaluation’s value…prepare by working now to make evaluation all the more useful and real-time data essential so that the evaluation value proposition reframes evaluation as an essential activity not as a mundane bureaucratic or luxurious function when times are good” (patton 2020). 2. merl must keep adapting in a global pandemic, business as usual for merl was completely disrupted. in all four organizations, regular planned merl activities were postponed. in a matter of a few days, not only were the approaches no longer relevant or even safe for communities, but the very purpose of the activities and many of the questions being asked were no longer appropriate. the four cases provide examples of organizations adapting tools to provide more real-time feedback to decision-makers, adapting methods of data collection to remain as rigorous as possible while keeping staff and communities safe, adapting and rethinking the purpose of evaluations and what is really essential to best fulfill the mission of the organization, and adapting the function of merl to include leveraging big data and machine learning techniques. 3. merl must apply good principles in a crisis the challenge for christ-centered organizations during covid-19 is to discern god’s leading and make consequential decisions in a rapidly changing external environment. these decisions should be informed by monitoring and listening to what is happening both externally and internally with beneficiaries, staff, and many other stakeholders. yet, the challenge is compounded because most of the standard merl approaches organizations have used in the past no longer apply. nevertheless, good merl principles must continue to underpin the new and adapted approaches. these principles must be applied consistently and proactively, even if the actual approaches may differ. as a priority, christ-centered christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(1), summer 2020 green, mallonee, and check, merl in the time of covid-19: four case studies 11 organizations should be clear on what their principles are, especially in the middle of a crisis. some examples of key principles highlighted in these case studies are the following: • hope international applies an important principle to listen well to clients through merl as a form of ministry and service to people who bear god’s image, especially in a crisis. • icm applies the principle to leverage what communication mechanism is already available for the majority of its network to make services and merl activities more relevant, effective, and timely. • compassion international’s carr principles seek to balance what would lead to “credible” data with what is “responsible” in order to gather data that supports decision-making and serves children and families loved by god. • food for the hungry applies the principle to utilize already available “big data” to provide the best insights for decision-making, because those who are vulnerable deserve the best insights available as a form of service. for further information on good principles, check, green, and kumar (2020) provide a framework of principles to consider for christ-centered organizations conducting merl that interacts with the american evaluation association guiding principles. one example of how organizations could apply the same principles differently would be a decision on whether to hire enumerators or not. one organization could decide to hire and manage enumerators remotely to collect data through phone surveys in order to be more rigorous as an approach, while another organization could decide to train and rely on staff to collect data in order to save money, provide work to staff and/or utilize the opportunity to build a culture of learning. given the situation and constraints, each approach may be appropriate in the given scenario and if they are also applying good principles. it will be a challenging journey for christ-centered organizations to increasingly deliver value through merl, adapt merl to provide even more useful data, and utilize good principles to guide merl approaches in ever shifting and volatile environments, like the one covid-19 presents. it is a journey worth taking, because it will inform responses to covid-19 and also improve the ability for organizations to discern god’s direction for providing quality services, seeking justice, and empowering communities to face an unknown future. references catholic relief services. 2020. crs covid-19 recommendations: guidance on monitoring and evaluation and learning. online resource from crs. check, kristen, green, rodney, and kumar, subodh. (2020). “toward laying the foundation for christ-centered monitoring & evaluation.” christian relief, development, and advocacy: the journal of the accord network 1(2), 61-69. https://crdajournal.org/index.php/crda/article/view /417. coates, jennifer; swindale, anne; and bilinsky, paula. 2007. “household food insecurity access scale (hfias) for measurement of food access: indicator guide.” usaid. http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/user_upload/eufaofsi4dm/doc-training/hfias.pdf. “coronavirus – kenya: use digital payment methods instead of cash as a precautionary measure against the coronavirus outbreak.” april 11, 2020. cnbcafrica. https://www.cnbcafrica.com/africa-pressoffice/2020/04/11/coronavirus-kenya-use-digitalpayment-methods-instead-of-cash-as-aprecautionary-measure-against-the-coronavirusoutbreak/. “covid-19 restrictions and flooding from aboveaverage march-may rains drive acute food insecurity.” may 2020. famine early warning systems network (fews net). https://fews.net/. “delivering 10 million meals to 1.7 million people in 100 days.” june 28, 2020. inquirer.net. https://globalnation.inquirer.net/188835/deliverin g-10-million-meals-to-1-7-million-people-in-100days. gore, radhika and patel, mahesh. 2006. “cash transfers in emergencies: a review drawing upon the tsunami and other experience.” unicef. https://www.unicef.org/policyanalysis/files/cash_tr ansfers_in_emergencies__a_review_drawing_upon_the_tsunami_and_oth er_experience.pdf. “icm healthcare worker video training series.” https://www.caremin.com/covid-training. karlan, dean and gugerty, mary kay. (2018). “the goldilocks challenge: right fit evidence for the social sector.” oxford university press. “kenya bans ‘uncoordinated direct’ food donations after friday stampede.” april 12, 2020. cgtn. https://newsaf.cgtn.com/news/2020-04-12/kenyabans-uncoordinated-direct-food-donations-afterfriday-stampede-pbydhttths/index.html. https://ics.crs.org/node/898-covid_meal.pdf https://ics.crs.org/node/898-covid_meal.pdf https://ics.crs.org/node/898-covid_meal.pdf https://crdajournal.org/index.php/crda/article/view/417 https://crdajournal.org/index.php/crda/article/view/417 http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/user_upload/eufao-fsi4dm/doc-training/hfias.pdf http://www.fao.org/fileadmin/user_upload/eufao-fsi4dm/doc-training/hfias.pdf https://www.cnbcafrica.com/africa-press-office/2020/04/11/coronavirus-kenya-use-digital-payment-methods-instead-of-cash-as-a-precautionary-measure-against-the-coronavirus-outbreak/ https://www.cnbcafrica.com/africa-press-office/2020/04/11/coronavirus-kenya-use-digital-payment-methods-instead-of-cash-as-a-precautionary-measure-against-the-coronavirus-outbreak/ https://www.cnbcafrica.com/africa-press-office/2020/04/11/coronavirus-kenya-use-digital-payment-methods-instead-of-cash-as-a-precautionary-measure-against-the-coronavirus-outbreak/ https://www.cnbcafrica.com/africa-press-office/2020/04/11/coronavirus-kenya-use-digital-payment-methods-instead-of-cash-as-a-precautionary-measure-against-the-coronavirus-outbreak/ https://www.cnbcafrica.com/africa-press-office/2020/04/11/coronavirus-kenya-use-digital-payment-methods-instead-of-cash-as-a-precautionary-measure-against-the-coronavirus-outbreak/ https://fews.net/ https://globalnation.inquirer.net/188835/delivering-10-million-meals-to-1-7-million-people-in-100-days https://globalnation.inquirer.net/188835/delivering-10-million-meals-to-1-7-million-people-in-100-days https://globalnation.inquirer.net/188835/delivering-10-million-meals-to-1-7-million-people-in-100-days https://www.unicef.org/policyanalysis/files/cash_transfers_in_emergencies_-_a_review_drawing_upon_the_tsunami_and_other_experience.pdf https://www.unicef.org/policyanalysis/files/cash_transfers_in_emergencies_-_a_review_drawing_upon_the_tsunami_and_other_experience.pdf https://www.unicef.org/policyanalysis/files/cash_transfers_in_emergencies_-_a_review_drawing_upon_the_tsunami_and_other_experience.pdf https://www.unicef.org/policyanalysis/files/cash_transfers_in_emergencies_-_a_review_drawing_upon_the_tsunami_and_other_experience.pdf https://www.caremin.com/covid-training https://newsaf.cgtn.com/news/2020-04-12/kenya-bans-uncoordinated-direct-food-donations-after-friday-stampede-pbydhttths/index.html https://newsaf.cgtn.com/news/2020-04-12/kenya-bans-uncoordinated-direct-food-donations-after-friday-stampede-pbydhttths/index.html https://newsaf.cgtn.com/news/2020-04-12/kenya-bans-uncoordinated-direct-food-donations-after-friday-stampede-pbydhttths/index.html christian relief, development, and advocacy 2(1), summer 2020 green, mallonee, and check, merl in the time of covid-19: four case studies 12 lau, lincoln leehang; hung, natalee; go, daryn joy; ferma, jansel; choi, mia; dodd, warren, and wei, xiaolin. 2020. “knowledge, attitudes and practices of covid-19 among income-poor households in the philippines: a cross-sectional study.” journal of global health 10 (1), 1-11. manila bulletin. july 21, 2020. “protecting filipino healthcare workers from covid-19.” https://mb.com.ph/2020/07/21/protecting-filipinohealthcare-workers-from-covid-19/ mani, subha and barooah, bidisha. april 9, 2020. “phone surveys in developing countries need an abundance of caution.” international initiative for impact evaluation. https://www.3ieimpact.org/blogs/phone-surveysdeveloping-countries-need-abundance-caution. mellado, santiago “jimmy.” 2019. “why good discernment is like a sailboat.” (https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=265608856 1122124). patton, michael. march 23, 2020. “evaluation implications of the coronavirus global health pandemic emergency.” blog post. blue marble evaluation. https://bluemarbleeval.org/latest/evaluationimplications-coronavirus-global-health-pandemicemergency. population council. 2020. “kenya: covid-19 knowledge, attitudes, practices & needs.” kenya ministry of health. https://www.popcouncil.org/uploads/pdfs/2020pg y_covidkenyakapstudyresultsbriefround2.pd f “utilization-focused evaluation.” n.d. better evaluation. https://www.betterevaluation.org/en/plan/approac h/utilization_focused_evaluation “why covid-19 is another blow for kenya’s food security.” april 20, 2020. the conversation. https://theconversation.com/why-covid-19-isanother-blow-for-kenyas-food-security-135567 world economic forum. 2012. “big data, big impact: new possibilities for international development.” http://www3.weforum.org/docs/wef_tc_mfs_ bigdatabigimpact_briefing_2012.pdf. additional resources accord network covid-19 resources accord research alliance covid-19 merl resources authors/editors rodney green is a monitoring, evaluation and listening specialist with compassion international with ten years of experience in international development. he holds a msc in development management and co-chairs the accord research alliance steering committee. author email: rgreen@us.ci.org nathan mallonee is the senior director of program development at living water international. he holds a master’s degree in international policy and development from georgetown university and co-chairs the accord research alliance steering committee. author email: nmallonee@mac.com kristen check is a senior program effectiveness research specialist with compassion international and owner of edessa research, llc. she holds an ma in anthropology, has over ten years of experience in international development, and co-chairs the accord research alliance steering committee. author email: kcheck@us.ci.org contributors for case studies rebecca mentzer serves at hope international as senior listening, monitoring, and evaluation advisor. she is a member of the ara steering committee. lincoln lau, based in manila, is an infectious disease epidemiologist, director of research at international care ministries, and assistant professor of public health at university of toronto. kendall wilson is an icm research associate with a background in epidemiology, a passion for m&e and healthcare, and an eagerness to launch her career in medical research. allan kakinda is a global monitoring and evaluation specialist at compassion international, based in uganda. peter ndungu is a national monitoring and evaluation specialist for compassion international in kenya. dr. subodh kumar is global director of monitoring and evaluation with food for the hungry and has been working in m&e for the last 25 years. he is a member of the ara steering committee. https://mb.com.ph/2020/07/21/protecting-filipino-healthcare-workers-from-covid-19/ https://mb.com.ph/2020/07/21/protecting-filipino-healthcare-workers-from-covid-19/ https://www.3ieimpact.org/blogs/phone-surveys-developing-countries-need-abundance-caution https://www.3ieimpact.org/blogs/phone-surveys-developing-countries-need-abundance-caution https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=2656088561122124 https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=2656088561122124 https://bluemarbleeval.org/latest/evaluation-implications-coronavirus-global-health-pandemic-emergency https://bluemarbleeval.org/latest/evaluation-implications-coronavirus-global-health-pandemic-emergency https://bluemarbleeval.org/latest/evaluation-implications-coronavirus-global-health-pandemic-emergency https://www.popcouncil.org/uploads/pdfs/2020pgy_covidkenyakapstudyresultsbriefround2.pdf https://www.popcouncil.org/uploads/pdfs/2020pgy_covidkenyakapstudyresultsbriefround2.pdf https://www.popcouncil.org/uploads/pdfs/2020pgy_covidkenyakapstudyresultsbriefround2.pdf https://www.betterevaluation.org/en/plan/approach/utilization_focused_evaluation https://www.betterevaluation.org/en/plan/approach/utilization_focused_evaluation https://theconversation.com/why-covid-19-is-another-blow-for-kenyas-food-security-135567 https://theconversation.com/why-covid-19-is-another-blow-for-kenyas-food-security-135567 http://www3.weforum.org/docs/wef_tc_mfs_bigdatabigimpact_briefing_2012.pdf http://www3.weforum.org/docs/wef_tc_mfs_bigdatabigimpact_briefing_2012.pdf https://accordnetwork.org/resources/covid-19-resources/ https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1t6rbq-1yy-34xglanpjxqozlgvz3ujexw276od7tczi/edit?ts=5ea9cd00#gid=0 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1t6rbq-1yy-34xglanpjxqozlgvz3ujexw276od7tczi/edit?ts=5ea9cd00#gid=0 mailto:rgreen@us.ci.org mailto:nmallonee@mac.com mailto:kcheck@us.ci.org christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 kurlberg and hoksbergen, decolonising practice: pathways, insights, and experiences 1 decolonising practice: pathways, insights, and experiences from the field of christian relief, development, and advocacy nina kurlberg and roland hoksbergen power and its outworking within international development has for decades been a much-debated topic (see, for example, elliott 1987; lister 2000; gaventa 2006; hammett 2019). the primary focus of discussions, particularly those centred around practice, has been on power asymmetries within the sector; that is, between donors and organisations located in the “global north,” and “local” communities and partner organisations in the “global south” (elliott 1987; lister 2000). 1 more specifically, significant attention has been paid to power differentials within “partnerships,” as well as on the lack of representation of those from the global south in positions of decision-making power within organisations based in the global north (lister 2000; brinkerhoff 2002; abrahamsen 2004). the development sector’s colonial roots have frequently been invoked in these conversations, said to be behind the supremacy of western knowledge and power that persists in development practice today, and one of the reasons why some have referred to development as a neo-colonial endeavour (see, for example, escobar 1995; kothari 2006). while colonialism has indeed featured in conversations on power within international development, then, in recent years the term “decolonisation” has gained considerable traction. spurred by the growth and implications of the black lives matter movement and disproportionate impact of covid-19 globally, decolonisation has become a term that encompasses concerns related to power, while 1 the terms “global north” and “global south” are contentious within the sector. one of the arguments against their use is that they encompass hugely diverse countries and regions of the world, and as such, have a generalising tendency and obscure more than they elucidate; another is that inherent within the terms is a hierarchical structure and the implication that those in the global south are in some senses “second-class” in comparison to those in the global north (ainsworth and byatnal 2022). nevertheless, these remain the terms most widely used to refer to regions of the world that primarily differ on economic grounds and will therefore be used in this introduction. 2 the term “global majority” is one that first emerged in the uk “to reject the debilitating implications of being racialised as minorities,” and is understood to be “a more accurate descriptor of those labelled as ‘ethnic minorities’ or ‘diverse minority communities’” (campbell-stephens 2021, 4). bringing the lens of race to the forefront of discussions. calls for the sector to decolonise have focused in particular on the ways in which its colonial legacy continues to impact issues related to, amongst other things, decision-making power, representation, organisational culture, and language. organisational responses to critiques in these areas have comprised a range of initiatives, such as more intentionally including those of global majority 2 heritage in board and staff positions of influence in the global north; increasing support for organisational efforts to decentralise so that decision-making moves closer to communities in the global south; and renewing emphasis on internal dynamics in need of addressing, along the lines of antiracist work. some have also sought to increase awareness of the importance of the language used in the sector, because words that are part of its established vocabulary, such as “development,” “donors,” and “beneficiaries,” are said to perpetuate narratives of superiority and inferiority that enable neo-colonial practices and systems of thought to persist, unnoticed and unchecked (see, for example, rist 2007 on “development”). in addition to calls for specific concrete changes to organisational practice, advocates of decolonisation within international development have also highlighted the systemic dynamics in need of addressing. some point to the colonial logics underpinning the structures of power within the sector; for example, the logic of superiority associated with “whiteness,” which christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 kurlberg and hoksbergen, decolonising practice: pathways, insights, and experiences 2 perpetuates a systemic form of racism that often remains hidden and thus unaddressed (kothari 2006). whiteness here refers to cultural practices, beliefs, and behaviours associated with those racialized as “white,” that while commonly perceived as neutral and therefore, “unmarked and unnamed” (frankenberg 1993, 1), operate as the standard against which all other cultural practices, beliefs and behaviours are measured. harmful systemic-level dynamics connected to whiteness include that of “white saviourism” (cole 2012), which is embedded in the logic of superiority noted above and in essence, works to centre those of white european heritage as the key actors in the sector (khan, dickson and sondarjee 2023). what is particularly important to draw attention to in relation to these systemic-level conversations on decolonisation is the logic of “coloniality,” first introduced by aníbal quijano (2000) although rooted in the “decolonial theory” of frantz fanon (1961), amongst others (see, for example, césaire 1972; dussel 1985). for quijano, while colonialism refers to “the historical, economic, and legal process by which europe appropriated the american continent”—in other words, to something concrete and tangible— coloniality refers to the “ongoing cultural structure” through which the notion of the civilized west and barbarous non-west is reinforced and perpetuated (fregoso bailón and de lissovoy 2019, 358-359). thus, the logic of coloniality sustains colonialism by ensuring the continuance of its practices yet “without formal colonies” (kho 2023, 52). importantly, these practices have not only entailed the continued systematic marginalisation and repression of other ways of living and being, but also of other ways of knowing, imposing the colonisers’ “patterns of producing knowledge and meaning” on the dominated to the extent that these have become universalised (quijano 2007, 169). in summary, then, coloniality is the term used to describe the ongoing impact of colonial relations on all contemporary societal systems—whether political, economic, social, or epistemological—which although hidden, is real and pervasive (duvisac 2022, 2; tom 2022, 566). against this backdrop, “decoloniality” can be understood as “a call for completing the unfinished business of decolonisation in the present century,” in order to restructure global relations and bring into being a “new era” free from the dominance of the global north (ndlovu-gatsheni 2020, 191). the precise nature of this era must remain undefined, since decoloniality is neither “static,” nor “a lineal point of arrival” (mignolo and walsh 2018, 17); rather, it “seeks to make visible, open up, and advance radically distinct perspectives and positionalities that displace western rationality as the only framework and possibility of existence, analysis, and thought” (ibid., emphasis added). as quijano puts it, “[n]othing is less rational, finally, than the pretension that the specific cosmic vision of a particular ethnie should be taken as universal rationality, even if such an ethnie is called western europe because this is actually…to impose a provincialism as universalism” (quijano 2007, 177). this is important, and the response to such universality has been captured within the concept of “pluriversality,” which focuses on the relationality between different ways of living, being and knowing, calling attention to their points of “connection” and “correlation” in order to enable dialogue (mignolo and walsh 2018, 1-2). as walter mignolo and catherine walsh explain, the pluriversal “connects and brings together in relation…local histories, subjectivities, knowledges, narratives, and struggles against the modern/colonial order and for an otherwise” (mignolo and walsh 2018, 3). according to mignolo and walsh, one important way of opening up the possibility of such dialogue is to more intentionally seek to make these “histories, subjectivities, knowledges and struggles” visible, something we will return to below. to summarise thus far, contemporary debates on decolonisation connect to long-running discussions on power in international development. key themes that the lens of decolonisation and decolonial theory bring to the discussion include the importance of recognising and acknowledging the positionality that societal actors, whether institutions, organisations, or individuals, carry with them into the spaces they inhabit; the necessity of systemic approaches that look beyond what is immediately apparent; and, connected to this, the significance of epistemology—that is, how things are known within international development. decolonial thought has been growing in influence and importance as an area of focus within the sector. in relation to humanitarianism in europe specifically, olivia umurerwa rutazibwa notes that a decolonial approach challenges eurocentric analyses, foregrounding the experiences and knowledges of the intended targets of humanitarian aid. it poses questions not so much about the political will, operational implementation and technical capabilities of humanitarians as about the perpetuation of colonial power relations in seemingly benevolent activities. decoloniality asks: where do we start the story? who has the microphone and who usually doesn’t? what do we consider expertise? what are the implications of eurocentric bias in knowledge production? do our practices and knowledge systems contribute to the struggle against colonial power relations? (rutazibwa 2019, 66) christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 kurlberg and hoksbergen, decolonising practice: pathways, insights, and experiences 3 these are all pertinent questions, and ones that various contributors within this special issue unpack. an important critique in relation to the movement for decolonisation within international development, however, concerns the danger that it becomes another programme driven by the global north, or by whiteness, that is then imposed on all others. thus, in relation to practice within the sector, it is important to be cognisant of where calls for decolonisation originate, and also of who is driving and leading any responses that are set in motion. in terms of christian relief, development, and advocacy organisations specifically, as several contributors note in their articles, colonialism and coloniality actively work against the values many such organisations uphold and seek to live out, such as justice, equality, reconciliation, and love, to name a few. christian theologies of power also bring a challenge to the status quo within the sector. as i (nina) argue elsewhere, where colonising power—interpersonal and systemic—is in operation within organisations, powerholders must, through the power of god’s spirit, “yield their power and move to the margins to listen intently to and amplify those voices and perspectives less often heard, allowing them to change the shape and nature of the organization” (kurlberg 2021, 72). the theological rationale for this is the self-giving love of christ, also enabled by the power of the spirit (ibid. 2021, 68). according to such theologies, engagement in decolonising initiatives is therefore vital for christian organisations. worth mentioning in relation to faith-based organisations more generally is the work of the ukbased joint learning initiative on faith and local communities (jli) on decolonisation. the jli has since 2020 sought to mobilise discussion amongst academics and practitioners engaged with a range of faith communities specifically on the intersection between faith and decolonisation. initiatives have included hosting a panel discussion on “decolonisation, development and faith” at the annual development studies association (dsa) conference in the uk, and a panel at the american academy of religion’s (aar) annual conference on the same theme. in addition to bringing together academics and practitioners with an interest in decolonisation and faith, the jli is also engaged in research specifically on decolonisation and localisation. 3 overview of the journal the articles in crda journal’s special issue on decolonisation provide a window into a variety of 3 https://jliflc.com. christian organisations and individuals that have embarked on their own journeys to decolonise their thought and practice. the purpose of the issue is not to advocate for one specific approach to decolonisation, but rather, to present the paths that different organisations have taken, as well as reflections from a range of individuals on this topic. our decision to compile a special issue addressing decolonisation was largely due to the increasing focus on the topic within the relief, development, and advocacy sector, both in the uk, where nina resides, and in the us, where roland resides. as we have spent time engaging with contributors over the past eighteen months and keeping abreast of the conversations taking place, our sense is that this topic not only needs continued emphasis, but greater nuance as well, something we hope comes across through the articles in this volume. our aim in compiling this journal issue and bringing these different authors together, is to contribute to the discussion and provide food for thought and inspiration for academics and practitioners, particularly those working in faithbased relief, development, and advocacy organisations. we are deeply grateful to each of our contributors, who shared so openly and, in many cases, vulnerably. as we hope will have become clear from our introductory remarks, if our aim is decolonisation, positionality is particularly important. we have therefore sought to make explicit the social and cultural location of authors where possible, albeit to varying degrees and in a variety of ways. our assumption is that this has a bearing on their work. catherine walsh expresses this in a poignant way; emphasising the need to move from “a posture of ‘studying about’ to ‘thinking with,’” she notes that this requires scholars to commit to “the making visible of his or her presence in this thinking” (mignolo and walsh 2018, 28). with this in mind, i (nina) live, know, and write as a secondgeneration british asian woman. my grandparents fled from hyderabad sindh, in what is now pakistan, to the uk and kenya during the partition of india in 1947, a fact i was acutely aware of during my childhood. i have studied theology and social science at both european and asian academic institutions, and thus i know that i am implicated in coloniality at the same time as i am disadvantaged by it. for more than fifteen years now, my studies, publications and professional work have largely focused on issues related to equality, diversity, inclusion, and decolonisation. i (roland) am very conscious of my own privilege as a white us american, though i fear not as much as i should be. i grew up in a family and church that taught me to care for others, but my deeper understandings of the themes discussed in this special issue likely began when i worked for a year in guatemala after the 1976 christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 kurlberg and hoksbergen, decolonising practice: pathways, insights, and experiences 4 earthquake. marrying a young woman from the house where i lived and becoming part of a latin american family did much to open my eyes, as did spending years in central america later on. my three plus decades as a professor of international development helped me grow in my ability to listen and to make me increasingly aware of the importance of “handing over the stick,” a practice well-known in community development, but powerfully relevant for every area of our lives. at this juncture, and before introducing the articles in this special issue, it is important to draw attention to some of the challenges that decolonisation as unpacked above presents to an academic journal such as this. as a well-established societal sphere of activity, academia is implicated in coloniality. it is guided by established systems and patterns of knowing and communicating, including rules regarding what ought and ought not to be done, and a degree of consensus on what makes an academic article “robust” or of “good quality,” that are embedded within colonial relations. as editors for an academic journal, we have admittedly centered the academy, along with its established rules concerning what constitutes “good scholarship.” nevertheless, one of the initial steps we have taken to decolonise our practice has been to bring a diverse range of authors and approaches to the topic, and to allow their authentic voices to emerge. readers might therefore notice that while we have formatted articles according to crda’s standard grammatical structure, we have not standardised language and spellings across the whole of this special issue, and we have sought to preserve the original tone of articles. we have also sought to make visible author positionality within each contribution, as already noted above. finally, a third initial step we have taken is to prioritise the concrete experiences of organisations and individuals within the sector. this resonates with walsh’s emphasis on the importance of beginning with “praxis” in relation to decoloniality. walsh notes that “[to] begin with praxis and the praxistical activity of thinking-doing, is to turn academia and western modern thought upside down” (mignolo and walsh 2018, 19). “thinking-doing” in this context places emphasis on praxis while also capturing the interconnectedness and inseparability of theory and praxis, concepts which are often separated within western thought or pitted against each other (ibid., 7). the contributions in this special issue that begin with praxis in relation to organisations highlight the complexity of the contexts in which organisations find themselves. aspects that are often the focus of organisational efforts to decolonise—whether specific relationships, activities, or processes—exist within much larger systems, with which they are intertwined. this interrelatedness means that reconfiguring power in one sphere of organisational activity will necessarily reconfigure power in another sphere of activity. reflecting on practice through decoloniality thus sheds light on multiple and varied sets of power differentials that need addressing in multiple and varied spheres of activity. an important insight that these contributions therefore bring to decolonial theories relates to the need for attention to dynamics at multiple layers, or levels of analysis. this special issue comprises seven full-length articles, two discussion pieces, and three book reviews, encompassing diverse “internal” and “external” organisational and individual perspectives. contributors are based in ecuador, guatemala, india, nigeria, the philippines, south africa, sri lanka, the uk, the us and zimbabwe—almost as many countries as there are articles. many authors are those whose work, education and lived experience spans the global north and global south, and academic and practicebased spaces. the first three full-length contributions chart organisational pathways to decolonising practice. as noted above, many organisations have been wrestling with questions related to power and partnership for a long time, and actively engaging in organisational initiatives to adjust their practice and ways of working, although the language of decolonisation has often not been used. one contribution in this section has a historical focus, another is centred around organisational-level initiatives carried out during a more recent time period, and a final article homes in on localisation as a specific area of organisational practice that can enable decolonisation. bringing a historical perspective to the special issue, alain epp weaver and emma smith cain introduce mennonite central committee (mcc) as a case study of one organisation’s decades-long journey to decolonise its practice. epp weaver and smith cain share insights from mcc’s history, charting some of the major changes it underwent from its establishment in 1920, to the present day, carefully articulating the challenges, complexities and opportunities mcc has encountered over the past one hundred plus years. these changes have been guided by theological reflection on missiological concepts and questions. in the next contribution, bikita mahdi and thobekile ncube focus on a more recent time period, 2017-2023, exploring various initiatives through which the faith-based organisation tearfund has sought to outwork decolonisation within its corporate culture, organisational structures, and ways of working. the theological motivation underlying this work came to the fore during the organisation’s jubilee year in 2017, a significant moment in its organisational journey, which led to a focus on restoring relationships impacted by colonialism and/or racism. as well as intentionally working on organisational culture, power has been a christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 kurlberg and hoksbergen, decolonising practice: pathways, insights, and experiences 5 key focus area, with emphasis placed on “shifting” or “recalibrating” power. we then return to mcc to learn from five staff members from two ngos, anadesa and mcc, who have reflected collectively to author a case study set in guatemala, based on almost twenty years’ work among indigenous tz’utujil communities. the authors argue that responding to colonial legacies has been enabled by the implementation of a localisation model that they view as a form of “reparations.” based on flexibility and mutual learning, this way of working has helped create an environment in which decolonisation processes can occur within and between these two organisations. the two full-length contributions that follow are based on insights from recent research processes carried out by two faith-based international nongovernmental organisations; the first is a theological research process that was in and of itself guided by a decolonial spirit, and the second addresses the topic of reparations. in their contribution, clark buys and maria andrade introduce a theological research process carried out by tearfund on the topic of economic and environmental sustainability. the research process, which intentionally sought to engage in regional “missional listening” and draw on perspectives from the global south, is discussed by buys and andrade from the perspective of latin american decolonial theory. as well as introducing the resultant “abundant community theology,” the authors highlight both the value and challenges of tearfund’s approach. ann-marie agyeman and anupama ranawana then explore “reparations,” which they view as a theological imperative and key aspect of decolonising development. their argument is that antiracism work can be seen as a form of reparations. using the findings from a piece of research carried out by christian aid in 2021 on race, ethnicity, and poverty, they explore how organisations can practically engage in this work. the final two full-length contributions focus on specific aspects of organisational practice based on the authors’ experiences. the first is a research piece on decolonising data collection, and the second is an essay that draws out several organisational factors that enable decolonisation. in the first, rebecca samuel shah explores the practice of organisations based in the global north in relation to knowledge production and data extraction. drawing on her own research in the slums of chennai and bangalore during the covid19 pandemic, shah makes a case for decolonising data collection. in the second article, toluwanimi jaiyebookoro argues that although many organisations highlight their support for decolonisation, current ways of working within the sector do not always enable organisations to actualise this. jaiyebo-okoro thus outlines four critical enabling factors (cefs) for decolonisation relevant for christian development organisations (cdos): lament, epistemic justice, diverse and inclusive representation, and the embrace of non-neutrality. this list is not exhaustive, but instead represents a starting point for organisations keen to decolonise their practice. this special issue also includes two shorter discussion pieces, the first of which is an essay by al tizon, who argues that poverty is ultimately the consequence of the pursuit of wealth. focusing in on the concepts of “empire” and “mammon,” tizon touches on the relationship between colonialism and capitalism. his argument finds congruence with the work of quijano (2000), who brings the lens of race to this relationship, arguing that racial hierarchies are embedded within capitalism (quijano 2000, 536-537). tizon argues that mammon and empire go together, and that when the church confronts mammon, empire is also confronted. in order to destabilise the “imperial spirit,” less capital-based ways of doing development are needed. in the second discussion piece, tracy kuperus engages with robtel neajai pailey’s thought on decolonisation within international development, focusing in particular on pailey’s critique of the “white gaze” of development, and more generally, on the importance of acknowledging race within development practice. this connects to wider discussions on the influence of “whiteness” within this sphere of activity. kuperus concludes with suggestions for how christians working in the field of development might avoid its white gaze. finally, the editors have included reviews of three recently published books: graham adams’ holy anarchy, reviewed by jo cribbin; anupama ranawana’s a liberation for the earth: climate, race and cross, reviewed by kuki rokhum; and al tizon’s christ among the classes: the rich, the poor and the mission of the church, reviewed by cynthia moody. note that two of these are written by tizon and ranawana, who have also authored articles for this issue of crda. the common ground underpinning the entirety of this special issue of the journal is the view that all humanity stands in equality before god. the authors represented here know the world we collectively inherited fails miserably to honor this basic idea. they call us to lament the pain and injustice of this world and to work together to imagine and open the possibility for an “otherwise.” references abrahamsen, rita. 2004. “the power of partnerships in global governance.” third world quarterly 25 (8): 1453-1467. christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 kurlberg and hoksbergen, decolonising practice: pathways, insights, and experiences 6 ainsworth, david and amruta byatnal. 2022. “localization? i hate the word. decolonization? i hate that even more.” devex. november 21, 2022. https://www.devex.com/news/localization-i-hatethe-word-decolonization-i-hate-that-even-more104340. bailón, fregoso and de lissovoy. 2019. “against coloniality: toward an epistemically insurgent curriculum.” policy futures in education 17 (3): 355-369. brinkerhoff, jennifer m. 2002. partnership for international development: rhetoric or results? boulder: lynne rienner publishers. campbell-stephens, rosemary m. 2021. educational leadership and the global majority: decolonising narratives. cham: palgrave macmillan. césaire, aimé. 1972 [1955]. “between colonizer and colonized.” in discourse on colonialism, translated by joan pinkham. new york: monthly review press, 20-25. cole, teju. 2012. “the white-savior industrial complex.” the atlantic. march 21. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2 012/03/the-white-savior-industrialcomplex/254843/. dussel, enrique. 1985. philosophy of liberation, translated by aquilina martinez and christine morkovsky. maryknoll: orbis books. duvisac, sara. 2022. “decolonize! what does it mean?” oxfam. july. https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream /handle/10546/621456/rr-decolonize-what-does-itmean-151222-en.pdf?sequence=1&isallowed=y elliott, charles. 1987. “some aspects of relations between the north and south in the ngo sector.” world development 15 (supplement 1): 57-68. escobar, arturo. 1995. encountering development: the making and unmaking of the third world. princeton: princeton university press. fanon, franz. 1961. wretched of the earth, translated by richard philcox. new york: grove press. frankenberg, ruth. 1993. white women, race matters: the social construction of whiteness. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. gaventa, john. 2006. “finding the spaces for change: a power analysis.” ids bulletin 37 (6): 23-33. hammett, daniel. 2019. “whose development? power and space in international development.” geography 104 (1): 12-18. khan, themrise, kanakulya dickson, and maika sondarjee (eds). 2023.white saviorism in international development. quebec: daraja press. kho, tung-yi. 2023. “colonial logics and the journey from the third world to the first, and back again.” in talking about global inequality: personal experiences and historical perspectives. edited by christiansen, christian olaf, oliver bugge hunt, priyanka jha, melanie lindbjerg machado-guichon and sofia mercader, 47-54. cham: palgrave macmillan. kothari, uma. 2006. “an agenda for thinking about ‘race’ in development.” progress in development studies 6 (1): 9-23. kurlberg, nina. 2021. “embrace in the margins: a theological framework for inclusion.” in theologies and practices of inclusion: insights from a faith-based relief, development and advocacy organization, edited by kurlberg, nina and madleina daehnhardt. london: scm press. lister, sarah. 2000. “power in partnership? an analysis of an ngo’s relationships with its partners.” journal of international development 12: 227-239. mignolo, walter d. and catherine e. walsh. 2018. on decoloniality: concepts, analytics, praxis. durham: duke university press. ndlovu-gatsheni, sabelo j. 2020. “african decolonization’s past and present trajectories.” current history 119 (817): 188-193. tom, nobesuthu. 2022. “black theology before the decolonial turn,” the ecumenical review 74 (4): 561-575. quijano, aníbal. 2000. “coloniality of power and eurocentrism in latin america.” international sociology 15 (2): 215-232. quijano, aníbal. 2007. “coloniality and modernity/rationality.” cultural studies 21:2-3: 168-178. rist, gilbert. 2007. “development as a buzzword.” development in practice 17 (4-5): 485-491. rutazibwa, olivia umurerwa. 2019. “what’s there to mourn? decolonial reflections on (the end of) liberal humanitarianism.” journal of humanitarian affairs 1 (1), 65-67. nina kurlberg is postdoctoral research associate in theological education at the university of durham, uk. she is serving as guest editor of this journal issue. roland hoksbergen is professor emeritus of economics and international development at calvin university. he serves as co-editor of this journal. author emails: nina.kurlberg@durham.ac.uk hoksro@calvin.edu https://www.devex.com/news/localization-i-hate-the-word-decolonization-i-hate-that-even-more-104340 https://www.devex.com/news/localization-i-hate-the-word-decolonization-i-hate-that-even-more-104340 https://www.devex.com/news/localization-i-hate-the-word-decolonization-i-hate-that-even-more-104340 https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/03/the-white-savior-industrial-complex/254843/ https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/03/the-white-savior-industrial-complex/254843/ https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/03/the-white-savior-industrial-complex/254843/ https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10546/621456/rr-decolonize-what-does-it-mean-151222-en.pdf?sequence=1&isallowed=y https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10546/621456/rr-decolonize-what-does-it-mean-151222-en.pdf?sequence=1&isallowed=y https://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/10546/621456/rr-decolonize-what-does-it-mean-151222-en.pdf?sequence=1&isallowed=y mailto:nina.kurlberg@durham.ac.uk mailto:hoksro@calvin.edu christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 wheaton network initiative, principles of gender equality… 42 principles of gender equality for development organizations wheaton network initiative on gender, development and christianity introduction headlines abound with studies asserting that a more diverse organization has greater ability to achieve its goals. this diversity is also reflected in the biblical description of christ’s kingdom of shalom, both which has been revealed already at creation and that which is still to come. diverse voices improve goal achievement, employee engagement and innovation. research from the humanitarian sector demonstrates that gender equality is a key lever in achieving development goals. even so, there has been little investigation of how women’s equality influences the work of christian mission, relief and development agencies. for this reason, a cohort of like-minded global organizations began exploring the confluence of three different yet overlapping spheres: 1) global development /humanitarian work, 2) christian faith, and 3) women’s equality—three distinct foci that may hold unrealized yet extraordinary potential when working in unison. the work that follows is an initial offering to aid christian organizations in their efforts to bring greater gender equality within their organizations and to the communities they serve. such equality reflects equal opportunity, the perception of fairness, even handedness and reduction of bias and discrimination in the way our organizations function and the communities they serve. these principles were developed by a working group birthed out of a consultation on development, gender and christianity at wheaton college in 2018. the consultation brought together over 30 technical experts, ministers, and leaders from global faith-based organizations to discuss best practices and development needs for gender equality in our work and places of work. these principles represent broadly accepted minimum practices, written through a theological lens, to facilitate organizational growth and development toward greater gender equality. these principles are intended to provide: ● language for and a roadmap to greater gender equality in your organization. this requires acknowledging that we are on a journey toward this important goal, not to become discouraged by lack of progress, but to celebrate and harness leadership efforts in your organization on this journey ● guideposts, as we expect organizations will prayerfully and thoughtfully consider how best to use them in their own context. they are most effective if overseen by a designated and empowered representative person or group who can track improvements year over year, and communicate progress and highlight areas that need more attention. tools are available in the industry for more stringent measurement, these can be made available by a consultation representative ● a way for organizations to “sign on” to the principles of gender equality and join with likeminded groups. this will publicly declare an organizational commitment to gender equality. these principles, for example, are part of foundation of the christian alliance for inclusive development. christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 wheaton network initiative, principles of gender equality… 43 principles of gender equality for development organizations (1) shalom in the community: we affirm that we are all called to kingdom community and to be active restorers of shalom, the health and wholeness among all those created in the image of god, called for god’s purposes and equipped for god’s work. this shalom needs women and men partnering at all levels within our organizations and the communities we serve. together we must bring our gifts of leadership, proclamation, stewardship and service if we are to reflect christ’s new community. using these gifts will ensure our ministries are faithful to god’s design, and most strategic in achieving our best in missional outcomes. (2) god’s design of women and men together: we affirm the biblical truth that from the beginning, man and woman were created in god’s image to govern the world side by side (genesis 1:26-28). the flourishing that god intended through woman and man’s mutual service and leadership was undermined by their sin. as a result, their shared-rule deteriorated into maledominance (genesis 3:16) which is not god’s ideal. the equal value of women and men’s shared governance is demonstrated throughout scripture and particularly in the practices of christ and his teachings. we commit to being explicit and transparent about our commitment to the equal value of women and men. a) does our organization have a clear theological statement that expresses the value and contributions (and limitations, if they exist) for women and men? b) are our theological commitments clearly communicated (and easily available) to external and internal audiences and reflected in our strategic plan, our values, and priorities? c) does this policy statement acknowledge the importance of organizational structures, discussing the balance that should exist in leadership roles of women and men across the organization? (3) women’s leadership and influence: we affirm that women’s leadership is necessary to reach our missional goals. as research shows, the best performing organizations have gender balance in leadership roles at all levels and include women and men from a diversity of racial/ethnic communities. missional effectiveness, creativity, innovation and professionalism is enhanced when organizations have greater gender balance in their leadership, and people bring different perspectives to bear on the significant challenges facing christian ministries. this mandates that women not only have a seat at the leadership table, but that they have influence within the organization and the broader development community. we believe this commitment to gender equality in leadership should be modeled in the global office and in local communities. as organizations, we also recognize the need to support and advocate for women's leadership in larger networks and to our varied audiences. a) does our organization have target goals (percentages) for women’s representation and professional influence on boards, executive teams, leadership at all levels of the organization, including positions of spiritual leadership? b) do we perform a regular gender assessment of organizational climate to assess how female leaders and staff assess their role and influence in the organization? c) do we report these numbers, track progress, and use the information to reward leaders and divisions promoting diversity or make changes where necessary? (4) intentionality and development: we are committed to intentionally seeking to amplify the contributions and influence of all women within our organizations and the communities in which we serve. historical realities have created structural and systemic barriers for women and other underrepresented groups to advance in organizations today. for women of color and marginalized ethnicities and classes, these barriers are greater. with cultural sensitivity in the communities we serve and organizations we partner with, we will affirm and advocate for the dignity of women that jesus afforded them in scripture. we recognize the fallen nature of this world and that we are all biased, and require intentional work to overcome our individual biases and organizational realities. we will ensure resources are directed both towards education all staff members around gender issues as well as education and intentional development of women to be prepared to grow in their influence in the organization. a) are there active educational efforts to change staff culture and awareness of challenges faced by women throughout the organization that includes bias training and attention to human resource policies? b) are there monies, personnel time and other resources targeted to increasing gender diversity through hiring, promotion, retention and targeted development of women for leadership roles? c) are there efforts in place to include the inclusion of women and their voices at all levels, especially the voices of women that are underrepresented? d) are key leaders actively promoting these goals and being vocal about their commitments, both internally and externally? christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 wheaton network initiative, principles of gender equality… 44 (5) creating a healthy work environment: we commit to treating all people with respect and dignity afforded them as image bearers of christ. we will create healthy work environments that promote flourishing of all employees. we will not tolerate sexism or sexual harassment in any form, and commit to protecting and safeguarding our employees and clients from such oppression or harassment, even at the cost of reputation. we agree to advocating and working for healthy work environments not only in our organization, but with the organizations with whom we partner. a) do human resource policies and practices of our organization reflect these commitments to professional working environment, and are they made clear to all employees? b) do we have specific safeguarding policies in place at all levels such as harassment report policies and procedures, anonymous systems to report abuse, and resources for those harassed? c) are we survivor-centered, transparent about cases of abuse, and do we hold people accountable for their actions? (6) programming with a gender lens: we commit to developing all of our programs with a gender equality lens, and being intentional about gender inclusion among the stakeholders we serve. we recognize the high percentage of women and girls that are served by the ministries we lead. we will ensure equal inclusion of women and men, girls and boys in the needs analysis, execution and impact assessment of the work we do. this includes both the empowering of women in efforts like economic development and leadership training as well as attention to the unique needs of women and girls around maternal health and violence. with cultural sensitivity, we commit to upholding the full dignity of women and girls in the communities we serve, and advocating for their appropriate treatment as god’s beloved daughters, as is congruent with our christian faith and witness. a) do we include gender analysis in our program needs assessment? b) based on the gender analysis, do we emphasize the meaningful involvement of women, girls, boys, and men in the program design, research, implementation and evaluation processes? c) does our organization collect gender disaggregated data and use it within impact evaluations? christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 blank page in recognition of pulled article 58 blank page in recognition of pulled article this blank page is in recognition of the article that was to be featured in this special issue, a case study on gender mainstreaming in an evangelical organization, that had to be pulled because of the current political targeting of diversity, inclusion, and equity efforts. christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(2), winter 2024 lequire, thirty years later: the growth of the creation care movement 121 thirty years later: the growth of the creation care movement stan lequire in this personal retrospective, the author reflects on thirty years of growth of the evangelical creation care movement. the various factors contributing to the growth of the movement are highlighted: leadership, ownership, program development, global reach, and spiritual depth. the article concludes with personal spiritual reflections on leadership and hope. i have always loved eugene peterson’s book title, a long obedience in the same direction (intervarsity press 1980). that evocative phrase alone communicates a lifetime of my own experiences. i suspect that many laboring in development and advocacy work may well understand what peterson is talking about. it is a challenge to lead a christian organization that attempts to glorify jesus in innovative ways. the work of advocacy for justice and social change is trying, exhausting, and filled with many challenges. my own calling has been in the area of environmental advocacy or what many of us prefer to call “creation care.” i was the founding director in 1993 of the evangelical environmental network (een) and steered the work for its first five years. the network was always a tiny group of leaders who understood the comprehensive nature of the gospel and that god’s reign and love extends to all corners of creation and culture. hate mail and opposition were plentiful, but so were small steps forward. 1 nonetheless, i never could have imagined what happened on june 7, 2023 when the een hosted a banquet in washington, dc for about one hundred well-wishers and supporters. we celebrated the retirement of our third director, the rev. mitch hescox, and the commissioning of our fourth director, the rev. dr. jessica moerman. it appears that the “creation care” movement is alive and well. i could not be more amazed, humbled, and encouraged. from small beginnings, an organization now thrives and carries the ministry forward into the future. i have long 1 for a thorough history of evangelical involvement in the environmental movement, see gish (2020). 2 for more information on this innovative organization, see www.plantwithpurpose.org. any recent annual report will provide an overview of their powerful ministries. felt that the creation care movement was making slow but steady progress over the past years, but the june 7 event offered physical and tangible proof. what are some of the factors that may lead an organization through thirty years of ministry? here are a few personal reflections on factors leading to this milestone for the een and for others in the broader creation care movement. gifted leadership the creation care movement is blessed with leaders who have devoted many years to this novel and worthwhile cause. there are too many to name, but here are just a few examples. scott sabin, founder and director of plant with purpose (formerly known as floresta) 2 was an early supporter of the evangelical environmental network. plant with purpose predates the een, has a forty-year history of its own, and has experienced significant growth of staff and programming under scott’s leadership. plant with purpose now works in nine countries with forty-two employees. it mobilizes some 80,000 families in various countries for agroforestry projects. i must also mention the army of faith-filled science professors on christian college campuses. these professors have labored semester by semester over long years so that, slowly but steadily, new generations of students learn that caring for creation is a viable part of our faith as well as a professional opportunity. in fact, the number of young phds and scientists joining the movement is an encouragement to all of us who labored to get the http://www.plantwithpurpose.org/ christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(2), winter 2024 lequire, thirty years later: the growth of the creation care movement 122 movement up and running! one of these scientists is the new president and ceo of the een, rev. dr. jessica moerman. 3 at her june 7 commissioning, moerman told the audience, “this is a marathon, not a sprint… we will take up the baton.” such leaders build hope in all of us. ownership by increasing numbers of evangelicals in the early days of the creation care movement, we wondered how we could get on anyone’s radar! how do we let followers of jesus know that caring for creation is not a political stance, but a life of faithful obedience to the creator? it seems that the message is now accepted by many. david bookless, the theology director of a rocha international, travels globally with the message of the bible’s mandate for creation care. bookless notes a growing response and openness to his message. “the vast majority of the time now—and it was less so 30 years ago—people are lapping it up. people are quite excited by it… i find it right around the world; i find there’s a huge appetite for it” (bookless 2023). ben lowe, newly appointed director of a rocha usa, reports that a rocha cannot keep up with the number of inquiries coming from churches. lowe also notes a “significant switch” over the past few years from having to persuade audiences of the basics of creation care to the need to equip their audience for specific action. as lowe says, “there is enough of a critical mass now,” which “is a fundamental shift in posture and mission” (lowe 2023). even the national association of evangelicals (nae), which took many years to embrace the care of creation, is now actively supporting creation care as a gospel-centered issue. nae leadership has issued bold and robust statements on such topics as creation care and climate change, stating among other things that… as evangelicals, we believe that caring for creation is part of our calling as stewards of god’s creation. we also believe that caring for the most vulnerable is central to the way of jesus (nae 2022). i believe that under the capable and visionary leadership of walter kim, the nae will provide even more direction in addressing the degradation of god’s creation. it is reasonable to say, in summary, that the creation care movement is growing, even though, undoubtedly, additional progress and growth are needed. it can also be said that there have been setbacks 3 moerman holds a phd in earth and atmospheric sciences from georgia tech and has held a variety of research positions. before joining the een, moerman was an aaas science and technology policy fellow at the us department of energy. over the past seven or eight years, particularly from the association of broader evangelicalism with extreme right-wing ideology and a hostile stance toward secular culture. nonetheless, progress has being made over the past thirty years and hope abounds. breadth of programming an additional and observable sign of strength for the creation care movement is that evangelicals are able to relate the care of creation to diverse issues and situations. over the past 30 years, other organizations have been born such as yeca, young evangelicals for climate action, which takes bold action in the area of addressing climate change from practical and biblical perspectives. another organization addresses mountaintop removal and other issues in appalachia. christians for the mountains, directed by allen johnson, was founded in 2005. one additional area of such growth is the connection between creation care and (traditional) missionary endeavors. such a connection was only dreamed of and prayed for in the mid-1990s, when een was first getting started. while such creation care missionaries are certainly not numerous, they now exist and have begun to do good work. for example, team, the evangelical alliance mission, mentions creation care as valid missional activity. such statements would have been unimaginable a few years ago. in a 2017 blog post highlighting several missionaries engaged in creation care, the author states that “missionaries around the world are shining light on god’s handiwork through creation care ministries.” the reader is encouraged to “pray with us for creation care ministries.” finally, i might point to your own work as i suspect that many of the readers of this article may be engaged in the care of creation without even knowing it or calling it such. there is a high likelihood that if you are engaged in agricultural ministries, clean water supply, or just about any kind of community development, you may be doing creation care work! there is, however, one area of programming that i long to see added to the creation care movement. the een, and other organizations, need to take bolder stands in the area of environmental justice. many disadvantaged communities have been on the receiving end of pollution and degradation from wealthier americans. there is much work to be done in this area. care must also be taken not to appropriate the work of environmental justice from those who have labored for decades in this arena. therefore, this work must begin with humble listening to the voices coming from these stressed communities. christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(2), winter 2024 lequire, thirty years later: the growth of the creation care movement 123 global reach while much of this commentary is focused on the work of evangelicals in the united states, it would be helpful to mention that the creation care movement is thriving around the world. a rocha international is one example already mentioned. in many instances, the global movement surpasses our own engagement as these sisters and brothers do not face the same political and social issues that we do in the united states. researcher and author melanie gish observes, beyond the nation’s borders, however, a transnational creation care ‘reformation’ seems to be making progress indeed, enabling leaders… to speak out on pressing global environmental threats while remaining deeply anchored within the core tenets of the evangelical faith (gish 2020, 110). one of the high points of this global movement came when the lausanne congress, founded by billy graham, adopted creation care as a core issue. the 3rd lausanne congress, cape town 2010, was significant in seeing ‘creation care as a gospel issue within the lordship of jesus christ.’ this helped spark the global creation care movement now known as lwccn (the lausanne / world evangelical alliance creation care network) (lausanne-4 2023). spiritual depth all of us engaged in christian ministry and advocacy take steps to remain faithful to our biblical calling, and this is just as true for those working in the area of creation care. it is fascinating and encouraging that all four of the past and present directors of the evangelical environmental network are ordained clergy. 4 we are not development professionals nor experts in non-profit leadership. nonetheless, we want to see the lordship of jesus proclaimed and the church moving forward in including creation care and justice advocacy in the discipleship of god’s people. i continue to be convinced that care of creation and creation itself are vital, yet often overlooked, parts of our faith which—if embraced—could lead to great revival and even another spiritual awakening among our churches. 4 in chronological order, these are rev. stan lequire, rev. dr. jim ball, rev. mitch hescox, and the next director, rev. dr. jessica moerman. 5 see also isaiah 42:9, in which god promises to declare “new things.” could creation care be a new ministry for you and your organization? isaiah 61 is another encouraging passage. to that end, i close with a devotional thought from god’s word that i hope will encourage your ministry (and invite your further involvement in creation care). “here is my servant, whom i uphold,     my chosen one in whom i delight; i will put my spirit on him,     and he will bring justice to the nations. he will not falter or be discouraged till he establishes justice on earth. in his teaching the islands will put their hope.” isaiah 42:1, 4 5 this passage reveals the heart and mind of jesus christ, god’s servant. he desires justice in all corners of his creation, and he is utterly dedicated to bringing justice to fruition. please do not give up hope. jesus will not falter, and he will send his spirit that we too might do our work for him, be that creation care or the many other works of justice and advocacy. finally, some words by plant with purpose’s director, scott sabin, one who has labored faithfully to care for creation: there is hope in jesus, and hope is desperately needed at this moment— not so we can sit back and wait for the end, but so we have the courage to keep contending for what is good. jesus is redeeming all things, and there is hope in that, even though we don’t know exactly what that will ultimately look like. armed with that hope, we can begin by contributing what we can, all any of us can, and that is the little that we have. as i have written elsewhere, much like the little boy in the story of the feeding of the five thousand, anything we have to offer is hopelessly inadequate. however, it is what we have, and that is the point. if you remember the story, the five loaves and two fish contributed by the boy are ridiculous in the face of the need. given in faith, they become the raw material for a miracle. when i see what is being done by our partnering farmers in tanzania, with tens of thousands of people gathering annually to celebrate voluntarily planting millions of trees as an expression of their faith and purpose, or when i talk with a former guerilla fighter excitedly talking about regreening his watershed and discovering purpose as an emissary of peace, christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(2), winter 2024 lequire, thirty years later: the growth of the creation care movement 124 i realize that god has been able to use my five loaves and two fish in ways i never anticipated all those years ago, when “planting trees for jesus” seemed like such a foolish way to spend a life. (sabin 2021). references bookless, david. n.d. https://www.howgodworks.org/podcast/season4/god-is-green. podcast interview accessed june 13, 2023. gish, melanie. 2020. god’s wounded earth: american evangelicals and the challenge of environmentalism. waco, tx: baylor university press. "lausanne-4-is-coming.” 2023 (march 13).the pollinator: creation care network news. http://news.lwccn.com/index.php/2023/03/13. lowe, ben. march 10, 2023. interview with the author. national association of evangelicals (nae). 2015. “nae issues call to action on creation care.” nae issues call to action on creation care national association of evangelicals | national association of evangelicals. national association of evangelicals (nae). 2022. “loving the least of these.” https://www.nae.org/loving-the-least-of-these. peterson, eugene h. 1980. a long obedience in the same direction: discipleship in an instant society. downers grove, il: intervarsity press. sabin, scott. 2021 (june 3). “the journey of an accidental environmentalist.” blog post. team blog posting. n.d. see https://team.org/blog/pray-for-creation-care. accessed february 25, 2024. rev. stan lequire is the founding director of the evangelical environmental network. rev. lequire has also served as a pastor, missionary, and educator in sustainable development and spiritual formation. in addition, he has researched best practices of community-based ecotourism as a model for development. author email: stan.lequire@gmail.com. https://www.howgodworks.org/podcast/season-4/god-is-green https://www.howgodworks.org/podcast/season-4/god-is-green http://news.lwccn.com/index.php/2023/03/13 https://www.nae.org/nae-issues-call-to-action-on-creation-care/ https://www.nae.org/nae-issues-call-to-action-on-creation-care/ https://www.nae.org/nae-issues-call-to-action-on-creation-care/ https://www.nae.org/loving-the-least-of-these mailto:stan.lequire@gmail.com christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(2), winter 2024 powell/slimbach, tough questions on faith and political economy: a reflection 138 tough questions on faith and political economy: a commentary philip powell and richard slimbach the following is a response by philip powell (co-director of the justice conference, uk, and also theology and network engagement manager with tearfund, uk) to the five questions richard slimbach poses on faith and political economy 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, is published in 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 philip powell responds are: 1. in what ways have your family background, theological education, and ideological leanings shaped your perspectives on us foreign policy and the global us american military ‘footprint’? 2. are policy advocacy, community organizing, and other actions that prioritize economic justice, environmental sustainability, and human rights legitimate areas of public engagement for christian ngos? 3. what does our theology say about the importance of environmental responsibility? why must the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor be heard together? what keeps christian organizations from tackling big environmental issues like climate change, biodiversity loss, deforestation, and resource (oil, gas, and mineral) depletion? what goals might christian ngos set for themselves in these areas? 4. given the realities of global poverty, increasing income/wealth inequality, and excessive levels of consumption and material waste in the global north, what is expected of christian organizations committed to the welfare of the poor and dispossessed? 5. our current economic system works to create immense wealth and to grow economies, but morally, how does it work? what does it do to people and planet, not just for them? do the internal mechanisms of capitalism act to preserve and protect the earth’s ecological processes and biodiversity? do they enable people to live in caring relation to animals, plants, and the world of nature? do they encourage people to desire and delight in god? do they strengthen the world’s cultural and religious traditions and identities that provide meaning, direction, and joy in life? in other words, in what ways does advanced capitalism nurture and/or hinder transformational development? philip powell thank you to the accord network for inviting me to respond. and thank you, richard, for writing this challenging article, asking tough questions about transformation and development. i thought the title should have been extended to say something like asking tough questions about transformation and development and learning to live without the answers in the short and medium term. i want to agree with you that this is about having a conversation, and sometimes it is about developing a spirituality to live with, while not having the answers, because any rush to give answers is going to be shallow and short-sighted, because these are very complex issues that rich has touched on, things like militarism and capitalism. i am going to try throwing a few ideas out for us, and hopefully we can discuss this later when there are questions. i wholeheartedly agree with rich that we need to go beyond where we have been in terms of thinking 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 powell/slimbach, tough questions on faith and political economy: a reflection 139 about issues. i read the line you wrote about what young adults from evangelical backgrounds are feeling. you wrote that what they find maddening is the avoidance, or silence, they experience within churches on issues of greatest consequence to the planet's future. i am largely sympathetic to their complaints. i find a lot of millennials unable to cope with being in a church that is talking about some sort of spiritual stuff while the world is on fire. and yet i do not see how turning away from the church is going to deal with some of the big issues we are facing. because ultimately, i agree with what the late bishop lesslie newbigin says, that the church, god's people, is still the foretaste, the sign, and the instrument of god's kingdom. we need god's solutions to some of these problems. newbigin also said that the alternative to the current order that is falling apart is the church itself. we are the embodiment of a different kind of world. this does not go into the view that we would withdraw and just live in a christian bubble. to respond to some of these questions you pose, which are very challenging, i am just going to give my viewpoint. the first question is about my own sort of background and where i come from. i grew up in india. both my grandfathers served in the armed forces, one in the british army, the other in the air force. i grew up in a home that was very promissionaries and pro-americans. a lot of indian christians grew up being quite pro-american. in fact, two of my favorite films growing up were a film called hatari with john wayne, and the other was the film patton about the us army general patton during the second world war. indeed, when the first gulf war was happening, i was actually collecting photos of the news in the newspaper, black and white photos from an indian newspaper, and sticking them in a book to have images of the us military victories. because my grandfather was in the army i had that sort of love for the army. and yet, a decade or so later, when the second gulf war was happening, on the 15th of february, i was in london marching against the second gulf war. something changed in my outlook, especially because of leaving india and coming to live in the uk. i began to see the problems with what some call “us imperialism.” i think what i am grappling with is how to bear witness to who christ is, god's selfdisclosure in history, in the midst of our complex world. my own academic background is in international relations, which helped me understand that there are no easy answers. one of the things to say about my personal background is that i feel i have had to overcome in my own journey the divide that i felt growing up with a quite a pietistic faith—prayer, evangelism, doing mercy ministry—but had very little vision for engaging politics, for engaging the sphere of public life. and so this is a little bit about my own journey. to the question about legitimate areas of public engagement for christians ngos, of course the answer is “yes, yes, yes.” but it is really about the details of what that “yes” means. so often young adults who are against injustice, and who want justice, seem to know better about what we do not want, while finding it difficult to articulate what we are for. so, yes, we're against economic exploitation, but how do you get to having a world in which there is economic justice? what are we for? i’d like to introduce the writings of someone here in cambridge (uk), michael schluter (https://www.jubilee-centre.org/founder-dr-michaelschluter), who has been writing a lot about relational thinking and how to transform capitalism from within. it has more of a vision of what kind of society we want than just saying what we do not want. coming to the question of theology, let me first read a quote. the reason i want to read this quote is because it again refers to lesslie newbigin, who i have found very helpful. the quote is by david w. smith of great britain, from his book transforming the world: the social impact of british evangelicalism (2004). toward the end of the book, he writes these words: and yet, as evangelicalism changed over time, so its understanding of the nature and consequences of conversion was modified in all kinds of ways, with the result that the biblical promise of the new humanity was watered down to an offer of personal peace and happiness. gutted of its spiritual content, conversion was reduced to an experience which required no radical break with the values of our secular culture. indeed, conversion became a purely private affair, bearing so little relevance to the public sphere that a widespread resurgence of born-again religion, revival, could occur without posing the remotest threat to a society whose prosperity is built on a justification of greed and whose security rests upon a willingness to commit genocide and turn god's earth into an uninhabitable wasteland. evangelicalism, no less than liberalism and catholicism, ceased to have critical contact with western culture and became party to the veneration of modern forms of the sacred, the nation state, the ideology of guaranteed security and, above all, the cult of mammon, which the bible frankly calls idols. conversion became a means of personal psychological release from the historical situation, and those who experienced it were left, in activist words, totally integrated with society, religiously degraded and reduced to one dimension. the resultant peaceful coexistence https://www.jubilee-centre.org/founder-dr-michael-schluter https://www.jubilee-centre.org/founder-dr-michael-schluter christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(2), winter 2024 powell/slimbach, tough questions on faith and political economy: a reflection 140 between the church in the west and the culture of the enlightenment has led newbigin to describe european christianity as the most advanced case of syncretism. that was david w. smith pointing out what is happening in our world in terms of christianity in the west. that is when i decided to read more about this man, lesslie newbigin. let me read one of the quotes from mark noll, and i am then going to say a couple things about the other questions. this what noll writes in the scandal of the evangelical mind (2001): among evangelicals of all varieties, there was little evidence of any felt need for systematic, theoretical reflection, for a theology applied selfconsciously to politics, and for a critical historical study in aid of political theory. concern for political involvement was replaced with an almost exclusive focus on personal evangelism and personal piety. current events evoked interpretation of prophecy instead of either reforming activism or political analysis. noll’s book shows that the kind of christianity exported to the parts of the world where i grew up was very much about one’s personal salvation. i never heard the idea that the gospel was good news for public life. i wonder how we recover a theology that overcomes the public/private division? i can mention many names, but i'll mention one simply because he is from the united states. this is e. stanley jones, who was committed to personal evangelism, but who also saw himself as a statesman. he was engaged, for example, in trying to prevent the united states going to war with japan. we have these examples, but in the circles where i move with young leaders, if i mention e. stanley jones, most of them do not know who he is. coming to the last of the questions, i want to refer to the micah network declaration on integral mission (2001). this declaration says many things about structural injustice. here is one of the lines from the micah declaration. “we affirm that the struggle against injustice is spiritual. we commit ourselves to prayer, advocating on behalf of the poor, not only before the rulers of this world, but also before the judge of all nations.” the most complicated and challenging thing for christian development agencies to deal with is how to find a way forward in reforming the kind of capitalist economic global system we have. until we find a way forward out of this debt-based system, driven primarily by increasing returns on capital, i do not see any way that we can deal with inequality, and also, as you suggest in your paper, what martin luther king jr., if he were around today, would likely call “ecocide.” that is the big question for us. to conclude, my challenge is to find a kind of formation that allows people to live some degree of christlikeness in a world that is so far away from what god intends, while also finding ways to engage with systems and structures. richard slimbach philip, i very much appreciate, and agree with, your quotes from the british commentator david w. smith, who is honoring newbigin and mark noll. i agree that a big part of the problem is traceable to what has been a major contribution of evangelicalism, which is the stress on personal piety. but when it never leaves the congregational setting, there is then an overemphasis, even an exclusive emphasis, on personal salvation, on a way of reading the bible, on a colorblind kind of racial identity, and on an association with various political movements like the moral majority in the united states or tea party trumpism, which, to outsiders, transforms the community into little more than a political block. that is the great obstacle we face in the united states right now in relation to radical discipleship. lastly in relation to ecocide, reforming capitalism in the short term, that is in the next thirty years, according to ipcc (intergovernmental panel on climate change) estimates is an unrealistic endeavor and carbon emissions continue to rise year by year. there is no slowing down. and in my view, the mechanisms of global capitalism, which is the air every country breathes economically, politically, culturally, and socially, it becomes a question of regulating or transforming it with protections, which i tried to highlight by giving the nordic examples. finland, sweden, and denmark are capitalist societies, but they are social democratic capitalist, and have significant safety nets and protections for both people and planet. references jubilee centre. n.d. “founder: dr michael schluter.” https://www.jubilee-centre.org/founder-dr-michaelschluter. micah network. 2001. “micah network declaration on integral mission.” https://d1c2gz5q23tkk0.cloudfront.net/assets/uplo ads/3390139/asset/micah_network_declaration_ on_integral_mission.pdf?1662641257. noll, mark a. 1994. the scandal of the evangelical mind. grand rapids, michigan: w.b. eerdmans. smith, david w. 2004. transforming the world: the social impact of british evangelicalism. paternoster digital library). https://d1c2gz5q23tkk0.cloudfront.net/assets/uploads/3390139/asset/micah_network_declaration_on_integral_mission.pdf?1662641257 https://www.jubilee-centre.org/founder-dr-michael-schluter https://www.jubilee-centre.org/founder-dr-michael-schluter https://d1c2gz5q23tkk0.cloudfront.net/assets/uploads/3390139/asset/micah_network_declaration_on_integral_mission.pdf?1662641257 https://d1c2gz5q23tkk0.cloudfront.net/assets/uploads/3390139/asset/micah_network_declaration_on_integral_mission.pdf?1662641257 https://d1c2gz5q23tkk0.cloudfront.net/assets/uploads/3390139/asset/micah_network_declaration_on_integral_mission.pdf?1662641257 christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(2), winter 2024 powell/slimbach, tough questions on faith and political economy: a reflection 141 philip powell is the theology and network engagement manager at tearfund uk and previously the co-director of the justice conference (2021-23). he also worked for the cambridge-based think tank jubilee centre (2013-21), where he developed and led training programmes like the bible and public life online course and the sage graduate leadership programme. he is a member of the advisory group for the uk student movement just love and a trustee at global action uk. author email: philip.powell@tearfund.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:philip.powell@tearfund.org mailto:rslimbach1@gmail.com christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(1), summer 2022 verbi, a year in god’s time… 28 a year in god’s time: response shift-bias and retrospective pretest methodologies in measuring spiritual impact samuel verbi christ centered organizations (ccos) are increasingly attempting to measure the spiritual impact of their programs. while this presents exciting opportunities for ccos to move from anecdote to evidence, the subjective nature of many of the metrics used in traditional longitudinal designs presents potential biases that need to be examined and mitigated. based upon longitudinal and retrospective survey data, as well as follow-up focus groups, from a spiritual community, this paper presents evidence of response shift bias occurring in social and spiritual impact metrics. response shift bias occurs “when an individual’s internal frame of reference about the construct being measured changes between the pretest and the posttest” (little et al. 2019, 2). to mitigate this risk, this paper proposes integrating retrospective pretest methodologies in impact evaluations involving spirituality metrics. introduction in recent years there has been an increase in the interest of measuring the spiritual impact of christ centered organizations (ccos) (kumar 2022), and a growing line of research focusing on how to “integrate the faith dimension into the evaluation of social programmes” (deneulin and mitchell 2019, 1). this presents exciting opportunities for these organizations to move away from theological dogma and anecdote to robust evidence when understanding and improving their spiritual impact. yet along with the highly subjective and selfreporting nature of many of the spirituality metrics employed in these evaluations (eido 2021) comes a danger of response shift bias in longitudinal surveys. response shift bias occurs “when an individual’s internal frame of reference about the construct being measured changes between the pretest and the posttest” (little et al. 2019, 2). due to this change in “internal frame of reference,” traditional longitudinal studies often mask the true change that is occurring, significantly skewing insights and results. based upon longitudinal and retrospective survey data, as well as on a follow-up focus group from a spiritual community, this paper presents evidence of response shift bias occurring in social and spiritual impact metrics. given that it is already “difficult to accurately collect or analyze the data, fruits, or results around life-affirming and liberating indicators even with the best methods, instruments, and spiritual discernment” (check, green, and kumar 2020, 66), this paper goes on to propose integrating retrospective pretest methodologies to mitigate this risk. response shift bias response shift bias is a phenomenon that occurs when using traditional longitudinal (pretest and posttest) models of change measurement. in a traditional model, respondents are asked to complete surveys at multiple points in time (i.e., rating their hope levels before attending a program, during the program, and after the program). to ensure comparability and some level of objectivity, this method relies on the respondent not changing their perception of the scales being used in these surveys. in this traditional case, on a scale of 0 to 10 for levels of hope, respondents would understand a rating of 8 out of 10 to mean the same thing at each measurement point. on the other hand, if the program changes the respondent’s perception of the actual scales (i.e., the respondents' understanding of what true hope actually feels like), then it is likely that it will also change their understanding of what a rating of 8 out of 10 means to themselves. in this instance, whilst their hope levels have increased, their longitudinal scores may in fact show no change, or indeed an objective decline, in their hope levels. christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(1), summer 2022 verbi, a year in god’s time… 29 the essence of the phenomenon is expressed in the definition proposed by b. d. rapkin and c. e. schwartz (2004, 14) as the “recalibration of internal standards of measurement and reconceptualization of the meanings of items.” examples of response shift bias given the nature of this phenomenon, it is unsurprising that the vast majority of response shift bias examples comes from the use of subjective and selfreporting rating scales in longitudinal designs. the first study to report response shift bias was conducted by ralph howard et al. (1979) in an assessment of an educational program to reduce dogmatism among non-commissioned officers on an air force base. to measure the change in dogmatism, the evaluation used a self-reporting metric with the traditional longitudinal pretest and posttest approach. initially the results indicated that 62% of the participants became more dogmatic from pretest to posttest. these scores were surprising because they not only indicated the program did not work, but that it actually increased dogmatism. furthermore, this finding contradicted the perceptions of program staff as well as participants’ retrospective evaluations of the program. follow-up interviews with participants argued that the program altered the participants’ understanding of dogmatism and therefore changed the way they completed the dogmatism scale. since then, additional research has verified the existence of response shift in self-report measures (cantrell 2003; ingram, et al. 2004; pratt, mcguigan, and katzev 2000). while the majority of these highlight that response shift bias can mask positive effects of programs, it has also been shown to mask negative impacts. for example, skrzypek et al. (2018, 53) found that response shift bias was present in relation to the subjective ratings of quality of life (qol) for participants experiencing an objective decline in their physical wellbeing. here “a negative experience of health is accompanied by the parallel lowering of expectations,” argue the authors. in this case “the measurement of qol does not reveal the influence of illness despite the objectively poor health condition.” lack of examples of response shift bias with spirituality metrics though response shift bias has been shown to occur within social impact metrics (such as qol scales), there has been little to no examination of how it might influence spirituality metrics. authors such as bronkema (2016) have conducted excellent reviews and summaries of existing spirituality metrics and scales, but there is a need to examine how these metrics operate in impact evaluations. in some ways this is not surprising, given the relatively recent emergence of impact measurement in christ-centered organizations (ccos) and faithbased organizations (fbos) (terry et al. 2015). still, in other ways it is surprising, especially given the high level of similarity and subjective overlap that many spirituality metrics have with social well-being scales. case-study in 2018, the community of st. anselm in lambeth palace, london, united kingdom, with support from porticus, asked eido research to build a bespoke spirituality impact metric and conduct an impact evaluation of the community. one of the goals of this impact evaluation was to answer the question: to what extent did a year living in the community transform the lives of its members? with over 111 members who had already graduated from the community, the initial evaluation required a retrospective design. this was conducted in 2018, and asked all 111 graduates of the community to estimate their level of social and spiritual wellbeing before and after leaving the community. following this the evaluation switched to a more traditional longitudinal design. this involved asking all community members to complete the same metric at point of entrance into the community, at point of graduation, and then yearly. when the results of the retrospective impact evaluation were published, the report revealed dramatic changes in the lives of participants across all four dimensions of their personal, spiritual, relational, and vocational lives. these results reflected the experiences of all community members prior to the 2018/2019 cohorts. as the methodology switched to the more traditional longitudinal design, however, the changes in participant lives appeared to be significantly less. in particular, participants reported significantly higher baselines in their personal, spiritual, relational, and vocational well-being. ruling out cohort differences a first initial explanation behind these differences was based upon cohorts. for example, it is possible all cohorts prior to 2018 saw objectively higher changes in their spiritual well-being as compared to cohorts after 2018. to test for this possible difference between cohorts, future cohorts were asked to complete both longitudinal and retrospective questions. this approach asked each cohort to answer four high-level questions regarding the level of positivity they felt towards their relationship with god, with themselves, with others, with their vocation, scoring their answers from 0 (very negative) to 10 (very positive). it asked these questions christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(1), summer 2022 verbi, a year in god’s time… 30 at point of entrance to the community, and at point of exit from the community. it then asked them again at point of exit from the community to reflect back on their lives at point of entrance, and to answer the same questions again. graph #1 summarizes these results. graph #1 as is shown within the 2019 cohort, there was a significant difference between longitudinal (shown in orange), and their retrospective scores (shown in purple) for their lives at point of entrance to the community. in each relational dimension of their lives, participants recalled a much lower level of well-being than when they first answered the questionnaire. similarly, for all cohorts, graph #2 shows this same trend continuing to occur with community members. when asked to rate how positively they felt about the four areas of their lives at point of entrance into the community, members scored these areas of their lives relatively high, between 7 to 7.5 out of 10. yet when asked the same question at graduation, members rated their entry scores at a much lower 4.5-5 out of 10, and their current graduation scores at 7-7.5 out of 10. christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(1), summer 2022 verbi, a year in god’s time… 31 graph #2 this finding (mirroring the data seen between cohorts and methodologies) confirms that differences between cohorts is not the reason for the differences between longitudinal and retrospective data. to further interrogate this pattern, another cohort in 2021 was asked to complete the entire spirituality metric from the framework both at point of entry, and again, retrospectively, at point of graduation. this included the following behavior scales and agreement scales, as shown in tables #1 and #2: christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(1), summer 2022 verbi, a year in god’s time… 32 please indicate how frequently you do the following: daily multiple times per week weekly monthly multiple times per year yearly less than yearly / never read the bible on your own or with others pray on your own or with others engage in the discipline of silence on your own or with others praise and worship god on your own or with others attend a church service share liturgy with others table #1 please indicate your level of agreement with the following statements: strongly disagree disagree slightly disagree mixed slightly agree agree strongly agree i am comfortable engaging in the discipline of silence i am able to find god in the silence i am able to engage in worship (sung praise) in several different styles even those different than my own i frequently understand the will of god i feel there is a spiritual purpose for my life i feel i am growing spiritually i am able to fully trust god in the hard times i am able to find god in every situation i experience god’s love in every situation table #2 christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(1), summer 2022 verbi, a year in god’s time… 33 using these scales, it was possible to form two index scores, one for spiritual behavior and another for spiritual beliefs and experiences. graph #3 shows the differences in these scores between the pretest, retrospective pretest, and posttest responses. graph #3 as with the previous datasets, respondents' beliefs and experiences baseline was slightly lower in their retrospective scores compared to their normal pretest scores. this is shown in the three right bars of the graph. interestingly, behavior metrics did not repeat this pattern. as the three bars on the left show, participants’ pretest and retrospective pretest scores were almost identical. follow-up focus group while quantitative evidence thus suggested that the retrospective data was more accurate, further research was required to confirm this theory. this research took the form of two focus groups with five members of the 2019 cohort and five members of the 2021 cohort. in these focus groups, participants were shown the graphs on the previous pages and simply asked to self-assess why their retrospective baseline was significantly lower than their longitudinal baseline. prior to this question, participants weren’t given the theories behind this change. during these groups, all ten members expressed sentiments that endorsed a response shift bias explanation. “my instinct is that my understanding of [these scales] has changed. so with hindsight i look back and think ‘oh i thought i knew what positive was,’ but now i’m like ‘i didn’t have a clue what positive was,’” said one participant. “when you realize how much you don’t know you become more critical of everything that you do know,” added another. with specific reference to their relationship with god, participants again highlighted the same dynamic. “i think it is a sense of maturity. i was just really naïve back then. i didn’t really appreciate the amount of time and space that could be devoted to a relationship with god,” said one member. “i got to experience what it is to really be with god. the dynamics changed so drastically for me,” added another. from the 2021 cohort specifically, participants voiced how much the year had changed their understanding of the questions. “i remember when first completing this survey, i thought i knew what god’s presence felt like,” said one member. “now when i answer these statements, i realize i didn’t have a clue about how much i can experience his love,” added another. likewise, in their relationships they also felt the same. “i have cultivated friendships that i didn’t even know could exist,” said one participant. “it was something that we thought we knew, but our christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(1), summer 2022 verbi, a year in god’s time… 34 understanding of this changed whilst we were in the community.” discussion the data shown in this paper present an intriguing dyad of potential explanations. the first is that no response shift-bias is occurring, and that in fact social desirability bias is the main culprit behind the differences in measures. the second is that response shift bias is a significant issue and that retrospective methodologies are more accurate in measuring spiritual impact. with regards to the former, it is possible that the longitudinal baseline is accurate and that it is the retrospective data that is experiencing bias. the most likely form of bias here would be a form of social desirability bias, with respondents over-estimating the level of transformation occurring in their lives. since respondents want the year they spent in the community to be significant, and know the community wants to see change, there is the potential that their baseline measurements would be exaggeratedly low, while their current measurements would be exaggeratedly high. authors such as beckford (1978) and richardson, stewart, and simmonds (1978) were among the first to argue that this rewriting of the past is very common in regard to faith and spirituality, with respondents creating “reconstructed biographies” that tend to describe the past as being worse than it actually was to contrast with a present, more favorable religious state. beckford (1978) even goes so far as to argue that the reports of converts should be treated as "skillful accomplishments of actors" who rehearse their "scripts" consciously or subconsciously to remain consistent with the official ideology of their particular religious group. though the tendency to rewrite the past is certainly a possible influence, there is a second explanation comprised of four reasons why this might not be the case. first, all responses were advertised as confidential and anonymous, with the community never being able to see responses from individual participants. second, the research invitation letter, as well as subsequent emails, made it clear that this was a space to make responses as brutally honest as possible. participants were strongly encouraged to be critical and explicitly warned against writing what they thought the community “wanted” to hear. third, the research was conducted by an external, non-religious organization to add a level of objectivity and external critique. finally, and indeed most importantly, respondents in their follow-up focus group unanimously articulated that it was a change in how they understood these concepts that was the most likely cause behind these differences. this second explanation aligns itself with previous research. community members are arriving at the community of st. anselm with a lower perception of what is possible in their relationship with god and in other areas as outlined above. once people became part of the community, however, and over the subsequent year, their perception of the possibility for this and other relationships dramatically changes, along with their understanding of any scales that they might use to rate this experience. as a result, when they exit the community, their rating of 7.3 on these same scales means something significantly higher than the initial 7.3 they originally gave at point of entrance. as a result, they adjust their retrospective scores to reflect the dramatic changes they have indeed experienced. studies have shown that educational programs focusing on subjective well-being, such as the community’s, are more susceptible to response shift bias (drennan and hyde, 2008). given the highly subjective nature of spiritual impact, and the subsequent scales used in the community of st. anselm report, this response shift bias is a strong possibility and would explain the high baseline appearing in longitudinal data. analyzing the retrospective data through this lens is, therefore, the more reliable approach, and should be interpreted as the closest representation of reality. implications for spiritual impact measurement as christian development organizations and christ centered organizations (ccos) continue to explore ways to measure their social and spiritual impact, these findings shed important light and guidance on the approach they might take. given the highly subjective and self-reflexive nature of traditional spirituality metrics, this paper has argued that there is a strong possibility they will be susceptible to response shift-bias. as paraphrased by one participant, “i think it is a sense of maturity. i was just really naïve back then. i didn’t really appreciate the amount of time and space that could be devoted to a relationship with god.” in these instances, therefore, “a lack of evidence or results does not necessarily mean that god’s kingdom is not advancing” (check, green, & kumar 2020, 66), but rather just may be due to the reliance on traditional longitudinal methodologies. with this in mind, this paper agrees with janzen and wiebe (2010) in their call for organizations to “employ more rigorous and complex faith-based evaluation that use mixed methods, multi-methods, and multi-level methodologies” (2010, 6). in particular, the integration of retrospective pretest methods into traditional longitudinal designs is recommended. in these instances, much of the traditional longitudinal approach remains the same, with respondents still completing a pretest and posttest survey. the crucial addition is a retrospective pretest survey included in their second data collection point. christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(1), summer 2022 verbi, a year in god’s time… 35 this third dataset allows researchers to compare pretest and retrospective pretest data, identifying areas of most significant difference. following this, researchers can either pursue further clarity with respondents through follow-up focus groups, or can publish results with a caveated maximum or minimum (depending on which dataset they use). numerous studies have investigated the validity of a retrospective pretest in relation to the traditional prepost design. in a synthesis of the literature surrounding these tests, klatt and taylor-powell (2005) conclude that “the retrospective pretest has been shown to be more consistent with objective measures, observations from program judges, and performance measures” (2005, 4) than other traditional approaches. in their review of the literature, rong chang and todd little (2018), from the college of education, institute for measurement, methodology, analysis, and policy at texas tech university, conclude that “pretest data collected at the posttime provide a highly reliable and valid reflection of participants’ true preintervention levels and thereby provide very precise estimation of participants’ perceived changes due to the program effects” (2018, 10). conclusion almost by definition, measuring the spiritual dimension is an exercise in flawed subjectivity. there is so much room for variance, interpretation, bias, and confusion. it may be this reason that has led many ccos to shy away from the challenge of measurement, and rely on anecdote and theological dogma when celebrating success and making decisions. this choice however, would be a mistake, and one that would only further isolate ccos from best-practice approaches in human and spiritual impact. instead, as many ccos are already doing, the approach to measuring spiritual impact should be inquisitive, vigilant, and critical, examining potential areas of bias and weakness, and potential areas of improvement and growth. this paper has argued that within longitudinal designs of change, response-shift bias is one such area of weakness and potential growth. by examining a case study of spiritual impact metrics, in combination with the latest literature and research, this paper has given evidence of response shift bias, and proposed that retrospective pretest designs should be integrated into traditional longitudinal approaches. references beckford, james a. 1978. “accounting for conversion.” british journal of sociology 29:24962. bronkema, david. 2016. “the challenges and promises of spiritual metrics: understanding the dynamics at play and guidelines for best practices.” in towards an understanding and practice of spiritual metrics: measuring spiritual impact, edited by david bronkema, mark forshaw, and ellen strohm (forthcoming). cantrell, pamela. 2003. “traditional vs. retrospective pretests for measuring science teaching efficacy beliefs in preservice teachers.” school science and mathematics 103(4):177-185. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.19498594.2003.tb18116.x. chang, rong, and todd d. little, 2018. “innovations for evaluation research: multiform protocols, visual analog scaling, and the retrospective pretest–posttest design.” evaluation & the health professions 41(2):246-269. https://doi.org/10.1177/0163278718759396. check, kristen, rodney green, and subodh kumar. 2020. “towards laying a foundation for christ centered monitoring & evaluation.” christian relief, development, and advocacy: the journal of the accord network 1(2):61-69. https://crdajournal.org/index.php/crda/article/view/ 417. deneulin, severine, and ann mitchell. 2019. “spirituality and impact evaluation design: the case of an addiction recovery faith-based organisation in argentina.” hts theological studies 75(4):1-9. https://doi.org/10.4102/hts.v75i4.5482. drennan, jonathan, and abbey hyde. 2008. controlling response shift bias: the use of the retrospective pre-test design in the evaluation of a master's program. assessment & evaluation in higher education 33(6), 699-709. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602930701773026 eido research. 2021. a review of individual spiritual health assessments. produced privately for a client. howard, george s., kenneth m. ralph, nancy a., gulanick, scott e. maxwell, don w. nance, and sterling k. gerber. 1979. “internal invalidity in pretest-posttest self-report evaluations and a reevaluation of retrospective pretests.” applied psychological measurement 3(1):1-23. https://doi.org/10.1177/014662167900300101. ingram, maia, l. staten, s.j. cohen, r. stewart, and jill guernsey dezapien. 2004. “the use of the retrospective pre-test method to measure skill acquisition among community health workers.” internet journal of public health education. bg1-15. janzen, rich, and david wiebe. 2010. “putting god in the logic model: developing a national christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(1), summer 2022 verbi, a year in god’s time… 36 framework for the evaluation of faith-based organizations.” the canadian journal of program evaluation 25(1):1-26. klatt, john, and ellen taylor-powell. 2005. “synthesis of literature relative to the retrospective pretest design.” presentation to the joint ces/aea conference, toronto, october 29. kumar, subodh. 2022. “toward building evidence of kingdom impact.” christian relief, development, and advocacy: the journal of the accord network 3(2):24-36. retrieved from https://crdajournal.org/index.php/crda/article/view/ 507. little, todd, rong chang, britt k. gorrall, luke waggenspack, eriko fukuda, patricia j. allen, and gil g. noam. 2020. “the retrospective pretest– posttest design redux: on its validity as an alternative to traditional pretest–posttest measurement.” international journal of behavioral development 44(2):175-183. retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1177/0165025419877973. pratt, clara c., william m. mcguigan, and aphra r. katzev. 2000. “measuring program outcomes: using retrospective pretest methodology.” american journal of evaluation 21(3):341-349. https://doi.org/10.1016/s1098-2140(00)00089-8. rapkin, bruce d., and carolyn e. schwartz, 2004. “toward a theoretical model of quality-of-life appraisal: implications of findings from studies of response shift.” health and quality of life outcomes 2(14):1-12. https://doi.org/10.1186/1477-7525-2-14. simmonds, robert b. 1977. “conversion or addiction: consequences of joining a jesus movement group.” american behavioral scientist 20(6):909-24. https://doi.org/10.1177/00027642770200060. skrzypek, michal, katarzyna kowal, agnieszka marzec, and artur wdowiak. 2018. “the phenomenon of response shift in studies on the health-related quality of life in clinical medicine.” european journal of medical technologies 2(19):51-58. http://www.medicaltechnologies.eu/upload/08b_the_phenomenon_of _response_shift_-_skrzypek.pdf. terry, john d., anna r. smith, peter r. warren, marissa. e. miller, sam d. mcquillin, terry a.wolfer, and mark d.weist. 2015. “incorporating evidence-based practices into faith-based organization service programs.” journal of psychology and theology 43(3):212223. https://doi.org/10.1177/009164711504300306. samuel verbi is the co-founder of eido research, a consultancy that helps christ-centered organizations measure and improve their social and spiritual impact. working with clients in charities, churches, and christian development organizations around the world, his areas of interest and expertise include program evaluation, research design, spiritual impact measurement, and qualitative methodology. author email: samuel@eidoresearch.com https://www.eidoresearch.com/ mailto:samuel@eidoresearch.com christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(1), summer 2019 15 for a government that works: asj’s theory of change, with a case study of their efforts in education carlos hernández, roland hoksbergen, katerina parsons, and kurt ver beek the asociación para una sociedad más justa (asj) is a christian, honduran ngo that fights corruption and works to ensure that the honduran government functions well for the benefit and wellbeing of all hondurans, especially the marginalized and vulnerable. the paper begins by explaining asj’s theory of change and how it applies pressure and provides support to the government in bringing about more just outcomes for the general population of honduras. the paper proceeds to a case study of asj’s work in public education and explains how, over the last decade, asj has been instrumental in bringing about transformational improvements in hiring practices, number of class days, and overall institutional integrity in the ministry of education. introduction the central american country of honduras faces numerous challenges, including one of the highest homicide rates in the world, generalized insecurity, and some of the highest rates of poverty and inequality in the americas (world bank n.d.). in response, foreign aid and both local and international nonprofits have invested in job creation, violence prevention, and the provision of services in such areas as health, education, and agriculture. underlying these challenges, however, is a deeper, more insidious pair of issues – corruption and weak governance. between 2014 and 2018, the percentage of hondurans stating that corruption was the principal problem facing the country more than tripled from 5.8% to 17.1%, and while a majority of hondurans found insecurity to be the most pressing issue, 32.7% of those surveyed believed that corruption was the primary cause of the nation’s violence (iudpas 2019). 1 transparency international’s corruption perception index ranks honduras in the bottom third 1 42.8% felt the principal problem in honduras was insecurity, down from 70.5% in 2014. in 2018, 38.2% stated it was the economy, a significant increase from 25.3% in 2016. 2 la asociación para una sociedad más justa (asj) has a u.s. affiliate called the association for a more just society (ajs-us), which is largely dedicated to fundraising and supporting asj in honduras. the acronym asj is used throughout this paper to refer exclusively to work done by the honduran organization. for more information, see www.ajs-us.org/who-we-are/partnership. of the world its annual ranking of countries’ corruption (transparency international), which reflects deeply entrenched failure in honduras’ public systems of health, education, security, justice, infrastructure, and others. a study by the central american institute of financial studies found that in just a few major, emblematic cases of corruption, the country had lost $367 million, equivalent to 4.3% of the country’s gdp, 35% of the ministry of education’s budget, or 70% of the budget of the ministry of health (“la corrupción” 2017). despite the importance of corruption to the daily lives of so many hondurans, few civil society organizations in honduras address the topic, and christian organizations that do are exceedingly rare. the association for a more just society (in spanish, la asociación para una sociedad más justa, or asj), however, is a christian organization focused around the idea of “making government systems work” through denouncing corruption and supporting the implementation of systemic government reforms. 2 asj was founded in honduras in 1998 by a group of friends, four hondurans and two north americans, https://www.ajs-us.org/www.ajs-us.org/who-we-are/partnership christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(1), summer 2019 16 who were frustrated by the limitations of their work in charity and development. they felt their interventions, though helping certain individuals, were doing little to tackle the corrupt, unjust government systems that were behind much of the country’s suffering. the founders wanted to work directly on improving the institutions that most affect the majority of people in honduras, including public health, public education, and public security. from this goal came the mission “to be brave christians dedicated to making honduras’ system of laws and government work and be just for the poorest and most vulnerable of honduran society” (asj website). asj works in vulnerable communities in honduras’ capital city, work that helps them to understand the population’s interests and needs. its focus, however, is principally on a structural level, as it seeks incremental changes in the country’s most essential public systems. asj believes that this is one of the most effective and far-reaching strategies for helping the poor and marginalized. as asj works to build up the honduran state’s capacity for effective governance and institutional accountability, it helps improve the population’s access to quality health, education, infrastructure, and other crucial public services, and contribute to safer lives and better opportunities for the population. in doing so, asj helps to build a more just society, one that serves all its citizens with competence and justice. at its heart, asj is a christian organization, whose unstated mission is to evangelize the church to reclaim the justice aspect of their faith and to live it out as “brave christians” focused on protecting those on the margins of society. asj consistently and publicly claims their christian identity, while also unmasking corruption, working in violent and dangerous neighborhoods, and denouncing and pressuring government to do what is right for its people. these are very high-risk and uncommon christian pursuits. this public proclamation of faith, backed up by concrete actions, allows asj to witness to christians and non-christians alike, modeling an active faith that is concerned not only with people’s eternal souls but also with their earthly well-being. this paper begins by describing asj’s theory of change. from a foundation of solid research and trusting relationships, asj both pressures and supports government institutions, contributing to reforms that make the country safer and more just. asj has led reforms in several major honduran institutions, but to explain more fully how asj’s strategy works in practice, we will focus on asj’s work in public education. over a period of eight years, asj played a major role in taking the education sector from a period of chaos and anarchy (cerna 2014) in 2010 to a new era of public education in which students attend school more than 200 days a year, teachers no longer buy teaching positions, and citizens are increasingly empowered to ensure quality education in their local schools. the paper closes by drawing together some key lessons from asj’s two decades of experience in ensuring that the government functions more as it should. making systems work: asj’s theory of change with work grounded both in personal relationships and solid research, asj pressures the honduran government to eliminate corruption and to make the reforms necessary to provide quality services to the population. asj employs three main strategies to apply this pressure. one is speaking out through honduran media, which brings important topics to light and informs the general public about corruption, negligence, and failures of public systems. a second is to mobilize organizations and civil society groups towards informed action, and a third is to make use of government systems themselves, bringing legal cases against violent offenders or government officials accused of illegal actions. all three strategies draw negative attention to problems in the government and incentivize government officials to change. the pressure asj applies on government agencies is similar to that utilized by other advocacy organizations, from the aclu to amnesty international to any number of smaller lobbying groups. what is unique about asj is that it doesn’t limit itself to calling the government to account; it also offers to help, first by suggesting viable solutions, and then by working alongside the government to implement those solutions. asj’s theory of change is summarized in figure 1, with each component of the strategy described in further detail below. christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(1), summer 2019 17 asj’s strategy for improving government performance this work is complicated, and when it touches powerful interests, it can be controversial and dangerous. threats of physical harm to asj staff are common. for many reasons, it is much easier to open a private school than to reform the whole public education system. nonetheless, it has always been asj’s goal to strengthen government systems that serve everyone – not to create parallel systems that benefit a few. this philosophy is both practical and hopeful; practical because asj works within systems that currently exist, and hopeful because asj believes that the reforms it advocates can make a big difference in the lives of millions. the foundation: research and relationships asj’s work has been strongly influenced by the living situation of its co-founders, who chose in the organization’s early years to move from the suburbs of tegucigalpa, the honduran capital, to one of its marginalized barrios, a settlement that at the time was one of the city’s most dangerous neighborhoods. living alongside hondurans who were most affected by limited state resources greatly influenced asj directors’ understanding of which interventions would do the most good. this experience shaped one of asj’s central values, the importance of relationships. as an organization that works in defense of the poorest and most vulnerable, they feel they must know the poor and vulnerable intimately, and understand the way they live, the things they value, and the potential they have. relationships with civil society allies and members of government have also been crucial to how asj works. even though asj focuses on systems, they understand that those systems are made up of individuals, and knowing their motivations and goals is essential to advocacy and implementation of reforms. complementing their emphasis on relationships is asj’s insistence on careful, detailed research. advocacy falters when reports of corruption are dismissed as nothing more than opinion. asj therefore seeks out evidence that identifies, among other things, budget shortfalls, collusion, corruption, and weakness in government systems. it also works to present this information in a way that is clear and accessible, not just by politicians or experts, but by the general population. research-based advocacy is not only convincing, it is also productive, as it offers an analysis of what went wrong as well as reasonable solutions. applying pressure research and relationships allow asj to identify needed reforms, which must then be followed up with action. unsurprisingly, those who benefit from corruption have little interest in addressing it, especially when doing so is tacit acknowledgement of their own corruption or weakness. even government officials who are not corrupt may feel powerless to bring about change. to counteract this stasis, asj tries to make it attractive for government officials to lead reforms rather than accept the status quo. as shown in figure 2, asj found they could shift the cost-benefit scale through legal action and public media campaigns, especially if they were in alliance with other civil society organizations. furthermore, broader social movements that raise awareness about injustice can tip the balance for politicians concerned about public perception and their own prospects for reelection. asj effectively uses all three of these methods to pressure the honduran government to make reforms. figure 1: asj’s strategy utilizes both negative pressure and positive support to encourage and assist government agencies in the implementation of needed changes christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(1), summer 2019 18 figure 2: asj works through three parallel strategies to generate pressure that encourages the government to change legal action honduras has many good laws, but they are not enforced consistently. when asj brings criminal reports or corruption cases to the courts and ensures that they are heard and appropriately processed, they not only achieve justice in certain individual cases, but also demonstrate that the public system can indeed bring justice. sometimes asj’s legal work directly implicates economic or political elites in acts of corruption. for example, asj released a report in 2015 demonstrating that the government had purchased medicine for children with malnutrition that had only four of the eleven required ingredients (“astropharma intenta” 2015). deeper investigation uncovered that the offending medicine company, astropharma, was owned by lena gutierrez, vice-president of congress, and several of her family members (“lena gutiérrez y sus parientes” 2015). asj’s investigators went deeper and found evidence not just of poor-quality medicines but of abuse of power – the same year gutierrez joined congress, the size of her family’s company government contracts increased over 100-fold (“sin participación activa” 2011). this report resulted in the honduran supreme court issuing an arrest warrant, and in june 2015, gutierrez and three other members of her family were arrested (“arresto domiciliario” 2015). the pressure that asj was able to exert through legal action not only stopped astropharma’s illegal and unsafe dealings with the government, it put dozens of other medical companies on notice that they were being watched and that the consequences of corruption could be serious. while undeniably effective, such legal work is extremely unpopular with the powerful people it 3 data from seproc, an independent media monitoring company: https://seproc.hn. seproc provides this and other information to asj in weekly emails. targets, which makes it dangerous. after they went on record making accusations against the gutierrez family, asj was threatened with legal action, and their executive director, carlos hernández, received multiple threats against his life. such threats are common at asj. in 2006, on the road to a court hearing, dionisio díaz garcía, one of asj’s lawyers, was assassinated (ajs, “dionisio” n.d.). in 2016, a board member was the target of an assassination attempt, resulting in the death of a bodyguard (ajs “ajs condemns” 2016). today, asj directors receive a constant barrage of threats against themselves and their families. they are not surprised by this. as founder kurt ver beek says, “if you are not making people mad, you are probably not doing justice work” (ver beek 2018a). media campaigns when asj cannot bring government officials to court, sometimes they can still bring them to the “court of public opinion,” generating awareness, accountability, and demand from the general public to promote positive change. there is a television in almost every honduran house, and if not, a radio. as asj works on getting their messages into public debate and onto the national agenda, they take advantage of public media, one of their most effective tools for mass communication. in 2017 alone, asj appeared in honduran media 4,400 times. 3 asj’s director of advocacy is quoted an average of six times per day. each of these appearances is an opportunity to impact the national dialogue, and influence government institutions. one example of this sort of campaign occurred in 2015, after asj, together with a broader coalition of https://seproc.hn/ christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(1), summer 2019 19 organizations, released a groundbreaking study analyzing impunity rates for homicides in honduras. the study, which looked at homicides that had occurred between 2010 and 2012, reported that only 4% of homicides in honduras had resulted in a conviction; the remaining 96% remained in impunity (asj “estudio sobre impunidad”). asj organized a campaign “overturn impunity” (“dale vuelta a la impunidad”), that invited individuals and organizations to film a simple video of them turning their hand over and speaking out against honduras’ abysmal conviction rates. prominent organizations and asj supporters in honduras and the united states made dozens of videos, and the statistic decrying “96% impunity” became a major talking point in both honduran and international media. people had already been asking why so few cases were being reported to the police, and why so few court cases resulted in convictions. this statistic gave people a concrete metric to discuss and compare internationally, resulting in more targeted and specific advocacy. since this campaign, asj has been able to lead reforms specifically designed to reduce impunity rates. the reform of court management models, for example, which is described in the next section, increased case clearance in one court by 73%. one driver of openness for this sort of technical assistance is public support, and the media remains one of the best ways to inform and rally the public around these big goals. social movements awareness-building through the media is an important first step, but the likelihood of real change is greatly enhanced if public awareness leads to a social movement demanding change. as asj works towards an active, engaged public that holds government accountable, they empower communities to know their rights and responsibilities as citizens, and to lead coalitions of organizations in advocating change. working in local communities, asj first identifies people affected by injustice, and then connects them with people who can help change their situation. as the movement grows, asj leads trainings for community members that teach individuals both how government systems are supposed to work and trains them in the actions they can take to hold these systems accountable. once community members are aware of how the system can work, they are more likely to expect that it will, and to organize when it does not. asj leads community members in monitoring and auditing their local public schools and public health centers, documenting weaknesses, demanding change, and ensuring that the government continues to function after changes are made. reports by community members become powerful tools in the maintenance of effective public services. such social movements and their empowered citizens come to form a “bridge of trust” between populations who have learned not to trust the government and the government, which all too often has not been deserving of that trust. in their efforts to foster social movements, asj works directly with individuals in communities, but also invites other organized groups to join them. asj has led the creation of several coalitions that greatly strengthen the impact of their work. in 2009, asj helped organize a coalition of development organizations, protestant and catholic churches, and other groups to create “let’s transform honduras,” a coalition advocating for improved education and health services. in 2012, asj launched the “alliance for peace and justice” (apj) to advocate for changes in honduras’ security and justice sectors. this second alliance was born out of dissatisfaction with the deeply corrupt law enforcement system. in 2011, uniformed police officers, in an attempted carjacking, murdered the son of the president of the national university, julieta castellanos. asj joined castellanos, and, along with other influential organizations, like the national university, world vision, the national fellowship of protestant churches, and the development arm of the catholic church, lifted their voices to protest police violence and impunity. for years, the apj refused to let police corruption be ignored. they carried out studies to better understand violence in honduras, organized marches, press conferences, and events, and sat in meetings with members of congress. all this work paid off when, in 2016, four members of apj, two of whom were asj staff, were invited to lead the process of cleaning up and reforming the national police. this has been a multi-year effort that resulted in more than 5,100 suspect officers being fired, multiple prison sentences, and ultimately, a stronger, more effective police force (bid n.d.). the credibility and breadth of the organizations and institutions in these coalitions reinforce the importance of asj’s work and carry their messages even further, paving the way for dramatic reforms in public institutions. informed by their experience with individuals, and accompanied by other organizations, asj has been able to channel social movements into successful reform. from pressure to support unlike other organizations that engage in advocacy or organize citizens to protest and demand change, asj takes the addition step of supporting the government in its work. this strategy has become a unique and essential complement to asj’s advocacy work. in christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(1), summer 2019 20 addition to demanding change, asj offers the support of technically competent staff to help the government design, implement, and monitor institutional change. as in its advocacy work, asj’s proposals and assistance are based on irrefutable research that facilitates the preparation of practical and technically sound proposals. in asj’s early days, nearly all its actions were public critiques that pressured the government to change. over time, as asj continued to take cases public, always supported by good research, solid evidence, and practical solutions, their credibility increased to the point where government institutions began to seek its advice directly. this shift to supporting, and not just denouncing, was not simply opportunistic. asj discovered that it was often more effective to address problems through collaborative engagement than through public shaming that generated outrage but could also burn bridges with the people ultimately responsible for carrying out desired reforms. for their part, government officials’ motivations for seeking out asj’s help are not purely selfless. they face constant pressure to protect their reputation, and openness to transparency reflects well on them at election time. indeed, asj found some government leaders who were genuinely disturbed by corruption in their institutions and welcomed asj’s help to identify and implement concrete improvements. they needed fresh ideas, and they were happy to have the support of the public as they worked to overcome internal resistance to change. one of the benefits of collaboration is that government institutions often provide access to their internal data, statistics, processes, and protocols. sometimes such openness comes as a result of public pressure, but in other cases it is the result of asj showing institutions their willingness to put in the work to help them improve. figure 3 illustrates how relationships and research inform proposals for improvement, the implementation of those proposals, and ongoing government oversight to hold authorities responsible for continual improvement. supporting government: proposals, technical support, and oversight ideally, when the government cooperates, asj moves through the following four steps, reflected in figure 3. first, asj diagnoses the problem through careful research. second, asj recommends proposals for improvement. third, it offers consulting expertise for the implementation of the plans, including determining budgets, management and accountability structures, and identifying necessary resources and funding. finally, once a reform is implemented, asj offers oversight, monitoring progress to ensure the government continues to improve its service delivery to all hondurans. let’s consider each of these areas in more detail. figure 3: asj collaborates with government institutions to help them implement reforms christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(1), summer 2019 21 research and analysis: when a government agency agrees to collaborate with asj, the first step is to create a detailed “baseline report” that identifies opportunities for improvement and serves as a benchmark against which to measure anticipated progress. in 2014, for example, asj signed a groundbreaking three-part agreement with the honduran government and transparency international, an international anti-corruption organization for which asj serves as honduras’ chapter. this agreement authorizes asj to carry out audits of seven major government institutions, evaluating them by their compliance with legal and administrative standards for purchases, public contracts, human resources, and the management of statistical information. these detailed analyses, crafted after revising tens of thousands of pages of documentation and hundreds of hours of interviews, often uncover irregularities, inefficiencies, and occasionally, blatant instances of corruption. the baseline report assesses both transparency and effectiveness. in this preliminary study, public institutions have scored, on average, just 33%. 4 among the anomalies the studies have uncovered are “ghost” employees who never show up to work, restrictive calls for bids that prevent competition for million-dollar government contracts, and vehicles purchased with public money that end up in the homes of public officials – all instances of corruption that, together, take millions of dollars away from essential government services. making such accusations is a serious matter, which makes it vital to have carefully documented evidence and a deep understanding of the law before making any findings public. proposals for improvement: once it completes the study, asj presents its findings publicly, often in a media event, typically accompanied by government leaders. at the same event, asj and government officials present their collaboratively designed improvement plans. while asj findings are often not favorable, they come as no surprise to government officials, with whom the findings have already been shared. the government is thus presented with a brief window during which they have the opportunity to create a plan, in collaboration with asj, to address deficiencies in their institution. this is no mere facesaving formality. asj obtains signatures and a public 4 scores are calculated based on the compliance of honduran government entities with legal requirements, protocols, and procedures in the area of purchases and contracts, human resources, and statistics-based management. asj research staff, with input from ministry officials, compile a list of indicators for each of the three research areas. they then request and analyze information to determine compliance. for example, asj staff may request payroll documentation, and make in situ visits to verify whether employees on payroll actually show up to work. compliance with these indicators is calculated, and the percentage of standards the institution meets is the overall score. commitment from the institution to be held accountable to specific, measurable improvements. the theme of the event is thus hope for the future, not scandal from the past. asj’s intention is not to disgrace or shame the ministers who cooperate with it to collect oftendamaging information about their institutions. instead, though asj highlights instances of corruption, it also points out institutional strengths, and give ministers the opportunity to commit publicly to improvement. many public officials have responded well to this strategy. seeing that asj is not necessarily hostile towards them, they are open to work with asj to implement constructive reforms. implementation of reforms: in asj’s supportive work with government, it finds that the will to improve is often not the only barrier to structural improvement. true, some government institutions resist change because the benefits from a corrupt status quo outweigh the costs. but others are willing to change, if only they had the resources, training, and technical expertise they need. the commitment to address these latter challenges sets asj apart from many advocacy and anticorruption institutions. many ngos critique the government, but few work actively to implement reforms. one example of asj’s work first proposing and then supporting the implementation of reforms can be seen in the implementation of new management models for honduran courts. in 2015, asj signed an agreement with the honduran attorney general’s office committing to offer technical support to the judicial body in areas of investigation, transparency, accountability, access to information, and the protection of human rights. the heart of this agreement was a four-year strategic plan that included the implementation of a results-based management model. in 2016, this management model was piloted in the special court for common crimes in tegucigalpa. this court was chosen for the pilot because of the large quantity of cases it received – approximately 20% of all cases processed by the attorney general’s office. by december 2016, asj had carried out a careful diagnosis that resulted in a structural reorganization of employee responsibilities and job descriptions, case management strategy, assignment, and filing protocols, and even its physical space. as a result, the court adopted changes in administration, human resources, christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(1), summer 2019 22 and customer service, resulting in more criminal reports processed, more trials, and, ultimately, a reduction in impunity see figure 4). criminal reports had previously taken between five and seven days to be assigned to an attorney. with the implementation of a new ticket system, this was reduced to an average of 38 hours. in addition, the creation of an early response unit increased the number of resolved cases by 73%, resulting in as many as 70 additional processed cases per month. in addition to resolving a greater number of cases, new management models also eliminated certain possibilities for corruption. under previous management, individuals who brought a case to the attorney general’s office would know weeks before which judges had been assigned to their case, giving them an opportunity to approach judges in an attempt to illicitly influence their decision. under the new structure, neither the plaintiff nor the judge is aware of case assignment until the day of the trial, bringing more transparency and objectivity to the legal process. asj’s work with honduran courts and the ministry of education, described in the second half of this paper, are two examples of how asj accompanies the honduran government in the implementation of more transparent and efficient management structures. asj has found that its willingness to volunteer its time and other resources to support the government as they implement these changes can be the difference between a reformed institution and simply a chastened one. monitoring and oversight: once government institutions have implemented reforms and changed their operating structures, asj returns after 18 months to monitor improvements using the same indicators from the initial baseline report. in every institution where changes were implemented, asj’s monitors found progress. for example, the payroll for all police officers used to be managed from a single excel spreadsheet on a laptop with no password protection. now, at asj’s suggestion, the security sector uses human resources management software with far better security. the health ministry has completely overhauled the way it purchases and distributes medicines, reducing theft and loss. overall, asj saw the scores of their seven target institutions rise by an average of 26% in just three years, a substantial improvement in transparency and best practices. asj has thus found that cooperating with and supporting the government can be extremely useful for rooting out corruption, strengthening institutions, and, ultimately, offering more and better services to those who need it. even so, some civil society organizations criticize asj for this approach because of discomfort with cooperating in any way with an institution where corruption is rampant. critics argue that asj’s work legitimizes government actions in other areas that are still clearly corrupt. proponents of this approach, including many ally organizations in honduras, acknowledges the dangers of close association with government authorities, but see this as a healthy tension as they work to maintain a balance between protecting their organizational integrity and working with government institutions where positive change seems possible. in the process, asj prioritizes its apolitical stance and stays away from party politics and political ideologies. when advocating for change, asj has held meetings with as many as ten different honduran political parties, including both minority parties and major players. asj is driven not by the desire to see a particular ideology win out, but instead by the dream of seeing schools educating children, hospitals treating patients, and courts ensuring justice for all, regardless of income or status. asj has been involved in this work for 20 years, through administrations of different political colors. whichever party is in power, asj makes the effort to work with them. the impact of structural change the impact of all this work has been significant. corruption has been called out, high-ranking officials, including a former first lady, have been arrested and jailed, more than a dozen drug traffickers or elites, including a former president, were extradited to the united states, and corrupt and non-functioning institutions are increasingly efficient and well-regulated. among the most striking impacts is the dramatic transformation of the national police, including the dismissal of more than 5,100 police officers, the training of new officers, a detailed rewriting of the laws 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 200 average per month, 2014 average per month, 2015 average oct and nov, 2016 figure 4: cases resolved christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(1), summer 2019 23 and regulations, and day-to-day accountability that now infuses this institution. this has been a major achievement, but it is only one example of the transformation that asj has seen in honduran public institutions. these reforms positively impact the honduran public. asj’s neighborhood-specific interventions model the change that is possible; however, they also transform individual lives, showing people that they can and should expect more from their governing bodies, and that everyone can participate in demanding change. in summary, in all its work, asj takes seriously the calls of biblical prophets to fight for justice for the oppressed and to root out corruption wherever they find it in honduran government institutions. in its mission to fight against corruption and for justice, asj has learned that a brave commitment to their work can bring about real change, particularly when this work is rooted in careful investigations, indisputable research, and close relationships with the people involved. asj has found success through pressuring government to implement reforms via the media, legal action, and social movements; but the most significant transformation has come when asj supported the government in that change, working with government officials to propose, implement, and oversee reforms. asj’s theory of change is based on the practicalities of what has worked for it and the doors that circumstances and god’s providence have opened. the christian faith on which asj is founded motivates it to act on behalf of the poor with a commitment to challenging oppressors and seeking justice. partnering with citizens, civil society organizations, churches, and the government, it forms powerful coalitions for positive change in honduras. to convey in greater detail how this theory of change functions, we transition now to a case of study of asj’s work in public education. case study: asj and honduran public education education in crisis in 2009 honduras descended into chaos and anarchy when a constitutional crisis surrounded the removal of the president from office. one political faction had managed to remove president manuel (mel) zelaya and send him into exile. they accused him of political malfeasance. zelaya’s supporters, on the other hand, saw this as a coup and swarmed the 5 primary schools in honduras cover grades 1-9, while secondary schools cover grades 10-12. streets in protest. the country was at an impasse, on the brink of violence, and imperiled by a deeply divided citizenry. wanting to do something positive, asj called a meeting of some thirty ngo, church, and civic leaders who were concerned about the well-being of the country. this coalition, which came to be called transformemos honduras (let’s transform honduras), met several times in 2009. they decided not to take sides in the political conflict, but to focus their immediate attention and efforts on the nation’s health and education sectors, both of which were highly corrupt and failing. following asj’s lead, transformemos honduras (th) started with some research to learn more about the character of the problems and their underlying causes. what they found was a failed education system due to embedded corruption that had built up over decades. among their key findings: limited class days: in 2009, due to political turmoil, students in honduran primary and secondary schools attended classes only 90 days, less than half the 200 days required by honduran law 5 . unfortunately, the whole decade from 2001 to 2010 was not much better; average school attendance was only 125 days a year. schools closed due to teacher strikes, late teacher arrivals on mondays, early departures on fridays, fumigation campaigns, and any other excuse that seemed somewhat reasonable. one-day holidays turned into week-long holidays (cerna 2014, “solo 95…” 2007). frequent teacher strikes: during the ten years prior to 2011, teachers went on strike for weeks or months every year. in 2005 teachers went on strike 34 different times, for all sorts of reasons. in addition to reducing the number of school days, these strikes were also a great opportunity for corruption. marlon escoto, secretary of education from 2012-2017 says that strikes were one of the preferred methods of corruption for union leaders. they claimed to be using union dues as strike funds, but they were really pocketing a lot of money during these strikes (escoto 2018). ghost teachers: when th went to confirm the presence of teachers in the different districts, they found that many ‘teachers’ drew salaries, but never showed up to work. about 80,000 teachers were being paid, but th studies showed that around 25% of these were “ghosts,” who collected a salary without showing up to work. politicized/clientelist hiring: hiring decisions for administrators and teachers in the system often christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(1), summer 2019 24 revolved around bribes, family connections, and even sexual favors. oftentimes decisions were political. political parties and teachers’ unions had developed a tense but symbiotic relationship since the educational system had been nationalized in the late 1950s. members of congress appointed loyalists to well-paid district leadership roles, making them “clients” of the politicians. in return, the teachers helped keep that politician elected. over time, political leaders formed strong alliances with the leaders of the teachers’ unions. honduran professor and independent researcher edwin medina says that if there were ten teaching positions to be distributed, union leaders and politicians would negotiate so that each would get to name five teachers. demand was high for such life-long, well-paid positions, and aspiring teachers often paid $5,000 to get one, equivalent to a year’s salary at minimum wage (medina 2018). supposedly, according to the 1997 law governing teachers in public schools (the estatuto del docente hondureño), hiring decisions were based on merit, determined especially by a competitive examination and interview process called a “concurso” (competition). but this process was secretive and easy to manipulate, and no significant hindrance to corrupt hiring practices. in the symbiotic relationship that developed over time, politicians wrote laws and established rules that supported unions, and unions provided field support for favored political leaders. two examples of political support for union leaders are the law requiring all teachers to affiliate with a teachers’ union and the rule requiring the government to deduct union dues from teacher salaries and distribute them directly to the unions. one example of how the teachers helped their political patrons is that polling stations were commonly set up in schools, with teachers managing the polls and the ballot boxes. there was thus ample opportunity for teachers to ensure that votes from their district went the right way. low test scores: international standardized tests are rare in honduras, but in 1997 honduran students participated in a test overseen by unesco. honduras came in last out of 11 latin american countries. on a similar test in 2013 honduras came in 10 th out of 15 countries. the apparent gain was a sign of hope, but was small comfort when national testing showed that “for the sixth grade … from 2012 through 2016, 90% or more of the evaluated students were graded as ‘needs improvement’ or ‘unsatisfactory’” (educación 2017). 6 the ungovernability of the education sector is likewise lamented in a 2009 world bank study (world bank. 2009, 15457). governance/management failings: marlon escoto was named secretary of education in 2012, a position he held for five years. it was unusual for someone to serve five years in this position. prior to escoto’s tenure (and since), secretaries came and went at a pace of one per year, making it virtually impossible to exercise any reasonable authority or continuity. similar to what th had found in its own research, escoto likewise discovered that the ministry had hardly any relevant information about the system. they didn’t know how many students were enrolled, how many schools existed, or how many teachers had been appointed, let alone who those teachers were by name and how much they were paid. there were no systems of evaluation for either curriculum or teachers. in general, there was virtually no oversight or evaluation for anything that happened in local schools (escoto 2018). 6 real change begins after transformemos honduras formed in 2009, asj played a key leadership role by dedicating a budget and staff time to the work. other th participants included leaders from christian ngos like aldea global, caritas, compassion, mopawi, and world vision. together, they pooled their knowledge about honduran public education and helped plan strategy. they also put the grassroots networks of their separate organizations in the service of what became a social movement to end corruption and bring about change in both education and health. based on the information already gathered, th wrote three reports, one each on class days, ghost teachers, and the politicized hiring process. confronted with how serious the systemic failings and corruption were, th participants worried about associating their names with the reports. anticipating reprisals, especially from the teachers’ unions, th nevertheless went public with the findings. the press made a big deal about them and they generated much public discussion. thankfully, the feared mobs outside the ngo program centers never materialized. it’s not clear why, but speculation among th leaders is that the unions were caught off guard. or perhaps they simply didn’t feel threatened by this upstart social movement when they were confident that their relationships with corrupt government officials were secure. unfortunately, the government didn’t react much either. th’s coordinator, blanca munguia (munguia 2018), says they brought the reports to the authorities, including josé alejandro ventura, the secretary of education. but ventura was not interested in change, christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(1), summer 2019 25 likely because he was implicated in the corruption being reported. 7 settling in for the long haul, th 8 employed a threepronged strategy. first, they continued their research, taking advantage of honduran transparency laws to request information on teacher payrolls from department offices. 9 then it began to build a social movement, training parents to collect information about teachers and class days in their local schools. furthermore, it studied education law to see where the law was good, but not followed, and where the law needed to be changed. th also used every reasonable opportunity, especially popular media channels, to publicize that the system was deeply flawed and steeped in corruption. all of this together, the research, media presentations, and the broad base of support combined to keep pressure on the authorities to act. one school th learned about, the bello oriente school in tegucigalpa, was paying 63 teachers, but only 36 of these ‘teachers’ ever showed up at the school. th repeated this fact often in media presentations, and the pressure on government authorities kept building. th researched hiring practices with the intent to verify that people being hired to teach were indeed those who, as required by law, had scored highest on the test. again, it found, in direct violation of the law, that hired teachers often had low test scores. it also found other anomalies: some successful candidates had been part of the selection committees and then chose themselves for the positions. others with low scores happened to be close relatives of members of the selection committee. all these findings were duly reported to local and national authorities and publicized in local and national media. though secretary of education ventura was not interested in fighting corruption, he nevertheless seemed to feel the need to respond in some way to the pressure. his response was to review and update the education law. there were two main laws in honduras at the time, the 1966 law that centralized the system, and the 1997 law that covered teachers, their hiring, salaries, promotion, union membership, and other human resource types of issues. ventura invited stakeholders, including th to participate in discussions about the law, and got a new law, the ley fundamental de educación, passed at the end of 2011. th hoped the new law would improve the structure and 7 ventura is currently on house arrest for charges of corruption related to a corruption case in which he was implicated while serving in a different government post. 8 it’s not easy to separate transformemos honduras from the asociación for a more just society, mostly because asj plays a leading role in th. much of what th is and does is heavily influenced by asj, its values, and its strategies. 9 access to public information laws were an important part of asj’s strategy. while the laws were on the books when asj started this work, they were seldom, if ever, used, and it took nearly a year and persistent pressure before their first information request was filled. even as responses later became more expedited, requests were frequently returned incomplete. nonetheless, without asj ’s insistence, it is unlikely that this valuable tool would be in use at all. transparency of the hiring process, that hiring would henceforth be based on merit, and that any opportunities for corruption in hiring would be closed. but the new law did not include many provisions that th/asj wanted, and to this day they continue to advocate for changes to the law. it was in 2012 that things finally started to improve. in response to th pressure, president porfirio (pepe) lobo dismissed ventura and replaced him with marlon escoto. escoto was not politically affiliated, but he was committed to fighting corruption, and very interested in working with th. for the next five years, th and asj worked closely with escoto and members of his team to fight corruption and set up new systems that would efficiently and effectively provide quality education to honduran children and youth. with the support of the honduran president and th, escoto proceeded to make major changes, including the following: a digital system: early in his tenure, with th technical support, escoto developed and implemented a digital information system called the “sistema de administración de los recursos humanos docentes” (administrative system of faculty human resources) through which all teachers had to register if they wanted to get paid. it soon became evident that some teachers held multiple positions, sometimes in locations so far from each other that it would be impossible to teach in one school in the morning and get to the other in the afternoon. for such anomalies, indicated teachers had to visit the central office to explain. naturally, many could not explain, and were thus released from the positions they were neglecting. as a result, the payroll shrunk. escoto says there were some 80,000 teachers on the payroll when he took office. several years later the payroll had been reduced to fewer than 55,000 teachers. some 25,000 “ghost” teachers had been dismissed (escoto 2018). union power declines: in a huge change for unions, the government no longer withheld and distributed union dues, depriving them of millions of dollars. teachers could now pay union dues voluntarily, but the majority chose not to. as a result, teachers’ strikes diminished and, by 2015, ended altogether. the end of strikes and the increased discipline in the system overall allowed the achievement of the 200christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(1), summer 2019 26 day school year, for the first time in 2013, and then every year since. carlos hernández, executive director of asj, was cited in a local newspaper, saying that “in 2013 the goal of imparting 200 days of class was finally achieved, thanks to the disciplinary measures adopted by the minister of education marlon escoto” (cerna 2018). merit-based hiring: the final major change was that the ministry of education got serious about following objective, competitive hiring procedures, both for teachers and departmental directors, thus greatly reducing corrupt hiring practices. unfortunately, there have been problems of implementation for the new competitions. for teachers, the ministry has not yet been able to develop an adequate test, so no competition has taken place since 2012. teachers hired since 2012 are all interim hires who will have the opportunity to remain in a position of a similar level when the competition finally takes place. a test was given in late 2017, but it was nullified when 94% of the applicants failed, showing that something was clearly wrong with the test itself. one explanation is that there had not been a test for five years, and, without telling the candidates, the ministry gave a new kind of test, one that assessed not only knowledge, as had been the norm, but also teaching skills. a new test was initially planned for december 2018, but as of march 2019, it had been put on hold again in anticipation of a more rigorous analysis of the need for additional teachers (“invalidan concurso…” 2018). competitions for departmental directors ran into problems too, including problems of quality, internal governmental turf wars, and corruption. the first new competition was held in 2016, but, like the 2017 teacher exam, was nullified when hardly anyone passed. two government ministries (education and civil service) then began squabbling about which ministry should administer the competition. finally, with those problems resolved and a new test scheduled, th director, blanca munguía mistakenly received a text message intended for a select, politically affiliated group of candidates. it told them to show up a day or two early for the test so that they could be given answers to the exam. asj scoped out the situation, and after witnessing obvious violations at the hotel where selected candidates had been called to prep for the exam, shared what they had uncovered with escoto and the president. on the day of the exam, over one hundred candidates were seated and ready to take it when a top-ranking official, presumably the president or someone under his command, called the administrator of the exam and told her to cancel it. with asj’s involvement and 10 much more detail is contained in the asj-th spanish-language report on the process; see asj-th 2016. 11 see http://www.revistazo.biz/web2/ oversight, the hiring process was re-initiated a few weeks later, and this time resulted in the successful and significantly more transparent selection of departmental directors. after all stages of the hiring process, which included the exam, candidate resumes, psychiatric exams, and interviews, close to 25% of the candidates were approved for placement. 10 a review of th/asj strategies used in education a lot has happened in public education since 2010 and th and asj have been central players throughout. marlon escoto himself says candidly that reforms would not have happened without th/asj involvement (escoto 2018). exactly which of th/asj’s strategies were most influential is hard to say, so it may be useful to review the multiple types of th/asj engagement. research and communication: seeing research as crucial to advocacy, th/asj obtained pertinent, irrefutable, and abundant information, and then ensured that it got to the right people. oftentimes that meant that th/asj first shared its findings with the authorities. if the authorities chose to act on it, well and good. if they did not act, then th/asj put on pressure, through media campaigns that included press conferences, tv interviews, and their own online publication, revistazo. 11 relationship building, grassroots empowerment, and social movements: th has been a powerful vehicle for empowering local citizens to know their rights and to hold their local governments, including their schools, accountable. this has recently evolved into a follow-up program called comunidades fuertes (cf) (strong communities), a social support program located in four of honduras’ most violent communities. cf embraces youth who may be attracted to gang activity and offers counseling to families that have been impacted by violence. in the process of supporting people, it also continues to train people in communities on their civil rights and the role they can play as monitors of educational practice in their local schools. these empowered citizens keep their local schools on track, monitoring especially the presence of teachers and principals in the schools. in recent years, however, in response to student weakness on standardized test scores, cf is training local teams of monitors to assess the quality of education. teachers being present in the class is a good start, but a second step is to assess how teachers use the day and to what extent it includes effective teaching. http://www.revistazo.biz/web2/ christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(1), summer 2019 27 monitors thus trained take their positions in the hallway outside the classroom and count the minutes of different activities taking place inside, from ‘students copying from the blackboard’ to ‘teacher lecturing’ to ‘teacher talking on her cellphone,’ etc. these results are compiled, written up in reports, and presented to school principals and district directors. in most cases principals take the reports seriously and develop improvement plans to address the shortcomings, which local teams then monitor throughout the next year. dolores martinez, coordinator of cf, tells of a principal in one school who rarely showed up, which was reported to the district director. the result was an improvement plan that required her to be at school every day. dolores says that the principal was not happy with cf’s intervention, but she does now come to school every day, even if she still leaves earlier than she should (martinez 2018). asj does not have plans to extend this program to the whole country on their own, but they are sharing the program with other organizations in the hope that they develop their own cf programs in communities throughout the country. relationship building at high levels: readers of this article may have noticed multiple reference to meetings with ministers of education and with the president himself. over the years and in all their work, asj, and now also th, have built a rich network of relationships with leaders in all areas of honduran life; government, business, media, international organizations, and civil society. it has established a reputation as a serious organization that does its research and pursues its mission with passion, persistence, and integrity. that’s why when asj learned of the corruption in the department director competition, they went straight to the president and got the exam cancelled. citizens’ voices and legal action: one helpful program sponsored by asj is ‘asistencia legal anti-corrupción’ (alac) (anti-corruption legal assistance). this program allows people to anonymously report corruption through an email address, telephone hotline, or cellphone app called ‘dilo aquí’ (“say it here”). the program began in 2016 and had fielded some 800 complaints by the middle of 2018. two fulltime asj staff are assigned to this program. one recent complaint reported a teacher who was appointed to a position by his father, even though he scored an unacceptably low grade on the exam. alac staff 12 the baseline study measured purchases and contracts and human resources, while the first evaluation added statistics management as a third element of study with its own indicators. between the first baseline score in (2014-2015) and the second (2015-2016), the score for purchases and contracts decreased slightly, from 27% to 25%, after the ministry failed to provide asj with documents supporting contracts for construction and remodeling of school buildings. the score for human resources increased from 47% to 62% (15%), while statistics management was evaluated at 57%. the average of these three areas is 48%. informed the ministry of education, which investigated the situation and deposed the teacher (rivera toledo 2018). proposals and support: in th/asj’s collaborative support of the ministry of education, asj staff helped develop the online system the ministry uses to gather information about teachers and students. it also provided guidance on how to manage the competitions for teachers and departmental directors, including helping to write the tests and evaluate the results. as asj human resources expert jimena garcia says, “we help them in everything they want us to help them with” (garcia 2018). former secretary of education rutilia calderón requested th assistance in writing education’s strategic plan. she says that the most important part of what th and asj offer is their recommendations and technical assistance. during her year as secretary, she preferred working with them over any other civil society organization, because instead of just denouncing failure, they contribute ideas and recommendations for how problems can be resolved (calderón 2018). monitoring/oversight: after the initial baseline study, asj did the first follow-up audit/evaluation during the years 2015/16. the report, which was presented to the new secretary of education, marcial solís, showed some improvement in hiring practices, but some backsliding in acquisitions/contracts and information/data gathering. 12 vice minister of education, javier menocal, said the ministry was not happy with the results, and that they planned to take the evaluation seriously and commit to doing a better job. he also noted his appreciation for asj and his intention to work closely with them to make the necessary changes (menocal 2018). the second follow-up evaluation was being completed as this article was being written. lessons learned among the lessons from asj’s experience in public education are the importance of solid research, good relationships at the grassroots and in the government, strategic use of the media, and collaborative support. here are some additional lessons gleaned from asj’s experience thus far. christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(1), summer 2019 28 faith: as mentioned previously, faith is a central motivating factor for asj. the verse micah 6:8 “he has shown you, o mortal, what is good. and what does the lord require of you? to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your god” is ubiquitous in the daily life of asj, from murals on the office walls to web pages. likewise, it is faith that motivates asj staff in the midst of danger. when threatened by violence, they remind themselves of i john 4:18, “there is no fear in love. but perfect love drives out fear…” asj leaders emphasize how important it is to be brave in following christ’s example as they work not for their own interests, but for the well-being of the most vulnerable. fairness and consistency: asj’s reputation for integrity has been built over two decades by adhering to standards of justice and applying them fairly. onan calix, a current leader of the largest teachers’ union, said that he originally thought asj was their enemy, but then asj helped his union address a major injustice in the way the government was treating teachers who by law were supposedly exempt from retaking the application test. asj supported them and they won the case, which showed calix that asj was a neutral player in service of justice for all (calix 2018). impartiality and nonpartisanship: in honduras’ hyperpartisan political environment, asj is often criticized for working too closely with the government. for example, edwin moya, a member of th and longstanding, influential practitioner in the honduran education sector, believes that asj is too closely affiliated with the current government. he argues that hondurans are coming to see it as an ally of the ruling party. the fact that this is more perception than reality doesn’t matter to moya, because he fears that over time the perception will undermine th/asj’s influence (moya 2018). moya believes th/asj should continue with its research and advocacy, but that working directly with the government crosses the line from advocacy to tacit acceptance, threatening the organizations’ credibility. taking a more supportive position, jorge galeano, executive director of world vision honduras and a member of the th leadership group, says that asj is neither friends nor enemies with the government, and that, “following the metaphor of the sun, asj should be close enough to stay warm, but not so close that they get burned” (galeano 2018). as asj works closely with the ministry of education, they daily live the “healthy tension” that this balancing act requires. work with those who will work with you: asj president, kurt ver beek says the standard bell curve (see figure 5) helps explain with whom asj works. ver beek argues that every government agency has a few honorable champions and a few incorrigible villains, while the vast majority of government employees fall somewhere in the middle, influenced by risk/reward calculations on doing either wrong or right. asj works to identify and eliminate the most corrupt people in an institution, and enlist the bravest and most transparent in leading reform, thus changing the cost-benefit structures for the entire institution. for example, asj wanted to work with secretary of education ventura in 2010, but was not successful. when marlon escoto was appointed, th/asj enjoyed a productive working relationship and witnessed many significant reforms, as it did with his successor, rutilia calderón (ver beek, 2018-2). figure 5: asj works to shift the cost-benefit structure in institutions by implementing reforms that reward good behavior and hold consequences for bad behavior competent staff: when asj offers recommendations and technical assistance, they come with experts and experienced staff in such areas as human resources, digital systems, teacher evaluation, statistical analysis, legal matters, test-making, and accounting. fully honduran: of asj’s 130 staff members, all are honduran except for kurt ver beek, who volunteers his time as board president, and a handful of people in communications positions. this honduran identity is vital when asj calls out honduran officials for corrupt practices, because it is other hondurans who are calling them out, not foreigners. furthermore, honduran staff are knowledgeable about the history, culture, and context of honduran politics, allowing them to plan more effective interventions based on honduran reality, and giving them a greater personal stake in the outcome. this also influences asj’s longevity in the country, because staff are likely to stay in honduras for the long term. civil society: through its work with transformemos honduras, asj stays connected with honduran civil christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(1), summer 2019 29 society. by working with other civil society leaders in this coalition, asj enjoys the benefit of ideas that come to the table, as well as the support of other organizations that lend their support to th/asj efforts. external funding: much of asj’s funding comes from sources external to honduras, which means that no honduran business, foundation, or person can be accused of using asj as a supporter of their own personal interests. asj does not take money from the honduran government, a policy important enough to be enshrined in their institutional imperatives. in order to stay sustainable as an organization, asj seeks out a diversity of funders, which in 2018 included the u.s. state department, millennium challenge account, transparency international, the international development bank, german and canadian foreign aid funds, and a variety of christian foundations. in addition, u.s. partner organization ajs works with over 1,000 individual donors per year. the facts that funders are so diverse, and that asj is so obviously led by hondurans, have protected asj from charges of foreign meddling in honduras’ internal affairs. conclusion in the past eight years the educational system has undergone some amazing progress, though much remains to be done. student test scores improved initially, but are still too low, which is why th is now focusing on teaching quality. textbooks are scarce and school buildings are often pitifully inadequate. purchasing practices and data gathering at the ministry are still weak. the two key education laws are not as strong as they should be, and some sections are contradictory. fair competitions for aspiring teachers are anticipated, but as of april 2019 had not yet taken place. there is always the possibility that the system will slide back into its old, corrupt ways. and yet, recall that asj’s mission is to make the government work, especially for the benefit of honduras’ most vulnerable citizens, so we must acknowledge the revolutionary changes that have come about between 2010 and 2019. more than two million students depend on the honduran public education system, which in 2010 was infested with corruption and barely functioning. in 2010, more than 25% of paid teachers never showed up; in 2019 that figure is less than 1%. students who attended class only 125 days in 2010 attended for over 200 days in 2018. test scores improved as honduras moved from dead last among latin american nations to 10 th out of 15, and there is promise for more improvement in the future. in 2018, hiring is much less susceptible to longstanding corrupt practices. community members are increasingly empowered to hold their local schools accountable. at all levels, from ministry officials to teachers in rural schools, a culture of evaluation and oversight is taking root. transparency at all levels is expanding. asj’s work in public education is representative of their unique sense of mission. many organizations, christian and secular, do excellent work improving the well-being and opportunities of small pockets of individuals and communities. such interventions typically run parallel to public systems that serve the vast majority of the nation’s citizens. hundreds of people are helped through a one-time medical brigade, while millions suffer without access to quality hospitals. volunteer teams build wells, giving a few communities access to running water, while the country’s water grid, serving millions, lies in shambles. private schools provide excellent education for a few fortunate children, while public schools languish. asj appreciates the work of all these groups, while they have taken the path of working to impact the lives of millions. this case study illustrates the power of a theory of change that combines persistent pressure and oversight with an openness to suggest and help implement reforms. it illustrates that, even in country wracked by corruption, it is possible to bring about macro-level, structural change that bends toward a kingdominspired arc of justice. while difficult, dangerous, and time-consuming, this work is also rewarding and redemptive. asj staff view this work as consistent with their commitment to be faithful to god’s call to work for justice. it is a model other christians committed to kingdom living can learn from. references asociación para una sociedad mas justa (asj). august 2018. asj. december 2017. “informe de evaluación a la secretaría de educación período 2015 – 2016,” p.6. “evaluation report from the secretary of education, 2015-2016 “ (author’s translation). asj. “estudio sobre impunidad 2010-2012.” june 5th, 2015. association for a more just society (ajs). “ajs condemns assassination attempt against ajshonduras board member jorge machado that resulted in death of bodyguard.” december 16, 2016 ajs. “dionisio: the life of a brave christian” n.d. asj-th. 2016. “informe de veeduría social al proceso de concurso público de directores y secretarios departamentales y directores de la unidad de supervisión departamental de la secretaría de educación.” tegucigalpa, honduras. october 20, 2016. http://asjhonduras.com/webhn/sobre-nosotros http://asjhonduras.com/webhn/tag/estudio-sobre-impunidad-en-honduras https://www.ajs-us.org/content/ajs-condemns-assassination-attempt-against-ajs-honduras-board-member-jorge-machado-resulted https://www.ajs-us.org/content/ajs-condemns-assassination-attempt-against-ajs-honduras-board-member-jorge-machado-resulted https://www.ajs-us.org/content/ajs-condemns-assassination-attempt-against-ajs-honduras-board-member-jorge-machado-resulted https://www.ajs-us.org/content/ajs-condemns-assassination-attempt-against-ajs-honduras-board-member-jorge-machado-resulted https://www.ajs-us.org/dionisio christian relief, development, and advocacy 1(1), summer 2019 30 “arresto domiciliario para lena gutierrez y su familia.” la prensa. july 4, 2015. “astropharma intenta meterle al estado ‘multivitaminas’ sin 7 de los 11 ingredientes necesarios.” revistazo. july 1, 2015. banco de desarrollo internacional (bid). “¿cómo honduras redujo a la mitad su tasa de homicidio?” calderón, rutilia. april 30, 2018. personal interview. calix, onan. april 26, 2018. personal interview. cano, ignacio, emiliano rojido and robson rodrigues. “evaluación del proyecto ‘paz y justicia’ desarrollado por la asociación por una sociedad más justa en honduras.” laboratório de análise da violência, univeresidade do estado do rio de janeiro. september 2017. cerna, mario. “histórico: dos años consecutivos con 200 días de clase en honduras.” el heraldo. october 30, 2014. educación: una deuda pendiente. informe de progreso educativo – honduras 2017. escoto, marlon. april 24, 2018. personal interview. galeano, jorge. april 26, 2018. personal interview. garcia, jimena. april 27, 2018. personal interview. “invalidan concurso de selección docente de 2017 y anuncian repetición de proceso.” march 23, 2017. la prensa. iudpas instituto universitario en democracia, paz y seguridad. “percepción ciudadana sobre inseguridad y victimización en honduras: informe ejecutivo 2018.” universidad nacional autónoma de honduras, facultad de ciencias sociales, may, 2018. “la corrupción: sus caminos e impacto en la sociedad y una agenda para enfrentarla en el triángulo norte centroamericano.” instituto centroamericano de estudios fiscales (icefi), page 6. setiembre, 2017. “lena gutiérrez y sus parientes siguen siendo dueños de astropharma porque jamás se disvincularon”. revistazo. september 30th, 2015. martinez, dolores. april 26, 2018. personal interview. medina, edwin. april 24, 2018. personal interview. menocal, javier, may 2, 2018. personal interview. moya, edwin. april 24, 2018. personal interview. munguia, blanca. april 23, 2018. personal interview. proceso digital. “costo de la corrupción supera 3,900 millones de lempiras en pocos casos: asj” june 28th, 2016. ramirez irías, lester. “judicialización de la corrupción pública 2008-2015: resultados de la respuesta internacional anticorrupción.” asociación para una sociedad más justa. june 2016. rivera toledo, karol melissa (staff lawyer for alac). june 6, 2018. personal interview. transparency international “honduras.” “sin participación activa, astropharma logra millonarios contratos por medicamentos.” revistazo. september 8th, 2011. “sólo 95 días trabajaron maestros el año pasado.” la prensa. january 27, 2007. ver beek, kurt (president of asj). july 5, 2018-1. email communication. _____. april 24, 2018-2. personal interview. world bank. “intentional homicides (per 100,000 people: honduras:” world bank. 2009. "strengthening performance accountability in honduras:" institutional governance review: background chapters. carlos hernández is co-founder and executive director of the association for a more just society (asj). a proud honduran, he is a prominent leader in honduran and latin american civil society, particularly on the topics of governance and corruption. author email: carlos_her69@yahoo.com roland hoksbergen is professor emeritus of economics and international development at calvin college and a co-editor of this journal. he lived eight years of his adult life in various countries of central america. author email: hoksro@calvin.edu katerina parsons is the director of communications for ajs-us, the u.s.-based sister organization of the association for a more just society. a graduate of calvin college, she has lived in honduras for four years. author email: katerinaparsons@gmail.com kurt ver beek is co-founder and president of asj, and is also a professor of sociology for calvin college, where he leads the honduras semester abroad program. he has lived in honduras for nearly 30 years. author email: kverbeek@gmail.com https://www.laprensa.hn/sucesos/855480-410/arresto-domiciliario-para-lena-guti%c3%a9rrez-y-su-familia https://www.laprensa.hn/sucesos/855480-410/arresto-domiciliario-para-lena-guti%c3%a9rrez-y-su-familia http://www.revistazo.biz/web2/index.php/nacional/item/1040-astropharma-intenta-meterle-al-estado-%e2%80%9cmultivitaminas%e2%80%9d-sin-7-de-los-11-ingredientes-necesarios http://www.revistazo.biz/web2/index.php/nacional/item/1040-astropharma-intenta-meterle-al-estado-%e2%80%9cmultivitaminas%e2%80%9d-sin-7-de-los-11-ingredientes-necesarios https://www.iadb.org/es/mejorandovidas/como-honduras-redujo-la-mitad-su-tasa-de-homicidio https://www.iadb.org/es/mejorandovidas/como-honduras-redujo-la-mitad-su-tasa-de-homicidio http://www.elheraldo.hn/pais/763186-214/hist%c3%b3rico-dos-a%c3%b1os-consecutivos-con-200-d%c3%adas-de-clases-en-honduras http://www.elheraldo.hn/pais/763186-214/hist%c3%b3rico-dos-a%c3%b1os-consecutivos-con-200-d%c3%adas-de-clases-en-honduras http://www.thedialogue.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/informedeprogresoeducativo2017-1.pdf.%20pp.9-11. http://www.laprensa.hn/honduras/1163048-410/concurso-docente-secretaria_educacion-nuevo-proceso-honduras http://www.laprensa.hn/honduras/1163048-410/concurso-docente-secretaria_educacion-nuevo-proceso-honduras https://icefi.org/sites/default/files/resumen_ejecutivo_la_corrupcion_sus_caminos_e_impacto_en_la_sociedad_y_una_agenda_para_enfrentarla_en_el_triangulo_norte_centroamericano.pdf https://icefi.org/sites/default/files/resumen_ejecutivo_la_corrupcion_sus_caminos_e_impacto_en_la_sociedad_y_una_agenda_para_enfrentarla_en_el_triangulo_norte_centroamericano.pdf https://icefi.org/sites/default/files/resumen_ejecutivo_la_corrupcion_sus_caminos_e_impacto_en_la_sociedad_y_una_agenda_para_enfrentarla_en_el_triangulo_norte_centroamericano.pdf http://www.revistazo.biz/web2/index.php/nacional/item/1067-lena-guti%c3%a9rrez-y-sus-parientes-siguen-siendo-due%c3%b1os-de-astropharma-porque-jam%c3%a1s-se-desvincularon http://www.revistazo.biz/web2/index.php/nacional/item/1067-lena-guti%c3%a9rrez-y-sus-parientes-siguen-siendo-due%c3%b1os-de-astropharma-porque-jam%c3%a1s-se-desvincularon http://www.proceso.hn/nacionales/item/126958-costo-de-la-corrupcion-supera-3-900-millones-de-lempiras-en-pocos-casos-asj.html http://www.proceso.hn/nacionales/item/126958-costo-de-la-corrupcion-supera-3-900-millones-de-lempiras-en-pocos-casos-asj.html http://asjhonduras.com/webhn/tag/judicializacion-de-la-corrupcion-honduras/ http://asjhonduras.com/webhn/tag/judicializacion-de-la-corrupcion-honduras/ http://asjhonduras.com/webhn/tag/judicializacion-de-la-corrupcion-honduras/ https://www.transparency.org/country/hnd http://www.revistazo.biz/web2/index.php/nacional/item/35-sin-participaci%c3%b3n-activa-astropharma-logra-millonarios-contratos-por-medicamentos http://www.revistazo.biz/web2/index.php/nacional/item/35-sin-participaci%c3%b3n-activa-astropharma-logra-millonarios-contratos-por-medicamentos http://www.laprensa.hn/honduras/642908-97/s%c3%b3lo-95-d%c3%adas-trabajaron-maestros-el-a%c3%b1o-anterior https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/vc.ihr.psrc.p5?locations=hn https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/vc.ihr.psrc.p5?locations=hn https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/3181 https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/3181 mailto:carlos_her69@yahoo.com mailto:hoksro@calvin.edu mailto:katerinaparsons@gmail.com mailto:kverbeek@gmail.com christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(1), summer 2024 paltzer, jonker, reinemann, and benfer, a pilot study of an integrated faith-based recovery … 23 a pilot study of an integrated faith-based recovery and financial literacy program among recovery home participants jason paltzer, jason jonker, anna reinemann, jessica benfer background: faith-based recovery models are available for individuals seeking help with substance use. combining a christian recovery program with financial goal setting is a novel approach to enhancing recovery support. this pilot study investigated the effectiveness of a combined faith-based recovery plus financial literacy program. methods: participants (n=33) were recruited from residential recovery homes in phoenix, arizona, to participate in one of two groups: a resilient recovery alone group or a resilient recovery plus faith & finances group. recovery, spiritual well-being, forgiveness, perceptions of god, religious coping, and financial behaviors were measured at three points to assess change over time. results: resilient recovery + faith & finances program participants showed some decrease in problems associated with their substance use. individuals receiving resilient recovery alone had positive feelings of spiritual well-being. the correlations were weak to moderate among both groups. discussion and conclusion: a combined recovery with financial literacy was feasible, but the short duration of the intervention was a limitation. the results did not determine effectiveness in the recovery, spiritual, and financial outcomes measured. still, the study provides lessons for future research and implementation of an integrated approach, including the use of a single facilitator, consistent meeting schedule, and conducting both programs concurrently rather than consecutively. more extensive and longer studies are needed to account for additional confounding and sociodemographic factors related to recovery and spiritual outcomes. alignment between christian health and development programs and research measures related to the content is needed to better understand effectiveness and causal mechanisms. background for decades, religious or spiritual belief systems have provided internal and external support essential for recovery (diclemente 2013). religious or spiritual programs have contributed significantly to substance use disorders (sud) treatment and recovery efforts in the united states, with 73% of addiction treatment programs incorporating a spirituality-based element (grim and grim 2019). numerous evidence-based studies have found that lower levels of substance abuse and reduced lifetime likelihood of using drugs have been linked to religious and spiritual practices (degenhardt et al. 2010; herman-stahl et al. 2007; moscati and mezuk 2014; palamar et al. 2014). in a comprehensive review, koenig et al. (2012) found that 90% of 145 quantitative studies reported that faith led to reduced risks associated with alcohol use, abuse, or dependence and 84% of 185 studies reported that faith was associated with reduced drug use (koenig et al. 2012). few studies, however, have examined the pathways by which faith aids in recovery. one potential way that faith may contribute to the success of recovery is through religious coping. religious coping refers to positive and negative actions and cognitions regarding god and religion. for example, a positive action would be “asked for forgiveness for my sins.” a positive cognition would be “sought god’s love and care.” conversely, an adverse action would be “questioned god’s love for me,” and a negative cognition would be “wondered whether god had abandoned me.” the resilient recovery program is a bible study on the topic of addiction that seeks to encourage positive religious coping and to decrease negative christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(1), summer 2024 paltzer, jonker, reinemann, and benfer, a pilot study of an integrated faith-based recovery … 24 coping. the meeting structure includes a time for voluntary self-disclosure or “confession,” asking god’s forgiveness, and a time to reflect on god’s love and care. the program is available online or in-person and has been used by churches and sober living homes primarily in the southwestern united states. the resilient recovery program uses verses from the bible to initiate discussion and guide prayers, but is open to people of any faith or no faith. participants are encouraged to view the program’s assertions as hypotheses and to share their thoughts and beliefs through group discussions. although christians, members of other religions, agnostics, and atheists, may respond differently to the program, resilient recovery hopes the program will encourage positive religious coping and decrease negative religious coping in most participants. religious and spiritual sud recovery programs increase recovery capital, which refers to the number of resources one has access to that can help one initiate and maintain recovery (granfield and cloud, 1999). financial capability is an essential aspect of recovery capital, but treatment programs rarely focus on developing financial capability among their clients (jones-sanpei and nance 2021). two domains of recovery capital, physical/financial and human, are related to access to and use of financial services (cloud and granfield 2001). prior research suggests financial literacy promotes relapse resiliency in recovery and is related to the knowledge and skills to manage financial resources effectively (president’s advisory council on financial capability 2013; harris et al. 2011). faith & finances is a series of twelve weekly financial education sessions designed for a small group study in a church or christian nonprofit. as a financial education ministry, it empowers people in material poverty with practical money management skills, biblical stewardship principles, and supportive relationships. by design, its small-group structure creates opportunities to bring people together within a local church or ministry community. facilitators, participants, and allies at all income levels walk together in authentic relationships and discover how god has chosen to use individuals’ money to accomplish his work. this pilot study investigated the feasibility and effectiveness of integrated faith-based recovery and financial literacy programs. the purposes of this study are 1) to evaluate the effectiveness of a 6-week version of resilient recovery; 2) to evaluate the effectiveness of a combined 12-week resilient + faith & finances program; and 3) to assess the feasibility of implementing a combined recovery and financial literacy program among individuals living in recovery residential homes. the goal was to better understand from a christian worldview the mechanisms underlying the relationship between faith and recovery. given the lack of specific christian instruments for measuring christian spirituality, we used more general measures of forgiveness, perceptions of god, spiritual well-being, and religious coping. resilient recovery and faith & finances are christian-based programs incorporating spiritual lessons from the bible. the hypotheses motivating this study were 1) christian-based recovery meetings increase participants’ spiritual health (i.e. forgiveness, perceptions of god, spiritual well-being, and religious coping; 2) adding a christian financial literacy program increases spiritual health, financial health (i.e. savings account, emergency fund, giving, and spending plan), and associated substance use problems (measured by the short inventory to problems for alcohol and drugs (sip-ad)). methods this study used a two-group pre-post-study design. partnerships with recovery residential homes in phoenix, arizona, provided access to eligible individuals willing to participate. the residents stayed at the homes voluntarily and were asked to participate in the study voluntarily. they were allowed to withdraw from the study at any point throughout the program. participants were enrolled on a rolling basis between june 2021 and august 2022. the chalmers center for economic development provided the faith & finances facilitator training for the study, and resilient recovery provided the resilient facilitator training. each program component, resilient recovery and faith & finances, lasted six weeks, with one week between programs for individuals receiving both programs. each program typically lasts longer, but shortened versions were implemented to accommodate the average time a participant spends in a recovery home and maximize participant retention. baseline and follow-up surveys were conducted following the end of each program for three possible survey periods (baseline=time 1, 6 weeks=time 2, 12-week followup=time 3). phone, text messages, and email attempts were made to follow up with individuals to minimize loss-to-follow-up. individuals staying at recovery homes frequently changed addresses and communication methods (changed in phone numbers and internet access for email), which led to incomplete surveys during the follow-up period. surveys were completed through one-on-one phone interviews or selfadministered via a qr code based on the preferences and resources of participants. a more extended followup period was not feasible, given the difficulty of christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(1), summer 2024 paltzer, jonker, reinemann, and benfer, a pilot study of an integrated faith-based recovery … 25 tracking individuals once they left the recovery home. results were provided based on completed surveys, given this was a pilot study with a small sample size, limiting the ability to conduct multiple imputation or other methods for missing data. data and sample the study eligibility criteria were as follows: • adults 18 years of age or older • residents of a recovery home in phoenix, az • not a legal dependent • able to read and write in english a residential recovery home is defined as a structured living environment that supports recovery from addiction. these homes have dorm-style bedrooms and shared bathrooms. each home's policies varies; some have a “zero tolerance” policy, while others are more flexible. residents typically progress through stages. the first stage provides food, wi-fi, and laundry facilities. work is not allowed. participation in a 12-step program, house meetings, and drug tests are sometimes required. these programs are voluntary and accept a combination of insurance and private pay. for those who pay privately, most recovery residential homes require only that a person have the desire to abstain from substances. substance abuse treatment is defined as professional services designed to help patients abstain from harmful substances and attain a greater quality of life. recovery homes do not provide treatment. they collaborate with professionals by providing a sober living environment. substance abuse recovery is defined as “recovery is a process of change through which people improve their health and wellness, live self-directed lives, and strive to reach their full potential” (national institutes of health 2024). substance use recovery may or may not involve a substance use disorder defined as the presence of 3 or more of 11 items found in the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders – fifth edition (american psychological association 2022). group 1 (resilient recovery + faith & finances) enrolled 17 individuals as the combined intervention, and group 2 (resilient recovery alone) enrolled 16 individuals. individuals were offered the opportunity to participate through a letter from the research team distributed by participating residential recovery home managers. participating recovery homes were selected for the same study group for feasibility and minimal burden on the home managers. recovery homes in phoenix were recruited through email invitations, targeted facebook ads, and direct phone conversations. participants could withdraw from the study at any time, while remaining part of the groups. meetings took place at each participating residential recovery home, where individuals were given and read an informed consent form. each participant provided verbal consent by agreeing to complete the initial intake survey. individuals had the opportunity to discontinue the program by not completing the survey and informing the facilitator of their desire not to continue. individuals who completed the questionnaire were given additional information regarding their respective program groups. individuals in group 1 participated in weekly resilient recovery meetings for 6 weeks, followed by faith & finance meetings for 6 weeks. meetings were conducted on-site at their recovery home. group 2 individuals participated in weekly resilient recovery meetings on-site for 6-weeks. email and mobile phone information was collected, and participants were contacted to complete a follow-up questionnaire following the completion of each program component or the 6-week time period if there was no program, as in the case of the resilient recovery alone group for time 3. the study received ethics approval through baylor university’s institutional review board. measures in addition to demographic data, the following scales were used to measure substance-related problems, spirituality, and financial literacy: 1. short inventory to problems – alcohol and drugs (sip-ad) (kiluk et al. 2013) —selected due to the ongoing relationship of substance abuserelated problems long after use discontinues. 2. spiritual well-being scale (paloutzian and ellison 1982) — a general measure of spiritual health and relationship with god. 3. god-10 scale (exline et al. 2011) — selected to assess individual perceptions of the characteristics of god throughout the recovery process. 4. forgiveness long form (fetzer institute 1999) — chosen because forgiveness is part of the recovery process as individuals reflect on their past relationships. 5. religious coping scale (pargament et al. 2011) — selected to measure spiritual practices related to strengthening one’s relationship with god. 6. faith & finances financial capacity survey (developed by chalmers center for economic development) — chosen to evaluate the four financial behaviors as indicators of financial health. statistical analysis data were analyzed using r version 4.2.2. sample characteristics are reported by frequencies and christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(1), summer 2024 paltzer, jonker, reinemann, and benfer, a pilot study of an integrated faith-based recovery … 26 proportions among participants who completed resilient recovery and those who additionally completed faith & finances. frequencies and proportions are also reported for financial data. spearman correlation coefficients were calculated by group, sex, and education level for each item or item grouping within scales. correlation coefficients measure the strength of association between two rankordered variables. for the measures used in this study, a positive correlation shows the indicator increased in value over subsequent time points. if a participant moved from a 3 (neutral) in time 1 to a 5 (moderately disagree) in time 2 for the question, “i don’t find much satisfaction in private prayer with god,” the correlation coefficient will be a positive value, 0.21 for example, and interpreted as a relatively weak-to-moderate positive correlation. statistical significance is determined using a p value of 0.10, given the low sample size, shown in red. because this was a pilot study with a relatively small sample size, differences between the two groups were not analyzed. results overall, 33 individuals participated in the study (table 1). participants completing resilient recovery were primarily male (81.3%) and single/never married (75.0%), white (43.8%), and had graduated high school (50.0%). of those participants who additionally completed faith & finances, the majority were female (52.9%), widowed (52.9%), white (70.6%), and had a high school degree (23.5%) or less (23.5%). the total completed surveys for each period by group participation is shown in table 2. the groups show some demographic variation, which is a limitation of the small study sample. a significant limitation is the number of completed responses for time 3 among the resilient recovery alone (rr alone) group. subsequent results are shown with rr alone time 3 data for transparency. table 1: sample characteristics of participants receiving resilient recovery alone and resilient recovery plus faith & finances. characteristic resilient recovery (n=16) resilient recovery and faith & finances (n=17) sex: male female 13 (81.3%) 3 (18.8%) 8 (47.1%) 9 (52.9%) marital status: divorced single (never married) widowed 2 (12.5%) 12 (75.0%) 2 (12.5%) 7 (41.2%) 1 (5.9%) 9 (52.9%) race: black/african american hispanic/latino other white 4 (25.0%) 5 (31.3%) 0 (0.0%) 7 (43.8%) 1 (5.9%) 3 (17.6%) 1 (5.9%) 12 (70.6%) education: less than high school graduated high school some college, no degree associate degree bachelor’s degree trade/technical school 5 (31.3%) 8 (50.0%) 2 (12.5%) 0 (0.0%) 1 (6.3%) 0 (0.0%) 4 (23.5%) 4 (23.5%) 3 (17.6%) 3 (17.6%) 1 (5.9%) 2 (11.8%) note: five individuals were removed from the data set because they lacked either resilient recovery or faith & finances financial data. categories are determined by changes in the strategy between time 1 and time 3 measures. christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(1), summer 2024 paltzer, jonker, reinemann, and benfer, a pilot study of an integrated faith-based recovery … 27 table 2: completed surveys for each period by treatment group. overall resilient recovery resilient recovery and faith & finances t1 t2 t3 t1 t2 t3 t1 t2 t3 n=33 n=28 n=12 n=16 n=12 n=3 n=17 n=16 n=9 spirituality outcome tables show correlations by group as well as by sex and education, realizing that these demographic variables likely influence associations. correlations between items and demographic characteristics were mostly neutral but in the expected direction among participants completing either program (tables 4-8). five spiritual well-being scale items improved among participants completing resilient recovery: “i don’t know who i am, where i came from, or where i’m going” (correlation=0.48; p value=0.01), “i believe that god is impersonal and not interested in my daily situations” (correlation=0.38; p value=0.04), “i feel good about my future” (correlation=0.32; p value=0.08), “i feel that life is full of conflict and unhappiness” (correlation=0.32; p value=0.08), and “i believe there is some real purpose for my life” (correlation=0.34; p value=0.07). some variation is observed between males and females. perceptions of god (god-10 scale) as loving, cruel, or distant stayed relatively unchanged among individuals in both groups. the forgiveness scale measures showed that offering and receiving forgiveness with god, others, and self also remained unchanged when participating in both groups. items showing improvement over time for the rcope scale included “felt punished by god for my lack of devotion” among participants in the combined group (correlation=-0.34; p value=0.03). substance-related problems the short-inventory of problems for alcohol and drugs (sip-ad) scale showed improvement in most items among participants in the combined group. the sip-ad is designed to measure problems associated with active substance use, but the scale has shown validity in measuring the variation of problems among those in a sober state of the recovery cycle, as was expected among the participants in the study (kiluk et al. 2013). to accommodate for the length of time individuals may have been living in recovery homes, the sip-ad instrument was adapted to have a 12-month recall of problems associated with drinking alcohol or taking drugs. foolish risks (correlation=-0.27, p value=0.09), impulsivity (correlation=-0.28, p value=0.08), money problems (correlation=-0.26, p value=0.10), family hurts (correlation=-0.26, p value=0.10), and personal growth interference (correlation=-0.31, p value=0.04) are areas with the most significant improvements among those receiving the combined programs. financial literacy during the resilient recovery period (change between times 1 and 2), individuals having a bank account increased by ten percentage points, and individuals giving to church decreased by eight percentage points among the resilient recovery alone group. church giving increased by almost 15 percentage points, and spending plans declined by 15 percentage points among the rr and ff combined group. the percentage of individuals completing the ff program (change between time 2 and 3) increased by nine percentage points for having a bank account and eight percentage points for having an emergency fund (table 3). table 3: financial behavior results by group (percentages) financial activity resilient recovery alone (%) resilient recovery and faith & finances (%) t1 (n=16) t2 (n=12) t3 (n=3) t1 (n=17) t2 (n=16) t3 (n=9) church giving 25.0 16.7 0.0 35.3 50.0 55.6 bank account 56.3 66.7 100.0 64.7 68.8 77.8 spending plan 43.8 41.7 66.7 52.9 37.5 33.3 emergency fund 25.0 25.0 33.3 29.4 25.0 33.3 christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(1), summer 2024 paltzer, jonker, reinemann, and benfer, a pilot study of an integrated faith-based recovery … 28 table 4: spiritual well-being scale results by group, sex, and education level, spearman correlation measures (p value). group sex education swbs 1=strongly agree; 2=moderately agree; 3=agree; 4=disagree; 5=moderately disagree; 6=strongly disagree overall n=33 rr n=16 rr_ff n=17 male n=21 female n=12 less than high school n=9 graduat ed high school n=12 more than high school n=12 i don’t find much satisfaction in private prayer with god 0.21 (0.07) 0.22 (0.23) 0.19 (0.23) 0.29 (0.06) 0.03 (0.86) 0.27 (0.24) 0.36 (0.07) 0.07 (0.72) i don’t know who i am, where i came from, or where i’m going -0.05 (0.71) 0.48 (0.01) -0.25 (0.11) 0.17 (0.25) -0.21 (0.28) 0.08 (0.74) -0.06 (0.78) -0.12 (0.55) i believe that god loves me and cares about me* 0.13 (0.28) 0.05 (0.81) 0.15 (0.35) 0.13 (0.41) 0.15 (0.42) 0.06 (0.80) -0.02 (0.94) 0.26 (0.20) i feel that life is a positive experience* 0.06 (0.64) 0.06 (0.73) 0.05 (0.76) 0.04 (0.78) 0.10 (0.61) 0.24 (0.30) -0.20 (0.34) 0.17 (0.38) i believe that god is impersonal and not interested in my daily situations 0.23 (0.05) 0.38 (0.04) 0.15 (0.34) 0.37 (0.02) 0.00 (1.00) 0.05 (0.84) 0.24 (0.24) 0.36 (0.06) i feel unsettled about my future -0.02 (0.84) 0.18 (0.33) -0.10 (0.53) 0.09 (0.55) -0.02 (0.92) 0.20 (0.39) -0.04 (0.83) -0.13 (0.49) i have a personally meaningful relationship with god* 0.08 (0.53) 0.10 (0.61) 0.04 (0.79) 0.16 (0.31) 0.03 (0.87) 0.21 (0.39) -0.19 (0.34) 0.20 (0.33) i feel very fulfilled and satisfied with life* 0.05 (0.65) 0.22 (0.23) -0.02 (0.91) -0.06 (0.69) 0.20 (0.28) 0.09 (0.70) -0.03 (0.88) 0.12 (0.56) i don’t get much personal strength and support from my god 0.08 (0.48) 0.11 (0.55) 0.05 (0.77) 0.08 (0.61) 0.12 (0.52) -0.11 (0.65) 0.19 (0.37) 0.12 (0.55) i feel a sense of well-being about the direction my life is headed in* -0.05 (0.69) 0.16 (0.39) -0.14 (0.38) 0.10 (0.54) -0.15 (0.42) 0.07 (0.78) -0.09 (0.66) -0.10 (0.61) i believe that god is concerned about my problems* 0.17 (0.15) 0.16 (0.39) 0.19 (0.23) 0.16 (0.32) 0.22 (0.25) -0.10 (0.67) 0.22 (0.29) 0.35 (0.08) i don’t enjoy much about life 0.03 (0.80) 0.18 (0.34) -0.07 (0.68) -0.03 (0.87) 0.07 (0.72) 0.10 (0.71) -0.08 (0.70) 0.06 (0.75) i don’t have a personally satisfying relationship with god -0.02 (0.87) 0.08 (0.67) -0.12 (0.44) 0.07 (0.65) -0.17 (0.37) -0.19 (0.43) -0.21 (0.31) 0.25 (0.21) i feel good about my future* 0.01 (0.90) 0.32 (0.08) -0.15 (0.34) 0.05 (0.77) 0.02 (0.92) 0.08 (0.73) -0.04 (0.84) 0.02 (0.94) my relationship with god helps me not to feel lonely* 0.02 (0.84) 0.09 (0.63) -0.08 (0.63) -0.09 (0.57) 0.19 (0.33) -0.04 (0.87) 0.09 (0.67) 0.03 (0.87) i feel that life is full of conflict and unhappiness 0.11 (0.37) 0.32 (0.08) -0.01 (0.94) 0.19 (0.23) 0.04 (0.82) 0.35 (0.13) 0.02 (0.91) 0.01 (0.95) i feel most fulfilled when i’m in close communion with god* 0.13 (0.28) 0.13 (0.49) 0.07 (0.67) 0.16 (0.31) 0.10 (0.59) -0.02 (0.94) 0.15 (0.46) 0.28 (0.16) life doesn’t have much meaning -0.02 (0.85) 0.29 (0.12) -0.21 (0.19) 0.00 (0.99) -0.11 (0.58) -0.02 (0.93) 0.05 (0.82) -0.08 (0.68) my relation with god contributes to my sense of well-being* 0.08 (0.52) 0.14 (0.46) 0.01 (0.95) -0.18 (0.27) 0.39 (0.03) -0.12 (0.63) 0.28 (0.17) 0.08 (0.70) i believe there is some real purpose for my life* 0.08 (0.50) 0.34 (0.07) -0.03 (0.85) -0.14 (0.37) 0.40 (0.03) -0.13 (0.61) 0.27 (0.19) 0.14 (0.49) *items reverse coded. christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(1), summer 2024 paltzer, jonker, reinemann, and benfer, a pilot study of an integrated faith-based recovery … 29 table 5: perceptions of god scale by group, sex, education level, spearman correlations (p value) table 7: religious coping scale by group, sex, and education level, spearman correlations (p value) *items reverse coded christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(1), summer 2024 paltzer, jonker, reinemann, and benfer, a pilot study of an integrated faith-based recovery … 30 table 8: short inventory of problems – alcohol and drugs scale by group, sex, and education level. spearman correlations (p value) discussion the primary purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of resilient recovery and a combined resilient recovery plus faith & finances program on spiritual health, financial behaviors, and problems associated with substance use. the results do not fully support the stated hypotheses: 1) a christian-based recovery meeting would increase participants’ spiritual health (measures: forgiveness, perceptions of god, spiritual well-being, and religious coping; 2) adding a christian financial literacy program increases spiritual health, financial health (measures: savings account, emergency fund, giving, and spending plan), and associated substance use problems (measures: sipad). other potential variables need to be considered as possible explanations between faith-based recovery meetings that are combined with additional recovery capital, such as financial literacy essential to maintaining abstinence (cloud and granfield 2001). the results of this pilot study suggest that a combined resilient recovery and faith & finances intervention reduces some problems associated with substance use. changes in financial habits varied in both groups, suggesting other variables need to be considered, such as length of the intervention, available benefits received while in recovery, in-kind resources provided by the recovery homes, or support from family and friends. the spiritual well-being scale among individuals completing resilient recovery alone had improved responses in feeling good about their future, origin/purpose/destiny, belief in god’s interest in their life, and perception of conflicts. participants in the combined group had increased feelings of being punished by god. the content of both programs highlighted god’s providence, provision, and grace (forgiveness). yet, participants in both groups did not show significant changes in giving or receiving forgiveness or perceiving god as loving. this result indicates that aligning program content with spiritual christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(1), summer 2024 paltzer, jonker, reinemann, and benfer, a pilot study of an integrated faith-based recovery … 31 mechanisms supporting recovery requires further research to understand the faith journey of individuals in recovery and develop appropriate measures. it is worth noting that, though the goal was to measure christian beliefs related to two christian-based programs, participants were able to answer questions based on their personal understanding of god. the study shows that combining a recovery program with a financial literacy program is feasible among individuals in recovery homes. slightly more than half of the individuals in the combined group completed both programs. upon completion of the study, residential home managers were interviewed to determine the feasibility of conducting the groups in the homes. the managers of the homes expressed a high level of satisfaction with the programs. one recommendation the home managers had was to have the same facilitators conduct both programs, given the level of trust developed with participants and the continuity of facilitator trust. both programs are typically of longer duration than those evaluated in this pilot study. in a real-world implementation, resilient recovery is ongoing, with individuals moving in and out over months or even years. faith & finances is a 12-week program. for this study, due to the high mobility rates of individuals in residential recovery homes, both programs were shortened to 6 weeks. this is a significant limitation of the study. other limitations include a change in facilitators requiring new relationships to be established. the director of resilient recovery was present during the faith & finance sessions, which was recognized as a positive feature in participant retention and engagement. the sip-ad does include items that could be considered incongruent with the design of resilient recovery in addressing the shame cycle by asking about “foolish risks" in the sip instruments. given the limited selection of validated tools that assess substance issues from a christian perspective, we selected the sip-ad as the closest validated match. possible confounding relationships influencing the results could be the short duration of each program, education levels, relapse occurrences, facilitator differences, and losses-to-follow-up. additional variations may occur because of differences in the individual non-linear faith journey, recovery home management and policies, prior recovery experience, non-substance using relationships, or proximity to family. an individual’s faith journey includes processing past influences of shame, self-worth, and beliefs from past and current substance use before moving to a place of forgiveness, spiritual well-being, and loving perceptions of god. such a change might require a more intentional move toward a positive understanding and belief about themselves and their relationship with god. a future study could investigate this journey of faith through recovery by measuring participants’ religious feelings over a 6to 12-month period as they participate in programs like resilient recovery, an ongoing program, and faith & finances. still another study could consider increasing retention rates in recovery programs to increase the likelihood of individuals navigating this faith journey through recovery. this study has several additional limitations. the small sample size limits the interpretation of the evidence and increases the likelihood of bias and confounding. loss-to-follow-up was an issue as only three individuals from the resilient recovery alone group completed the third survey. incentives were provided and secondary contact numbers were collected if available to help increase retention rates, but movement of individuals in recovery homes occurs at high rates, especially if they relapse back into substance use and are not allowed back into the same home. in the future, retention might be improved by creating multiple contact points through numerous contact numbers, hiring a recovery communications manager, or promoting additional support communities that participants could join. in addition, individuals in recovery experience good and bad days that influence survey responses. future studies should include a general quality of life question to establish an emotional status before each survey. yet another limitation is that residential recovery homes self-selected into the study, leading to potential selection bias on the residential home level, as observed in table 1. strengths of the study include the comparison of the two groups, with one receiving an integrated financial literacy program, a novel approach to recovery. the design allows us to assess the added effectiveness of financial literacy alongside an existing recovery model. the pre-post sequential design provides an opportunity to measure each program with a baseline for outcomes specific to that program. the study provides insight into a hard-to-reach population: those entering recovery. the study team underwent thorough training for the component they were facilitating, increasing fidelity to each intervention. strong relationships between resilient recovery staff and home manager were built through 1) in-person visits and explanation of the resilient recovery program, including videos of the model; 2) sharing personal facilitator experiences of addiction and recovery as a peer-based model; 3) committing to conducting the groups at the recovery home; and 4) consistently showing up weekly. as recovery home christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(1), summer 2024 paltzer, jonker, reinemann, and benfer, a pilot study of an integrated faith-based recovery … 32 managers saw the commitment of the resilient recovery facilitators, they were willing to allow residents to participate in the study. for similar studies in the future, we recommend the following improvements: first, upon recruitment, obtain multiple points of contact for the individual to minimize losses-to-follow-up. in a subsequent study, we found individuals in recovery were willing to provide additional contact information to support them as much as possible. identifying the appropriate recall period based on the individual's recovery journey will help establish better recovery measures for the individual and program content. second, a future study should also measure variation in residential recovery home policies, such as a "zero tolerance" policy, versus those more flexible. and third, a future study design should implement programs concurrently among the combined intervention group (providing each program on two different days) and the comparison group receiving only one program throughout the same timeframe. this requires recruiting homes in advance so the programs can start simultaneously, which also means the study team must have enough facilitators to serve both groups. this approach would allow the recovery homes to be randomized. conclusion the population of individuals in recovery is growing, and it is important to identify ways to study and determine the most effective methods for supporting those in recovery. substance use is a growing global problem, and innovative, faithand community-based approaches are clearly called for. this study provides insight into the feasibility of a combined recovery and financial literacy approach. although the results do not support a substantial effect on recovery, spiritual, or financial outcomes, there are important lessons about program implementation and methods for future research. this research offers guidance for implementing a combined recovery model, such as consistent facilitators and simultaneous implementation. future research methods should include additional confounding factors, a longer followup period, and more robust retention strategies. general spiritual measures only go so far, and there is a need to determine specific spiritual factors that mediate the faith-based recovery pathway. concepts like forgiveness, grace (god as loving), hope of an eternal destiny, and generosity are potential factors that need further study to strengthen faith-based recovery programs. references american psychiatric association. 2022. diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed., text rev.) https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.books.978089042578 7 cloud, william, rober granfield. 2001. “natural recovery from substance dependency.” journal of social work practice in the addictions 1(1), 83104. https://doi.org/10.1300/j160v01n01_07 degenhardt, louisa, et al. 2010. “evaluating the drug use ‘gateway’ theory using cross-national data: consistency and associations of the order of initiation of drug use among participants in the who world mental health surveys.” drug and alcohol dependence 108(1-2), 84-97. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2009.12.001 diclemente, carlo c. 2013. “paths through addiction and recovery: the impact of spirituality and religion.” substance use & misuse 48(12), 1260-1261. https://doi.org/10.3109/10826084.2013.808475 exline, julie j., crystal l. park, joshua m. smyth, and michael p. carey. 2011. “anger toward god: social-cognitive predictors, prevalence, and links with adjustment to bereavement and cancer.” journal of personality and social psychology 100(1), 129-148. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0021716 fetzer institute 1999. “multidimensional measurement of religiousness, spirituality for use in health research. a report of a national working group.” granfield, robert, and william cloud 1999. coming clean: overcoming addiction without treatment. new york university press. grim, brian j., and melissa e. grim. 2019. “belief, behavior, and belonging: how faith is indispensable in preventing and recovering from substance abuse.” journal of religion and health 58(5), 1713-1750. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943019-00876-w harris, kitty, sara smock jordan, and mckenzie wilkes. 2011. “relapse resilience: a process model of addiction and recovery.” journal of family psychotherapy 22, 265-274. https://doi.org/10.1080/08975353.2011.602622 herman-stahl, mindy a., christopher p. krebs, larry a. kroutil, and david c. heller. 2007. “risk and protective factors for methamphetamine use and nonmedical use of prescription stimulants among young adults aged 18 to 25.” addictive behaviors 32(5), 1003-1015. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.addbeh.2006.07.010 https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.books.9780890425787 https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.books.9780890425787 https://doi.org/10.1300/j160v01n01_07 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2009.12.001 https://doi.org/10.3109/10826084.2013.808475 https://doi.org/10.1037/a0021716 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-019-00876-w https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-019-00876-w https://doi.org/10.1080/08975353.2011.602622 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.addbeh.2006.07.010 christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(1), summer 2024 paltzer, jonker, reinemann, and benfer, a pilot study of an integrated faith-based recovery … 33 jones-sanpei, hinckley a., and richard j. nance. 2021. “financial capability in addiction research and clinical practice.” substance use & misuse 56(2), 214-223. https://doi.org/10.1080/10826084.2020.1853776 kiluk, brian d., jessica a. dreifuss, roger d. weiss, jon morgenstern, and kathleen m. carroll. 2013. “the short inventory of problems revised (sipr): psychometric properties within a large, diverse sample of substance use disorder treatment seekers.” psychology of addictive behaviors 27(1), 307-314. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0028445 koenig, harold, dana king, and verna benner carson. 2012. handbook of religion and health. (2nd ed.). oxford university press. moscati, arden, and briana mezuk. 2014. “losing faith and finding religion: religiosity over the life course and substance use and abuse.” drug and alcohol dependence 136, 127-134. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2013.12.018 national institutes of health, https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/recovery. accessed july 2, 2024. palamar, joseph j., matthew v. kiang, and perry n. halkitis. 2014. “religiosity and exposure to users in explaining illicit drug use among emerging adults.” journal of religion and health 53(3), 658-674. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-0129660-3 paloutzian, raymond f., and craig w. ellison. 1982. “loneliness, spiritual well-being and the quality of life.” in loneliness: a sourcebook of current theory, research, and therapy, edited by letitia anne peplau and daniel perlman, 224-236. john wiley and sons. pargament, kenneth., margaret feuille, and donna burdzy. 2011. “the brief rcope: current psychometric status of a short measure of religious coping.” religions 2(1), 51-76. president’s advisory council on financial capability: final report. 2013. https://www.nefe.org/_images/partnerships/pacfc %20final%20report%20feb%2019%202013.pdf jason paltzer is the executive director of the meros center. he has experience in public health and missions. dr. paltzer is a visiting professor at wisconsin lutheran college and scholar at the institute for studies of religion at baylor university. author email: jason@meroscenter.org. jason jonker is the director of resilient recovery ministries. he has extensive experience implementing evidence-based programs for suds and formerly oversaw the daily clinical operations of six mental health clinics as a regional clinical director for a nonprofit agency. author email: resilient@crosswalkphoenix.com. anna reinemann. msw teaches in the meros community health ministry certificate program. she advises students around the globe in the use of community engagement tools in church and community settings. her background is in crosscultural ministry, project management, and training. author email: anna.r.reinemann@gmail.com. jessica benfer is a research scientist/grant writer at the meros center. her background is in statistics, public health, and health services research and policy. she is working to build a research program in dementia care at the meros center. author email: jessica@meroscenter.org. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0028445 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2013.12.018 https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/recovery https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-012-9660-3 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-012-9660-3 https://www.nefe.org/_images/partnerships/pacfc%20final%20report%20feb%2019%202013.pdf https://www.nefe.org/_images/partnerships/pacfc%20final%20report%20feb%2019%202013.pdf mailto:jason@meroscenter.org mailto:resilient@crosswalkphoenix.com mailto:anna.r.reinemann@gmail.com mailto:jessica@meroscenter.org christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(2), winter 2024 bronkema, et al., further discussion on tough questions about transformational development 146 further discussion on tough questions about transformational development moderated by david bronkema, with contributions from ravi jayakaran, philip powell, katie toop, and richard slimbach. on june 27, 2023, the accord research alliance faculty group organized a webinar to provide a space for discussion on richard slimbach’s article “asking tough questions about transformational development,” published in this journal in the summer of 2023 (slimbach 2023). the webinar was moderated by david bronkema, co-editor of the journal, and started with remarks by three main discussants: ravi jayakaran (president of medical ambassadors international) who tackled slimbach’s questions around faith and development; philip powell (co-director of the justice conference, uk, and also theology and network engagement manager with tearfund, uk) who responded to questions involving faith and political economy; and katie toop (senior director of transformational development with world concern), who addressed the questions of faith and field partnerships. these three responses, published separately in this issue of the journal along with slimbach’s comments on them, were followed by a moderated discussion between the author and the three respondents, which is reproduced below in a lightly edited version. the specific and detailed questions posed by richard slimbach are found in the original article, and the full recording of the webinar can be found at https://vimeo.com/844345288/e970fe8826?share=copy. david bronkema a question for philip: it seems that one undercurrent in rich’s article is that christian development ngos engaged in relief, development, and advocacy should in some way be wrestling with the degree to which they are complicit with capitalism, militarism, and also ecocide or environmental problems like climate change. so, phillip, since you addressed the structural aspects in your response, what do you think the role of ngos should be in tackling this issue of whether they are or are not complicit in this? are they facilitating the perpetuation of these structures and systems rich has mentioned? to what degree should ngos be self-reflective in terms of what rich has argued? philip powell i guess the answer would be “yes” to your question. it is working out the details of if that selfreflection happens, where do we go with it? what are your ways to measure that you're making some progress to do things differently? so, for example, if you say you care about the destruction of the planet and you want to do something about it, are you avoiding air travel? there are some small steps we can take. but the bigger question is about systems and it is hard to generalize about capitalism, because the more you study the phenomenon, you realize there is more than one kind of capitalism in the world. there are different ways in which capitalism is being done in china and the scandinavian countries and the united states. therefore, what i'm expecting of christian ngos is both to be self-consciously critical and reflective, but also to avoid thinking that we’ve solved the problem when we promote a muhammad yunus model of free enterprise in places like bangladesh. ultimately, gains at the community level are going to have to be worked out in relation to all the meta stuff that is going on. inequality in the world has increased dramatically. until we deal with such meta questions of structural injustice and how it eats into the small gains we make at the local level, i don't see how ngos can simply say we are happy distributing clean water in plastic bottles when we have not dealt with the fact that the wells have been polluted in the first place. david bronkema katie, i wonder if you could respond to what philip just said. you spoke today about partnerships at the local level. obviously, there are dire needs there, 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 bronkema, et al., further discussion on tough questions about transformational development 147 survival needs, for relief, but also in development. do you think there is time for ngos to be self-consciously critical and reflective? should time be made? katie toop this is indeed a great question. we were just engaging in conversation with our teams in bangladesh and looking at our principles, and so many of the things that oppose our principles are time and time restrictions. we are so driven by the tyranny of the urgent. should we be considering this? absolutely. will we? this is another question. i think we can look at the history of the work in development as an example, and if we take an entirely different topic and think about the importance of community ownership, well, we have known about that for decades. but has that shaped the way that we approach community engagement? not in a lot of ways. in some places, yes. and in small pockets, yes. is there time and space? there is the time and the space that we make for it. i should say that when we consider issues like climate impact, this is what communities themselves are crying out for. they are feeling the weight of this, and it what comes up all the time. we recently had an external evaluation and, again, this is what comes up from communities, saying “we don't know what to do about extreme climate issues and we don't have an answer. this is what we need.” if we can be genuinely responsive to that and recognize that we are called to serve those who are disproportionately feeling the effects of this, then yes, but we have to choose to make those shifts, and we have to choose to ask those potentially costly questions and be willing to change the way that we do things and ask ourselves if we are ready to do that. david bronkema ravi, what if communities are not identifying a gap that has to do with the political economy, with capitalism, or with militarism? how do we deal with that at the local level? is it our responsibility to impose those kinds of issues, or are those issues already there and we are just not recognizing them? ravi jayakaran first of all, the issue is that in terms of the size of organizations, christian organizations, even the mega organizations, do not have much influence in the global economy, and as christian ngos we still play a very, very diminished role in making global change. second, though, what is important is to look for what and where the points of conflict are for the people that we work with and those who support us. those specific conflicts for them are the relevant ones for our work. when an issue comes up, when a point of conflict comes up, it might be a purely local issue that needs addressing, but it might also be connected with something that calls for global change and for engagement in advocacy. that is when you look back to your supporters, and if advocacy in that area is going to cause them to feel conflicted or held back, then you need to reach a decision with them about whether it should be engaged or not. in other words, there are some situations where people talk about social justice, for example an issue of racial problems, that affects everyone. the question is how much would your supporters want you to be engaged in addressing that? because it would call for changes for them too. david bronkema to close this rich conversation, any highlights and takeaways that jumped out at each of you? ravi jayakaran it has been a great dialogue-starter for us to more succinctly address the sort of frameworks we use. it also calls for more dialogue on these issues among those of us who are engaged in this work. i am glad that you brought out some of those important questions, rich. we need to address them. for a long time, we have been engaged with simply doing what we are doing. like i said, sometimes what we are doing is so small compared to the larger global needs. and no one is questioning us in terms of our framework and what we are advocating. it is important for us to start looking at that, address it, and dialogue on it. so thank you. philip powell i would like to mention a couple of things. in my own mind, i am trying to make a distinction between the four broken relationships—god, others, self, and nature—but also talk about broken systems and how to deal with those. a big question is how to maintain institutions that sustain justice over time. to ravi’s point that you cannot bite the hand that feeds you, there are times when you have to choose to do something, but you need wisdom for that. years ago, tearfund decided to start talking publicly and with supporters about how climate change is affecting communities we are working with. supporters wanted to know why, if we were there to help communities in poverty, why were we jumping on the green bandwagon. but now, twenty years later, we have earned a role of leadership in making some difficult choices. the last thing i want to say is that christian and jewish christian development leaders can play a role in shifting norms. so even if diversity and inclusion at some point looks like window dressing, over the long term, there can be ways in which you see a substantive difference. i would also highly recommend a book that came out a couple of years ago called the enchantments of mammon: how capitalism became christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(2), winter 2024 bronkema, et al., further discussion on tough questions about transformational development 148 the religion of modernity by eugene mccarraher (2019). it is a long book, about 700 pages, but it helps one see the spiritual and enchantment dimensions of capitalism. i would love to talk about it more sometime. katie toop i love that there's a curiosity and openness to considering difficult questions. at the beginning of rich’s article, there is a quote that talks about loving questions. i appreciate and agree with that, especially because we are often afraid of questions. let us not be afraid of questions or of the dialogue. we also recognize in this dialogue that it takes courage to do something differently, to even talk about something differently. so choosing to move ahead in courage is important. yet as much as we dialogue around our questions, we must also be careful not to love our questions so much that we fail to listen for answers. there will not be one-size-fits-all solutions. but we need to remember there is a spirit who will guide us and a god who promises to give wisdom if we ask. as we ask questions of each other, we should also remain in a posture of humility before a god who has promised to give us wisdom. richard slimbach following up on what phillip mentioned, you can find a much shorter examination of political economy as a religious system in an early 2000 article by harvey cox, “the market as god.” very, very powerful. it shows how modern consumer capitalism provides an ultimate sense of meaning and purpose in people's lives, a path to fulfillment. it has its own rituals, sacraments, high priests, etc. a more forthright critique coming out of the relief and development community of this global system could help those on the ground. local churches and their leaders interpret their context both locally and extend it outwardly, nationally and globally, in ways that might lend insight to their wellbeing initiatives. references cox, harvey. 1999. “the market as god.” atlantic monthly 283 (3): 18–23. mccarraher, eugene. 2019. the enchantments of mammon: how capitalism became the religion of modernity. cambridge, massachusetts: the belknap press of harvard university press. christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(2), winter 2024 kurlberg et al., further discussion on decolonization 131 further discussion on decolonization moderated by nina kurlberg, with contributions from bikita mahdi, thobes ncube, liz muir, rebecca shah, alfred sebahane, clark buys, and emma smith cain. on january 17, 2024, the accord research alliance faculty group organized a webinar to provide a space for discussion on the christian relief, development, and advocacy (crda) journal’s special issue on decolonization published a few months before in november 2023. the webinar was moderated by nina kurlberg, one of two co-editors of the special issue, and started with remarks by two main discussants, mafer madriz, director of compassion international’s partnership efforts focused on mobilizing and strengthening the capacity of local church partners, and charlotte bray, currently studying anti-racism and power in international development from a catholic theological perspective at the lincoln theological institute at manchester university. these two responses were followed by a discussion that included insights from the authors of four of the journal articles: bikita mahdi and thobekile ncube, rebecca supriya shaw, clark buys, and emma smith cain. this third response is a collation of these insights, along with additional brief comments from liz muir and alfred sebahene. the full recording of the webinar is found at https://vimeo.com/903813593?share=copy, and further online discussion on the topic can be accessed at https://groups.google.com/g/ara-faculty-group-forum. the special issue of the journal with all the articles is located at https://crdajournal.org/index.php/crda/issue/view/69. bikita mahdi we all know, from the outset, that we can't undo in a few years what has taken centuries to ingrain. we are grateful that the build up to tearfund's jubilee year in 2018 allowed us to pause as an organization to lay the foundation for a spiritual shift to happen, a deliberate path towards healing by rebalancing power and restoring relationships. we must apply to ourselves the same underlying theology of restoration of broken relationships that we believe can help end poverty and injustice. but the path is not always easy. obviously, we were operating in a funding environment that's more restricted than ever. protecting investment in translation budgets, for example, investment in relationships built on allyship and friendship and not money, and building equity, diversity, and inclusion considerations into all our processes, resources, and tools. these all take effort, resources, and energy. in an era of shrinking, unrestricted budgets, these things can be very hard and present us with some real practical considerations and obstacles. thobes ncube i will add one thing. there is the financial cost, but there is also the emotional toil that happens when you go on this journey, because there is a lot of letting go of ways of thinking, there is a lot of giving up power, there is a lot of receiving power. and it can be quite costly. sometimes that can be a barrier because it is too much. and then there can be a temptation to put a pause on it when it gets to be too much, whether it is on the wellbeing of staff or the financial cost that comes with it. in spite of all this, the journey is worth it. liz muir in relation to the cost, the question organizations must really ask themselves is whether they are prepared for the cost. one, in terms of power; two, in terms of budget. and if they are not, they must think about the cost to the people who suffer if we do not decolonize. there are two different angles we must face when thinking about cost, because there is a great cost to humans, to our workforces, to individuals when we do https://vimeo.com/903813593?share=copy https://groups.google.com/g/ara-faculty-group-forum https://crdajournal.org/index.php/crda/issue/view/69 christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(2), winter 2024 kurlberg et al., further discussion on decolonization 132 not do this well. if we are going to say that we are going to do it, we really must back it, because if we do not it becomes a burden to people, which impacts well-being and performance, among other things. moderator nina kurlberg then asked author rebecca supriya shah about her focus on data collection, especially as it relates to monitoring and evaluation, which rebecca addresses in her contribution. are standard evaluation methods appropriate in a decolonized world, or should christian organizations change how they approach data, data gathering, and program evaluation? rebecca shah to answer that question is very difficult. so let me do what most self-seeking authors do and point you to my paper to read it. in the meantime, i just want to raise a couple of points. the first way in which christian organizations can effectively seek to decolonize, and might i even say “dewesternize,” their practices is to avoid predatory extractive practices of data collection and abstract digitized quantification. how do they do that? as i mention in my paper, it is by seeking informed consent. you may say, of course, everyone seeks informed consent, but many christian organizations, unlike universities that conduct research, aren’t governed by the kind of internal review boards (irbs) that i was governed by when i do research, where they ask you many questions about the type of research you are doing. so seeking informed consent is important. the second one, and this is where i think the rubber hits the road, is for christian organizations to avoid paternalistic framing of their effort because they are the only ones who know best and because they happen to have the resources and skills to engage in the kind of data collection and analysis required. of course, the answer always is “but we will do capacity building.” that's how they “fix” the global south. capacity building is all well and good. there are problems with it, but my issue here is that much of the power imbalance lies in the structural issues and inequities inherent in grant making. if you were to ever apply for a grant in the u.s., at the department of health and human services for religious freedom, to the uk’s foreign, commonwealth & development office (fcdo), the john templeton foundation, or the templeton religion trust, as i have done on numerous occasions, you would discover that it is an onerous process. you need to have experts. there are pages and pages and pages one fills out. do local agencies and independent local actors have these opportunities? most do not. so this becomes a monopoly of large-scale christian organizations like world vision and tearfund, and the whole way of understanding how grants are given, how grants are constructed, is itself a structural imbalance and a power issue. finally, the methods used are very important, because the kinds of methods that create distance, the categories used, for example that they are “oppressed,” or “she was abused,” a “victim,” these all distance the data-gatherer from the person whose data is being collected. the second way the methods are problematic is that they have become so large-scale and digital that they are impersonal, and people really don't have a chance to provide their own voice and their own perspective. i suggest an alternative to such methods. i have used large-scale methods and i have worked on monitoring and evaluation, and i do not for a moment think this is an easy thing. forgive me if i have conveyed this. finally, and this is a deep problem, large-scale christian organizations, northern christian organizations, and their counterparts in the global south have discussions that disparage certain aspects of culture, reinforce western cultural imperialism, and sustain a false narrative about the purity of western christian culture. i did a large-scale evaluation for a large christian organization based here in the united states, which was looking at how biblical principles can foster human flourishing. and one of the things to talk about was witchcraft in africa; a quick aside from the fact that i am not for one moment advocating witchcraft and terrible things in indigenous cultural practices that need to be avoided. but this organization went and started discussing the baobab tree and how it was evil and how people ought to stop protecting it, because if they did, they would flourish. this is a problem, because these discussions are cultural, and they are often pejorative. one has to do it, these organizations and people tell me, because their donors demand it. but to dewesternize and decolonize research, christian organizations should not start from a default posture of hostility or skepticism towards traditional culture, and particularly cultural practices. they should recognize that, more often than not, there is value in protecting and preserving cultural values and traditions such as those aspects that support marriage, marital stability, family life, and domestic harmony. alfred sebahene alfred sebahene speaking from tanzania. i'm not actually responding to the question, but i want to make a small contribution that might help us think more broadly when we talk about decolonization. my worry is that in most of the writings we come across today, including some of the writings we ourselves have done, the agenda on decolonization is mainly based on theories, arguments, history, a bit of practice, and trying to see whether we can have good practice. and we are christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(2), winter 2024 kurlberg et al., further discussion on decolonization 133 missing out, because i don't see much on the role of the gospel in our discussions. if you come to talk about decolonization in the global south, in particular in my area of east africa, you need to mention what the bible says, and how we respond to the power of the gospel as we speak about decolonization. i challenge us to think about this. finally, it is a bit trickier when we keep talking about global south whenever we talk about decolonization. decolonization is not about global south and global north. it has to do with the transformation by the power of the gospel, and on both sides, involving all practitioners. if people are transformed, then they would know what to do with the grants. the need to think about the power of the gospel is very, very important. moderator nina kurlberg took this opportunity to focus again on the theological, especially the theologies that underpin and motivate christian organizations. clark buys of tearfund and maria andrade wrote an article for the special issue that explained the theological research process tearfund engaged in on environmental and economic sustainability. she asked clark why they believe christian organizations must decolonize their theology, and why such decolonial theologies are relevant for christian ngos. clark buys to some it might sound quite abstract to talk about theologies of christian ngos. does it really matter thinking about such abstract concepts? in fact, yes, there are profound and significant implications for our impact both on people and on planet. our case study contribution explores the research methodology of some of our theological research around economic and environmental sustainability and of our research consultations in various contexts around the world. the research kept unearthing a recurring issue we were faced with, which is the issue of dominion theology. this perspective is rooted in an interpretation of genesis 1 that proposes that christians are not only sort of invited, but also obligated and responsible in some sense, to dominate and control all of creation in a selfseeking way. of course, this is incredibly concerning, and the application of this theology has been devastating in all sorts of ways. but there is for me an unexpected sort of encouragement and reminder here. dominion theology serves as a reminder of the tangible connection between theology, action, and the resulting impact on the world. theology is not merely an intellectual exercise. it carries the potential to shape and influence our actions, which in turn shape the world. my first point, then, is that theology matters for christian ngos because of the way theology concretely impacts people and planet. second, it is important to scrutinize the voices that shape our theology. as has been said in different ways already, too often, and in many contexts, the voices influencing our theology so disproportionately represent the global north, people who are white, english-speaking people, often men. this imbalance in representation perpetuates the biases within our theology, which then impact the actions that stem from it. for tearfund, a uk-based ngo serving economically impoverished communities in the global south, this has become a critical concern. our fundraising primarily occurs in the uk, and it is essential that our theology is not only inclusive, but also reflective of the voices of the economically marginalized. one of the great gifts to the world from latin american liberation theology is the way it underscores the necessity of including the voices of the marginalized, of the economically impoverished, of the “poor” in shaping our theologies, and at times lies in intentionally decolonizing theology and ensuring that the voices we elevate are diverse, thus breaking away from historical biases that have shaped our theologies. lastly, we must acknowledge the historical legacy of colonialism, a legacy in which colonial christianity has sadly played a significant part, as charlotte mentioned earlier. crafting theology within the historical context demands recognition and accountability. decolonizing our theology is not just about inclusivity, as important as that is. it is about seeking as best we can to move towards actively dismantling the power and wealth inequalities that colonial theologies have entrenched and created around the world. so, three quick points to try and answer the question. first, it is important because theology impacts action, which has an impact on people and planet. second, decolonizing our theology needs to include the hard work to further diversify the voices that shape our theology, not least of which are the voices of the economically poor. and third, we are working not in the context of a historic vacuum, but within the historical legacy of colonialism, which means we must actively seek to dismantle the systems of power and wealth inequality established through colonialism. i hope those quick thoughts are helpful and stimulating. to close the webinar, the moderator asked emma smith cain, who co-wrote a contribution with alan epp weaver on the mennonite central committee's experience of decolonizing aid, to review key practical tools or approaches organizations can turn to in order to address decolonization. emma smith cain in terms of what we find at mcc to be practical tools or approaches, mcc functions primarily as a christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(2), winter 2024 kurlberg et al., further discussion on decolonization 134 funding agency. we accompany our partners in long, long, long-term relationships in 45-plus countries globally. the most important aspect of this relationship is the focus on accompaniment and mutual transformation. you will see that come out clearly in the article about mcc and anadesa, one of the partners in guatemala that mafer talked about; you will see this practice of accompaniment, but also the focus on mutual transformation come out quite clearly in that article. one thing that alain epp weaver and i highlighted is just the tension related to evidencing our global impact. i'm not going to talk about the challenges of that in the formal part of this webinar, but that is one of the biggest challenges we face. there are practical ways that mcc has been able to address that. some of you might be involved in similar conversations happening in more secular spaces like interaction. about five or six years ago, interaction commissioned a report that showed that evidencing global impact is highly problematic on one end and nearly impossible on the other end. at mcc we have really resisted the urge to try to aggregate global impact in terms of outcome indicators, because when we try to say, okay, here is the percent decrease in global hunger directly attributed to the work of mcc and its partners, that forces us to dictate to our partners the indicators they must use. i think rebecca would also agree with us that this devolves into an extractive process of gathering data in the global south for the benefit of us in the global north, and particularly for funding agencies like usaid, or charity-rating agencies, like charity navigator here in the us or charity intelligence in canada. ultimately, what does that show? at mcc, we really try to value the relationships with our partners over logframe data. part of that for us is making sure that even though we do have standardized tools, these tools are flexible. if a partner says that this logframe tool does not work for them and they do not want to use it, that is totally fine. we can adapt our practices to share the evaluation data plans in a format that works for that partner. something inspiring and innovative i saw recently with our zimbabwe program, is a partner who said, “you know, writing these reports semi-annually is such a drain on our time and is not how we normally convey the results of our work.” instead, they submitted a video report where they shared verbally the types of changes they had seen in their communities. being open and flexible to using reporting formats, logframe tools, and planning tools that really fit with the partner's priorities is important to us at mcc, while simultaneously resisting that urge and that pressure to demonstrate global evidence of impact and instead relying on qualitative case studies to drill down deep into what that work looks like globally. clark buys is a theology development officer at tearfund. clark leads tearfund's global young theologian. emma smith cain is learning & evaluation coordinator at mennonite central committee in akron, pennsylvania, united states. smith cain is also a 2023-2024 accord fellow. nina kurlberg is postdoctoral research associate in theological education at the university of durham, uk. she served as guest editor for the journal’s special issue on decolonisation. bikita mahdi is a business analyst and horizon scanner in tearfund's strategy & impact team working on a wide range of corporate projects. liz muir is head of equality, diversity, and inclusion at tearfund, with responsibility for embedding effective change management and inclusion across the organization globally. liz is an experienced trustee with experience across the public, education, and charity sectors. thobekile ncube is an organisation development manager at tearfund zimbabwe. alfred sebahene is senior priest and canon theologian in the anglican church of tanzania. he serves as head of the department of theology and religious studies at st john’s university of tanzania in dodoma, where he also coordinates the unit for the study of corruption. rebecca supriya shah is special advisor to the president for global initiatives at the university of dallas, and principal investigator for the religion and economic empowerment project (reep). based in bangalore, india, and washington, dc, shah consults with international organizations, and governments on development policy and practice. author emails: clark buys: clarkbuys@gmail.com emma smith cain: emmasmithcain@mcc.org nina kurlberg: nina.kurlberg@durham.ac.uk alfred sebahene: asebahene@sjut.ac.tz rebecca sjupriya shah: rshah2@udallas.edu mailto:clarkbuys@gmail.com mailto:emmasmithcain@mcc.org mailto:nina.kurlberg@durham.ac.uk mailto:asebahene@sjut.ac.tz mailto:rshah2@udallas.edu christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(1), summer 2022 rowe, response to bueno 1 reflections of a practitioner on david bueno’s “gangs and development: the difficulties of transformational development in gangcontrolled communities in el salvador” barbara rowe as a practitioner of christian-based transformational development, i am highly impressed by the quality of david bueno’s article, as well as his unique insights and conclusions (bueno 2022). he demonstrates a profound understanding of the history and current situation of el salvador, the growth and development of the gang situation, and the challenges faced by the government, international aid organizations, and local churches in bringing community development to marginalized populations there. i served as a missionary in el salvador for a total fifteen years, first for seven years during and after the civil war in the 1990s, and then again for eight years from 2012–2020. my experiences have brought me to believe that the way to foster transformational development, which, as bueno points out, “addresses the whole of human life: material, social, psychological, and spiritual” (2022, 42), is three-fold. first, we must strike at the root of the problem: human sin. this means we must begin with a focus on individuals, bringing them to faith in and commitment to jesus christ, which will result in a transformation of their character and lifestyle, and likely bring a change in the life of their families as well. second, group efforts are also key to transformational development. this is evident in the often-overlooked efforts of churches to bring about change in their own communities: providing food, clothing and economic assistance to needy families and individuals, offering training programs aimed at teaching job skills, teaching family values, providing individual and family counseling, and providing a place where people in the community can develop relationships. third, group efforts on a larger scale are also needed to support and encourage individual and group efforts at the community level. still, in my view, these large-scale efforts aimed at social justice are not effective for long-term transformational development without the first two. in the reflections that follow, i share examples from my work in gang-controlled areas that have led me to these conclusions, focusing on the first two. i start with a bit of background. background in the 1990s, i worked with a small community of displaced families located on both sides of the railroad track in san martín, the same community bueno writes about. at that time, there was no gang presence, but we began to hear whispers about local gangs, and the word “mara” (spanish word for gang) started coming up in conversations. i was working with christ for the city international, and we were supporting a church plant while at the same time promoting transformational community development through economic projects, literacy, and health initiatives. the community assisted in the building of a place of worship, which also served as a location for the programs. by the time i returned to serve again in el salvador, the gang phenomenon had taken hold and the country was firmly in its grip. practically every inch of territory in the country had been divided up by gangs defending their turf. i lived in a lower middle-class neighborhood where this was evident by the presence of “sentries,” as the article notes, more commonly known as “lookouts.” these gang members observed all comings and goings, as well as who came by to visit. i could not receive certain people in my home, particularly those from areas controlled by rival gangs. when my internet service failed, the company refused to come to the neighborhood to repair it (though they wanted to continue to bill me for the service). though i did not seek out contact with the gang, certain situations required it and at times i was approached by and even threatened by gang members. one example occurred when i had to approach a gang leader to gain permission to bring in a mission team that would build a house for a member of the community. https://cfci.org/ https://cfci.org/ christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(1), summer 2022 rowe, response to bueno 2 when travelling with visiting missionaries or local christians into or through some communities, i informed the gang members in advance to avoid trouble. the most difficult encounter i had with the local gang was the night i found them beating my vehicle with baseball bats. they were angry with the person who had borrowed the vehicle. the police refused to come, and so with much prayer and reliance on the holy spirit, i was able to slowly approach the car, get in and drive away as they retreated into the darkness. it is important to remember, as david bueno shares, that el salvador is a small, densely populated country with a history of military rule and dictatorships. the country is now a fledgling democracy after the signing of the peace accords that ended the country’s 12-year-long civil war. the country emerged as a functioning democracy, but struggles with problems of political corruption and the long-standing power of the wealthy elite. some elites are even closely tied to the gang leadership in the country in order to further their political and personal ambitions (ávalos 2018, and fiscalía de el salvador… 2021”), and one of the greatest challenges faced by the society is the lack of a properly functioning justice system. examples from work my organization, christ for the city international, is a mission agency with transformational development “in our dna.” our vision is to have “no place without a witness, no church without vision, and no person without hope.” our vision seeks to transform individuals and provide local churches with support, which will in the end bring about transformation of the neighborhoods and cities in which they are located. leadership is cultivated and developed at the local level, allowing those individuals to drive the processes and decisions for change at the community level. we also focus on supporting local individual christians in mission by recruiting them as missionaries to work in their own (and surrounding) communities, to the point that over 90% of our total work force is made up of christians not of north american origin. my main work in el salvador was dedicated to the faro project, an effort to assist local christian churches in opening youth centers where pre-teens and teens could come to learn vocational skills, enjoy fun activities and sports, and learn about the christian faith. we hoped to bring about personal and community transformation by bringing youth into a personal relationship with jesus christ and a commitment to serve and obey his commands, rather than being sucked into the gang world that permeates their environment. this program continues to be active in the country, and we have achieved moderate success in some locations. at the individual level two examples stand out to me that illustrate the importance of work at the individual level. both focus on the root problem of human sin. first, similar to the experience related in bueno’s article by the pastor of the after-school program, we had a young man who was about to join a gang after becoming disheartened and cynical about his life and possibilities for the future. he lives in one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in san salvador and was living with his grandmother after being abandoned by both parents. after introducing him to the youth center and spending some 18 months taking him to and from the activities and classes, he dedicated his life to christ and is now serving in the program as a coordinator. in analyzing what brought this complete turnaround in this young man’s life, it is clear to me that by teaching him the truth about who god is, and who god created him to be, we were able to transform his worldview and provide a glimpse of a brighter future. in our programs he discovered he has gifts for creating beautiful art and learning languages. he discovered what it felt like to be loved for who he is, which reminded me of the tenuous and unstable environment gang members live in, where they may be betrayed or punished at any moment, and where struggles for power keep them in constant fear. he experienced true joy in having fun in a safe environment where he could relax and be himself. in short, being with us was much more “fun” than being with his gang friends. second, in addition to the faro program, i worked directly with gang members from ms-13 and 18th street gangs in the salvadoran prison system, both adults and juveniles. in my work inside the salvadoran prison system prior to 2019, i had the privilege of witnessing the power of the holy spirit at work as young men turned their lives over to jesus christ and began to walk the long walk of faith through discipleship. these young men today continue to practice their newfound faith, both within the prison and once they are released. they share the joy that they have in living lives free of criminal activity; lives dedicated instead to sharing about jesus christ with others and working for positive change in their community. but there were also some who had been “evangelized” by local churches, only to fall away and return to gang life. that this happens shows how deep the evil of gang life goes, and how important it is for christians to continue the work god calls us to. it also reinforced for me how the focus areas in our work, both in faro and the prison ministry on adequately discipling young men, needed us to recognize that it takes time and a complete transformation of worldview christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(1), summer 2022 rowe, response to bueno 3 in order to understand fully what it means to be a follower of jesus christ. at the group level at a group level, we were careful in our christian youth centers to give control and responsibility to the local church, providing mostly guidance and training, with a minimal number of resources to encourage them along. our faro program does not provide large amounts of resources to churches wanting to start christian youth centers. rather, we walk alongside them, providing training and a minimal amount of funds and human resources once churches demonstrate their commitment to their youth center program. one of the requisites was a core group of christian youth willing to participate in the program and use it to reach their non-christian friends with the gospel, thereby assisting their friends to discover their identity in christ. church members were encouraged to volunteer to assist in reaching the youth in their neighborhoods, thereby promoting transformational change. it is well-documented by psychologists and social sciences that youth in their pre-teens and teens experience a particularly vulnerable time in their lives. they are exploring their own identities and how they fit in the world as they pull away from home life to enter into society on their own. this is a reality that gang leadership takes advantage of, recruiting boys as young as 8-10 years of age. knowing that youth are seeking a group (other than family) to belong to, we developed a model where the christian youth from the sponsoring church were permitted to determine certain aspects of the program such as choosing a name for the center, developing their own logo, and even determining their activities at the center. they were encouraged to invite friends and acquaintances to participate in these activities, regardless of religious background and/or gang affiliation. our goal was to lead the youth toward a commitment to jesus christ and prevent them from joining gangs, all the more important because once in, it is very difficult (but not impossible) for anyone to leave the gang. models that rely on and give most of the decisionmaking power and responsibility to the local church are, i believe, a more effective way of working toward transformational community development than models that are brought in by outside agencies with decisions made primarily by outsiders. but this kind of grassroots development requires a change in past program development standards and assessment techniques, as bueno notes. current programs measure outcomes using relatively short-term time frames, whereas giving more control and responsibility to local communities means that results will require more time, patience, and collaboration with the community as it struggles to find resources and answers to local problems. this also means that the organization assisting the community must allow the community to make mistakes, and even fail in their efforts to bring about lasting transformation. during my years with the faro project, a number of youth centers were opened and then had to be closed due to lack of understanding or commitment on the part of the local church. in one case, there was an attempt by a corrupt pastor to use the program for his own ends. when that happened, my organization felt forced to cease collaboration with the program, sadly to the detriment of the youth living in that community. there were other challenges as well. it is hard to find sufficient volunteers and even staff for programs in poor communities where every able adult is working to earn income for their families. in gang-entangled communities it is particularly difficult when bringing people from outside the community is so dangerous. keeping christian youth involved at one of our centers was likewise challenging due to the constant migration of youth to the united states, where, for their own safety, parents would send them to live with other family members. bueno is certainly correct in his assessment that small churches in poor communities are unable to achieve self-sustainability without outside support, either from national church bodies or international organizations. yet it is vital that outside organizations avoid providing excess amounts of resources and making decisions unilaterally in order to safeguard against the disempowerment of communities and individuals interested in working for transformational change. conclusion in my view, christians have the key to lasting transformational development in individuals and communities. bueno rightly notes that in gangentangled communities, change seems improbable, and a positive view of the future is limited. genuine community transformational development takes years to achieve, sometime generations. although local churches can be leaders in the effort to bring change in these communities, they cannot act alone. they need the support of national and international institutions to provide resources and training that otherwise would not be available to them. work must be done to engage people and institutions from all classes of salvadoran life, to foster a greater understanding of the value of raising up these communities for the benefit of the entire society. finally, we cannot rule out the work of the holy spirit, who works in the hearts and minds of christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(1), summer 2022 rowe, response to bueno 4 individuals with the life-changing message of the gospel! as christians working for transformational change in these gang-entangled communities, let us remember the words of the parable jesus shared in matthew 13:44, “the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.” when we share that treasure with others, and they receive it, their lives are transformed, and they begin to experience the joy and peace of being a member of the kingdom of god. references ávalos, héctor silva. 2018. “el salvador’s gangs influence local politics in the capital: report.” insight crime, july 9, 2018. https://insightcrime.org/news/analysis/el-salvadorgangs-influence-local-politics-capital-report. bueno, david. (2022). “gangs and development: the difficulties of transformational development in gang-controlled communities in el salvador.” christian relief, development, and advocacy 3(2):37-50. “fiscalía de el salvador presenta pruebas de políticos ligados a pandillas.” 2021. la prensa gráfica, june 24, 2021. https://www.dw.com/es/fiscal%c3%adade-el-salvador-presenta-pruebas-depol%c3%adticos-ligados-a-pandillas/a-58039430 barbara rowe is the director of international personnel for christ for the city international. she received a master’s degree in public health and nutrition from loma linda university, and did her early work based on the theories of brazilian educator, paulo freire. author email: barbararowe@cfci.org https://insightcrime.org/news/analysis/el-salvador-gangs-influence-local-politics-capital-report https://insightcrime.org/news/analysis/el-salvador-gangs-influence-local-politics-capital-report about:blank about:blank christian relief, development, and advocacy 3(1), summer 2021 purvis, do savings groups work? six years of evidence from the drc 1 do savings groups work? six years of evidence from the drc courtney purvis using a unique model for community development called the church empowerment zone, world relief partners with the local church in the democratic republic of the congo to implement a high impact, sustainable economic development program called savings for life. an innovative longitudinal data collection tool brings data from six years of program implementation and reveals continued positive financial growth for beneficiaries, even after program staff left the area. world relief collected 673 datasets from 196 savings groups to learn how savings groups evolve and grow over time; members average over 350% increase in savings after six years while group sizes remain at maximum membership. the data also reveal the program’s positive outcomes on future savings groups: later-joining members saved nearly three times as much in their first year as early savings groups had in their first year. overview world relief, a christian relief and development organization operating in nine countries internationally, uses a unique implementation model, called the church empowerment zone, to create sustainable programing that grows in positive outcomes over time. one such program, dedicated to promoting village saving and enterprise, is called savings for life (sfl). using the savings for life methodology, world relief has trained over 400,000 members in eleven different countries to save together, and to give and repay loans from group savings. for purposes of monitoring and assessment, world relief utilizes a technological longitudinal data collection system called text-it alongside the sfl program in the democratic republic of the congo. analysis of text-it data reveals insights on the economic outcomes of the sfl program in the lives of savings group members. key findings are: 1. there is high demand for sfl, evidenced by nearly 100% of groups maintaining maximum membership. 2. members’ savings increase over time; the most mature groups’ savings increased more than 350% over six years. 3. newer savings groups increase the share value, the unit of weekly savings, over 80% more than what older savings groups used in previous years during the same cycle. 4. the covid-19 pandemic has had a limited negative impact on sfl members’ ability to save. 70% of savings groups that shared out after saving during the pandemic distributed more per member than before covid-19. 5. there is over a 2600% return on donors’ investment after eight savings group cycles. the paper begins by providing the context for how world relief implements technical programs, using the church empowerment zone as an operating model. second, the paper discusses world relief’s community-managed savings group program and the longitudinal data collection tool world relief used from 2016 to 2021 to gather economic data on its savings groups in the drc. third, the paper presents and explains five key findings from savings program implementation. finally, the paper notes some research gaps and suggests ideas for further research. introduction and program implementation context influenced by the early work of the lausanne movement and the 2001 micah declaration on integral mission, world relief believes in integral mission, the practical demonstration of the gospel that bears social consequences alongside the verbal proclamation of the gospel (lausanne movement 2010; micah network 2001; stott 1974). moreover, world relief believes that the local church must be at the center of development christian relief, development, and advocacy 3(1), summer 2021 purvis, do savings groups work? six years of evidence from the drc 2 work in order to produce lasting change. 1 therefore, in its basic operating model, world relief walks alongside local churches in geographic areas called church empowerment zones (cez) to implement technical programs, such as child development, health and nutrition, peace and reconciliation, and economic development. in the cez, world relief follows a multiyear process to empower networks of local churches, training key leaders and volunteers in the implementation of technical programs. when the time is right, world relief hands responsibility for continuation of the programs over to the local church. the church empowerment zone process has four implementation phases. in the first phase, mobilization, world relief works to build a network of local protestant and catholic churches. living in the same geographic area is often not enough to bring churches or church leaders together. instead, churches may feel like they cannot work together sometimes like they are in competition with each other. through a long process of sensitization, identification, and introduction, local churches come to know each other in new ways and learn to behave more like teammates than competitors. world relief also helps group local churches together in meaningful geographic areas, calling each group a church network. each church network elects leaders, called the church network committee (cnc) to represent 15-40 churches in their geographic area. during this first introductory phase, the goal is to bring churches together so they can coordinate their work in a variety of key community ministries. in the second phase, world relief conducts a needs assessment and baseline survey to understand the starting point of need in the community. after this, world relief aims to transform mindsets, especially around the ideas of empowerment and poverty alleviation. 2 in this phase, the goal is to help local church leaders take a hard look at the capacities and assets they already have within the community along with the needs they would like to address. continuing to focus on the empowerment of churches, world relief challenges the network of churches to address one tangible need in their community using only their own resources. 3 world relief has seen churches from various denominations work together to repair roads, rebuild widows’ homes, and even construct a new church building for one of the denominations in the 1 world relief is not alone in this belief; the accord network, and its member organizations, affirm this in the “principles of excellence in integral mission,” which serves as guiding ideals for christian organizations operating in international development. https://accordnetwork.org/about/principles/ 2 gil odendaal’s book, standing with the vulnerable (2016) includes lessons like the ones world relief uses in the field, contextualized for a north american audience. 3 world relief adapted this concept of seed projects from disciple nations alliance and the global che network (2012) and bob moffitt’s “seeds and seed projects” (2007). community. as churches begin to see each other as teammates instead of competitors, they work together across denominational lines on common projects that benefit the whole community, not just the members of one church. in the third phase, world relief focuses on capacity development of church leaders and volunteers as they introduce technical programs to address community needs discovered in phase two. world relief field staff work alongside church leaders to select community-based volunteers to train in programs like child development, outreach groups for health and hygiene, agriculture, and savings groups. in this phase, world relief staff take an active role in program implementation, always keeping in mind the final objective of handing the program over to the local church. world relief’s goal in this third phase is to multiply outreach in the community by training committed church-based volunteers to serve the broader community. once technical programs develop and mature, world relief begins phase four: reflection, evaluation, and handover to the local church. by this point, teams of local volunteers have gained enough expertise in program implementation to carry on program growth with the support of church leaders. many programs create sustainability mechanisms, such as local program committees, which act as the program authority and provide leadership and ongoing training for other volunteers in the community. as world relief exits the community, local churches assume the responsibility of continuing valued technical programs as church ministries. the savings for life program in the church empowerment zone world relief applied this church empowerment zone model in 2015 in the rutshuru region in the eastern part of the democratic republic of the congo. prior to introducing technical programs, world relief networked churches together, conducted baseline surveys and needs assessments, provided envisioning seminars with church leaders and challenged local churches to take on a seed project in the kako region of rutshuru. in the kako cez, there are approximately 36,000 households with a total population of nearly 215,000; 89% of the total population lives under the about:blank christian relief, development, and advocacy 3(1), summer 2021 purvis, do savings groups work? six years of evidence from the drc 3 poverty line. world relief partnered with 107 churches and organized them into seven cncs that provide leadership for program activities in their geographic areas. in 2015, after six months of phase one and two work, the kako cez became ready to implement technical programs. bearing in mind the needs identified in phase two, church leaders decided one of the first issues they wanted to address was material poverty. world relief staff linked their request to the economic development program, savings for life (sfl). world relief developed the savings for life program out of its deep history of starting and operating microfinance institutions (mfis). around 2008, world relief intentionally refocused on partnering with the local church for community-based programming and identified mfis, largely operating in urban centers, as outside their target focus. instead, world relief redirected their economic development efforts towards community-based savings groups. at that time, the chalmers center4 was the thought leader for faithbased savings programming, while secular organizations were starting to follow the village savings and loan association (vsla) methodology, developed by care international 5 and popularized by hugh allen of vsl associates. 6 world relief piloted both the chalmers model and vsla in separate countries from 2008-2010. experience in the field found more cohesive, financially successful savings groups who used vsla, leading world relief to employ only vsla for future savings groups operations. in 2013, world relief wrote narrative sections to complement the operations of the vsla methodology and named this curriculum savings for life. the sfl curriculum brings a biblical understanding of stewardship and poverty alleviation that draws upon bryant myers’ ideas that poverty is caused by brokenness in four key relationships (myers 2011). once church leaders decided to address material poverty through sfl, world relief followed a threeyear process to hand over the sfl ministry to the local church. in the first year, world relief field staff formed 4 when helping hurts (corbett and fikkert 2009) and from dependency to dignity (fikkert and mask 2015) are two of the chalmers centers’ most helpful resources on savings programs. the chalmers center has their savings group training materials available online at https://chalmers.org/training/restore-savings/ 5 https://www.care.org/our-work/education-and-work/microsavings/vsla-101/ 6 the vsl associates’ website, https://www.vsla.net/ has a full description of the vsla methodology, including downloadable training guides. early work by allen and panetta (2010) summarizes vsla-style savings group programs. the savings-led working group of the seep network serves as a convener for implementing organizations in the savings group sector, worldwide. the website www.mangotree.org houses a resource library of this working group. 7 world relief’s volunteer structure largely follows the vsla methodology’s village agent approach. see https://www.vsla.net/ for information and training guides for utilizing village agents. and trained 24 savings groups in the sfl methodology. through sfl, members contribute weekly to a common savings fund through share purchases, setting an initial share value at the beginning of the cycle. members must buy a minimum of one share and a maximum of five shares at every weekly meeting. initial savings groups in the kako cez set a share value of 500 congolese francs, giving members the opportunity to save 500-2,500 congolese francs ($0.25-$1.25), in increments of 500, at each weekly meeting. this common savings fund provides loan money for group members, repayable to the group with an interest rate set by the group. in kako cez, groups have chosen between 5-10% interest per month with a maximum loan term of three months. groups also manage a social fund that acts as micro-insurance, providing small grants in times of need. groups set a fixed amount for weekly contributions, ranging between 100-500 congolese francs ($0.05-$0.25) for the social fund and agree upon the amount of a grant for a member facing a financial crisis, such as an unexpected hospitalization of a child. the group has a metal box with three locks to hold all money for savings, loans, and the social fund. three separate members hold keys for the box which may only be opened at sfl group meetings. after a period of 9-12 months, groups hold an annual distribution of funds, called a share out, at which each member takes home the amount s/he saved plus the portion of interest earned from loan activity (typically around 25-30% return on one’s savings). after each share out, groups start a new cycle of savings and lending. the first twentyfour groups saved together and found great success following the sfl methodology; the average member saved $36.15 but took home $47.71 at the share out, a 32% return on their investment. after a successful first cohort of savers, world relief then selected volunteers 7 from among those first groups and trained them on how to form, train, and support new savings groups in the community. world relief’s field staff then moved into a position of supporting teams of volunteers as the volunteers formed and trained new groups. in total, world relief congo now has thirty-three community-based about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank christian relief, development, and advocacy 3(1), summer 2021 purvis, do savings groups work? six years of evidence from the drc 4 volunteers working with the sfl program in the kako cez. these volunteers receive annual refresher training from world relief, a bicycle to help them get to savings groups, and, because the weather in kako is often overcast and rainy, a raincoat and rain boots. beyond this, there are no other financial incentives from the organization, churches, or savings groups. world relief designed the volunteer structure with the eventual handover to the local church in mind, meaning in part that they did not want to pass on any financial cost to the church. yet, even without financial incentives, the sfl program thrives, with volunteers typically meeting or exceeding target numbers of new savings groups to form and train. after two years of implementation, world relief started setting up the sustainability mechanism: the sfl committee. this committee is a group of “super volunteers” who take on the roles and responsibilities of the field staff and sit under the authority and leadership of the cnc. this is the first step of world relief phasing out of the community. world relief organized four sfl committees throughout the kako area. these report to the cnc and support the remaining sfl volunteers as they continue to work with new and existing savings groups. in sfl implementation year three, the world relief staff work to hand over their responsibilities, ensuring sfl committee members understand and can follow their roles successfully. though world relief staff phased out of the kako cez in 2018, the sfl committee continues supporting both groups and volunteers, and cnc members support and encourage sfl committee members in order to keep sfl work going. at the time of the handover from world relief staff to the sfl committee in 2018, world relief staff and volunteers had established 125 sfl groups. from 2018 until today, the sfl committee continues to support these 125 existing groups, but have also added 72 new groups with 1,801 new members. the total number of sfl groups in kako cez is now 197 with 4,906 members. 8 overall, group members save an average of $62 annually and earn 27.4% return on their savings (savix 2021). many international organizations that implement vsla-style savings groups, including world relief, use the same management information system, the savix. this shared platform allows organizations to compare key performance indicators. table 1 shows indicators from the savix comparing world relief’s sfl program in kako cez to other organizations’ savings program in the congo, east africa, all of africa, and worldwide. world relief’s lower average outstanding loan with higher return on savings indicates numerous turnovers of small loans to generate increased profit to members. 9 savings groups programs operating in: key performance indicator kako cez (world relief only) congo (all implementers) east africa (all implementers) africa (all implementers) world (all implementers) attendance rate 96.6% 87.0% 86.0% 87.0% 87.0% average savings per member $62 $28 $25 $25 $28 average outstanding loan size $27 $38 $37 $37 $41 return on savings 27.4% 15.7% 19.3% 17.3% 16.6% table 1 the context of implementing sfl in the cez is one positive factor enabling the program’s success. volunteers are committed to training and supporting groups with the encouragement of the cnc. community members not yet in a sfl group see the 8 the kako cez savings groups are one subset of the entire groups in the drc. throughout the drc, world relief has trained and formed 400 savings groups with nearly 10,000 members. 9 researchers cannot know individual groups’ interest rates. vsl associates promotes 10% interest rate per month, which many organizations also share with groups due to its ease of calculation. ultimately, groups choose their own interest rate. a majority of world relief sfl groups in kako cez use 10% interest rate. profit earned by current groups, which motivates and encourages them to form their own group. although world relief staff officially left the area in 2018, sfl committees remain in the community to sustain the work carried on by volunteers. the framework of the christian relief, development, and advocacy 3(1), summer 2021 purvis, do savings groups work? six years of evidence from the drc 5 cez, especially the initial work of church networking, lays the groundwork for the sfl program to have ongoing positive outcomes in community members’ lives. savings for life longitudinal research using the text-it system in order to monitor and asses the sfl program, in 2016 world relief partnered with an innovative, longitudinal data collection service called text-it to supply group-level data about the savings groups in kako cez. the text-it system is a sms-based bounce back service that allows group members to send quantitative data via text message for world relief to analyze. each group has a unique identification number, allowing world relief to follow each group’s incremental financial progress. since starting to use text-it in 2016, world relief has had five cohorts of savers, one starting each year, as depicted in figure 1. figure 1 each cohort is a cluster of savings groups that started their saving cycle roughly around the same time and therefore shared out roughly around the same time, approximately nine months later. cohorts progress to the next cycle as a new cohort starts cycle 1. cohort 1, the first 24 groups to use text-it, completed eight cycles by the time of this data collection. world relief collected 673 datasets from 196 groups across all cycles. 10 figure 2 shows the number of datasets world relief collected per cycle. figure 2 10 this research would not be possible without the diligent work of joseph kalegamire, emily mugisha, and sam ferguson, as well as many field staff and volunteers in the kako cez. on the day of the share out and in the presence of the full group, a member of the savings group, usually the record keeper, sends a missed call to a local text-it number that initiates a series of seven questions in text message form, written in the local language. each question has a numeric answer with a preset acceptable range. if the response to the prompt is within the acceptable range, the system sends the next question. if an answer comes back outside the acceptable range, the system sends a response indicating the answer is outside the normal range and asks the member to verify and send a different response. the questions text-it sends are: 1. what is your group number? (this is preassigned to each group and does not change cycle to cycle) 2. what cycle number has your group just completed? 3. what was the share value for your group this cycle? 4. what was the total number of shares collected this cycle? 5. what was the total amount shared out this cycle? 6. how many members did your group have this cycle? 7. does your group plan to start a new cycle? all of the data for this study came from within the kako cez. because world relief’s standard is to christian relief, development, and advocacy 3(1), summer 2021 purvis, do savings groups work? six years of evidence from the drc 6 implement technical programs within the context of the cez, this study does not have similar data from outside the cez to compare. similarly, there is a lack of other longitudinal research of this nature to compare to world relief’s data. therefore, this research does not attempt to show causality to the cez model or any other single factor for reported outcomes; instead, the research simply observes the context in which these outcomes take place. key terms: shares sfl members save in the form of shares, saving one to five shares at each weekly meeting. share value the share value is the cost of one share, for example, 500 congolese francs (about 25 cents in us currency). cycle each saving group saves, gives loans and repays loans within the group for 9-12 months, which constitutes one cycle of saving and lending. share out at the end of each cycle, groups have a distribution of funds, called the share out. new cycle after the share out, groups have the opportunity to start a new cycle with a starting balance of zero. table 2 key findings key finding 1: there is high demand for sfl savings for life appears to meet a strong need for members. across all 673 datasets, 100% of the groups started a new cycle. additionally, 98.2% of groups have the maximum group size of 25 members (figure 3). while world relief does not expect that all group members are exactly the same from the time the group formed (as members may have moved away or dropped out of the program), this means the group replaced any departing member with a new member to keep the group size at 25. finally, data from the management information system, the savix, reveal the average weekly attendance rate is 97%. this rate is higher than averages from other implementers in the congo, africa, or worldwide (table 1) and also the savings group sector standard of 85%, set by hugh allen, the founder of vsl associates (allen 2007, mersland et al. 2019). the high attendance rate of sfl members suggests that they 11 this finding reports savings in local currency only. the drc experienced greatly varying exchange rates from 2016 to 2021, as low as 950 cf to 1 usd to as high as 1969 cf to 1 usd, respectively. even so, rural sfl members likely experienced little impact from these exchange rate changes; for example, the standard daily wage for a farm laborer or are eager and willing to attend group meetings regularly. from 2016 until 2018, while world relief set annual targets for new groups, field staff and volunteers regularly exceeded the targeted numbers, reflecting the demand from the community. many new members testified that their reasons for joining a savings group included the simplicity of the saving and loan recording processes, the ease of applying for and obtaining loans, and also the testimony of current savings group members who earned a significant profit on their savings. the geographic context of the kako cez may influence the high demand for sfl; there is virtually no other financial institution available for savings or loan activities for community members. the closest formal financial institution is approximately 70 kilometers away. local moneylenders charge up to 50% monthly interest rate and demand significant collateral, one’s home for example. in addition, no other development organization implements a savings group program in the kako region. the shortage of other available financial services, combined with the continued success of sfl groups, as indicated by regular 25-30% return on savings, contributes towards the high demand for sfl in kako cez. key finding 2: members’ savings increase over time the data from cohort 1 (groups 1-24) show significant savings growth over sequential cycles. the graph below shows the average amount a member in cohort 1 saved and the amount s/he took home at the share out (savings plus profit from loan interest) for each of the eight cycles. an average member in cohort 1 increased their savings 351% from cycle one to cycle eight, as depicted in figure 4. 11 figure 3 christian relief, development, and advocacy 3(1), summer 2021 purvis, do savings groups work? six years of evidence from the drc 7 this increase in savings occurred in two ways. first, members increased the number of shares they purchased as they progressed in cycles, as shown in figure 5. at the beginning of each cycle, members set the share value, then purchase a minimum of one to a maximum of five shares at each weekly meeting. the average number of weekly shares saved increased from 1.9 in cycle one to 3.4 in cycle 3 and then remained relatively steady over the next five cycles, reaching a maximum of 3.7 in cycle 8 (figure 5). second, as groups progressed from one cycle to the next, they increased the group share value from the previous cycle, as seen in figure 6. after the share out, members who regularly saved the weekly maximum of five shares, challenged the group to increase the share value so that, in the next cycle, they would be able to save more. many times, members attempted to save the same number of shares each week as the previous cycle, even though the share value increased, leading to much higher savings. all groups in cohort 1 started their first cycle with a share value of 500 congolese francs (cf) and by the eighth cycle, the share value had increased to 1000 cf for 71% of groups and 2000 cf for 29% of groups, bringing the average share value in cycle eight for cohort 1 to 1,285 cf. figure 4 figure 5 the price for locally grown foods remained unchanged during these years. therefore, observing the change in saving amounts over the years in local currency, not usd, is a better representation of the sfl member experience. christian relief, development, and advocacy 3(1), summer 2021 purvis, do savings groups work? six years of evidence from the drc 8 figure 6 key finding 3: share values increase for successive cohorts a different way to analyze the change in share value is to look at how it changes within the same cycle over successive years and cohorts. when sfl started in the drc, 100% of groups used 500 cf as their share value. savings group implementers may expect to observe increasing share values as groups progress in cycles (key finding 2) but one notable finding from this study is that new cohorts started the same cycle but with a higher share value. for example, when cohort 4 started their first cycle, 37% of groups opted to increase the share value to 1000 cf or 2000 cf from the previous standard of 500 cf, figure 7. this increase is even greater comparing cycle two data between cohort 1 and 4; in 2017, when cohort 1 held the second cycle share out, again 100% of groups used a share value of 500 cf. by 2020, when cohort 4 held their second cycle share out, the average share value increased to over 900 cf, figure 7. only 35% of cohort 4 groups maintained the 500 cf share value; 56% of groups increased their share value to 1000 cf and 9% of groups increased to 2000 cf. figure 7 world relief has a few hypotheses on why newer cohorts start cycles with share values higher than the preceding cohorts. first, when world relief introduced sfl in the community, group members were uncertain about the program and if or how it would benefit them. after the initial cohort held a share out with 25-30% christian relief, development, and advocacy 3(1), summer 2021 purvis, do savings groups work? six years of evidence from the drc 9 return on their savings, testimony spread throughout the community. this may have led future cohorts to trust the sfl system and lead them to save more than the initial savers. when members in cohort 1 start new, advanced cycles, with a share value of 1000 cf or more, and new members join a freshly formed cycle-one sfl group, these new members may look to the seasoned members for modeling and setting expectations. new groups may choose to save with a 1000 cf share value simply because they observe it modeled by their peers. another possible explanation is that, when the initial cohort started saving, field staff reported that members did not believe in their own ability to save. once members shared out with profit and started the next cycle with a higher share value, however, others were also encouraged and started saving at a higher share value. yet another explanation may be that a general increase in small business activities, which world relief definitely noticed, contributed to the members’ ability to save more. a final possibility is that some members in early cohorts may have joined later cohorts to be part of a second savings group, even though world relief does not encourage this practice. when this happens, the more mature members may encourage the entire group to start with a higher share value because they know it is possible. while world relief does not know the exact reasons behind the higher share value, the increasing share value across successive cohorts does seem to demonstrate members’ increased appreciation for and trust in the sfl program. key finding 4: covid-19 had limited negative impact on sfl members’ ability to save world relief assigned each savings group a unique number in the text-it system so it could compare savings and share out amounts from cycle to cycle. at first glance, data appear to show a strong negative outcome for members saving during the covid-19 pandemic: only 70% of groups increased the amount they shared out in 2020 (when a majority of savings occurred during covid-19) compared to the share out the year before, 2019, and 30% of groups decreased the amount they shared out during this period. in contrast, during the year before covid-19 (2019), 83% of groups increased their share out over the share out in 2018 while only 17% of groups decreased their share out during this period (figure 8). figure 8 still, although fewer groups increased their share out amounts during the pandemic, the average amount each member earned at share out actually increased compared to the share out pre-pandemic. the average change in share out, across groups in all cycles, comparing the 2020 share out to the 2019 share out was 22,099 congolese francs (cf). this is slightly higher, 1,104 cf more, than the share out differential between 2019 and 2018 (figure 9). although fewer groups had an overall increase, those that did increased at a greater rate, making the average change higher for savings during the covid-19 pandemic compared to savings from the previous year. christian relief, development, and advocacy 3(1), summer 2021 purvis, do savings groups work? six years of evidence from the drc 10 figure 9 figure 10 depicts the percent of groups that increased or decreased their share out in three different cycles: 2019 compared to 2018 (savings prior to covid19, orange bars), 2020 compared to 2019 (savings during the first half of covid-19, blue bars) and 2021 compared to 2020 (savings during the second half of covid-19, grey bars). while there were groups that increased in 2019 (orange bars), the increase was relatively low, with a majority of groups only increasing 0-20,000 cf per member. this contrasts with a greater percentage of groups that increased their share out in 2020 (blue bars) or 2021 (grey bars) but did so at a higher rate, with a majority of groups in 2020 increasing 20,000-100,000 cf per member and a majority of groups in 2021 increasing 20,000-50,000 cf per member. figure 10 christian relief, development, and advocacy 3(1), summer 2021 purvis, do savings groups work? six years of evidence from the drc 11 government-imposed covid-19 restrictions may explain these varying increases and decreases of members’ savings. when the government imposed a lockdown, community members could not travel from the countryside to the city. this affected farmers who now could not travel to sell their produce in densely populated city markets. instead, many farmers attempted to sell their produce in countryside markets where, due to the competition, prices were low. on the other hand, some community members may have financially benefitted from the travel restrictions, because they did not spend money on travel expenses and were available to work on others’ farms as day laborers. overall, these changes in share out amounts indicate that although the covid-19 pandemic may have impacted some group members, causing them to save a bit less, overall, the general progression has continued; as members progress through cycles of savings, the amount saved in each cycle increases. key finding 5: there is a strong positive return on donors’ investment the average cost for world relief to implement sfl in the drc is $21.56 per member12 (as indicated by the star in figure 12). the amount of money the average member saves in the sfl program far outweighs the cost running the program. this research does not have counterfactual data to compare savings of non-sfl members in kako to the savings of sfl members, so this paper cannot assign causality to the savings rates. 13 but world relief does not know of any other external factors that would drive up savings rates of sfl members such as savings groups or other economic development programs offered by development organizations or government programs. therefore, this research compares the cost per member to the amount the member saved in the cycle for the return on the donor’s investment, using the following return on investment (roi) calculation of: figure 11 in cycle one, the average member in cohort 1 earned $47.71 at the time of the share out. using the above calculation, there is already a 121% roi on the donors’ investment. because the investment for the member is a one-time cost (world relief directs future investments to future cohorts), any savings beyond the cost of $21.56 is a positive return, as indicated by the circled sections on figure 12. figure 12 12 cost per member is one standard ratio, calculated by the management information system, the savix. the savix calculates this as the prorated cost of the program divided by total number of savings group members. implementing organizations have not agreed upon what to include in the program cost, making this a ratio difficult to compare across programs. world relief includes all field costs (staff salaries, training, monitoring and evaluation costs, and a portion of field office expenses) but not us home office overhead. 13 other randomized control trials from the savings group community confirm that savings groups contribute towards increased household savings (gash and odell, 2013). christian relief, development, and advocacy 3(1), summer 2021 purvis, do savings groups work? six years of evidence from the drc 12 as the cycles continue and share out amounts increase, the return on the donors’ investment rises to 2661% by cycle eight (calculated by adding up all the share out amounts over cycles 1-8, subtracting the cost of investment, $21.56, then dividing by the static cost of investment, $21.56), as shown in figure 13. 14 figure 13 the implications of this finding may encourage donors to know how the outcomes of their giving exponentially increases over years, as members continue to save more and more in new cycles. research gaps and call for further research this research has the obvious limitation in that there is no control group, or a group similar in demographics where world relief does not implement the sfl program, to compare data with. because of this limitation, this research is not able to show definitively that sfl is the factor driving positive outcomes. it is possible, for example, that other factors are playing a role in the saving experiences of sfl members. given the village context, however, and world relief’s knowledge of that context, it is not unreasonable to conclude that the sfl program has been a major factor in the change. still, in order to prove causality, world relief, or perhaps an independent researcher, would need to conduct further research using a randomized control trial (rct), designating a control group to compare to the treatment group of sfl members. other savings group implementing organizations have conducted rcts to link savings groups to the causality of economic impacts in treatment areas (gash and odell 2013; gash 2017). most research, however, has a limited timeframe, such as one to three years, because rcts are difficult to conduct over a long 14 admittedly, this figure ignores any net present value calculations. its purpose is only to show that return on donors’ initial investment is indeed significant. period. these studies reveal increases in savings and the use of credit in treatment areas. researchers have also examined household expenditures to determine if increased savings came about because members simply reduced household expenses and therefore had more money to save. yet researchers found no reduction in household expenses, suggesting that the increase in savings did not negatively affect household consumption. some rcts have also found an increase in total household expenditures for the treatment group, suggesting that savings groups may allow for increased household purchases (ksoll et al. 2013; annan et al. 2013). finally, for rcts that measure asset ownership, nearly all studies find reasonable increases for savings group members, while no study finds negative effects on asset ownership (gash 2017). evidence from these rcts suggests a story similar to what world relief believes has occurred in the drc with the savings for life program; participation in the savings group program leads to higher savings among participants. the full extent of these impacts, however, remains uncertain until a fuller rct is conducted. another limitation of this research is the lack of analysis into members’ utilization of sfl funds for business, health, education, or other outcomes. although researchers may accomplish this with robust rct work, the complicated nature of money management likely calls for a mixed methods approach christian relief, development, and advocacy 3(1), summer 2021 purvis, do savings groups work? six years of evidence from the drc 13 to research (rutherford 2003). in the qualitative section, researchers may find financial diaries as an effective technique to chart and monitor community members’ income and expenditure and how participation in a savings group may change these amounts (collins, morduch et al. 2009). a further analysis into the use of sfl funds would provide a deeper understanding into how the sfl program impacts important everyday aspects of community members’ lives. conclusion following the financial data of savings groups in the drc from 2016 until today, world relief has witnessed significant growth in members’ savings. savings groups continue to increase their share values as they move to subsequent cycles, which leads to higher weekly savings. groups continue to have high profits from internal loans and distribute those profits at the annual share out. new members continue to join sfl groups, saving at higher rates than the earlier groups. world relief believes lasting community change only happens when the community, and especially community leaders, are not only champions of change but are also leading the change. this is why world relief invests so much time in the church empowerment zone doing church networking, envisioning seminars, and mindset transformation trainings before introducing technical programs in the community. like the sfl, the network of cooperating churches continues after world relief hands the program over to them. with this framework in place, churches are able to select community and churchbased volunteers who are the main trainers for programs like savings for life. within sfl, the volunteer sfl committee continues to support other volunteers and train new groups in the sfl methodology. although world relief staff phased out of the kako cez sfl program in 2018, testimonies reveal ongoing positive economic outcomes, such as volunteers continuing to form new groups with the maximum number of members, groups increasing their share value as they progress into new cycles, and continued increased savings shared out at the annual distribution. with its holistic understanding of human development, world relief knows that progress involves much more than increased saving, but it also knows that increased saving is an important step in the direction of better lives in the economic sphere. importantly, as this article tries to show, world relief’s sfl program is helping communities take that step. references accord network. “integral mission principles.” https://accordnetwork.org/about/principles/ allen, hugh, and panetta, david. 2010. savings groups, what are they? the seep network: washington, d.c. allen, hugh and the seep network savings-led financial services working group: ratios subgroup. 2007. financial ratio analysis of community-managed micro-finance institutions. the seep network. annan, jeannie, tom bundervoet, juliette seban, and jaime costigan. 2013. urwaruka rushasha (new generation): a randomized impact evaluation of village savings and loans associations and family-based interventions in burundi. final evaluation. international rescue committee. collins, daryl, jonathan morduch, stuart rutherford, and orlanda ruthven. 2009. portfolios of the poor: how the world’s poor live on $2 a day. princeton, nj: princeton university press. corbett, steve and brian fikkert. 2009. when helping hurts: how to alleviate poverty without hurting the poor…and yourself. chicago, il: moody publishers. fikkert, brian and russell mask. 2015. from dependence to dignity: how to alleviate poverty through church-centered microfinance. grand rapids, mi: zondervan. gash, megan. 2017. understanding the impact of savings groups. the seep network: washington, d.c. gash, megan and kathleen odell. 2013. the evidence-based story of savings groups: a synthesis of seven randomized control trials. the seep network: washington, d.c. ksoll, christopher, helene bie lilleør, jonas helth lønborg, and ole dahl rasmussen. 2013. impact of village savings and loans associations: evidence from a cluster randomized trial. study paper no. 56. rockwool foundation research unit. lausanne congress. 2010. “the cape town commitment: a confession of faith and a call to action.” lausanne movement. https://lausanne.org/content/ctcommitment#capet own medical ambassadors international and global che network. 2012. “planning a seed project.” https://chenetwork.org/_dvd/03%20che%20to ts/tot%20lessons%20archive/tot%201%20 single%20column/1tot%201%20in%205%20days/1tot%20i%20lessons/ta200%20seed%20proje cts_sc.doc about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank#capetown about:blank#capetown christian relief, development, and advocacy 3(1), summer 2021 purvis, do savings groups work? six years of evidence from the drc 14 mersland, roy, bert d’espallier, rolando gonzales, and linda nakato. 2019. what are savings groups? a description of savings groups based on information in the savix database. hørsholm, denmark: fahu foundation. micah network. 2001. “micah declaration on integral mission.” moffitt, bob. 2007. “seeds and seed projects.” https://disciplenations.org/wpcontent/uploads/2020/04/seeds-and-seedprojects_moffitt.pdf. myers, bryant. 2011. walking with the poor: the principles and practices of transformational development. maryknoll, ny: orbis books. odendaal, gil. 2016. standing with the vulnerable: a curriculum for transforming lives and communities. world relief. downers grove: intervarsity press. rutherford, stuart. 2003. the poor and their money. oxford, ny: oxford university press. savings-led working group, the seep network. https://seepnetwork.org/savings-led-wg savix: the savings group information exchange. https://thesavix.org/ stott, john. 1974. “the lausanne covenant.” lausanne movement. https://lausanne.org/content/covenant/lausannecovenant#cov text-it: the leading bot platform. https://textit.com/ the mango tree: the global resource on savings groups. the seep network. https://mangotree.org/ vsl associates. https://www.vsla.net/ courtney purvis has served as the senior program advisor for world relief’s savings for life program since 2011. her recent work focuses on digitization of savings groups and promoting women’s empowerment and gender equality through savings groups. author email: cpurvis@wr.org about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank#cov about:blank#cov about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank book review development in mission: a guide for transforming global poverty and ourselves by monty lynn, rob gailey, and derran reese reviewed by katrina t. greene christian relief, development, and advocacy 3(2), winter 2022 greene, book review 98 abilene, tx: abilene christian university press, 2021, $20.99 lynn, gailey, and reese have written a thought-provoking, theologically-informed, and engaging book that challenges global north christian congregations and individuals to humbly, reflectively, and relationally engage in poverty alleviation. according to the authors, such engagement involves listening to the poor and partnering with them and organizations, both christian and secular, to address the needs of the poor and vulnerable. they argue that just as christ emptied himself of his power and privilege because of his love for people, that christians should also empty themselves and relinquish their power and privilege to care for others, especially the poor. in this review, i identify multiple strengths of the book as well as provide two critiques that are apparent to me, especially as a socio-cultural anthropologist. one of the strengths of the book is the authors’ provision and examination of seven principles of effective transformational development. these are (1) cultivate loving relationships, (2) empower to sustain, (3) give it time, (4) attend to context, (5) invest in friendships and partnerships, (6) seek out insight, and (7) assess and improve. these principles are vital to effective engagement in poverty alleviation, and they also connect well with other christian scholarship. for example, in the authors’ discussion of the principle “attend to context,” which involves global north christian congregations and individuals participating in a contextualization of the cultures in which they intend to serve, i was reminded of the scholarship of al tizon. tizon emphasizes the need for intercultural competence within the church, arguing that the church “needs to enter boldly into the multicultural fray that increasingly describes our neighborhoods and communities today with a humility that is eager to learn and with enthusiasm for bearing witness to the gospel for all cultures” (2018, 16). in the context of explaining another principle, “assess and improve,” lynn, gailey, and reese explore the need to understand whether an initiative is helping others and, if not, what needs to be changed. they also encourage participation in the design and implementation of assessments and promote an examination of unintended and targeted consequences. such an argument coincides with the scholarship of bryant myers, who argues that monitoring and evaluation “is not ultimately about program efficiency as much as it is about effectiveness, which includes both the hoped for and the unanticipated” (2011, 291). another strength of the book is the authors’ strategic use and placement of personal narratives and experiences as well as scripture to introduce, elucidate, or support themes within the book. the inclusion of personal narratives, for example, at the beginning of chapters one, two, and five make the book even more accessible to those who have limited development or theological training, but desire to better understand and relate to the concepts being examined. as a socio-cultural anthropologist, however, i note that while the authors do acknowledge the value of anthropology to engage in poverty alleviation, more integration of anthropological insight into the book would help support the authors’ arguments. chapter 1, for example, commences with a story involving the gifting of a pumpkin to doris, a first-term american missionary in swaziland (now eswatini), from patricia, a swazi woman. the story wisely illustrates how christian congregations and individuals need to understand that the poor often desire to give and share what they have (e.g., resources, ideas, and experiences) with those who are giving to them. when global north christian congregations and individuals do not acknowledge or accept what the poor have to offer, they may prevent the poor from seeing how they can be a blessing to such congregations and individuals. but i would go still deeper, for such a reality also links to the work of marcel mauss, a french social scientist who argues that gifts always create obligations and reinforce or reflect social relationships. an application of mauss’ (2000) work, first published in 1925, to the lynn, gailey, and reese book would help provide an anthropological lens for understanding why unhealthy relationships, miscommunication, and even dependency manifest when global north christian congregations and individuals do not leave space for reciprocation in their relationships with the poor. my second critique involves the authors’ discussion of various transformational development sectors without more explanation of how some global north christian congregations and individuals may be more open to engagement in some sectors than in others. while the authors do provide a biblical foundation or a “theological warrant” for “the lesser-known sectors” and detailed field-based insights and practices for each sector, i suggest that it would also be helpful to place the various sectors along a continuum of openness to engagement related to global north christian congregations and individuals. in my view, for example, the sectors of children, youths, and older persons; education; food; health; relief; scripture translation; shelter; sport; and water, sanitation, and hygiene, are more culturally embedded within the church due to its historic missions work within these sectors. this reality may lead christian congregations and individuals to be more open to effective engagement in poverty alleviation efforts in these arenas. the existence of less cultural embeddedness with regard to other sectors within some global north christian congregations, however, may engender less openness to engagement with those sectors. such sectors include creation care, freedom and liberation, income generation, migration and refuge, peacemaking and peacebuilding, and technology. increasing openness to these sectors may require strategies, in addition to sharing scripture and best practices, that involve educational and motivational strategies that interact with christian congregations and individuals on a personal level and utilize the social capital and influence of younger generation christians in such discussions. despite these critiques, the book is of great value to the christian relief, development, and advocacy (crda) community due to its inclusion of relevant secular and christian scholarship with regard to poverty alleviation and its encouragement of christian congregations and individuals to pursue public and lifestyle advocacy. such encouragement is reflective of the thoughts of arthur simon, founder of bread for the world, who argues that christians can engage in effective change by combining their individual actions and helping others with efforts to change public policy. simon (2003, 138) explains, for example, that while it is important for individual christians not to throw litter into a river, it is also important for them to work to get laws established and enforced that discourage the dumping of industrial and agricultural waste into a river. another value of the lynn, gailey, and reese book is its promotion of partnerships to combine efforts between christian congregations and individuals and various organizations, christian and secular, in the alleviation of poverty. while such partnerships should not compromise christian development efforts, the sector-organized list of faith-based and secular non-governmental organizations, parachurch agencies, and intergovernmental organizations presented as potential partners for engagement at the end of the book is extremely valuable. i look forward to incorporating the book into the curriculum of my development-focused courses in order to reinforce some foundational understandings of effective poverty alleviation engagement. references mauss, marcel. 2000. the gift: the form and reason for exchange in archaic societies. translated by w. d. halls. new york: w.w. norton. first published 1925. myers, bryant l. 2011. walking with the poor: principles and practices of transformational development. new york: orbis books. simon, arthur. 2003. how much is enough?: hungering for god in an affluent culture. grand rapids: baker books. tizon, al. 2018. whole and reconciled: gospel, church, and mission in a fractured world. grand rapids: baker academic. katrina t. greene (ph.d., american university) is an associate professor of anthropology and intercultural studies at biola university, where she leads the international and community development concentration/minor. her research focuses on women, entrepreneurship, and community development in the black townships of cape town, south africa. author email: katrina.greene@biola.edu image1.jpeg christian relief, development, and advocacy 3 ( 2 ) , winter 20 2 2 greene , book review 56 book review development in mission: a guide for transforming global poverty and ourselves b y monty lynn, rob gailey, and derran reese reviewed by katrina t. greene abilene, tx: abilene christian university press, 2021, $ 2 0.99 lynn, gailey, and reese have written a thought provoking, theologically informed, and engaging book that challenges global north christian congregations and individuals to humbly, reflectively, and relationally engage in poverty alleviation. according to the authors, such engagement involves li stening to the poor and partnering with them and organizations, both christian and secular, to address the needs of the poor and vulnerable. they argue that just as christ emptied himself of his power and privilege because of his love for people, that chri stians should also empty themselves and relinquish their power and privilege to care for others, especially the poor. in this review, i identify multiple strengths of the book as well as provide two critiques that are apparent to me, especially as a socio cultural anthropologist. one of the strengths of the book is the authors’ provision and examination of seven principles of effective transformational development. these are (1) cultivate loving relationships, (2) empower to sustain, (3) give it time, (4) attend to context, (5) invest in friendships and partnerships, (6) seek out insight, and (7) assess and improve. these principles are vital to effective engagement in poverty alleviation, and they also connect well with other christian scholarship. for exa mple, in the authors’ discussion of the principle “attend to context,” which involves global north christian congregations and individuals participating in a contextualization of the cultures in which they intend to serve, i was reminded of the scholarship of al tizon. tizon emphasizes the need for intercultural competence within the c hurch, arguing that the c hurch “needs to enter boldly into the multicultural fray that increasingly describes our neighborhoods and communities today with a humility that is e ager to learn and with enthusiasm for bearing witness to the gospel for all cultures ” (2018, 16) . in the context of explaining another principle, “assess and improve,” lynn, gailey, and reese explore the need to understand whether an initiative is helping others and, if not, what needs to be changed. they also encourage participation in the design and implementation of assessments and promote an examination of unintended and targeted consequences. such an argument coincides with the scholarship of bryant my ers , who argues that monitoring and evaluation “is not ultimately about program efficiency as much as it is about effectiveness, which includes both the hoped for and the unanticipated” (2011, 291) . another strength of the book is the authors’ strategic use and placement of personal narratives and experiences as well as scripture to introduce, elucidate, or support themes within the book. the inclusion of personal narratives, for example, at the beginning of chapters one, two, and five make the book even more accessible to those who have limited development or theological training, but desire to better understand and relate to the concepts being examined. as a socio cultural anthropologist, however, i note that while the authors do acknowledge the value o f anthropology to engage in poverty alleviation, more integration of anthropological insight into the book would help support the authors’ arguments. chapter 1 , for example, commences with a story involving the gifting of a pumpkin to doris, a first term a merican missionary in swaziland (now eswatini), from patricia, /docprops/thumbnail.emf christian relief, development, and advocacy 3(2), winter 2022 greene, book review 56 book review development in mission: a guide for transforming global poverty and ourselves by monty lynn, rob gailey, and derran reese reviewed by katrina t. greene abilene, tx: abilene christian university press, 2021, $20.99 lynn, gailey, and reese have written a thoughtprovoking, theologically-informed, and engaging book that challenges global north christian congregations and individuals to humbly, reflectively, and relationally engage in poverty alleviation. according to the authors, such engagement involves listening to the poor and partnering with them and organizations, both christian and secular, to address the needs of the poor and vulnerable. they argue that just as christ emptied himself of his power and privilege because of his love for people, that christians should also empty themselves and relinquish their power and privilege to care for others, especially the poor. in this review, i identify multiple strengths of the book as well as provide two critiques that are apparent to me, especially as a socio-cultural anthropologist. one of the strengths of the book is the authors’ provision and examination of seven principles of effective transformational development. these are (1) cultivate loving relationships, (2) empower to sustain, (3) give it time, (4) attend to context, (5) invest in friendships and partnerships, (6) seek out insight, and (7) assess and improve. these principles are vital to effective engagement in poverty alleviation, and they also connect well with other christian scholarship. for example, in the authors’ discussion of the principle “attend to context,” which involves global north christian congregations and individuals participating in a contextualization of the cultures in which they intend to serve, i was reminded of the scholarship of al tizon. tizon emphasizes the need for intercultural competence within the church, arguing that the church “needs to enter boldly into the multicultural fray that increasingly describes our neighborhoods and communities today with a humility that is eager to learn and with enthusiasm for bearing witness to the gospel for all cultures” (2018, 16). in the context of explaining another principle, “assess and improve,” lynn, gailey, and reese explore the need to understand whether an initiative is helping others and, if not, what needs to be changed. they also encourage participation in the design and implementation of assessments and promote an examination of unintended and targeted consequences. such an argument coincides with the scholarship of bryant myers, who argues that monitoring and evaluation “is not ultimately about program efficiency as much as it is about effectiveness, which includes both the hoped for and the unanticipated” (2011, 291). another strength of the book is the authors’ strategic use and placement of personal narratives and experiences as well as scripture to introduce, elucidate, or support themes within the book. the inclusion of personal narratives, for example, at the beginning of chapters one, two, and five make the book even more accessible to those who have limited development or theological training, but desire to better understand and relate to the concepts being examined. as a socio-cultural anthropologist, however, i note that while the authors do acknowledge the value of anthropology to engage in poverty alleviation, more integration of anthropological insight into the book would help support the authors’ arguments. chapter 1, for example, commences with a story involving the gifting of a pumpkin to doris, a first-term american missionary in swaziland (now eswatini), from patricia, christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 agyeman and ranawana, from development to repair: dismantling racism and its role in shaping poverty today 56 from development to repair: dismantling racism and its role in shaping poverty today ann-marie msichili agyeman and anupama ranawana this article discusses the multidimensionality of poverty, how it is shaped and maintained through colonial logics, and how this understanding requires a holistic process of reparations. reparations is a key part of decolonizing development. anti-racism with integral intentions can be an expression of reparation as we actively dismantle hierarchies entrenched by racism (such as coloniality, apartheid, and caste systems). drawing from a research project on race, ethnicity, and poverty conducted by christian aid, the authors reflect on what faith-based international non-governmental organisations (ingos) must do in order to make these recognitions and move toward repair through working towards eradicating poverty. reparations as a theological and moral imperative a key focus within international development discussions regarding climate justice has been that of “loss and damage.” loss and damage, as formally understood, is a mechanism adopted at cop 27 through which economically disenfranchised countries, those often facing the most significant impact of climate change, can receive monetary assistance to cope with the impacts of extreme weather events. the adoption of this scheme is connected to significant mobilization by indigenous and small island nations regarding the connection between colonial extractivism and climate change. in particular, it is some level of recognition that longstanding forms of colonialism have helped increase the vulnerability of specific people and places to the adverse effects of climate change (ipcc 2022). as scholars such as amitav ghosh and gurminder bhambra and peter newell have long argued, climate change is a broad planetary crisis that can and must be understood in terms of processes of resource extraction and settler cultivation that have dramatically altered the environment on which life depends (ghosh 2021). the unequal effects of climate change are linked to the moral and structural logic of the european colonial project that saw certain communities and natural resources as sites of continuous extraction and elimination (bhambra and newell 2022). loss and damage could thus be a form of reparations from global north countries that profited from colonialization to countries in the global south that have been impoverished and made more vulnerable due to these historical processes. the concept of climate reparations is not new, as political geographer keston perry outlines. it is a wideranging and appropriate mechanism for recognizing the magnitude of the climate crisis, as well as creating a response that centers history and ethics (2020). perry’s emphasis on the ethics of the issue is important, and it provides an anchoring point for our discussion here, which focuses first on how the systems of reasoning and morality entrenched during the european colonial project maintain poverty and exacerbate vulnerability to extreme events, and second on the role of reparations in responding to these historical injustices. in doing so, the argument aligns with those of others who see reparations as a moral imperative and a fundamental necessity for the process of healing that must occur for formerly colonized nations (moffett 2017). kenyan theologian bob kikuyu, for example, argues that the goal of reparations is reconciliation. such a process of reconciliation must include not only monetary reparation, but also relational healing, both a repairing of relationships and a repairing of the relationship with creation (2022a). in other words, reparations can be seen as the holistic healing of all human relationships (maluleke 1997; harris 2017). the road to reparations is complex and challenging and cannot be achieved without a significant understanding of the multidimensionality of justice. in this article, we focus particularly on how policymakers, international development organizations and others with decision-making power need to understand christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 agyeman and ranawana, from development to repair: dismantling racism and its role in shaping poverty today 57 poverty. our particular emphasis is to engage faithbased ingos that have, historically, been unwilling to recognize their role in perpetuating the colonial project (goudge 2003; duffield and hewitt 2013; kothari 2005; wilson 2013; silvey and rankin 2011). this is significant because, as activists and scholars have noted repeatedly, the international development industry has always struggled to conceptualize the poverty prevalent in the global south. indeed, poverty is a major focus for the knowledge activities of the industry, particularly, as jayati ghosh points out, in terms of “defining the poor, categorizing the poor, analysing the behaviour of the poor, assessing policies designed to assist the poor or to alleviate their poverty, and so on” (2011). this of course means that the persistence of poverty justifies the relevance of the development industry, which is tied to the relationship between racism and poverty, an as yet under-researched and under-acknowledged issue in the sector. scholars such as uma kothari and althea-maria rivas, for example, note there is an intentional negligence of “race” in development thinking and practice (kothari 2006; rivas 2018). yet the sector needs to acknowledge and address the continuing legacy of colonial ideologies and the persistence of forms of racialized outcomes and hierarchies in development. in this article, we understand racism and colonialism as having an intertwined and symbiotic relationship that together maintain coloniality. beyond the political and economic realities of colonialism, coloniality refers to long-standing power that emerges through colonialism. these patterns define culture, labour, interpersonal relations, and knowledge production, and are maintained in books, assessment of academic performance, culture, hope, perceptions of the self, and many other aspects of livelihood (maldonado-torres 2008). in paying attention to these patterns of power, we see how power maintains privilege and allows for the control of some groups in society. this means there is also a need to understand how euro-american ideals influence the sector, and more specifically how authority, expertise, and knowledge have over time become racially symbolized. 1 any move toward repair must recognize the power of coloniality and must be accompanied by a reconceptualization of poverty in all its complexity. two key questions for thinking about reparations is “how have centuries of racism 1 for clarification, we understand “whiteness” here as elucidated by such scholars as anthony reddie (2021), willie james jennings (2020), bell hooks (1997), and sylvia wynter (mckittrick 2015); that is, as a dominant cultural space with enormous political significance, whose purpose is to keep others on the margins. whiteness separates those who are entitled to have certain privileges from those whose exploitation and vulnerability to violence is justified by their not being white; what jennings refers to as the constant reproduction of the plantation. contributed to this relational rupture that results in the multidimensional experience of poverty?” and “what has been neglected that needs healing and repair? to address all this, we draw from evidence from a race and poverty study that we conducted for christian aid in 2022 (agyeman and ranawana 2022). participants for the study were drawn from a sample of christian aid partner communities and staff working in sierra leone, zimbabwe, colombia, bangladesh, and israel/palestine. the purpose of this research was both to explore how different country programmes engaged with race, ethnicity, and colour in their programmatic work, and to better understand the links between race, ethnicity, colour, and poverty. focussing on these five countries, we interviewed participants by applying a modified form of narrative inquiry (clandinin and connelley 2000). narrative inquiry is a reflexive process that invites participants into dialogue to understand how they make sense of concepts, in this case related to race and poverty. we decided to open the dialogue in this way to create space for the voice and agency of our participants to place emphasis as and where they felt it necessary. it was clear from our findings that the issues were about so much more than a lack of access to resources, for we saw that individuals and communities are pervasively situated in spaces that prevent them from breaking out of the cycle of poverty. this implicitly (and at times explicitly) highlighted the political nature of poverty experienced as a result of systems of oppression based on race, ethnicity, or colour. we refer to our findings from these five countries to articulate what has been broken and is in need of repair. the political and multidimensional nature of poverty if reparations are part of a journey towards a world without poverty, then understanding the ways in which poverty exists and operates is important. there is a need to understand the entire ecosystem of meanings, values, ideas, and institutions that maintain poverty. doing so also supports calls from critical international development scholars to move towards a more complex approach to development that centers different ways of seeing the world and acknowledges a multiplicity of ways of living, being, and living a full life. before christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 agyeman and ranawana, from development to repair: dismantling racism and its role in shaping poverty today 58 discussing different approaches to reparations, we first draw from our own research to explore this vital topic. as do many ingos, christian aid believes that poverty results from structural and systemic power imbalances and misuse (ghosh 2022). this has been an integral part of our global analytical framework at christian aid as it identifies the parties responsible for repairing the injustice. poverty is evidence of the collective failure of society to honour, that is, to assign value to, its most vulnerable members. poverty is thus political, determined by how resources are distributed in and amongst societies. our response must therefore ask how reparations can enable us to better honour people living in poverty. the creation of poverty, as well as its repair, are thus both embedded in the structures and systems of power (including racism, patriarchy, and neoliberal capitalism), and reinforced through contextspecific ideologies. the misuse of power results in the manifestation of poverty across multiple dimensions of being. whilst indices such as the undp’s multidimensional poverty index and the world bank’s multidimensional poverty measure have brought nuance and complexity to how poverty is understood and assessed, enabling numerical comparison across ethnic groups, regions, and ages, and thus providing important information on patterns of poverty (alkire and santos 2010), such indices and measures are nevertheless limited in that they only capture factors such as monetary poverty, education, health, and basic infrastructure services, but do not necessarily expose how power exists and operates structurally and systemically. in addition, they measure poverty against the sustainable development goals, goals that were developed based on norms and standards of what makes a “good life” according to the global north (ziai 2016). and yet, these broader and deeper aspects of power, especially power dynamics, are, for us at christian aid, central to understanding and addressing poverty. in addition to those material aspects of poverty represented in the aforementioned poverty indices, our understanding of poverty at christian aid spreads over three interconnected aspects of our being: spiritual, relational, and material. together, these allow us to think of poverty holistically. the spiritual dimension of poverty multidimensional poverty is the state of being in which an individual, community, or entity can face multiple disadvantages at the same time concerning their income, gender, geographic location, caste, class, race, creed, psychological difficulties, physical disabilities, access to services, access to justice, ability for their knowledge to be acknowledged, their intergenerational trauma, loss of culture, the loss of spirituality, or multiple displacement. this list is not exhaustive. the journey “out” of poverty, therefore, is not linear, especially given how power shapes it. where we see the multiple manifestations of poverty as a result of colonial extraction and dispossession, it is because our ways of socio-economic living continually create, maintain, and reproduce systems of marginalisation, exclusion, and silencing. our research findings highlighted a relationship between spiritual dimensions of poverty that occur as a result of misused power. from a theological perspective, misused power is one outward manifestation of individual and collective sin that fractures relationships multidimensionally; it is the embrace of greed and therefore, turning away from god (ranawana 2022; rieger 1998). what begins spiritually in the hearts of humanity as the sinful desire to possess power and dominate soon manifests in relational dynamics, and eventually comes to fruition in the material through the unjust concentration and allocation of power and resources. this is how poverty can be understood in the spiritual sense, for it shows a movement away from a justice-centered spirituality. the rejection of the likeness and image of god in all humanity and the reservation of value and goodness to only a certain portion of humanity maintains a set of logics that have, both historically and into the present, made communities at the “lower end” of any social hierarchy more disposable. this was highlighted in our research in the topic of the oppression and dispossession of palestinians by the state of israel. in particular, the manifestation of intergenerational trauma, both individual and collective, was highlighted as a form of poverty that amplifies the sense of inferiority (and superiority) within individuals and groups. elena ruiz describes such structural trauma as “trauma by design” and argues that failures to understand “trauma as a functional, organizational tool of settler colonial violence amplify the impact of traumatic experience on specific populations” (2023). our findings show too that poverty (and trauma) inhibits the dreams and ambitions of people experiencing it in that it exacerbates feelings of powerlessness, hopelessness, shame, stigma, and humiliation (patel and kleinman 2003). in the framework of our biblical prophetic vision focused on the restoration of a broken world and all its systems, such impacts become a serious issue, even though they are overlooked by traditional measures of poverty. at christian aid, our work must critically consider all the factors that paralyse the ability of people living in poverty to create a vision of a transformed world and the action needed to build it. christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 agyeman and ranawana, from development to repair: dismantling racism and its role in shaping poverty today 59 in an approach that values everyone and respects all voices, we need to take care to consider what healing from such trauma means for different groups, and whether there are locally based, indigenous resources that can be helpful in the healing and restoration process. as development organisations, we should resource these approaches courageously to promote holistic flourishing for people who are living in poverty (peace direct 2021). another aspect of poverty understood in the spiritual sense is the complicity of missionaries and churches colluding with empires in the european colonial project to construct racist hierarchies that were imposed on indigenous peoples throughout the world (cruchley 2020; mukaria 2020; carey 2011; grimshaw and nelson 2001; dussell 1981; etherington 2005). one of those is the dutch cultivation system deployed in indonesia as a forced crop delivery system that extracted coffee, sugar, and indigo (bosma 2013). such systems stratified labourers into “degenerate types” who were then subject to various systems of administration and instruction dependent on racial categorization (schrauwers 2001). jesse mugambi, connecting colonial legacies to climate injustice, points to how this created a problem of “imbalance” wherein it is not an ignorance of poverty, but the subsummation to a culture of disposability, that ensures there is no political or moral will to transform a system that keeps some poor and others rich (2014). throughout the world, churches were complicit in propagating this system because of a political choice to search for wealth and profit, and thus turn away from right standing relationship with god. one particularly horrendous manifestation was the “doctrine of discovery,” which established a religious, political, and legal rationalisation for colonisation and violent acquisition of land not inhabited by christians (miller 2019). two papal bulls, in particular, stand out. the first, issued in 1455 by pope nicholas v, "romanus pontifex," served to grant trading monopoly to the portuguese with africa, and ultimately authorised the enslavement of africans. the second papal bull was issued in 1493, by pope alexander vi. it affirmed christian european “explorers’” claims to prominent geopolitical strongholds and the assertion of the superiority of european christianity globally. one of the places where our research showed this was significantly apparent was in zimbabwe, where many institutionalized christian churches own a significant amount of land and hold major investments linked to agriculture and other sectors. the transferred ownership of some of this land was inherited from the colonial era (edelman, oya, and borras 2016). in all this history in zimbabwe, what we see explicitly is how, in the search for wealth and profit, churches turned away from the truth that all are made in the image of god to concentrate and increase their own power and influence. the relational dimension of poverty histories of the doctrine of discovery and countries like zimbabwe connect directly to our views on the role of power in creating and maintaining poverty, especially in terms of how poverty must be understood as a result of exploitation. that is, poverty results from a complex set of social relations through which “value is appropriated from nature and labour and accumulated as wealth and capital” (bernards 2023), a situation that has been labelled “relational poverty” (lawson and eldwood 2018). entrenched within our social systems is the stratification of value based on race, and the reorganisation of society on this same basis. racism can be understood as hierarchies of power, knowledge, value, and respect that are rooted in racial identity (including ethnicity, caste, colour, and tribe). these hierarchies are framed by collective systems and structures and manifest in our individual behaviours, and such historically structured racial lines continue in the present. the global political influence of racism (and other identity-based hierarchies) results in the inequitable and disproportionate distribution of resources along these stratifications, driving up racial inequality and poverty experienced by those at the socalled “lower end” of this socially constructed hierarchy. relational poverty, therefore, can be conceptualised as “the result of the different terms and conditions on which people are included in social life” (lawson and eldwood 2018). this was a key point of discussion in our research exploring how race and poverty were related in zimbabwe. one case examined unequal race relations between chinese business owners and black zimbabwean workers within the mining and construction industries and how the imbalance of power between these groups exacerbates poverty outcomes. research participants we spoke with noted that there is a sentiment and perception of chineseowned companies in zimbabwe as exploitative of the labour of black zimbabweans and referred to it as a form of neo-colonialism. zimbabwean labourers working for chinese firms are often underpaid and work in unsafe conditions, according to a zimbabwean legislator who is challenging chinese companies that abuse workers and do not generally adhere to local laws (chingono 2022). negligent mining and constructionsite practices in particular increase pollution and contaminate water supplies, which increase the risk of christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 agyeman and ranawana, from development to repair: dismantling racism and its role in shaping poverty today 60 detrimental health outcomes and diminish livelihood security (siziba 2022). the rights of workers and residents are also affected by a lack of accountability within the national government. left unchallenged, inequality and unequal power relations based on race and colour work together to dehumanise and sustain the exploitation of black zimbabweans. the racial inequality that has so greatly marked the national identity of zimbabwe both before and throughout the colonial period now forms the building block of continual racial inequality evident today in the relationship between black zimbabweans and chinese business owners. arguably, the neglect of rights and the failure to protect black people in zimbabwe from wealthy chinese migrants is propped up by implicit racial hierarchy that perpetuates the exploitation, suppression, and oppression of black people, within africa and around the world. in this context, a critical question one of our participants posed was “what does the black lives matter movement and the decolonial journey mean for black people in zimbabwe who are on the sharp end of both poverty and racism?” to this, we would add the following question: “does the movement run the risk of only being meaningful for black people in western contexts, or is this an entry point to affirm the rights and resources of black people everywhere?” relational repair requires us to interrogate the implications of privilege and power in who is afforded racial justice in this sense. such critical reflections are important for how the aid sector thinks about reparations. watershed moments of social justice movements cannot neglect the well-being of people who bear the greatest weight of racism, poverty and inequality. another example from our study comes from bangladesh. in conversations with research participants, we discussed the tensions resulting from the liberation struggle of the 1970s, and how the rights of ethnic and other minority communities are either not recognized or otherwise contested. activists working at these interstices in bangladesh generally agree that such tensions are connected to struggles over lands that had been owned by minority communities, but were then taken by majority communities after liberation. research participants, as well as scholars and activists working in the region, also point to the challenges raised by the constitution of bangladesh that make the recognition of ethnic minority issues difficult. in particular, the constitution designates bengali as the sole state language and declares that bangladeshi citizens would be known as bengalis (article 6), leaving little room for diverse identity markers that are not bengali (van schendel 2020). observers note that ethnic and religious minorities continue to face persecution, land dispossession, and violence, with successive governments neglecting to address their root causes (lam 2006; christian aid and eidhr 2022). ethnic and religious minorities are thus impeded from participating in political life and from accessing educational and other social resources and services that could support their social well-being. during interviews, comments were often made about “fairness,” “lightness,” and how, rooted in the brahmin caste system, lighter skin tones are regarded as superior, a view that has been reinforced through imperialism and coloniality across south asia. when talking about the complexity of conceptualising race, complexion, and colour, one participant reflected: “it is not as clear as ‘black versus white’, but it is [a] socially constructed issue of lighter complexion and dark complexion.” the socially constructed nature of these colonial and racist ideologies reinforces deeply unequal systems that position people with darker complexions as inferior. this makes them more vulnerable to mistreatment and more likely to be excluded from basic services, such as education and healthcare, and therefore more likely to live in poverty. research participants we spoke with noted how such racist ideologies become internalized. in conversations with colleagues, we also discussed how this mirrors much of the landscape in south asia. the material dimension of poverty when discussing material poverty, we understand it as the consequences and physical impacts of the oppression and exploitation of people relegated to the lower end of socially constructed hierarchies. an example from sierra leone illustrates well how these socially constructed hierarchies entrench material poverty. participants highlighted the link between poverty and what they called “ethnoregionalism,” which has increasingly become part of the socio-political relations within sierra leone and is in many ways, as one participant noted, “a nomenclature for tribalism.” ethnoregionalism is the socio-political construction of cultural and regional groups that bears a significant influence on the political identity of individuals, families, and communities, which in turn actively shapes political ideologies, practices, and participation across regions within the country (kabba 2018), and which have tangible implications for where power is concentrated and how it is exercised in sierra leone. the ethnocentric divide can be traced back to the transitional period of independence in the 1960s, and has deep and complex roots in sierra leone’s social and political context. while all groups in society have varying senses of their own power (related to the understanding of their rights, entitlements, behaviours, christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 agyeman and ranawana, from development to repair: dismantling racism and its role in shaping poverty today 61 rules of engagement, and the structural and systemic inclusion or exclusion and inequality that characterises their community) (gaventa 2006), our interviews spotlighted the ways in which material poverty is shaped by ethnoregionalism in sierra leone. one colleague explained that this happens when “people see themselves as belonging to particular ethnic groups and as a result they should advance the cause of that group to be in power and governance. and once they are in governance it's all about their own sets of priorities.” what we then see is that resources, basic services, and economic benefits across the country are unequally distributed, with communities and ethnic groups (particularly minority groups) that are not represented in spaces of political power more likely to be underserved by political leaders and, therefore, to experience greater poverty. the measurement, monitoring, and reporting of material dimensions of poverty have received the most attention and resources within the aid sector (sen 1999). indices such as the oxford poverty and human development initiative’s (ophi’s) mpi can be tools that countries use to analyse where poverty is concentrated, who experiences it, and how, but understanding how both the legacies of colonialism and attendant ethno-regionalism influence the process of resource distribution further enables ingos meaningfully to respond to the depth of poverty that people experience. multiple forms of reparation considering this concept of the multidimensionality of poverty, reparations become a holistic healing of human relationships that result in spiritual, relational, and material repair. the work of healing relationships requires attention to the multidimensionality of poverty and an understanding of colonialism, slavery, and the attendant legacy of structural oppression, imperialism, extraction, and exploitation. considering what the sinful system of racism has broken, what do reparations mean for persons living in poverty and what are the implications for development actors, especially those who are part of historically dominant “mission” churches like roman catholic or anglican churches? to frame what forms of repair are needed, we use the four levels of racism framework developed by the multicultural council of saskatchewan (2021) to illustrate how different types of brokenness demand different kinds of repair. the first is repair of structural racism. structural racism is the process by which hierarchies are established and engrained in society as normative. for christian ingos, it is important to challenge ideologies that normalise racialised inequality and the disproportionate concentration of poverty within minoritized and racialised groups globally. structural repair requires us to actively dismantle and disrupt socially constructed hierarchies and systems that oppress people based on identity and thus work to uphold equality for all people as image bearers of god. actions consistent with this goal include, for example, continued global advocacy to end caste-based segregation in south asia. addressing structural racism shifts the collective understanding of who lives in poverty and why, towards a collective responsibility to protect the most vulnerable in our society. second is the repair of institutional and systemic racism, which must also take on multiple approaches. institutional or systemic racism is embedded in policies, practices, and programmes of public and private sectors—which is where christian ingos may find significant influence. two lenses can be applied: one is the examination of thematic priorities of christian ingos, and another is the examination of our organisational functions and roles within the aid sector more broadly. a thematic priority that may contribute to the repair of institutional and systematic racism, for example, is “debt justice.” debt has become an insidious framework for both the challenges and proposed solutions that face governments, national organisations, and households in economically dispossessed countries in the global south. the world over, debt is often seen as a kind of individual failure, and non-payment is met with punishment. we must shift our frameworks for understanding debt and its consequences to see indebtedness as a human rights issue. if we view poverty as multidimensional, and linked to the legacies of colonialism and racism, we must understand that countries in the global south face insurmountable debts because of other societal failures, including coloniality, and we should start with this understanding as we reshape our responses to debt. the second approach, examination of our organisational role and function, requires a critical reflection of the power christian ingos hold and exercise. this involves critically reflecting on the nature of our international partnerships, and our work with communities living in poverty. first, we must recognise our own collusion in imbalances of power, and then work toward transforming, redistributing, and relocating power more equitably (bond 2023). this speaks to the theological principle of “repentance,” which does not simply represent concepts of sorrow over wrongs, but is characterised by intentional acts that restore what has been broken. walter brueggeman encourages us by noting that when we begin to reflect deeply on repentance, opportunities that arise may be disguised as inconveniences, but are indeed gifts christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 agyeman and ranawana, from development to repair: dismantling racism and its role in shaping poverty today 62 (brueggeman 2020). the relational repair that happens in the space of repentance bears material benefits in that the work against poverty and inequality is anchored in deeper and more sustainable transformation (judson 2022). there is also a need for the repair of damage caused by interpersonal racism, including the beliefs, attitudes, and behaviours of individuals, both conscious and unconscious. holistic repair cannot happen without honouring and making room for the knowledge, wisdom, and theology of people who have been most affected by racism, poverty, and colonisation. indeed, they must have the leading role. kikuyu uses the african philosophy of “ubuntu” to illustrate this relational co-dependency: ubuntu is a recognition that the most valuable aspect of our existence is in our relationships, and that human beings are inextricably bound to one another, making our relationships the essence of life (2022b). finally, internalised racism is a fundamental aspect of repair that responds to internalised beliefs of inferiority and superiority in individuals. repair here requires dismantling and replacing beliefs of inferiority, (such as colourism or anti-blackness), or superiority (such as whiteness and the normalisation of white racial identity) with relational ways of being that redeem the goodness between one another (mokuria et al. 2023). the result, from a christian theological perspective, is the recentring of the imago dei. it is imperative for christian ingos to resource approaches for reparations that respond holistically to spiritual, relational, and material forms of poverty caused and maintained by racism. anti-racism with integral intentions can be an act of reparation that is liberative as we actively dismantle hierarchies steeped in racism, like those based in coloniality, ethnocentrism, and caste. for faith-based organisations, this liberation enables us to transform power and develop new futures and alternative relationships to realise the just and healthy world envisioned by and with people living in poverty. references alkire, sabina and maria emma santos. 2010. “acute multidimensional poverty: a new index for developing countries.” ophi working papers 38, university of oxford. agyeman, ann-marie and a.m. ranawana. 2022. exploring the relationship between race, ethnicity, colour and poverty in christian aid’s work. london: christian aid. bernards, nick. 2023. “from multiple deprivations to exploitation: politicizing the multidimensional poverty index.” development and change (september 10, early view): 1-22. https://doi.org/10.1111/dech.12788. bhambra, gurminder k. and peter newell. 2022. “more than a metaphor: ‘climate colonialism’ in perspective.” global social challenges journal. xx: 1-9. https://doi.org/10.1332/eiem6688 bond. february 28, 2023. anti-racism and decolonising: a framework for organisations. https://www.bond.org.uk/resources/anti-racismand-decolonising/ bosma, ulbe. 2013. the sugar plantation in india and indonesia: industrial production, 1770-2010. cambridge: cambridge university press. doi:10.1017/cbo9781139626323. brueggeman, walter. 2020. repentance. bittersweet monthly. https://bittersweetmonthly.com/post/2020/repenta nce. carey, hilary m. 2011. god's empire: religion and colonialism in the british world, c. 1801-1908. cambridge: cambridge university press. chingono, nyasha. 2022. “‘they want to remove us and take the rock,’ say zimbabweans living near chinese-owned mines.” the guardian, 7 january 2022. https://www.theguardian.com/globaldevelopment/2022/jan/07/zimbabwe-china-minespollution-evictions. christian aid and eidhr. 2022. the struggle for equality: stories of caste based discrimination in south asia. london: christian aid. clandinin, d. jean and f. michael connelly. 2000. narrative inquiry: experience and story in qualitative research. san fransisco: jossey-bass. cruchley, peter. 2020. “silent no longer: the roots of racism in mission.” the ecumenical review 72 (1): 98-107. https://doi.org/10.1111/erev.12490. duffield, mark, and vernon hewitt, eds. 2013. empire, development & colonialism: the past in the present. suffolk: boydell & brewer ltd. dussel, enrique. 1981. a history of the church in latin america: colonialism to liberation (14921979). grand rapids: william. b. eerdmans publishing. about:blank https://doi.org/10.1332/eiem6688 https://www.bond.org.uk/resources/anti-racism-and-decolonising/ https://www.bond.org.uk/resources/anti-racism-and-decolonising/ https://bittersweetmonthly.com/post/2020/repentance https://bittersweetmonthly.com/post/2020/repentance https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/jan/07/zimbabwe-china-mines-pollution-evictions https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/jan/07/zimbabwe-china-mines-pollution-evictions https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/jan/07/zimbabwe-china-mines-pollution-evictions about:blank christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 agyeman and ranawana, from development to repair: dismantling racism and its role in shaping poverty today 63 marc edelman, carlos oya, and saturnino borras jr., eds. 2016. global land grabs: history, theory and method. london: taylor & francis. etherington, norman, ed. 2005. missions and empire. oxford: oxford university press. gaventa, john. 2006. “finding the spaces for change: a power analysis.” ids bulletin 37 (6): 23-33. ghosh, amitav. 2021. the nutmeg’s curse: parables for a planet in crisis. chicago: university of chicago press. ghosh, jayati. 2011. “dealing with ‘the poor.’” development and change 42 (3): 849-58. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7660.2011.01709.x ghosh, jayati. 2022. the christian aid poverty report: reimagining paths to human flourishing. london: christian aid, august 2022 available online at https://www.christianaid.org.uk/sites/default/files/2 022-08/the-christian-aid-poverty-report.pdf. goudge, paulette. 2003. the whiteness of power: racism in third world development and aid. london: lawrence & wishart. grimshaw, patricia and elizabeth nelson. 2001. “empire, 'the civilising mission' and indigenous christian women in colonial victoria.” australian feminist studies 16 (36): 295-309. harris, melania l. 2017. “ecowomanism and ecological reparations.” in the wiley blackwell companion to religion and ecology, edited by john hart, 1st ed. 195-202. oxford: john wiley & sons. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118465523.ch15. hooks, bell. 1997. “representing whiteness in the black imagination.” in displacing whiteness: essays in social and cultural criticism, edited by frankenberg, ruth. 338-346. durham: duke university press. intergovernmental panel on climate change. 2022. climate change 2022: impacts, adaptation and vulnerability. contribution of working group ii to the sixth assessment report of the intergovernmental panel on climate change [h.o. po ̈rtner, d.c. roberts, m. tignor, e.s. poloczanska, k. mintenbeck, a. alegría, m. craig, s. langsdorf, s. lo ̈schke, v. mo ̈ller, a. okem, b. rama (eds.)]. cambridge: cambridge university press. https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg2/. jennings, willie james. 2020. after whiteness: an education in belonging. grand rapids: william. b. eerdmans publishing. judson, timothy r. 2022. “white lament: reckoning with racism through concrete repentance.” black theology 20 (3): 221-234. kabba, osman. 2018. “sustaining peace in sierra leone through collaboration of the dominant ethnic groups.” walden dissertations and doctoral studies. 4796. https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/dissertations/47 96. kikuyu, bob. 2022a. a theological reflection on loss and damage. london: christian aid. kikuyu, bob. 2022b. ubuntu: a framework for a new feminist contract for people and planet. christian aid. ubuntu: a framework for a new feminist contract for people and planet | christian aid. kothari, uma. 2006. “an agenda for thinking about ‘race’ in development.” progress in development studies 6 (1): 9-23. https://doi.org/10.1191/1464993406ps124oa. kothari, uma. 2005. “authority and expertise: the professionalisation of international development and the ordering of dissent.” antipode 37 (3): 425-446. lam, janice h. 2006. “the rise of the ngo in bangladesh: lessons on improving access to justice for women and religious minorities.” george washington international law review 38 (1): 101-130. lawson, victoria and sarah eldwood, eds. 2018. relational poverty politics: forms, struggles, and possibilities. athens, ga: university of georgia press. maldonado-torres, nelson. 2008. against war: views from the underside of modernity. durham: duke university press. maluleke, tinyiko sam. 1997. “dealing lightly with the wound of my people? the trc process in theological perspective.” missionalia: southern african journal of mission studies 25 (3): 324343. mckittrick, katherine, ed. 2015. sylvia wynter: on being human as praxis. durham: duke university press. miller, robert j. 2019. “the doctrine of discovery: the international law of colonialism.” the indigenous peoples’ journal of law, culture, & resistance 5 (1): 35-42. moffett, luke. 2017. “transitional justice and reparations: remedying the past?” in research handbook on transitional justice, edited by lawther, cheryl, luke moffett and dov jacobs. 377-400. cheltenham: edward elgar publishing. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781781955314.00028. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7660.2011.01709.x about:blank about:blank https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118465523.ch15 https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg2/ https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/dissertations/4796 https://scholarworks.waldenu.edu/dissertations/4796 https://www.christianaid.org.uk/news/policy/ubuntu-framework-new-feminist-contract-people-and-planet https://www.christianaid.org.uk/news/policy/ubuntu-framework-new-feminist-contract-people-and-planet https://www.christianaid.org.uk/news/policy/ubuntu-framework-new-feminist-contract-people-and-planet https://doi.org/10.1191/1464993406ps124oa https://doi.org/10.4337/9781781955314.00028 christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 agyeman and ranawana, from development to repair: dismantling racism and its role in shaping poverty today 64 mokuria, vicki g., bailey jewel morris, allison solange lino correa, tramanh “tommy” vu and kelli lane lowery. 2023. “out of the frying pan and into the fire: the emotional labor of excavating internalised racism.” whiteness and education. doi:10.1080/23793406.2023.2220719. mugambi, jesse n.k. 2014. “ethical reflections.” in song of the prophets: global theology and climate change, christian aid, november 2014, https://www.christianaid.ie/resources/ourwork/song-prophets-global-theology-climatechange. mukaria, andrew ratanya. 2020. a synopsis of racism in the african christian mission of 19th and 20th centuries. nairobi: dayanka publishers limited. multicultural council of saskatchewan. 2021. levels of racism. https://mcos.ca/wpcontent/uploads/2023/03/levels-of-racismscaled.jpg. patel, vikram and arthur kleinman. 2003. “poverty and common mental disorders in developing countries.” bulletin of the world health organization 81 (8): 609-15. peace direct. 2021. time to decolonise aid: insights and lessons from a global consultation. https://www.peacedirect.org/us/publications/timet odecoloniseaid/. perry, keston. 2020. “realising climate reparations: towards a global climate stabilization fund and resilience fund programme for loss and damage in marginalised and former colonised societies.” ssrn electronic journal. march 1, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3561121. ranawana, a.m. 2022. a liberation for the earth: climate, race and cross. london: scm press. reddie, anthony. 2021. “critical insights into after whiteness.” modern theology 37 (4): 10161026. rieger, joerg. 1998. liberating the future: god, mammon, and theology. minneapolis: fortress press. rivas, althea-maria. 2018. “the everyday practice of development.” in the routledge handbook of postcolonial politics, edited by shilliam, robbie and olivia u. rutazibwa. 166-178. abingdon, oxon; new york: routledge. ruíz, elena. 2023. “structural trauma. meridians: feminism, race.” transnationalism 22 (2) (forthcoming). schrauwers, albert. 2001. “the ‘benevolent’ colonies of johannes van den bosch: continuities in the administration of poverty in the netherlands and indonesia.” comparative studies in society and history 43 (2): 298-328. doi:10.1017/s0010417501003504. sen, amartya. 1999. development as freedom. new york: alfred knopf. silvey, rachel and katharine rankin. 2011. “development geography: critical development studies and political geographic imaginaries.” progress in human geography 35 (5): 696-704. siziba, bongani. 2022. “chinese continue mining black granite in mutoko, zimbabwe, amid human rights concerns.” the sunday express, 25 october 2022. https://earthjournalism.net/stories/chinesecontinue-mining-black-granite-in-mutokozimbabwe-amid-human-rightsconcerns#:~:text=locals%20allege%20that%20so me%20chinese,of%20us%2440%20per%20mont h. van schendel, willem. 2020. a history of bangladesh. cambridge: cambridge university press. wilson, kalpana. 2013. race, racism and development: interrogating history, discourse and practice. london: bloomsbury publishing. ziai, aram. 2016. development discourse and global history: from colonialism to the sustainable development goals. taylor & francis. https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/46 915. ann-marie msichili agyeman is an advisor at christian aid dedicated to disrupting racialised hierarchies, the legacy of colonisation, and how these shape poverty and inequality globally today. as a zambian living in the uk, an integral part of her work is remaining sensitive to the tension of being of the global south but benefitting from proximity to european power whilst domiciled in the uk. anupama ranawana is a research advisor for christian aid. she is an anticolonial feminist, who researches and writes on feminist storytelling, race and poverty, and the intersection of religion and politics. author emails: annmarie.agyeman@gmail.com aranawana@christian-aid.org https://www.christianaid.ie/resources/our-work/song-prophets-global-theology-climate-change https://www.christianaid.ie/resources/our-work/song-prophets-global-theology-climate-change https://www.christianaid.ie/resources/our-work/song-prophets-global-theology-climate-change https://mcos.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/levels-of-racism-scaled.jpg https://mcos.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/levels-of-racism-scaled.jpg https://mcos.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/levels-of-racism-scaled.jpg about:blank about:blank http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3561121 about:blank#:~:text=locals%20allege%20that%20some%20chinese,of%20us%2440%20per%20month. about:blank#:~:text=locals%20allege%20that%20some%20chinese,of%20us%2440%20per%20month. about:blank#:~:text=locals%20allege%20that%20some%20chinese,of%20us%2440%20per%20month. about:blank#:~:text=locals%20allege%20that%20some%20chinese,of%20us%2440%20per%20month. about:blank#:~:text=locals%20allege%20that%20some%20chinese,of%20us%2440%20per%20month. about:blank#:~:text=locals%20allege%20that%20some%20chinese,of%20us%2440%20per%20month. https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/46915 https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/46915 mailto:annmarie.agyeman@gmail.com mailto:aranawana@christian-aid.org christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(2), winter 2024 luikham, chronic, and hoksbergen, a brief history of the accord network and synopsis of oneaccord23 152 a brief history of the accord network and synopsis of oneaccord23 elijah luikham, david chronic, and roland hoksbergen a brief history of the accord network like any flourishing organization, the accord network has grown and changed since its founding in 1977. originally known as the association of evangelical relief and development organizations, or aerdo, the organization changed its name in 2010 to the accord network and has become ever more influential in the world of us-based christian organizations engaged in what we have come to know as “integral development.” the new name was unanimously chosen by the members of the board, because, as scott todd, board president in 2010 says, it was simpler, rich in meaning, better “branding,” and more inviting to christian organizations wary of the term “evangelical.” sadly, notes todd, this term had already become politicized, and was not sufficiently welcoming to potential members with other theological backgrounds, like those from roman catholic, reformed, or mennonite traditions. originally, being a member of aerdo required affirmation of the statement of faith of the national association of evangelicals (nae), but along with the name change, aspiring members could now opt simply to affirm the apostles creed (todd 2024). a main player in the accord network’s evolution, recently deceased executive director chad hayward, provided a spiritual center to the organization as well as much-needed direction and continuity. under hayward’s 17-year leadership, the membership grew to over 120 organizations and initiated annual meetings that encouraged members to gather for learning, sharing, worship, and general inspiration. in addition to a rich variety of workshop topics and plenary presentations chosen every year, annual meetings provide opportunities for accord working groups to spend whole days in “intensives” that focus on specific topics and areas of ministry. these include water, sanitation, and hygiene (wash), monitoring & evaluation and spiritual metrics (both under the accord research alliance (ara)), christian economic development (ced), or the most recent working group, formation and care. another key development in accord’s history was its affiliation with this journal, christian relief, development, and advocacy. conversations among hayward and the journal’s founders began in 2017, with hayward heartily encouraging the development of the journal, along with an independent editorial board. the accord network board and the journal’s newlyconstituted editorial board readily agreed that crda would become the official journal of the accord network, dedicated to providing “a forum in which practices, ideas, research, theories, ethics, and controversies of relief, development, and advocacy are presented, discussed, and debated by those who share a commitment to live in service to jesus christ” (crda website – about). as part of this affiliation, this journal plans to include brief summaries of the yearly meetings and associated intensives, which are simply titled “oneaccord##,” where “##” stands for the current year. what follows is a synopsis of oneaccord23, held in october 2023. synopsis of oneaccord23 the theme of oneaccord23 was “flourish.” the idea of human flourishing weaved its way through all presentations, beginning with four all day “intensives” on the day prior to the meeting, and continuing with five plenary addresses and all four program tracks in the three days that followed. plenaries katie toop, senior director of transformational development at world concern, got the plenary sessions off to a strong start with her comments on “flourishing and worship.” she reminded attendees of god’s love and promise of abundant life and pointed out that a flourishing life is a life of worship to the triune god. alia abboud, chief development office for the lebanese society for educational and social development (lsesd), wondered whether flourishing can arise in times of crisis. she told how god is using refugees to teach the church about god, and that the https://accordnetwork.org/ https://accordnetwork.org/ https://crdajournal.org/index.php/crda/about https://crdajournal.org/index.php/crda/about christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(2), winter 2024 luikham, chronic, and hoksbergen, a brief history of the accord network and synopsis of oneaccord23 153 refugee crisis has restored the mission of the church in lebanon to preaching christ, not christianity. and she explained how preaching christ during a crisis can lead to flourishing. joanne lyons shared from her personal experiences and the holistic practices of john wesley to remind attendees that the mission of accord is god’s mission. referring to christopher wright, she argued that the church is god’s mission in the world, and that the spirit brings impact and results that we could have never planned. in the final plenary address, mike mantel, ceo of living water international, pushed his listeners to build organizations that pursue both physical and spiritual wellbeing modeled on the biblical concept of shalom. moreover, he encouraged us not to forget 1) that god (the master strategist) loves you; 2) that god equips you and invites you to serve right where you are, and 3) that god’s world needs you. workshop tracks throughout the several days of oneaccord23, participants attended workshops and/or breakout sessions on flourishing … 1. through program, 2. through marketing and fund development, 3. through people and operations, and 4. in kingdom opportunities. each track offered four sessions, covering a wide variety of practical issues of great interest to the accord community. these included forays into such perennial issues as understanding poverty, fundraising, and hiring global staff, but also some newer ones, like responding to climate change, evaluating the importance of grit in entrepreneurship, and harnessing artificial intelligence (ai) for integral mission. one theme that permeated the entire conference was the shared desire to be faithful to our callings in serving a savior who cares about the wellbeing of everyone the world over and asks us to care about it too. for an overview of all the workshops and presenters involved, see the 2023 oneaccord program. intensives the purpose of the water sanitation and hygiene (wash) intensive was to take a deep dive into the complexities of integral mission topics. presentations and collegial conversation addressed the pursuit of transformation in the context of a variety of political, social, and spiritual environments, focusing especially on communications strategies, technology, financing, and monitoring. to learn more, contact thomas soerens at tsoerens@messiah.edu. the formation & care intensive enjoyed its inaugural accord intensive and focused on practitioners who wanted to learn more about how to support the spiritual formation and care of staff/volunteers. biblical reflection, prayer, silence and solitude, and sharing personal stories all played a role in this intensive. to learn more about or join this community of practice, write to odoi odotei (odoi_odotei@wvi.org). the christian economic development (ced) intensive addressed how flourishing in partnership and collaboration requires an end to paternalistic models and relationships led by organizations in the global north on the one hand, and, on the other, the development of new models through which we can serve god’s people together. to learn more, visit https://www.cednetwork.org/ or contact gillian foster wilkinson (gwilkinson@hopeinternational.org). the accord research alliance (ara) intensive, which focused this year on spiritual metrics, addressed the mutual organizational interest in measuring the faith— oriented part of our work. there was much diversity here. some presenters emphasized how often the gospel message is heard and shared, while others focused more on the increase in human dignity and sharing in the common good. everyone seemed keen on finding statistically acceptable techniques. including program participants in the design of program and measurement strategies was also a key theme. for more information, contact david bronkema at dbronkem@eastern.edu. references todd, scott. march 8, 2024. email conversation with roland hoksbergen, crda editor. david chronic has served for over 25 years with word made flesh, a christian development organization working in thirteen countries. he is currently the director of operations and is also a phd candidate at asbury theological seminary, researching theologies of development in the romanian context. elijah luikham is an ordained priest in the anglican church in north america who has served in a variety of ministry positions, most recently as a missionary for the organization trinity on the border in south texas. he is also phd candidate in intercultural studies at https://accordnetwork.org/oneaccord-2023 mailto:tsoerens@messiah.edu mailto:odoi_odotei@wvi.org https://www.cednetwork.org/ mailto:gwilkinson@hopeinternational.org mailto:dbronkem@eastern.edu christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(2), winter 2024 luikham, chronic, and hoksbergen, a brief history of the accord network and synopsis of oneaccord23 154 asbury theological seminary where he is focusing on global development. roland hoksbergen is professor emeritus of economics and international development at calvin university. he serves as co-editor of this journal. author emails: david.chronic@asburyseminary.edu elijah.luikham@asburyseminary.edu hoksro@calvin.edu mailto:david.chronic@asburyseminary.edu mailto:elijah.luikham@asburyseminary.edu mailto:hoksro@calvin.edu christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(1), summer 2022 bueno, pandillas y desarrollo 12 pandillas & desarrollo: los retos para el desarrollo transformacional en comunidades controladas por las maras en el salvador1 david bueno la capacidad de las pandillas para ejercer control territorial en el salvador está cambiando la dinámica social en las comunidades marginales, y las iglesias pentecostales son una de las pocas instituciones sociales que sobreviven en este contexto. en los últimos diez años, las pandillas han pasado de ser pequeñas bandas criminales locales a un fenómeno social influyente. la familiaridad y el acceso de los pentecostales a las pandillas tiene a muchos profesionales del desarrollo examinando si iniciativas de empoderamiento basadas en la fe pueden resolver amplios problemas sociales que influyen en la expansión de las pandillas. al mismo tiempo, el embrollo de las pandillas plantea una clara amenaza para la seguridad y la estabilidad necesarias para lograr el desarrollo sostenible. como practicante del desarrollo transformacional en el salvador durante más de treinta años, recientemente he observado el creciente aislamiento que el control de las pandillas está teniendo en las comunidades marginales. este artículo analiza más de cerca los efectos que el enredo de pandillas tiene en los enfoques de desarrollo transformacional sostenible en el salvador, examinando específicamente tres programas en la comunidad de san martín. el desafío es identificar políticas de desarrollo transformacionales, enfoques de promoción y recursos de apoyo que mejor se adapten a las comunidades controladas por pandillas. para lograr esto, es fundamental una discusión más amplia sobre el desarrollo transformacional en comunidades enredadas por pandillas. introducción las comunidades marginales en el salvador han experimentado el crecimiento de iglesias evangélicas (principalmente pentecostales), asociaciones comunitarias (incluidas organizaciones no gubernamentales / ong) y pandillas. como practicante del desarrollo transformacional en el salvador en los últimos treinta años, recientemente he sido testigo de un cambio preocupante en la dinámica social en las comunidades marginales. las pandillas han pasado de ser camarillas criminales locales a un fenómeno social influyente. los esfuerzos anteriores para disminuir la influencia de las pandillas, ya sea mano dura (aplicación de la ley) o mano suave (reformas estructurales), han tenido un éxito limitado en la reducción del crecimiento de las pandillas y la disminución de la violencia. la capacidad de las 1 este artículo es una traducción del inglés del artículo publicado en esta revista en febrero de 2022. ver bueno, d. (2022). “gangs and development: the difficulties of transformational development in gang-controlled communities in el salvador.” christian relief, development, and advocacy 3(2):37-50. traducido por anita araniva. pandillas para ejercer control territorial está dejando a muchas comunidades marginales aisladas de los sistemas de apoyo externos, y las iglesias pentecostales son una de las pocas instituciones sociales que sobreviven en este contexto. la esperanza es que el desarrollo transformacional pueda traer resultados sostenibles en las comunidades afectadas por las pandillas. este artículo analiza de cerca los efectos del embrollo de las pandillas en el desarrollo transformacional, examinando específicamente tres programas paraeclesiasticos en la comunidad de san martín. san martín es una comunidad con una presencia sustancial de pandillas y una larga historia de participación de la iglesia y las ongs cristianas en el desarrollo integral. mi investigación es principalmente empírica y se basa en conversaciones a fondo con christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(1), summer 2022 bueno, pandillas y desarrollo 13 miembros de la comunidad, profesionales del desarrollo y líderes de la iglesia que trabajan en el desarrollo transformacional. los programas en cuestión están enfocados en lograr un desarrollo transformacional a nivel individual y/o comunitario. por lo general estos programas han tenido éxito, en términos de afectar positivamente las vidas de muchos jóvenes y familias, pero han tenido poco impacto en los problemas estructurales que perpetúan la expansión de las pandillas. sonja wolf, después de investigar los programas de prevención de pandillas, concluye que el cambio social necesario será difícil sin la cooperación de los estratos más poderosos de la sociedad salvadoreña (wolf 2017, 223). por el momento, sin embargo, los profesionales del desarrollo transformacional que trabajan en comunidades afectadas por pandillas no pueden contar con tal cooperación. a la luz de estas limitaciones, el logro de un desarrollo transformacional sostenible se ve gravemente obstaculizado por la inseguridad y la inestabilidad creadas por las pandillas. el desafío es descubrir cómo se puede mejorar el desarrollo transformacional en comunidades afectadas por pandillas. desarrollo transformacional en comunidades afectadas por pandillas en el salvador. el desafío para muchas iniciativas comunitarias es que el control que ejerce las pandillas hace que el pronóstico de un futuro mejor sea insostenible. el desarrollo socioeconómico sostenible requiere un nivel básico de seguridad y estabilidad. paul collier sugiere crear un entorno normativo a nivel internacional que fomente el crecimiento económico y la buena gobernanza. si estas medidas fallan, entonces el uso de la fuerza externa puede ser necesario para garantizar la estabilidad (collier 2007, 124). desafortunadamente, ambas medidas se han aplicado en vano en el salvador. tanto las tácticas policiales de mano dura como las posteriores estrategias de ajuste social estructural no han mitigado el crecimiento de las pandillas (wolf 2017). desesperados por resultados, muchos ahora están buscando respuestas en las iglesias locales. las conexiones entre las pandillas y los pentecostales han sido bien documentadas en el libro de brenneman, homies + hermanos. por ejemplo, él explica cómo una de las únicas formas en que los pandilleros se les permite abandonar la pandilla es a través de la conversión religiosa. brenneman explica cómo los expandilleros conversos encontraron que el evangelismo pentecostal era ventajoso y efectivo (brenneman 2012, 16). a pesar del poder de estas conversiones, la perspectiva de aprovechar estas relaciones para lograr un mayor cambio social es improbable. la dinámica actual entre las pandillas y las comunidades religiosas expone las limitaciones prácticas para lograr un desarrollo transformacional sostenible. los profesionales del desarrollo transformacional en estos entornos están experimentando una regresión hacia el abordaje de las necesidades básicas, y los objetivos comunitarios a largo plazo se ven amenazados por la inseguridad. en las comunidades controladas por las pandillas, las iniciativas de bien común requieren el consentimiento de las pandillas o, como mínimo, la indiferencia de las pandillas. independientemente de lo que determinen los líderes comunitarios, la necesidad de control de las pandillas anula los objetivos de bien común. por ejemplo, en la comunidad de san martín el sistema comunitario de agua está a punto de colapsar. los técnicos y los miembros del comité de agua no pueden acceder a ciertas comunidades controladas por las pandillas. sin embargo, colaborar con las pandillas para mantener el sistema de agua de la aldea es problemático por muchas razones. cualquier acuerdo con las pandillas viene sin garantías, y legitima aún más su autoridad. también plantea la pregunta de quién está transformando a quién. los miembros de la iglesia y la comunidad enfrentan la difícil realidad de que el control de pandillas crea un ambiente inadecuado para su visión del futuro. la evolución de las pandillas el grado de influencia de las pandillas en las comunidades marginales de el salvador ha sido un acontecimiento importante en los últimos diez años. algo está cambiando en la forma en que operan las pandillas, y está alterando las estructuras de poder en las comunidades marginales. las pandillas están evolucionando de camarillas vecinales al estilo de los ángeles a un fenómeno nacional más amplio. la narrativa común de que los pandilleros son jóvenes motivados por la empresa criminal ha sido desafiada por el criminólogo steve dudley. los años de investigación de dudley sobre las pandillas de la ms13 lo llevan a sugerir que el mayor motivador para la afiliación a pandillas en el salvador no es la empresa criminal o el dinero, sino más bien la conectividad social y el sentido de pertenencia. dudley argumenta que, como empresas criminales, las pandillas son relativamente poco sofisticadas (dudley 2021). sin embargo, a pesar de su presupuesto relativamente pequeño, han crecido en tamaño e influencia en todo el país. dudley también señala que no importa cuánto hayan tratado los gobiernos anteriores de socavar los sistemas de apoyo financiero de las pandillas, las pandillas siguen multiplicándose. dudley concluye que los problemas de las pandillas en el salvador no se van a resolver con tácticas de aplicación de la ley; en cambio, deben abordarse a nivel social. christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(1), summer 2022 bueno, pandillas y desarrollo 14 los cambios en el comportamiento de las pandillas en los últimos años son un poco paradójicos. por un lado, las pandillas se están convirtiendo en grupos más inclusivos que han reducido las barreras de entrada y ofrecen más niveles de afiliación. por ejemplo, no todos los nuevos reclutas están obligados a someterse a una paliza de trece segundos para unirse a la pandilla (insight crime 2021). estos requisitos originales aún pueden existir en niveles más altos de liderazgo de pandillas, pero los nuevos reclutas pueden optar por niveles de compromiso menos comprometidos. los jóvenes pueden cumplir funciones de nivel de entrada, como ser centinelas de barrio, sin ser pandilleros de pleno derecho. muchos nuevos reclutas también reciben instrucciones de evitar hacerse tatuajes u otras marcas de pandillas, para ser más discretos. este enfoque más amplio parece contradecir el hecho de que el control de las pandillas de la comunidad local se ha vuelto más exclusivo. el acceso a sus comunidades es monitoreado de cerca. su organización interna ha mejorado en la medida en que las pandillas ahora administran redes nacionales para investigar a los forasteros. a medida que las pandillas crecen en número, se organizan mejor y obtienen control territorial, su influencia aumenta. la guerra territorial entre las pandillas de la calle 18 y la mara salvatrucha (ms) no se trata simplemente del orgullo del vecindario, sino del control del territorio estratégico que garantiza su seguridad y crea oportunidades. aún no está claro qué papel juegan el gobierno, la policía y el crimen organizado en esta batalla por el territorio. hay indicios de que las pandillas aprovechan el control territorial para crear alianzas en los niveles más altos de la autoridad nacional. por ejemplo, un artículo reciente en el periódico salvadoreño el faro describe cómo las pandillas logran influir en las elecciones con su control sobre comunidades marginales densamente pobladas (martínez y valencia 2018). también hay señales de que las pandillas son aprovechadas por jugadores más sofisticados. dudley señala el hecho de que durante la reciente pandemia de covid-19 gran parte de la ayuda gubernamental en muchas comunidades marginales se entregó a través de las pandillas (dudley 2021). independientemente de quién esté aprovechando a quién, las pandillas ahora se jactan de determinar las elecciones, tener conexiones en todos los niveles de la sociedad y operar como una fuerza de seguridad paralela en comunidades marginales. en tal contexto, los esfuerzos de desarrollo transformacional no pueden ignorar la creciente influencia de las pandillas. las iglesias locales pentecostales y las pandillas el papel de la iglesia local en la configuración de un futuro mejor es un aspecto fundamental del desarrollo transformacional, pero en las comunidades marginales de el salvador, la relación de la iglesia con las pandillas es complicada. no es sorprendente que estos grupos sociales se superpongan en muchas áreas (the economist 2018). manuel vásquez destaca cómo las mismas condiciones que hacen que unirse a una iglesia pentecostal sea atractivo para los pobres también hacen que unirse a una pandilla sea atractivo para los jóvenes privados de sus derechos (vásquez 2003, 134). la aplicación de stephen offutt de las teorías de embrollo social revela el complicado entorno en el que los miembros de la iglesia y las pandillas están conectados por relaciones familiares, económicas y sociales (offutt 2020). tanto las iglesias como las pandillas crean comunidades patrimoniales que ayudan a abordar los sentimientos de aislamiento. es importante destacar que hay diversos grados de relación con pandillas. las iglesias en las comunidades marginadas más afectadas por el control de pandillas suelen ser iglesias de vecindario pequeñas (100 miembros o menos) que pertenecen a denominaciones tradicionales. el grado de entrelazamiento se correlaciona con la ubicación física y la historia extendida en la comunidad. por ejemplo, las iglesias en vecindarios residenciales tienen que cumplir con estrictos protocolos de pandillas, como conducir con las ventanas abajo o pagar "renta" (tarifas de protección). las iglesias independientes emergentes, sin embargo, generalmente se establecen en áreas zonificadas para uso comercial. los pastores y miembros de la congregación entran y salen de estas iglesias más libremente. en comunidades estrictamente controladas, se requiere el consentimiento de las pandillas para que cualquier persona no local ingrese. otra distinción importante es que la familiaridad entre las iglesias pentecostales y los pandilleros no implica que la relación sea de mutuo consentimiento. las iglesias pentecostales también están limitadas por los controles territoriales de las pandillas. luis huezo mixco ha señalado que el pentecostalismo salvadoreño contribuye al "dinamismo de lo especial", lo que crea una paradójica similitud con las pandillas, cuyos mundos se superponen y las ponen en tensión (huezo mixco 2020, 231). los pentecostales están relacionados con las pandillas, pero de ninguna manera son coconspiradores en un nuevo orden social. comparten un ecosistema que facilita el crecimiento tanto de las iglesias pentecostales como de las pandillas, pero su capacidad para convivir es precaria. los pastores deben decidir si acomodar la autoridad de las pandillas o arriesgarse a las consecuencias si lo ignoran. esta es una desviación del pasado, cuando los márgenes de la christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(1), summer 2022 bueno, pandillas y desarrollo 15 sociedad proporcionaban un espacio social menos disputado para las iglesias pentecostales. en un artículo anterior (bueno 2001), identifiqué el margen como un lugar de refugio, un ambiente propicio para el desarrollo de estructuras de apoyo alternativas críticas para una expresión local de comunidad y fe. el liderazgo de estilo cacique del movimiento pentecostal, la estructura organizativa autónoma y la autoridad moral empoderada por el espíritu santo han sido parte integral de la construcción de la capacidad local. hoy, sin embargo, las comunidades marginales no son propicias para construir y mantener sistemas de apoyo alternativos. los evangélicos pentecostales que una vez buscaron la independencia de un sistema macro social restrictivo ahora están buscando apoyo externo para ayudar a abordar la inseguridad y la violencia que afectan a sus comunidades. las iglesias y pandillas pentecostales comparten un margen cada vez más hostil, y sobrevivir ha requerido nuevos métodos de adaptación. r.r. reno (2019) describe la crisis posmoderna que contribuye al surgimiento del nacionalismo, el populismo y otras fuertes afiliaciones basadas en la lealtad. su trabajo se centra principalmente en el norte global, pero tiene relevancia en el surgimiento de pandillas y el pentecostalismo en el salvador. reno describe la crisis actual de la sociedad como una inquietud nacida de la falta de identidad. "desconfiamos del sistema social como ineficaz, de las economías como volátiles y de las instituciones políticas como egoístas. escalamos sin redes de seguridad, no hay estabilidad, no hay descanso, no hay un sentido de pertenencia" (reno 2019, 103). 2 reno propone que en una sociedad inestable el surgimiento de lo que él llama "dioses fuertes" es predecible. el desarraigo perenne de la condición humana, y la falta de pertenecer, intensificados por la modernidad, magnifican el deseo de lealtades fuertes y concepciones de la verdad (reno 2019, 105). las creencias y lealtades fuertes pueden ser útiles para restaurar la identidad, pero también pueden conducir a ideologías distorsionadas y destructivas. las pandillas consideran que la privación de derechos surge de la falta de dinero, poder y respeto. todos pueden contribuir, pero cuando la solución es la lealtad arraigada en el miedo y el control basado en la violencia, estos dioses fuertes se vuelven opresivos. para los pentecostales, la crisis comienza con la condición del alma. "expulsados del edén, siempre estamos sin hogar" (reno 2019, 105). 3 los pentecostales buscan restaurar su identidad a través de un proceso de salvación y santificación. bryant myers 2 traducido del inglés por el autor: “we distrust the social system as ineffective, economies as volatile, and political institutions as self-serving. we climb without safety nets, there is no stability, no rest – no home.” 3 traducido del inglés por el autor: “cast out of eden, we are always homeless.” señala que una de las principales razones por las que los cristianos carismáticos y pentecostales son la expresión de más rápido crecimiento de la iglesia hoy en día es que tienen una respuesta para cual dios es más poderoso (myers 2011, 10). las pandillas y los pentecostales anhelan dioses fuertes que proporcionen un sentido de pertenencia, pero sus métodos de operación no podrían ser más diferentes. el uso de la violencia, las drogas y las imágenes satánicas por parte de las pandillas es sospechosamente contrario a las formas no violentas, austeras y llenas del espíritu de los pentecostales. sin embargo, la preferencia de las pandillas por los conversos "genuinos" no sugiere alguna forma simple de rebelión juvenil, sino más bien que la violencia que abrazan debe atribuirse a una oscuridad más profunda nacida del miedo, el abuso y la negligencia. las iglesias pentecostales no pueden abordar y/o manejar individualmente todos los males sociales que fomentan la proliferación de pandillas, y coexistir con las pandillas es cada vez más difícil a medida que las pandillas obtienen un mayor control. la mayoría de los pastores y miembros de la iglesia se esfuerzan por mantener relaciones cordiales con los miembros de la pandilla y hacen todo lo posible para evitar confrontaciones directas. si bien las iglesias basadas en la comunidad, compuestas por los pobres y marginados, tienen el potencial de influir en los pandilleros, también son las más afectadas por las pandillas. las iglesias pentecostales en estas comunidades tienen el enorme desafío de ser un refugio de y para los pandilleros. el reciente asesinato de un pastor de la iglesia elim por miembros de pandillas subraya la naturaleza volátil de estos entornos (alfaro y marroquín 2021). a pesar de una creciente comprensión de que la coexistencia con las pandillas es difícilmente sostenible, la mayoría de las iglesias todavía adoptan instintivamente un enfoque cauteloso para el compromiso social. las iglesias pentecostales y el compromiso social a medida que las comunidades se vean más afectadas por las pandillas, ¿los pentecostales irán más allá de su enfoque tradicional en la salvación individual para comenzar a abordar los problemas sociales estructurales? la percepción general es que la influencia de las iglesias pentecostales en el discurso público todavía no es representativa. algunas grandes iglesias independientes toman un papel algo activo en expresar preocupaciones sobre las condiciones christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(1), summer 2022 bueno, pandillas y desarrollo 16 actuales, y muchos pentecostales participan individualmente dentro de instituciones sociales más amplias. sin embargo, un enfoque colectivo de la acción social sigue siendo limitado. el compromiso social de las iglesias pentecostales es en su mayoría privado y local. una tesis reciente de mi hermano, ron bueno, cofundador de enlace, plantea la cuestión de si la acción social entre las iglesias pentecostales en el salvador es un "ritual disputado" (bueno 2019). su trabajo, principalmente entre las iglesias pentecostales rurales y semi-rurales, revela resistencia al compromiso social en muchos niveles. señala una vacilación general cuando se trata de involucrarse con temas que parecen políticos o que abarcan a la comunidad en general. por ejemplo, unirse a la adesco local (asociación comunitaria autorizada por el gobierno) es cuestionado por las iglesias pentecostales tradicionales. r. bueno describe el proceso actual que los pastores utilizan para ritualizar, como agregar oración o evangelismo, para justificar la acción social. este enfoque crea "rituales disputados" por miembros reticentes de la iglesia que están tratando de evitar el enredo secular. a principios de la década de 1930, las iglesias evangélicas (predominantemente rurales) tenían pocas opciones aparte de construir estructuras socio-religiosas adecuadas en los márgenes menos disputados de la sociedad. david martin describe esta tendencia como un "refugio" de la sociedad (martin 1990). al crear estructuras sociales alternativas en la periferia, pudieron evitar la polémica plaza pública dominada en ese momento por una tríada de poder; un estado militar, la iglesia católica y los grandes terratenientes. el objetivo de ser un pueblo separado y santo con un estricto código de comportamiento no tenía la intención de tener un amplio atractivo. los "verdaderos cristianos" eligieron el camino estrecho, lo que, por definición, hizo improbable el surgimiento de un movimiento popular. los pentecostales, sin embargo, entendieron cuán poderosa es una experiencia directa con dios para aquellos que se sienten abandonados. lo que no estaba previsto, incluso por la mayoría de los pentecostales, era cuántas personas se sentían marginadas. para los pentecostales en el salvador, el aislamiento no sería una estrategia a largo plazo. en la década de 1950, los pentecostales habían comenzado a adoptar estrategias de alcance social más evangelísticas dirigidas al crecimiento de la iglesia. en la década de 1980, se hizo más evidente una división entre las perspectivas sociales urbanas y rurales. a medida que la economía pasó de ser agraria a industrial, las áreas urbanas comenzaron a crecer. en el contexto urbano, las iglesias pentecostales ganaron tracción con las clases medias trabajadoras y profesionales. los pentecostales comenzaron a desarrollar escuelas, universidades y clínicas que proporcionaban alternativas para las comunidades desatendidas. al mismo tiempo, la mayoría de las iglesias en las comunidades rurales y marginales de el salvador seguían siendo relativamente pobres y pequeñas. estimaciones recientes indican que el 33% de los salvadoreños vive en condiciones de pobreza extrema, y la mayoría se encuentra en zonas rurales (grupo banco mundial 2021). en contextos con recursos limitados, las iglesias pentecostales tienden a favorecer los enfoques internos de los ministerios holísticos. es lógico pensar que las comunidades directamente afectadas por el crimen, la pobreza y la marginación prioricen las necesidades de la congregación en lugar de los problemas sociales amplios. en la década de 1990, grandes iglesias neopentecostales independientes comenzaron a surgir y exhibir una mayor influencia económica y social. al mismo tiempo, la ayuda internacional y las organizaciones paraeclesiásticas evangélicas también comenzaron a proliferar. los programas sociales que enfatizaron la participación de la comunidad recibieron apoyo de organizaciones paraeclesiásticas externas. muchas iglesias pentecostales establecieron de forma independiente asociaciones con organizaciones de ayuda para implementar programas sociales dirigidos a la comunidad en general. muchas escuelas, clínicas e iniciativas de cuidado infantil se establecieron en comunidades marginales con el apoyo de organizaciones internacionales de ayuda. en la década de 2000, las pandillas comenzaron a aparecer en comunidades marginales densamente pobladas por iglesias pentecostales. las pandillas fueron vistas inicialmente por los miembros de la iglesia como una molestia pública que podría mitigarse con una fuerte presencia policial, pero en 2010 se hizo evidente que había factores sociales más grandes influenciando la expansión de las pandillas. cómo manejar los efectos sociales ocasionados por las pandillas es un desafío que la mayoría de los pastores y miembros de la iglesia no están equipados para enfrentar. en cambio, los pastores y los miembros de la iglesia en comunidades dominadas por pandillas aplican su teología en un formato similar al triaje moral, negociando principios de santidad y rectitud en condiciones de coacción extrema. un pastor de jóvenes que entrevisté expresó lo conflictivo que está por la situación de las pandillas en su comunidad. "es difícil no sentir compasión por los jóvenes pandilleros que rutinariamente han sido expuestos por sus familias, la sociedad e incluso sus propias pandillas. sin embargo, el uso de la violencia y el miedo de las pandillas para controlar la comunidad es una amenaza directa christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(1), summer 2022 bueno, pandillas y desarrollo 17 para la iglesia y sus miembros" (pastor juvenil, 24 de septiembre de 2021). al margen de la sociedad salvadoreña, la ley y el orden ya no son proporcionados por las autoridades públicas. en comunidades muy integradas, las pandillas y los miembros de la comunidad tienen que negociar sus propias reglas de enfrentamiento. la policía y el ejército son vistos con desconfianza, y las historias de infiltración de pandillas se vuelven más comunes. sin una comprensión clara de quién tiene el control, especialmente en las comunidades marginales, las iglesias son aún más reacias a desarrollar estrategias que dependan del apoyo del gobierno. no saber en quién confiar hace que la colaboración social amplia sea problemática. en la actualidad, el imperativo moral para las iglesias es sobrevivir en lugar de prosperar. las iglesias pentecostales como la solución para la dominación de las pandillas en escenarios típicos de la historia de david y goliat de la biblia, se pide a las iglesias pentecostales pequeñas, pobres y cada vez más aisladas que resuelvan los crecientes problemas sociales que perpetúan el crecimiento de las pandillas. parece que estamos al final de un ciclo de desarrollo en el que las políticas de ajuste estructural a nivel macro vuelven su atención a las estrategias locales de empoderamiento. esto no es un cambio ideológico, sino más bien un intento pragmático de encontrar formas más efectivas de abordar el creciente problema de las pandillas. como se describió anteriormente, los enfoques de mano dura (aplicación de la ley) no han sido efectivos para reducir la expansión de las pandillas. a raíz de estos fracasos, el gobierno y las organizaciones internacionales comenzaron a centrar más recursos en políticas de cambio social estructural. con base en datos del banco mundial, stephen offutt señala que de 2013 a 2021 el salvador recibió más de $ 1 mil millones en ayuda extranjera (offutt, de próxima aparición, 240). si bien no todos los fondos se dirigieron específicamente a la reducción de las pandillas, el gobierno y las organizaciones internacionales de ayuda creían expresamente que cambiar las condiciones estructurales de la sociedad, mediante la creación de una economía próspera y una buena gobernanza, mitigaría la presencia de las pandillas. offutt describe "un campo abarrotado de actores involucrados en los esfuerzos de prevención de pandillas en el salvador. organizaciones multilaterales, gobiernos nacionales y organizaciones humanitarias, todos buscando y dispuestos a financiar soluciones" 4 traducido del inglés por el autor: “a crowded field of actors involved in gang prevention efforts in el salvador. multilateral organizations, national governments, and humanitarian organizations, all seeking, and willing to fund, solutions” (offutt, de próxima aparición, 239). 4 y, sin embargo, los esfuerzos macro-estructurales locales e internacionales para mejorar la economía política de el salvador no han frenado el crecimiento de la influencia de las pandillas en el salvador. muchos cristianos no se sorprenden. bryant myers afirma que las cosmovisiones modernas, materialistas, tecnocráticas y dependientes de la tecnología, no incluyen elementos espirituales que puedan ayudar a los pobres (myers 2011, 45). este punto de vista parece ser cierto en el salvador. la experiencia con las pandillas ha expuesto la limitación de los enfoques materialistas. hay indicios de que las organizaciones internacionales de ayuda están cada vez más abiertas a soluciones basadas en la fe. por ejemplo, la fundación moody recibió un brillante respaldo de marcy sánchez (directora de narcóticos y cumplimiento legal de la embajada de los estados unidos) en la inauguración de "vida libre", un programa de rehabilitación de pandillas basado en la fe. kenton moody (misionero pentecostal y fundador de la fundación moody) se hace eco del sentimiento de myers de que el desafío es que los cristianos salgan de nuestro exilio autoimpuesto y contribuyan con nuestro material de fe a la conversación (myers 2011, 45). la iglesia local como un jugador clave en el desarrollo transformacional se basa actualmente en su familiaridad y acceso a las comunidades influenciadas por pandillas. el desafío es determinar si las iglesias locales tienen la capacidad de liberar a sus comunidades del control de las pandillas. definición del desarrollo transformacional para muchos cristianos involucrados en el trabajo social, los enfoques de desarrollo transformacional han guiado nuestros esfuerzos. sin embargo, en este momento no está claro cómo el desarrollo transformacional puede ayudar a las comunidades marginales a separarse de las pandillas, en parte porque no hay un camino definitivo hacia la transformación social. wayne bragg argumenta que la transformación es el mejor término bíblico para describir una visión cristiana del desarrollo. el artículo de bragg no es una teoría del desarrollo en si, sino una lista de características de la transformación, cada una identifica una frontera transformacional (myers 2011, 153). con su libro pionero, walking with the poor (1999, 2011), bryant myers se basa en las ideas seminales de bragg al consolidar y expandir los principios y las mejores prácticas de desarrollo transformacional que ahora guían a muchas ongs cristianas desde el cambio de milenio. esto incluye a las ongs con las que he christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(1), summer 2022 bueno, pandillas y desarrollo 18 trabajado en el salvador. myers utiliza el término "desarrollo transformacional" para distinguirlo de una connotación puramente material común al desarrollo. el desarrollo transformacional aborda toda la vida humana: material, social, psicológica y espiritual (myers 2011, 3). para myers hay varias contribuciones críticas al desarrollo transformacional que solo la iglesia puede proporcionar, especialmente la restauración de la integridad espiritual. el objetivo es lograr un proceso de cambio (transformación) que restaure nuestra identidad y vocación. un proceso que se logra cuando establecemos relaciones correctas con dios, la humanidad y la creación. una gran pregunta que surge de las comunidades enredadas en pandillas, por lo tanto, es qué papel pueden desempeñar las iglesias locales y las organizaciones paraeclesiásticas para lograr un cambio sostenible. myers define la sostenibilidad de dos maneras: primero, el desarrollo transformacional debe terminar en una transición a la sostenibilidad, pasando de la dependencia a la independencia. en segundo lugar, la comunidad tiene que comprender que la sostenibilidad debe incluir las dimensiones físicas, mentales, sociales y espirituales (myers 2011, 193). este enfoque multidimensional para definir la sostenibilidad significa que debemos evaluar la efectividad del desarrollo transformacional tanto a nivel estructural como a nivel de proyecto / programa comunitario. el logro de resultados duraderos depende del desarrollo de sistemas de apoyo que permitan a las comunidades construir continuamente hacia un futuro mejor; y en el desarrollo de la capacidad de las iglesias locales para ser confiables, y constante fuentes de influencia moral que desafían los valores sociales de la comunidad hacia relaciones saludables y productivas. la iglesia local como socio para el desarrollo transformacional es tanto un principio como una decisión práctica. leslie newbigin afirma: "es seguramente un hecho de significado inagotable que lo que nuestro señor dejó atrás no fue un libro o un credo, ni un sistema de pensamiento, ni una regla de vida, sino una comunidad visible" (citado por myers 2011, 191). la investigación de gerard clarke también llama la atención sobre el hecho práctico de que las organizaciones de la sociedad civil basadas en la fe son los principales, si no los más grandes, contribuyentes al bienestar social en gran parte del sur global (clarke 2006, 837). en realidad, en las comunidades enredadas por pandillas, la iglesia local es una de las pocas opciones restantes para resolver la crisis de pandillas. desafortunadamente, no es una tarea pequeña, especialmente teniendo en cuenta que el gobierno local y las organizaciones internacionales de ayuda, con todos sus recursos y experiencia, no han podido resolverlo. la forma en que la iglesia local puede cumplir este papel es una preocupación para muchos practicantes involucrados en el desarrollo transformacional. el marco de myers para el desarrollo transformacional no propone un enfoque de fórmula única para todos, sino que sugiere que si tomamos en serio cada frontera, podemos dar otro paso hacia una visión más integral y holística de la transformación. basándose en el trabajo de abhijit banerjee y esther duflo, myers sugiere que al evitar diagnósticos simplistas y escuchar más atentamente a las comunidades afectadas, podemos entender la lógica de sus elecciones y posiblemente desarrollar políticas más efectivas para apoyar sus esfuerzos de desarrollo (myers 2011, 40). al aplicar un enfoque de aprendizaje social adecuado a nuestros campos específicos de compromiso, podemos descubrir el mejor futuro humano, que para myers es el reino de dios. myers concluye que, en el nivel más fundamental, la causa de la pobreza son las relaciones que no funcionan para el bienestar humano, que no permiten que todos florezcan (myers 2011, 295). este marco ha guiado las iniciativas de la iglesia y las organizaciones paraeclesiásticas en el salvador, sin embargo, el reciente aumento en la influencia de las pandillas ha dejado a muchos profesionales del desarrollo preguntándose si las estrategias actuales de desarrollo transformacional son suficientes para restaurar las relaciones saludables de la comunidad. comprender cómo las iglesias pentecostales pueden abordar el actuar de las pandillas es más que una investigación académica. es un intento de arrojar luz sobre una conversación crítica que actualmente tiene lugar entre los líderes de la iglesia, los trabajadores de desarrollo y los miembros de la comunidad comprometidos a ser agentes de transformación en sus comunidades. reflexionar sobre cómo las pandillas han florecido en la sombra de la iglesia es un ejercicio de examen de conciencia. en una de esas conversaciones, un pastor compartió con lágrimas cómo su hijo había sido reclutado por las pandillas y lo devastador que fue para él (care worker 2017). es en tales entornos que debe materializarse una comprensión más completa y auténtica del desarrollo transformacional. las comunidades controladas por pandillas en el salvador plantean un desafío único para las iglesias pentecostales que implementan estrategias de desarrollo transformacional. hay dos suposiciones comunes y contradictorias sobre el papel que las iglesias pentecostales pueden y deben desempeñar para abordar a las pandillas. la primera es la noción de que debido a que los pentecostales están presentes en comunidades enredadas en pandillas, son ideales para ser agentes de transformación. en segundo lugar, sin embargo, está la cuestión de si las iglesias pentecostales típicamente pequeñas, pobres y socialmente cautelosas christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(1), summer 2022 bueno, pandillas y desarrollo 19 en comunidades enredadas en pandillas tienen la capacidad o el deseo de abordar problemas sociales amplios. lo que se requiere es una comprensión profunda de cómo el control de pandillas está afectando el desarrollo transformacional y viceversa. en la comunidad de san martín, tanto los pentecostales como las pandillas están activos y tienen una fuerte presencia. como afirma myers: "es difícil hablar de cómo continuar el viaje hacia donde queremos ir si no sabemos dónde estamos" (myers 2011, 290). en este momento, las comunidades en el salvador están cada vez más controladas por las pandillas. este es el contexto en que se encuentran las iglesias y las organizaciones paraeclesiásticas, y por eso comenzamos aquí. desarrollo transformacional en comunidades enredadas en pandillas de san martín los siguientes tres ejemplos en las comunidades de san martín, un municipio en la ciudad capital de san salvador, resaltan el enigma de practicar el desarrollo transformacional en las comunidades controladas por las pandillas. san martín tiene muchas características de contextos semiurbanos que están fuertemente influenciadas por las pandillas, como la pobreza, el rápido crecimiento y el crimen. su administración se divide en ocho municipios y treinta y siete caseríos. según las proyecciones del gobierno, la población en 2020 fue de 92.027 (digestyc 2021), un poco menos del 30% de los cuales son adolescentes (de 10 a 24 años). las pandillas ya son fuertes en san martín, pero esto significa que unos 25.000 jóvenes están en edades óptimas de reclutamiento de pandillas. a menudo he escuchado decir: "¿no es gracioso cómo día a día nada cambia, pero cuando miras hacia atrás, todo es diferente?" las conversaciones iniciales con las partes interesadas de la comunidad sobre la influencia de las pandillas hacen eco de esta observación. mis conversaciones con personas que viven y trabajan en san martín resaltan uno de los desafíos con los enfoques de aprendizaje social. es difícil tomarse el tiempo y los recursos necesarios para evaluar los problemas generales cuando uno está luchando para ejecutar las tareas diarias. por ejemplo, a la pregunta de "¿cómo está afectando actualmente la situación de las pandillas a su comunidad?", la respuesta más común fue: "más o menos lo mismo de siempre". los residentes en san martín describen la situación de las pandillas con un grado de normalidad y acomodación. sin embargo, a medida que avanzan las conversaciones, la gente comienza a describir cómo las pandillas están ganando cada vez más control e influencia en sus comunidades. describen un contexto en el que hay diversos grados de control de pandillas, lo que dicta cuánto acceso y libertad tienen en sus comunidades. en algunos vecindarios, las pandillas tienen autoridad completa, de modo que ni siquiera la policía puede entrar. en la mayoría de los casos, los movimientos de los habitantes locales están restringidos y las personas tienen que ajustar su comportamiento para coexistir con las pandillas. lo que describen no es un problema de delincuencia estática, sino una comunidad que negocia diariamente arreglos sociales inestables. las comunidades están despertando a la comprensión de que pertenecen a territorios controlados por pandillas. las pandillas han dividido el país en territorios controlados por números o letras. los números son áreas controladas por la pandilla de la calle 18 (18), y las letras pertenecen a la mara salvatrucha (ms). cualquier persona desconocida que ingrese a un territorio controlado por pandillas puede ser detenida y se le puede exigir que muestre su identificación. si la dirección en la identificación es de un territorio controlado por pandillas rivales, el portador es disuadido de entrar o fuertemente monitoreado. el nivel de control también afecta dónde se puede trabajar. una maestra que solicitó un puesto en una escuela en una de estas comunidades fue persuadida de buscar en otro lado, porque vivía en un vecindario controlado por pandillas rivales. los miembros de la comunidad instintivamente aprecian las realidades del enredo de las pandillas, pero luchan por articular una definición clara de su relación con las pandillas. considere el ejemplo de una escuela cristiana local. la escuela cristiana la escuela cristiana en san martín tiene aproximadamente cuatrocientos estudiantes y fue establecida en la década de 1980 por una denominación pentecostal tradicional. el director de la escuela es el hijo de un pastor local y un ex alumno de la escuela. cuando se le preguntó sobre cómo las pandillas afectan a la escuela, explicó que en las etapas iniciales, la escuela pudo controlar la incursión de las pandillas al despedir a los niños involucrados en pandillas. muchos padres optaron por enviar a sus hijos a la escuela porque los protegía del reclutamiento de pandillas común en las escuelas públicas. ahora, a medida que las comunidades se enredan más, es cada vez más difícil mantener el elemento de pandillas fuera de sus escuelas. la influencia de las pandillas ya no se trata solo de los estudiantes, sino también de los padres y amigos del vecindario. ahora hay una segunda generación de pandilleros. un ambiente de miedo impregna toda la comunidad, porque nadie sabe en quién se puede confiar. "he tenido estudiantes que se han unido a pandillas que ahora están en prisión o han sido asesinados, y también he sido afectado personalmente por pandillas" (director de la escuela, 9 de septiembre christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(1), summer 2022 bueno, pandillas y desarrollo 20 de 2021). una vez, como profesor, fue acusado falsamente de acoso sexual por un estudiante que estaba saliendo con un pandillero. le pidió a la niña que dejara de hablar por su teléfono celular durante la clase. en represalia, la pandilla instruyó a la estudiante sobre cómo presentar una denuncia de acoso sexual. tres meses después, los cargos fueron retirados debido a la insuficiencia de pruebas, pero el mensaje había sido enviado: no desafiar a las pandillas. sorprendentemente, testifica de la protección y fidelidad de dios mientras espera la sentencia en prisión. explica cómo fue protegido por ex alumnos que habían sido encarcelados por crímenes de pandillas. su relación con los pandilleros de su comunidad es complicada. dice que es una oportunidad para influir, pero también conlleva riesgos. el director de la escuela no puede articular protocolos claros que guíen su compromiso con los pandilleros, pero sí señala que ser conocido en el área es importante. describe cómo en una ocasión el proveedor de leche de la escuela fue detenido a punta de pistola por pandilleros. exigían una cuota de extorsión. el director fue informado de la situación y pudo negociar su libertad. explica que "cuando hay un conflicto, a veces puedo acercarme a los mareros si los conozco o ellos me conocen a mí. si trabajara en una comunidad diferente, no tendría el coraje de enfrentarme a los pandilleros" (director de la escuela, 23 de septiembre de 2021). él explica que la credibilidad local y un comportamiento humilde puede proporcionar cierta influencia con los pandilleros, pero su respuesta no es predecible y uno debe acercarse a ellos con sabiduría. el director de la escuela procede a explicar cómo y cuándo se siente en libertad de acercarse a los pandilleros. "puedes confrontarlos con buenos consejos, e incluso predicarles sobre los males de un estilo de vida de pandillas. hasta cierto punto, esperan eso de un cristiano, pero debe hacerse con el espíritu correcto. si eres prepotente o amenazante, es posible que no salgas con vida". él cree que los jóvenes saben si estás a favor o en contra de ellos. pero también señala que no hay reglas escritas de enfrentamiento, y cuando te acercas a un pandillero "te la tienes que jugar". en san martín, los jóvenes con problemas han pasado de ser descuidados y/o intimidados, a ser temidos y priorizados. los pandilleros han ganado ventaja mediante la intimidación, y el personal de la escuela tiene que ajustar su forma de tratar a los jóvenes, usando medidas de la persuasión relacional para resolver los conflictos que afectan a la escuela y sus estudiantes. el director de la escuela una vez reunió el coraje para pedirle un favor al líder de la pandilla local, que había sido un amigo de la infancia. preguntó si podía pintar sobre el grafiti de la pandilla en las paredes de la escuela, pero el líder de la pandilla dijo: "no puedo darte permiso, porque los pandilleros más jóvenes están locos y no lo entenderían" (director de escuela, 29 de octubre de 2021). el liderazgo de las pandillas es una posición tenue que requiere que uno genere constantemente lealtad de los miembros. la relación personal que el director tiene con el líder de la pandilla le da un grado de accesibilidad, pero hay un sistema colectivo que se sobrepone a sus relaciones personales. la organización de las pandillas es local y fluida. desde el exterior, la organización de pandillas parece caótica, pero las pandillas tienen reglas, códigos y procedimientos tácticos no escritos que preservan y guían al colectivo. como colectivo, los pandilleros tienen poder, pero como individuos están muy expuestos. la capacidad de las pandillas para controlar el territorio es fundamental para su crecimiento y seguridad. su capacidad para controlar quién puede acceder a la comunidad dificulta significativamente la capacidad de la escuela para operar de manera eficiente. el director afirma que la matrícula y la asistencia a la escuela han disminuido. "un estudiante del barrio de altavista tuvo que abandonar porque estaba controlado por la pandilla rival". "también es difícil reclutar nuevos maestros si no son de la comunidad. los proveedores externos dudan en proporcionar a la escuela servicios de entrega. los proveedores de servicios consideran que nuestra comunidad está en la zona roja" (director de la escuela, 29 de octubre de 2021). muchos servicios básicos, como internet, agua y electricidad pueden pasar semanas sin ser reparados, porque las reparaciones requieren medidas de seguridad. la escuela está cada vez más aislada de los sistemas de apoyo externos. la escuela todavía recibe subsidios externos para becas, uniformes y almuerzos escolares de socios caritativos, pero la capacidad de ser autosuficiente es cada vez más difícil en este entorno. la preocupación del director por los jóvenes de su comunidad se evidencia por los riesgos que asume para servir a sus estudiantes y a su comunidad. como practicante del desarrollo transformacional, su corazón y capacidad son lo que le han permitido mantener las puertas de la escuela abiertas. a veces, ha podido aprovechar su buena reputación en la comunidad para negociar pequeñas concesiones. su relación con pandilleros individuales tiene valor en san martín, pero tiene sus limitaciones. la escuela, como institución, no puede negociar acuerdos generales con las pandillas. hay ciertos principios de pandillas que no violarán para nadie, y la dinámica volátil de las organizaciones de pandillas hace que el establecimiento de negociaciones formales sea imposible. por ejemplo, cuando la escuela intentó obtener el permiso de las pandillas para que el estudiante que vivía en altavista asistiera a la escuela, christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(1), summer 2022 bueno, pandillas y desarrollo 21 ni siquiera pudieron determinar quién dentro de la pandilla tenía la autoridad para aprobarlo. por lo tanto, tratar de establecer acuerdos de bien común con las pandillas es un desafío. a pesar de las crecientes limitaciones experimentadas por el enredo de pandillas, los efectos positivos que la escuela, y especialmente el director y el personal de la escuela, tienen en los jóvenes son evidentes. la situación de la comunidad seguramente se deterioraría si la escuela tuviera que cerrar. sin la presencia positiva de la escuela en la comunidad y los beneficios reconocidos de la educación, la situación de las pandillas ciertamente sería peor. el verdadero reto surge cuando se mira al futuro. es difícil para el director de la escuela cristiana y los líderes de la comunidad imaginar una salida al enredo de pandillas por su cuenta. el marco de desarrollo transformacional reconoce la importancia de los enfoques a nivel estructural, las condiciones macro son críticos para crear condiciones sostenibles. lo que no está claro es cómo el director y la escuela pueden capitalizar su conocimiento local y su historia positiva para fortalecer una respuesta más colectiva al control de las pandillas. lo que es concebible para ellos es una estrategia de desarrollo transformadora que continúe dando forma al futuro cambiando la perspectiva de los jóvenes, mientras que cambiar las condiciones sociales más amplias que afectan a su comunidad parece improbable. proyecto comunitario de agua otra área en el que los profesionales del desarrollo local experimentan los desafíos del enredo de pandillas en san martín es el proyecto de agua comunitaria. entrevisté al coordinador del programa de una ong cristiana que supervisa el proyecto de agua. el sistema de agua sirve a tres municipios de san martín. el proyecto originalmente servía a 1,200 residentes, pero actualmente atiende a 750. por el momento, el proyecto está cojeando, y la sostenibilidad futura del proyecto está en peligro debido a la dinámica de las pandillas. este proyecto de agua se inició en 2012 con la ayuda de una ong cristiana. el proyecto se llama "el milagro", porque durante muchos años la autoridad nacional del agua les había dicho a los miembros de la comunidad que el agua potable en el área no era factible. después de años de buscar desesperadamente acceder al agua, la comunidad finalmente obtuvo el apoyo de una ong cristiana y un alcalde local para patrocinar el proyecto de agua. el objetivo del proyecto era servir a once comunidades de la zona. se completó en 2018, a un costo de $ 1.8 millones de dólares. la cuota para cada hogar es actualmente de $ 10 / mes, mucho menos de los$ 40 / mes que las personas solían pagar cuando el agua era suministrada por camiones. una asociación de agua fue legalmente registrada y capacitada para operar y administrar el sistema de agua. el proyecto llevó agua potable a aproximadamente 250 familias. desafortunadamente, la asociación del agua ahora tiene que lidiar con los efectos del aumento de la influencia de las pandillas. tres de las once comunidades se niegan a pagar sus cuotas de agua. el coordinador del programa explica que "en el rincón la mayoría de las familias están relacionadas con pandillas y no pagan sus cuotas de agua. el personal de la asociación de agua ya no entra ni visita la comunidad. la pandilla también exige agua gratis para su campo de fútbol. "solo conocidos pueden llegar". nosotros (los trabajadores de ayuda externa) no podemos ingresar a estas comunidades ni ejercer ninguna presión para el pago debido a las pandillas" (coordinador del programa, 18 de agosto de 2021). las condiciones económicas en san martín también se ven afectadas por las empresas y servicios locales que se ven obligados a pagar "renta" (dinero de protección) a las pandillas. esto supone una carga financiera adicional para los miembros de la comunidad que ya luchan por llegar a fin de mes. alrededor del 30% de las familias que utilizan el sistema de agua no están al día en sus pagos. "el proyecto de agua está colapsando porque no pueden pagar sus cuotas" (coordinador de programa, 24 de septiembre de 2021). si esta tendencia continúa, la sostenibilidad del proyecto se verá comprometida. el coordinador del programa cree que deben aumentar las cuotas de agua a $ 15 / mes para mantener el sistema a flote. el presidente del comité expresó su preocupación de que el liderazgo actual no pueda hacer que la gente se ponga de acuerdo sobre el aumento de las tasas. el comité de agua tiene problemas financieros y no hay fondos suficientes para mantener y operar el sistema. cuando la asociación del comité de agua se enfrentó a la creciente realidad de que el sistema estaba en bancarrota, trataron de solicitar asistencia externa del gobierno y las organizaciones internacionales de ayuda. lamentablemente, no hay ayuda externa en el horizonte. el control territorial por parte de las pandillas y la incapacidad o falta de voluntad del gobierno para abordarlo, hacen muy difícil convencer a entidades externas para que inviertan en un proyecto que tiene una baja probabilidad de ser sostenible. por lo tanto, cualquier solución inmediata a los desafíos hídricos de la comunidad tendrá que ser interna. el coordinador del programa habló recientemente con los miembros de la asociación de agua para explicarles que no había financiamiento externo inminente, y que si no pueden acordar aumentar las tarifas e idear métodos para reducir los pagos atrasados, el sistema colapsaría. a la luz de esta realidad, dos miembros de la junta reunieron el coraje para acercarse a las pandillas en una de las comunidades delincuentes. el resultado de este esfuerzo aún no se conoce, pero el christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(1), summer 2022 bueno, pandillas y desarrollo 22 futuro del proyecto de agua pende de un hilo (coordinador del programa, 23 de diciembre de 2021). el coordinador del programa dice que la mayoría de las comunidades en san martín ahora tienen una visión limitada del futuro debido a la inseguridad causada por las pandillas. las comunidades se centran principalmente en las necesidades inmediatas, como casas y letrinas. no tienen visión del futuro para su comunidad (coordinador del programa, 29 de octubre de 2021). su único sueño es escapar, preferiblemente a los estados unidos. se han resignado a la realidad de que no mejorarán su bienestar económico en su entorno actual. a diferencia de la escuela cristiana que recibe algún apoyo externo, el proyecto de agua depende completamente del apoyo de la comunidad. inicialmente, se invirtieron muchos recursos en el desarrollo de capacidades para garantizar el mantenimiento y la operación del sistema de agua. nadie anticipó un contexto en el que las pandillas obtendrían tanto control que podrían estrangular las iniciativas comunitarias. programa extraescolar de la iglesia y la paraiglesia el ejemplo final es un programa extraescolar conectado con la iglesia pentecostal del buen pastor. la iglesia está ubicada en la frontera de dos pandillas rivales. esta iglesia tiene una larga historia de servir a la comunidad en general. en 2005, se inició un programa extraescolar (centro desarrollo infantil cdi) financiado por una ong internacional. el programa de patrocinio infantil atiende a aproximadamente trescientos niños, de 0 a 18 años de edad. el enfoque se centra principalmente en la tutoría, pero también patrocinan talleres vocacionales y un programa de fútbol. el programa cdi también ha invertido en tres microempresas que tienen como objetivo crear empleo y generar ingresos internos. cuando le pregunté al pastor qué resultados está teniendo el programa extraescolar en la comunidad, declaró: "el programa beneficia a muchos niños, y ha sido útil para evitar que los niños se unan a las pandillas. por ejemplo, un niño en el programa comenzó a pasar tiempo con pandilleros, y al trabajar con sus padres pudimos rescatarlo de las pandillas" (pastor, 3 de noviembre de 2021). también cree que los talleres para padres son beneficiosos para la prevención de pandillas. se lamenta de que el programa no haya tenido los resultados espirituales deseados. a pesar de que el programa enfatiza la formación cristiana, calcula que menos del 3% de los niños que han pasado por el programa asisten activamente a una iglesia. hice un seguimiento de por qué faltan los aspectos espirituales, si la organización paraeclesiástica alienta a la iglesia a participar en ello. inicialmente atribuyó el déficit espiritual a la falta de oración (compromiso espiritual), pero también admitió que la iglesia no siempre apoyaba el programa como debería. las actividades de la iglesia y del programa cdi no están completamente integradas y operan de manera semiautónoma. para ilustrar su punto, dio el siguiente ejemplo: "el cdi tiene un programa de capacitación vocacional para la música, sin embargo, la iglesia en sí no tiene un grupo de adoración". la iglesia del buen pastor había sido una vez una "iglesia líder" en la comunidad de san martín. pero hoy en día la visión del pastor del papel de la iglesia en la comunidad es más cautelosa. en 2020, el director nacional de programas extracurriculares informó a la iglesia que ya no expandirían sus operaciones en el salvador. según un informe estadístico, ya no se consideraba que la comunidad se encontraba en condiciones de extrema pobreza. después de más de quince años de operar en la comunidad, el programa está comenzando un proceso de transición hacia la autosuficiencia. le pregunté al pastor si la iglesia y las microempresas establecidas podrían sostener el programa actual. "el programa tiene un presupuesto mensual de $6,000 usd", dijo, "y las microempresas están generando actualmente alrededor de $ 250 por mes. con una iglesia de 50 miembros sería difícil sostener el programa sin apoyo externo" (pastor, 22 de diciembre de 2021). la prioridad es lograr que los niños actualmente inscritos pasen por el programa. el programa extraescolar en san martín es parte de una asociación directa entre la iglesia local y la organización internacional paraeclesiástica. no hay un acuerdo formal con la organización eclesiástica nacional. la estructura asociativa autónoma de las iglesias pentecostales se presta a estas alianzas directas con organizaciones paraeclesiásticas. ya sea que las asociaciones directas se realicen por conveniencia o principio, el resultado neto es que los sistemas de apoyo eclesiástico de las iglesias nacionales son limitados y en muchos casos desconocen sus actividades o no pueden apoyarlas. desde una perspectiva institucional, la iglesia nacional juega un papel limitado en el mantenimiento de estos programas. además, el hecho de que la congregación local no pueda sostener el programa extraescolar de los niños sin el patrocinio externo es preocupante en una economía local controlada por pandillas. una de las características distintivas de las estrategias de desarrollo transformacional es que conectan los proyectos con una iglesia local. se convierte en un gran desafío cuando las iglesias locales (principalmente en comunidades de bajos ingresos) no tienen los sistemas de apoyo para sostener iniciativas. al igual que la escuela cristiana, el beneficio de este programa para los más de trescientos niños es innegable, y es especialmente crítico para evitar que más niños se unan a las pandillas. el desafío es mantener los programas operativos cuando los christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(1), summer 2022 bueno, pandillas y desarrollo 23 indicadores actuales utilizados para determinar la necesidad no tienen en cuenta los efectos de las pandillas. este programa es de importancia crítica para la prevención de pandillas, pero debido a que este no es el enfoque principal del programa, puede perder su apoyo financiero. el tipo de pobreza infligida por las pandillas no siempre puede medirse por las métricas tradicionales del nivel de vida. en general, los proyectos y programas de desarrollo transformacional de las organizaciones eclesiásticas y paraeclesiásticas en san martín han sido efectivos para abordar las necesidades individuales de los niños y las familias. su presencia en la comunidad también proporciona un rayo de esperanza de que hay una manera de salir del problema de las pandillas. desafortunadamente, sin un cambio macro/estructural importante, las pandillas continuarán privando a estas comunidades de la estabilidad que hace posible el desarrollo sostenible. por lo tanto, la necesidad de una respuesta más colectiva es crítica. las iglesias y las organizaciones paraeclesiásticas tienen un acceso único a las comunidades influenciadas por pandillas, pero no se puede esperar que las transformen solas. análisis los pentecostales y las pandillas en el salvador comparten espacio, lazos familiares y cosmología, pero sus respuestas contrastantes a la marginación los ponen en tensión. no hay una visión común del futuro y sus métodos de influencia son diametralmente opuestos. sin embargo, a pesar del ambiente volátil, las iglesias pentecostales locales y las organizaciones paraeclesiásticas han logrado sobrevivir adoptando un enfoque cauteloso del compromiso social. como resultado, se encuentran entre las pocas organizaciones sociales que quedan en comunidades cada vez más aisladas y controladas por pandillas. su presencia y los programas de empoderamiento local brindan asistencia valiosa a muchas familias vulnerables. al mismo tiempo, el aumento de la influencia de las pandillas expone las limitaciones de estos enfoques. a medida que las pandillas expanden sus redes de influencia, las iniciativas de desarrollo transformacional sostenible se ven cada vez más aisladas. la necesidad de abordar los problemas de las pandillas es primordial para el bienestar de estas comunidades. desafortunadamente, no existe un enfoque de desarrollo transformacional específico de las pandillas para guiar a las iglesias y organizaciones paraeclesiásticas a lograr un cambio sostenible. antes de considerar estrategias de desarrollo transformacional para comunidades enredadas por pandillas, es importante situar el análisis dentro del entorno cotidiano. los programas de rehabilitación y reintegración de pandilleros son claramente parte de una estrategia comprensiva, pero estos programas tienen poco efecto en el control y la violencia de las pandillas sobre las comunidades. por esta razón, el enfoque de esta investigación está en los efectos que el enredo de pandillas tiene en la sostenibilidad de los esfuerzos de desarrollo transformacional en la comunidad. como se vio en la comunidad de san martín, la mayoría de los programas de desarrollo transformacional establecidos actualmente siguen estrategias y procedimientos de programas que se desarrollaron antes o independientemente del enredo de pandillas. los criterios y métodos del programa no anticiparon cómo un mayor control de las pandillas afectaría sus objetivos a largo plazo. en la actualidad, las iglesias locales y las organizaciones paraeclesiásticas están en tensión con la influencia de las pandillas, y hay pocos, si es que hay alguno, enfoques de desarrollo transformacional sostenible que aborden el tema del enredo de las pandillas. una revisión de las diferentes estrategias de mitigación de pandillas aplicadas hasta la fecha puede ser desalentadora. las tácticas policiales agresivas, las políticas de ajuste estructural a nivel macro y las iniciativas de rehabilitación de pandillas han demostrado ser en gran medida ineficaces (wolf 2017, 208). las comunidades influenciadas por pandillas están en el limbo del desarrollo. no hay una solución inmediata a las preocupaciones estructurales que alimentan el crecimiento de las pandillas, y el aumento del control de las pandillas en las comunidades marginales afecta la estabilidad requerida para el desarrollo sostenible. para los profesionales del desarrollo transformacional es difícil encontrar estrategias adecuadas. el proyecto de agua comunitaria en san martín es un ejemplo de ong que, ante la falta de una estrategia adecuada, simplemente mantiene el rumbo. el proyecto de agua continúa persiguiendo una progresión programática estándar de la dependencia a la independencia. sin embargo, el aumento del control de las pandillas afecta la estabilidad requerida para lograr los objetivos de sostenibilidad. ignorar estas dinámicas sociales puede crear objetivos y estrategias desalineados, y ejercer una presión adicional sobre las partes interesadas locales. teniendo en cuenta las organizaciones que ajustan o inician nuevos programas en comunidades enredadas por pandillas, la gran mayoría se enfoca en abordar las necesidades inmediatas. en san martín, la inestabilidad causada por el control de las pandillas hizo que la ong cristiana enfocara instintivamente nuevos esfuerzos en atender las necesidades básicas, como las letrinas. las organizaciones de desarrollo comúnmente ajustan sus programas cuando un desastre mayor golpea a una comunidad. en los casos en que estallan guerras o que ocurren desastres naturales, las políticas y los procedimientos cambian hacia el alivio de desastres y / o la asistencia a los refugiados. de manera similar con christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(1), summer 2022 bueno, pandillas y desarrollo 24 el enredo de pandillas, en ausencia de estabilidad, muchos profesionales del desarrollo gravitan hacia la prestación de asistencia inmediata. después de todo, las crisis sociales violentas causadas por el terrorismo o el crimen generalmente se clasifican como desastres (wisner 2015). desgraciadamente, en comunidades enredados por pandillas, la crisis social no tiene un fin definido. en muchas comunidades la presencia de las pandillas es un nuevo normal. también es importante reconocer, que el utilizar métodos de asistencia de emergencia puede aliviar necesidades básicas, pero no tiene efecto a largo plazo en las condiciones sociales que contribuyen a la desestabilidad creado por las pandillas. iglesias y organizaciones paraecclesiasticas que abarcan métodos de asistencia de emergencia deben estar cocientes que la crisis probablemente no se va mejorar a corto plazo. finalmente, consideremos los enfoques de la teoría del conflicto para abordar la violencia de las pandillas. hay investigaciones etnográficas en otras partes de américa latina que revelan que los residentes en comunidades conflictivas pueden y de hecho se enfrentan a la violencia de actores estatales y no estatales. pero en el salvador, la confrontación abierta de las pandillas es rara (wolf 2017, 229). se desconoce qué hace posible algunas formas de resistencia civil en algunos contextos y no en el salvador. pero lo que está claro es que cualquier persona que se enfrente a pandillas sin el apoyo del gobierno es probablemente vulnerable tanto al enjuiciamiento legal como a las represalias de las pandillas. del mismo modo, las estrategias estructurales no conflictivas también parecen destinadas al fracaso. alex de waal sugiere que "las personas necesitan desarrollar un sentido de que, como parte de una comunidad política más amplia, tienen derechos en los que deben insistir: al desarrollo, a un sustento sostenible, al respeto de los derechos civiles y políticos" (citado en myers 2011, 196). 5 aún así, estos derechos son irrelevantes para las pandillas, porque los pandilleros no pertenecen a sistemas internacionales formales en los que puedan rendir cuentas. en la actualidad, los profesionales del desarrollo transformacional en san martín y en otros lugares continúan aplicando iniciativas de empoderamiento de base sin una estrategia clara a largo plazo. avanzando: cómo la comunidad internacional de desarrollo puede apoyar a las comunidades influenciadas por las pandillas. 5 traducido del inglés por el autor: “people need to develop a sense that, as part of a larger political community, they have rights on which they should insist – to development, to a sustainable livelihood, to respect for civil and political rights” en las comunidades marginales, la capacidad de las iglesias para influir en un cambio amplio se correlaciona con sus alianzas externas con organizaciones internacionales de desarrollo. sin embargo, en las comunidades controladas por las pandillas, los modelos actuales de asociación se ven obstaculizados por condiciones hostiles, rituales disputados y capacidad limitada, todo lo cual hace que el empleo de estrategias de desarrollo formal sea poco práctico. uno conjetura que lograr un desarrollo transformacional sostenible llevará tiempo, que el apoyo externo será esencial y que las partes interesadas, incluidas las pequeñas iglesias pentecostales, tendrán que trabajar juntas. en este sentido, creo que hay un camino a seguir si podemos comprometernos a encontrar mejores formas de apoyar las iniciativas locales cuando el acceso es limitado. ignorar o aplicar los protocolos existentes no logrará los resultados deseados. el desafío es definir políticas de desarrollo transformacionales, promoción y recursos de apoyo que se adapten específicamente a las comunidades enredadas por pandillas. la primera decisión que enfrentan los profesionales del desarrollo transformacional cuando se enfrentan a comunidades enredadas por pandillas es si deben participar. la tendencia ha sido que a medida que aumenta el control de las pandillas y la violencia, las agencias de desarrollo externas se retiran. por lo tanto, las comunidades enredadas por pandillas se vuelven progresivamente más aisladas de los sistemas de apoyo externos. por ejemplo, médicos sin fronteras (msf) suspendió temporalmente sus operaciones en el salvador después de que uno de sus equipos fuera atacado por bandas armadas (rentería 2021). como lo demuestra este incidente, cuando las organizaciones se ven afectadas por las pandillas, tienden a considerar sus políticas y procedimientos por su propia cuenta, sin el beneficio de ninguna estrategia específica de las pandillas. las decisiones de las organizaciones internacionales de participar en el salvador se están tomando en oficinas aisladas de las comunidades afectadas por las pandillas. por el momento, cada organización debe negociar su propia estrategia de cómo mitigar el efecto de las pandillas. la magnitud del problema de las pandillas en muchas comunidades de el salvador también afecta la forma en que operan las ongs. por ejemplo, homies unidos (una ong basada en pares) tuvo su financiamiento suspendido porque las evaluaciones formales no pudieron ser realizadas por observadores independientes (wolf 2017, 236). la sospecha de las pandillas hacia los forasteros obstaculiza muchos http://homiesunidos.org/ http://homiesunidos.org/ christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(1), summer 2022 bueno, pandillas y desarrollo 25 protocolos formales. ya sea que se trate de las pandillas que restringen el acceso, o del personal de las agencias donantes que se niegan a visitar las comunidades controladas por las pandillas, el efecto neto es el aumento del aislamiento. cada vez más, solo las instituciones locales permanecen activas en estas comunidades, pero no parece razonable esperar que ellas solas aborden los problemas de las pandillas. el especialista en desarrollo alan fowler señala que los enfoques de empoderamiento del desarrollo a nivel micro deben combinarse con el apoyo institucional a nivel macro. myers refuerza este punto al afirmar: "cada comunidad es parte de una familia de sistemas sociales que son regionales, nacionales y finalmente globales" (myers 2011, 189). los líderes de la iglesia local, los miembros de la comunidad y los profesionales de la transformación necesitan el apoyo de la comunidad internacional de desarrollo. identificar mejores formas de apoyar las iniciativas locales que son inaccesibles debido a las pandillas es un primer paso crítico. el siguiente paso para identificar una mejor manera de abordar las comunidades enredadas por pandillas es ajustar los lentes a través de las cuales evaluamos el problema. al aplicar la teoría del entrelazamiento social de offutt, podemos comprender mejor los desafíos de los que estamos apoyando. en el caso del programa extraescolar en san martín, vemos cómo los profesionales del desarrollo utilizan un índice genérico de nivel de vida para determinar si el programa cumple con sus criterios. sobre la base de estos criterios, el programa ha comenzado un proceso de culminación gradual, a pesar del hecho de que el programa es muy valioso para evitar que los jóvenes se unan a las pandillas. las estrategias de desarrollo transformacional apropiadas en las comunidades marginales de el salvador requieren que veamos a las pandillas como una forma de pobreza. las comunidades enredadas por las pandillas no siempre parecen ser materialmente pobres, pero carecen de libertad, paz y perspectivas de empleo. además, la economía de las comunidades marginales de el salvador depende en gran medida de las remesas de los familiares que han migrado. esto puede sesgar la percepción de la necesidad, porque esos recursos se generan externamente; los padres migrantes pueden resolver sus necesidades financieras inmediatas, pero no crea perspectivas de empleo futuro. también, la misma necesidad de migrar puede exponer a sus hijos al reclutamiento de pandillas. los efectos de la pobreza en las comunidades enredadas por las pandillas van más allá de lo financiero. los criterios de evaluación del desarrollo transformacional deben integrar los efectos físicos, sociales, psicológicos y espirituales que influencia el fenómeno social de las pandillas. finalmente, con un grado de optimismo, podemos dar fe de la importancia que la iglesia local juega en cualquier estrategia de transformación a largo plazo. pero la forma en que las iglesias identifican los principios del reino en las comunidades enredadas por pandillas es fundamental. la cuestión moral de cuándo comprometerse o desvincularse de los pandilleros es compleja. por ejemplo, polígono (una agencia católica de desarrollo) terminó su programa de microempresas dirigido a pandilleros. el programa fue controvertido porque algunos creían que incentivaba unirse a las pandillas. los jóvenes fueron testigos de cuánto apoyo y recursos se dirigían a los pandilleros. construir relaciones saludables es un desafío en las mejores circunstancias. determinar cuándo comprometerse o desvincularse de las demandas de las pandillas es una matriz ética que solo los verdaderamente investidos pueden descifrar. me hace recordar las palabras del director de la escuela en san martín: "ellos saben cuándo estás de su lado". esta declaración no se trata de ser pro-pandilla o anti-pandilla. se trata de una conciencia de la persona y el contexto que uno aborda. cualquier guía moral o ética para navegar el enredo de las pandillas debe surgir a través de la búsqueda diligente de la verdad, por parte de las partes interesadas que comparten una mentalidad del reino. una mentalidad de reino para san martín debe ser desarrollada por aquellos que viven y trabajan allí. la comunidad internacional de desarrollo puede ayudar a facilitar este proceso, pero los participantes locales deben participar centralmente. la situación de las pandillas en el salvador presagia la visión profética de los niños que se vuelven contra sus padres. muchos aspectos del trabajo de desarrollo transformacional son probados por la realidad social de las pandillas. las experiencias en san martín resaltan la importancia de las relaciones a largo plazo, los sistemas de apoyo y las estrategias adecuadas. las estrategias de empoderamiento insular no son suficientes para mitigar la influencia de las pandillas. es necesario un enfoque más sólido y colectivo. la comunidad de desarrollo en general tiene el desafío único de aumentar el apoyo en comunidades menos accesibles. estos son solo algunos de los elementos importantes a considerar en las comunidades enredadas por pandillas. muchas otras políticas y procedimientos de desarrollo transformacional a nivel macro deben examinarse a la luz de este fenómeno social. la esperanza es que al integrar a la amplia comunidad de desarrollo en la conversación de aquellos que viven y trabajan en comunidades enredadas por pandillas, encontraremos las mejores maneras de avanzar. christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(1), summer 2022 bueno, pandillas y desarrollo 26 referencias alfaro, xiomara and david marroquín. 2021. “supuestos pandilleros asesinan a pastor de la iglesia elim en apopa.” el salvador.com. april 1. https://www.elsalvador.com/noticias/nacional/apop a-violencia-homicidios-pastor-ricardo-mejia-iglesiaelim/823047/2021/. brenneman, robert. 2012. homies + hermanos: god and gangs in central america. new york: oxford university press. bueno, david. 2001. “the struggle for social space: how salvadoran pentecostals build communities in the rural sector.” transformation 18(3), 171-91. bueno, ronald todd. 2019. translating pentecost into transformed communities in el salvador: pentecostal churches, social engagement and social change in el salvador. phd dissertation, university of middlesex. care worker. 2017. interviewed by steve offutt who shared this with the author on february 3, 2021. clarke, gerard. 2006. “faith matters: faith-based organizations, civil society, and international development.” journal of international development 18(6), 835-48. collier, paul. 2007. the bottom billion: why the poorest countries are failing and what can be done about it. new york: oxford press. coordinador de programa. 2021. nombre se omite por seguridad. entrevistado por el autor el 18 de agosto, 24 de septiembre, 29 de octubre, 3 de noviembre, y 23 de diciembre 23. director de escuela. 2021. nombre se omite por seguridad. entrevistado por el autor el 9,17,23 de septiembre, 29 de octubre, 2,6 de noviembre y 2 de diciembre. digestyc dirección general de estadística y censos, ministerio de economía. 2021. 06_san_salvador_proyec_grupos_de_edad_2020 -2025_rev2021 en excel. http://www.digestyc.gob.sv/index.php/novedades/av isos/1023-proyecciones-y-estimaciones-depoblacion-municipal.html. dudley, steven. 2021. “ms-13: america's most notorious gang. modern wisdom podcast 316,” youtube. https://youtu.be/q94ng1m1mzi huezo mixco, luis r. 2020. “empoderados en el espíritu. una aproximación al pentecostalismo en el salvador moderno.” in mansilla, miguel ángel and mariela mosqueira, directors. sociología del pentecostalismo en américa latina. santiago: ril editores, 213-243. insight crime. 2021. “ms13: el salvador.” last updated september 22. https://insightcrime.org/elsalvador-organized-crime-news/mara-salvatruchams-13-profile/. martin, david. 1990. tongues of fire: the explosion of protestantism in latin america. oxford: basil blackwell. martínez, carlos y roberto valencia. 2018. “mara salvatrucha: ‘fue un error haber aceptado dinero de los partidos político.’” elfaro. april 15. https://elfaro.net/es/201804/salanegra/21718/marasalvatrucha-%e2%80%9cfue-un-error-haberaceptado-dinero-de-los-partidospol%c3%adticos%e2%80%9d.htm. myers, bryant l. 2011. walking with the poor: principles and practices of transformational development. maryknoll: orbis books. offutt, stephen. 2020. “entangled: evangelicals and gangs in el salvador.” social forces 99(1), 424-45. offutt, stephen. de próxima aparición. evangelicals and gangs in el salvador. new york: oxford university press. pastor. 2021. nombre se omite por seguridad. entrevistado por el autor el 3 de noviembre 2022. pastor juvenil. 2021. nombre se omite por seguridad. entrevistado por el autor el 24, 25 de septiembre 24, 25. reno, r. r. 2019. return of the strong gods: nationalism, populism, and the future of the west. washington, dc: regnery gateway. rentería, nelson, with editing by diane craft. 2021. “doctors without borders suspends work in el salvador after attack.” reuters, january 31. https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/doctorswithout-borders-suspends-work-el-salvador-afterattack-2021-02-01/. the economist. 2018. “el salvador's violent gang members are finding god in prison.” youtube, may 22. https://youtu.be/7deancj6lzw. vásquez, manuel a., marie friedmann marquardt, and ileana gómez. 2003. “saving souls transnationally: pentecostalism and gangs in el salvador and in the united states.” in manuel a. vásquez and marie friedmann marquardt. eds. globalizing the sacred, 119-44. new brunswick: rutgers university press. wisner, ben. 2015. “community resilience to disaster.” in james write. ed. encyclopedia of the social & behavioral sciences, 2nd. ed, 354360. elsevier. wolf, sonja. 2017. mano dura: the politics of gang control in el salvador. austin: university of texas press. world bank group. 2021. “poverty & equity brief, latin america & the caribbean: el salvador.” april. https://databank.worldbank.org/data/download/po verty/987b9c90-cb9f-4d93-ae8c750588bf00qa/am2020/global_poveq_slv. pdf. about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank christian relief, development, and advocacy 4(1), summer 2022 bueno, pandillas y desarrollo 27 david bueno es director ejecutivo de water for the world, y sirve en la junta directiva de fundación esteban. ha vivido y trabajado en el salvador por más de 30 años. su labor se enfoca en el desarrollo socioeconómico sostenible. email del autor: david@water4world.net about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(2), winter 2024 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 christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(2), winter 2024 hoksbergen and bronkema, editors’ introduction and a tribute to chad hayward i editor’s introduction, with a tribute to chad hayward roland hoksbergen and david bronkema – crda co-editors the current issue of the crda journal comes out at a time when we are still mourning the passing of chad hayward just a few short months ago on january 27, 2024. chad had served as the accord network’s ceo for 17 years and was instrumental in getting crda adopted as the accord network’s official journal. by virtue of his position, chad served on crda’s executive board right from the inception of the journal in the summer of 2019, and he was a constant source of enthusiastic encouragement, prayer, and support for all that we were doing. he is sorely missed by all of us. we think chad would be particularly pleased by this issue of the journal, not only because of the specific articles that anchor its content, but also because it is the first issue in which we are publishing curated content from follow-up webinars focused on articles published in this journal. these webinars have become a central feature of the way we try to promote continuing reflection and discussion on the insights and topics raised in these pages, and, based on attendance, appear to be appreciated by our community. the current issue leads with an article by eight authors from tearfund who played important roles in tearfund’s rigorous evaluation of its church and community transformation (cct) program in africa. this synopsis of the evaluation discusses both the results of the study and the methodology, and we hope that their account leads to vigorous conversation leads to vigorous conversation among the christian ngo network about how best to undertake the work of serving christ’s community the world over. the second contribution to this issue is a retrospective reflection on the state of the creation care movement and efforts of the evangelical environmental network (een) over the last thirty plus years to promote and shape the movement. the author, stan lequire, founding director of een in 1993, finds that the movement is flourishing. he is especially hopeful because of the energy and commitment he sees from youth-led organizations like young evangelicals for climate action (yeca) and the ongoing engagement of ngos like plant with purpose and a rocha. the issue also includes polished transcripts of the two webinars organized by the accord research alliance (ara), a subgroup of the accord network. one was a follow-up to the crda special issue (5[1]) on decolonization. it opens with reflective comments from practitioner maria fernanda (mafer) madriz bolaños and academic charlotte bray, followed by a moderated discussion that includes four of the authors from the special issue and two webinar participants. the second webinar discussion refers back to richard slimbach’s provocative article, “asking tough questions about transformational development,” from crda’s winter 2023 issue (slimbach 2023). three practitioner/scholars were invited to respond to three sets of questions revolving around (1) the relationship of christian faith to development in general, (2) macro issues of political economy, and (3) the character and management of field partnerships. the questions slimbach poses are ones that christian development workers must continue to wrestle with over the course of their lives. definitive, final answers are not the point. instead, slimbach pushes us all to “live the questions” in the continuing hope that “organizations will give them sufficient airtime in honest conversations around conference tables or virtual tables to build more nuanced understandings, strengthen relational bonds, and ultimately help shape more thoughtful, inclusive, collaborative, dynamic, and impactful organizations” (62). we invite you to read the thoughtful comment and to join the conversation. this issue offers only one book review, which is on former crda editor stephen offutt’s book, blood entanglements: evangelicals and gangs in el salvador (new york: oxford university press 2023). we conclude with a brief overview of accord network history to highlight how crda became its official journal, and then to report on what happened at oneaccord23 in october of 2023. in the next year we expect to publish special issues on both peacebuilding and gender. other special issues in various stages of development will address the following topics: the church’s role in transformational development, wash, microfinance, and agriculture. if the spirit moves you to write something that explores the relationship between christian faith and our global mission to love our neighbors, we welcome your ideas. references slimbach, richard. 2023. “asking tough questions about transformational development.” christian relief, development, and advocacy: the journal of the accord network 4(2): 51–63. https://crdajournal.org/index.php/crda/article/view/547 https://crdajournal.org/index.php/crda/article/view/547 christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 moody, book review 106 book review christ among the classes: the rich, the poor and the mission of the church by al tizon reviewed by cynthia moody new york. orbis books. 2023. $35.00. this heartfelt and existentially challenging book gives a clear and compelling call for christians to lead justice-oriented lives, in which followers of jesus are led by the holy spirit to pursue selflessness and service to the poor over the temptation to accumulate material wealth and comforts. tizon reminds us that our worth is not defined by our socio-economic status. in fact, he points out, we may suffer from “affluenza,” a condition that de graaf et al. (2014) argue is caused by capitalistic society. what is our calling? jesus, tizon reminds us, lived among the poor and said they were blessed. in fact, jesus instructed the disciples to leave everything and follow him. he told the rich young ruler to go sell all he had and give to the poor. he applauded zacchaeus, who repented of his selfish gain. who is poor? while focusing on people who are economically poor, tizon reminds us that people may also be physically, personally, socio-politically, psychoemotionally, morally, and spiritually poor. yet, of those who are economically affected by classism, tizon writes, “a collective prejudice [is] formed into a system of inequality based on socioeconomic stratification … undergirded by embedded cultural narratives concerning the poor, and then instituted by powers that be at the expense of the poor” (xxii). tizon addresses not only personal poverty, but also the organizational and institutional elements involved in classism, which is closely linked with the institutional foundations of racism that date back to historic colonization movements (80). in other words, poor people cannot simply pull themselves out of poverty when its roots are structural in nature. colonization led to structural barriers that undergird classism. therefore, according to tizon, we are still in need of reforming societal structures today. indeed, it is up to those of us who have wealth to awaken to compassion and to work diligently toward sharing our time, talent, and treasure such that we advance jesus’ agenda over our own. we are to seek first the kingdom of god and his righteousness. as tizon argues, “when we are side-by-side in solidarity with the poor, we are side-by-side with jesus” (119). he quotes micah 6:8, and offers the caveat that “classism poisons the soul and creates a society that runs horribly contrary to the kingdom of god…the church needs to identify, confront, repudiate, and dismantle classism to be faithful to its mission in the world” (161). one of the major attributes of this book lies in the six “life altering movements” the author proposes we seriously reflect on: from awakening to compassion; self-gain to generosity; accumulation to simplicity; proprietary rights to hospitality; savior complex to friendship; and safety to solidarity. tizon provides short self-assessments in the appendix for each of these six areas. these help readers pinpoint concrete steps that can be taken over time to move more in the direction of generosity and ultimately solidarity with the poor among us. tizon also shares details of his own personal journey toward solidarity with the poor, as well as others’ stories including those of dorothy day, gustavo gutierrez, john perkins, gerard thomas straub, nikki toyama-szeto, raineer chu, and princess kasune zulu. each of these stories inspires the reader to think beyond self, and envision what might be if we each were to make other choices. tizon’s message challenges us christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 moody, book review 107 toward “conscientization,” asking, “are we not stewards” (89)? reminders of structural impediments created by classist societies beg for more than personal tithing alone. tizon suggests there is a need for organizational tithing. perhaps this could be considered as a form of corporate social responsibility (csr). other faith-based literature has pointed us in the direction of csr, and even toward socially responsible investing. amy domini speaks to social investors’ commitment to community development, and the positive impact corporate behavior can have on disadvantaged communities. domini reminds us that shareholders can “raise issues in a formal, structured way through the annual meeting of the corporation” (domini 2001, 88). tizon’s reminders harken back to those who have gone before, reminding us to find ways to remove structural barriers in society that keep us from achieving true solidarity with the poor. bringing the world’s economically poor into full communion and citizenship with the world’s economically rich will depend not only on our personal commitments to change, but also on organizational commitments to change. decolonization means making structural progress toward solidarity with poor. tizon gives christian development practitioners impetus to reflect personally and to envision new possibilities brought about by working toward decolonization through overcoming the inherent racism and classism that have invaded our modern psyches. what did jesus teach? tizon argues that it is all about love in action. as he says, “we must be careful to use our education to advance jesus’s agenda among the poor and oppressed and to steer clear of advancing ourselves up the social ladder of prestige, power and wealth” (38). tizon’s book points us all, and perhaps especially those working in development, toward a spiritual pathway of real and lasting change. references domini, amy. 2001. socially responsible investing: making a difference and making money. dearborn trade, a kaplan professional company. de graaf, john, david wann, thomas h. naylor, and annie leonard affluenza. 2014. how overconsumption is killing us—and how to fight back. oakland, ca: berrett-koehler publishers. cynthia m. moody teaches management and leadership at the college of central florida. she is a returned peace corps volunteer (mozambique ‘14) and former i-tec volunteer who is passionate about christian approaches to international development work that strive for world peace and solidarity. author email: moodyc@cf.edu about:blank christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 cribbin, book review 101 book review holy anarchy: dismantling domination, embodying community, loving strangeness by graham adams reviewed by jo cribbin 2022. london: scm press. £19.99. christian thinkers and practitioners working in relief and development may sometimes, perhaps even often, question what exactly it means for the kingdom of god to be at hand, in the midst of the many crises and injustices that characterise the environments in which their organisations operate. exactly where and how should we expect to see god’s kingdom come in the different parts of our world? what part do we have to play in its coming? graham adams’ holy anarchy: dismantling domination, embodying community, loving strangeness is a theological exploration of these questions and seeks to provide a way for christian individuals, communities, and organisations to reimagine what the coming of god’s kingdom could look like. holy anarchy adopts a decolonial approach-seeking to understand how colonisation and colonial logics and their effects continue to influence our relationships with one another, our systems, and society---and what a decolonial practice of seeking to undo these logics and their resulting power structures could look like in a faith community. the book centres around the premise of “holy anarchy,” a term originally expressed by theologian andrew shanks as an alternative to the “kingdom of god.” in four parts, holy anarchy addresses the themes of domination and injustice, how these may be subverted and dismantled, and how flourishing communities may emerge in their place. adams walks the reader toward a vision of holy anarchy, exploring some of the obstructions that rise up to block its way, including empires of domination, unjust systems and structures, consumerism, and exploitative dominion over the earth. in part one, adams explores the notion of holy anarchy, comparing it to other theological expressions and conceptualisations of the kingdom of god. holy anarchy is described as a future state of solidarity among peoples and god, marked by the flourishing of life and absence of domination of people over one another. holy anarchy is not, however, just a distant horizon for which the church should wait and pray, impervious to and unmoved by the obstacles in our world that prevent its realisation; it is also a path that christians and the church are invited to journey along. for adams, a first step on this journey is a re-thinking of our understanding of truth. he explores two different types of truth: truth in hand, and truth in process. truth in hand is the understanding that truth is fixed and unchanging, something that can be possessed or grasped in the hand, while truth in process understands truth as more akin to an open palm, which is not fixed but rather is evolving through a living network of conversation and interaction. for adams, it is this truth in process that is of higher value for the coming of holy anarchy, as it creates an attitude in which difference may be understood and valued. if truth can be held in an open palm, we are able to ask ourselves what it is that we are not seeing, even as we are able to listen to and value others’ truths, and perhaps in the process be brought into deeper solidarity with one another. part two calls for a dismantling of domination through doing justice. holy anarchy exposes patterns of domination and unjust structures for those open to perceiving it. in this section, god is described as one who subverts structures of domination and brings about holy anarchy instead, inviting us to do the same. this christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 cribbin, book review 102 willingness and ability to see and name injustice begins with an internal change, described by adams as a process of being shaken by god, or “decolonising consciousness.” adams argues that holy anarchy wakes us up and allows us to see the world as it really is, with all its injustices, power imbalances, and structures of domination. it also allows us to see and hope for an alternative future. it is only from a place of shakenness, from seeing things as they really are, adams argues, that we are able to see the very injustices in which we ourselves are complicit, and can begin to reject them, replacing them with acts of justice. in part three, adams describes an embodiment of community that occurs as we are shaken by god, resulting in the forging of paths towards solidarity and communion with one another. doing justice is not a purely individual practice--we are called into community and solidarity with one another, following the example of jesus in his ministry, who subverted the power of empire and dismantled domination in a radical, unexpected way. the communities we build, in our churches, neighbourhoods, and organisations will always be awkward and imperfect. rather than brushing off such imperfections, adams calls for the church to recognise its shortcomings, acknowledge its failures, and, despite all this, continue to commit to an everdeeper journey of solidarity, learning, and transformation. in part four, “love kindness--befriend strangers,” adams points to wider spaces for partnership and solidarity beyond the walls of the church, and the potential for faith to allow us to commune with others who may be wholly unlike ourselves. adams challenges us to consider both the structures of domination, exclusion, and destruction in our own world and the harm such structures create, whether based on economics, race, gender, sexuality, disability, or religion. holy anarchy shakes us open and allows us to recognise these injustices, both within and without ourselves, and moves us to act in love and solidarity with others in a genuinely radical way. for christian organisations working in relief, development, and advocacy, holy anarchy provides an invitation to examine the cultures and practices that permeate our organisations. it is an invitation to introduce a “decolonising consciousness,” to examine how we approach those who are different from ourselves in the course of our work, or to ask what biases prevent us from seeing colonial practices and structures of domination that may be present within our organisational practices. holy anarchy may be more immediately accessible to readers with familiarity with academic theological writing, due to some of the language and concepts adams employs. yet any theological complexity is beautifully balanced with a collection of original hymns and questions for reflection provided at the end of each chapter, in addition to an extended collection of worship materials at the end of the book. these may be the most valuable portions of the book as they provide a space for individual reflection and guided conversation--a space for truth in process to occur. holy anarchy may be a challenging and even uncomfortable read at times, but this is deliberate. through rich theological reflection and liturgical practice, holy anarchy asks each of us to reject power, injustice, and dominion in our world, whilst at the same time inviting us to imagine a different reality, one in which structures of domination are dismantled, community is embodied, strangeness is loved, and difference is valued. jo cribbin is strategic coordinator – crisis to resilience at tearfund. she specialises in strategy and project management, with a particular focus on theology, humanitarian response, and resilience. jo holds a master’s in international relations from the university of cambridge. author email: joanna.cribbin@tearfund.org mailto:joanna.cribbin@tearfund.org christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(2), winter 2024 bray, "decolonization in the world of christian ngos": a theological response 127 "decolonization in the world of christian ngos": a theological response charlotte bray on january 17, 2024, the accord research alliance faculty group organized a webinar to provide a space for discussion on the christian relief, development, and advocacy (crda) journal’s special issue on decolonization published a few months before in november 2023. the webinar was moderated by nina kurlberg, one of two co-editors of the special issue, and started with remarks by two main discussants. this second response is written by charlotte bray, who is currently studying anti-racism and power in international development from a catholic theological perspective at the lincoln theological institute at manchester university. believing that our theologies are central to our self-understandings and our actions, for both good and ill, bray argues that historical christianity bears much responsibility for the way the global north skewed power toward themselves, a legacy for which we must account. working from the perspective of catholic social teaching, a rich resource for putting our theology on a more constructive path, she argues that christians must take advantage of opportunities to make amends and work toward reconciliation in a newly structured anti-racist, decolonized world. the full recording of the webinar is found at https://vimeo.com/903813593?share=copy, and further online discussion on the topic can be accessed at https://groups.google.com/g/ara-faculty-group-forum. the special issue of the journal with all the articles is located at https://crdajournal.org/index.php/crda/issue/view/69. like mafer, i will start by stating my positionality. i am a white british theologian speaking from the university of manchester in the uk. i was previously lead trustee for racial justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion at cafod, the international development agency of the catholic church in england and wales, where my role was to accompany cafod staff in their task of creating a more equitable, diverse, and inclusive organization committed to anti-racism. i am now working on a research project at the university of manchester that explores theological themes in relation to anti-racism work in the sector. 1 in the uk, where i am from, it seems that conversations around decolonizing development have been predominantly happening in “secular” spaces. so, this special edition provides a much-needed space and opportunity for practitioners and academics to explore these issues from an explicitly christian perspective. it 1 to learn more about the research project “anti-racism and power in international development: a catholic theological approach,” please go to the lincoln theological institute’s webpage, http://lincolntheologicalinstitute.com/anti-racism-and-power/ [accessed 20.02.2024]. invites us to ask what it means to be a christian agency journeying towards anti-racism and decolonization. the articles help drive the conversation forward regarding what a truly anti-racist decolonized sector could look like. they also show what a mammoth task lies ahead as every aspect of an organization's work needs to be critically analyzed through an anti-racist and decolonial lens. for example, as rebecca shah demonstrates in her article on decolonizing data, something as commonplace as collecting data for reporting, research, or governance purposes can reinforce harmful power inequities between organizations in the global north and those from the global south (shah 2023). as activist-scholars such as robtel neajai pailey have shown, standard ways of working in the sector can perpetuate the white gaze and foster racist stereotypes that have their origins in coloniality; for example, organizations or individuals from the global north being regarded as more trustworthy or knowledgeable https://vimeo.com/903813593?share=copy https://groups.google.com/g/ara-faculty-group-forum https://crdajournal.org/index.php/crda/issue/view/69 http://lincolntheologicalinstitute.com/anti-racism-and-power/ christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(2), winter 2024 bray, "decolonization in the world of christian ngos": a theological response 128 than organizations or practitioners from the global south (pailey 2019). important questions are raised for anyone involved in the sector, such as — what is expertise and who has it? how do we decide on our measures and models of success? who has decisionmaking power and who sets the agenda both for development and decolonization work? do the narratives organizations tell the world about themselves, their work, and the people they work with perpetuate stereotypes or power inequities? within the broader task of decolonization, there are a plurality of goods to be achieved and challenges to be overcome. as these authors demonstrate, there is a huge diversity of work and thinking taking place. i was also struck by how many of the contributors critically examine how power continues to function in their organizations and how they honestly appraise the tensions and challenges they continue to encounter. this sort of honesty, transparency, and accountability is so important to help collectively drive change as it spreads awareness and helps others identify what the barriers to and enablers of this type of work are. the authors do not shy away from speaking of the barriers they face due to being embedded in wider systems, such as those that demand due diligence and reporting in ways that might hinder progress towards decolonization. the authors from tearfund lead us to question whether new ways of approaching accountability can be explored (mahdi and ncube 2023, 28). it is only through such honest accounting of the ways the sector continues to uphold power inequities that historic and contemporary harms can begin to be repaired. i believe that christian organizations have an important role to play in the decolonization of both the international development sector and wider society. as theologians such as willie james jennings and j. cameron carter have shown, distorted christian beliefs were fundamental in creating and justifying a racial imaginary that perpetuated the power inequities and racial hierarchies that still exist today (jennings 2010, carter 2008). moreover, the international development sector in part grew out of the missionary and so-called “civilizing” work of christian communities. many of the theological principles underlying christian commitments to charity and international development, while seemingly well-intentioned, have historically perpetuated the white gaze and continue to contribute to paternalistic or white savior narratives that cultivate attitudes of pity, saviorism or self-serving benevolence rather than solidarity. there is a need for 2 see, for example, pope john paul ii, ‘sollicitudo rei socialis’ (december 30, 1987), available at: <http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_30121987_sollicitudo-reisocialis.html> [accessed 12 april 2024], §38. christian communities to account for this legacy of harm. in their article, clark buys and maria a. andrade v. assert that, for christian organizations such as tearfund, their christian identity is, in their words, “foundational to the organisation’s why, how, and with whom” (2023, 36). from my experience, for equity, diversity and inclusion (edi), and anti-racism efforts to be sustainable and successful within christian organizations, this work needs to be rooted in their fundamental identity and mission as christian organizations. the commitment to decolonize needs to come from an organization's fundamental beliefs and values as these inform the wider culture of an organization. only in this way will the principles of equity, diversity, inclusion, anti-racism, and decolonization be embedded at every level of the organization. so, it is important for christian organizations to address the cultural assumptions and norms that guide their work. for example, through what theological lenses do organizations view development or humanitarian work? where has theology or church culture perhaps hampered efforts to decolonize? how does theological language function within organizations to either resist or collude with coloniality and racism? many of the journal contributors show that, despite this legacy of harm, christian theology has the potential to disrupt contemporary forms of coloniality and racial hierarchies. it can be used to develop a compelling vision of the sector's work in ways that lead to specific forms of decolonial and anti-racist praxis. for example, from a catholic theological perspective, we can start from what the nigerian theologian stan chu ilo calls “the whole story of the human person” (ilo 2014, xxxi); that is our origin and destiny in divine love, as all of humanity are lovingly created and redeemed by god. due to this common origin and destiny, we are called to become a community of kin who love and care for one another as god loves us. the creation and redemption narrative makes clear that god intends for, what ilo calls, “life in abundance to be received and shared with all” (ibid., 6). from the perspective of catholic social teaching, we are all called to participate in this flourishing by mutually sharing our gifts and contributing to the common good. 2 god calls us to new ways of relating characterized by love, solidarity, mutuality, reciprocity, friendship, and communion. sin, however, obstructs this flourishing and abundance of life. social sin or structural sin is the sin christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(2), winter 2024 bray, "decolonization in the world of christian ngos": a theological response 129 present in social structures that cause harm. 3 decolonization and anti-racism are then about acknowledging and working to transform — and, for those of us who benefit from racial hierarchies and colonial legacies, repent from — those sins of structural racism and coloniality that mitigate against the divine will for the flourishing of all. we cannot build the kingdom of god and fulfill our collective vocation to all participate in bringing about the common good without addressing these sinful structures and legacies and actively working to repair society. moreover, according to latin american liberation theologians such as jon sobrino, social sins blind people caught up within these situations so that those who are privileged are unable to fully recognize the unjust reality as sin, nor do they recognize their personal roles in perpetuating it (sobrino 2008 and sobrino 1994). they can only overcome this blindness, and therefore come to truly recognize structural injustice, through listening to the perspectives and lived experiences of communities that are marginalized and oppressed by the prevailing status quo, that is, those communities and individuals engaged in creative practices of survival and resistance against these sinful structures. for example, without the prophetic condemnations from those of the global majority, i, as a privileged white person, would not realize the extent to which coloniality and structural racism infects the sector. for those of us who are privileged, therefore, part of the process of repentance is through centering the lived experiences, voices, and perspectives of people who challenge our dominant ways of thinking and knowing, what decolonial theologian nicolás panotto calls the “otherwise thoughts” of “nonhegemonic voices” (panotto 2019, 218, 221), particularly those from people of the global majority. this is why, for those of us who have privilege, our commitments to solidarity must be accompanied by a commitment to subsidiarity, which necessarily includes working to transform the structures that grant us unearned privilege and power in favor of creating a more equitable system. so, from a theological perspective, decolonization and anti-racism can be regarded as both part of our vocation to bring about the common good and as part of our duty to resist the structural sins in history that cause harm. what i want to end on, though, is that it is important for us to think about decolonization not just 3 i have elsewhere constructively developed the idea of social sin in dialogue with catholic social teaching and liberation theologians such as jon sobrino. for a fuller treatment of theologies of social sin within the catholic tradition, including that propounded by jon sobrino, please see charlotte bray, sin and the vulnerability of embodied life: towards a catholic theology of social sin (london: t&t clark, forthcoming). see also charlotte rose bray, “sin and the vulnerability of embodied life: towards a constructive development of the idea of social sin within the catholic tradition” (doctoral thesis, durham university 2022). available at durham e-theses online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/14701/). in terms of challenge, but also in terms of opportunity. for example, what new perspectives can we engage with that can transform our normative ways of thinking and working? what alternative pathways for collaboration, partnership, and mutual liberation are there? how can we mutually share capacity and learning to enhance global solidarity and the common good? as bikita mahdi and thobekile ncube from tearfund mention in their article, covid disrupted dominant assumptions about what was possible in the sector (mahdi and ncube 2023, 27). it showed that structural and cultural change is possible, even with limited time and resources, if there is the willpower and courage to dare to be different. references bray, charlotte. sin and the vulnerability of embodied life: towards a catholic theology of social sin. london: t&t clark, forthcoming. bray, charlotte rose. “sin and the vulnerability of embodied life: towards a constructive development of the idea of social sin within the catholic tradition.” doctoral thesis, durham universit, 2022. available at durham e-theses online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/14701/. buys, clark and maria a. andrade v. 2023. “abundant community theology: a case study in decolonial theological research.” christian relief, development, and advocacy 5 (1): 35-45. carter, j. kameron. 2008. race: a theological account. oxford: oxford university press. ilo, stan chu. 2014. the church and development in africa: aid and development from the perspective of catholic social ethics, african christian studies series 2. eugene: pickwick publications. jennings, willie james. 2010. the christian imagination: theology and the origins of race. new haven: yale university press. mahdi, bikita and thobekile ncube, et al. 2023. “tearfund’s decolonisation journey—from jubilee to the present.” christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1): 19-29. pailey, robtel neajai. 2019. “de-centring the ‘white gaze’ of development.” development and change 51(3): 729–745. <https://doi.org/10.1111/dech.12550>. http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/14701/ christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(2), winter 2024 bray, "decolonization in the world of christian ngos": a theological response 130 panotto, nicolás. 2019. “a critique of the coloniality of theological knowledge: rereading latin american liberation theology as thinking otherwise.” in decolonial christianities: latinx and latin american perspectives, edited by r. barreto and r. sirvent, 217-237. springer verlag. pope john paul ii. “sollicitudo rei socialis.” december 30, 1987. available at: <http://w2.vatican.va/content/john-paulii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_jpii_enc_30121987_sollicitudo-rei-socialis.html> [accessed 12 april 2024], §38. shah, rebecca supriya. 2023. “decolonizing data and recovering the person in christian relief and development organizations.” christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1): 55-71. sobrino, jon. 2008. no salvation outside the poor: prophetic-utopian essays. maryknoll: orbis books. sobrino, jon. 1994. the principle of mercy: taking the crucified people from the cross. maryknoll: orbis books. charlotte bray is currently engaged in postdoctoral research on anti-racism and power in international development from a catholic theological perspective at the lincoln theological institute at manchester university. author email: charlotte.bray@manchester.ac.uk. mailto:charlotte.bray@manchester.ac.uk christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 mahdi and ncube, et al., tearfund’s decolonisation journey–from jubilee to the present 19 tearfund’s decolonisation journey– from jubilee to the present compiled by bikita mahdi and thobekile ncube, with much valued contributions from andrew philip, anna laszlo, jude collins, karen brown, liz muir, marc romyr antoine, miles giljam, oenone chadburn and rei lemuel crizaldo1 in this article, we explore what decolonisation means to the faith-based organisation tearfund, outlining several of the organisation’s practical efforts to intentionally “reset” and decolonise its corporate culture, organisational structures, and ways of working. the theological motivation behind this organisational journey was set in motion during its jubilee year in 2017, which sparked a renewed focus on restoring relationships, including those affected by colonialism and/or racism. the article traces an arc from 2017 to 2023, outlining organisational initiatives that aim to shift power and maximise inclusion. the purpose of so doing is to assess how the organisation’s ongoing shift from being a british charity towards becoming an authentically inclusive, global organisation has fared. tearfund is a christian charity mobilising communities and churches worldwide to help end extreme poverty and injustice. to this end, staff work alongside churches and organisations in more than fifty countries around the world to restore the four broken relationships—with god, with nature, with ourselves and with others (tearfund 2019b). the restoration of relationships inevitably includes relationships broken by colonialism, although it is important to acknowledge that understanding the consequences of colonialism “when these harms span centuries and still shape our lives” can be complicated (otele 2023). definition of decolonisation there are many differing understandings of decolonisation. its original use related to the physical and political process whereby colonies gained 1 bikita mahdi, business analyst, strategy & impact team, tearfund uk; thobekile ncube, organisation development manager, tearfund zimbabwe; andrew philip, communications for development team lead, tearfund uk; anna laszlo, tearfund chair of the board; jude collins, editorial and audience inclusion lead in tearfund uk’s communications for development team; liz muir, head of diversity and inclusion, tearfund uk; marc romyer antoine, tearfund country director haiti until december 2022; miles giljam, senior associate global campaigns team, tearfund uk; oenone chadburn, humanitarian & resilience team lead, tearfund uk; rei lemuel crizaldo, theological education learning coordinator, tearfund south east asia. 2 “postcolonial critics, edward said or gayatri spivak among them, argue that the coloniser enacted violence not by mere military force but by conquering historical representation. those who were oppressed were forced to the margins, erased. ‘to decolonise the mind is therefore to empower the mind with the ability to self-represent: to understand one’s history, to write one’s history, to create one’s own representation’” (danaparamita 2019). independence from colonial powers, and selfdetermination and inviolability of borders became generally accepted norms. in the current era, many regard decolonisation as pertaining to a process of “undoing colonial rule,” or more specifically, becoming free of colonial ideology, as well as challenging existing “positions of power and dominant culture” (warwick university 2018) and having the freedom to create representation. 2 over a period of hundreds of years, the process of colonisation extracted wealth and resources on a vast scale with little regard for the devastation wreaked on indigenous knowledge, identities, and lives. it manifested differently depending on context and time period: from the unspeakably cruel and concentrated colonial period in the congo starting in 1885 with leopold ii’s bloody reign, to the “500-year-long christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 mahdi and ncube, et al., tearfund’s decolonisation journey–from jubilee to the present 20 colonial project” in the philippines (berkeley center for religion, peace and world affairs 2022), to ghanaians and haitians taking pride in throwing off the yoke of colonisation, and to the many in southern african countries who still view decolonisation as work in progress. 3 unfortunately, the consequences of colonialism continue to reverberate across generations, including through the perpetuation of poverty, injustice, and inequality. colonial practices can be unwittingly perpetuated, for example, through replication of dominant (often western) cultural practices; through power imbalances and “inherited” hierarchies, and through shameful patterns of separation of faith communities. given that the relief and development sector in the uk also “reflects the power relationships of colonialism” (house of commons 2022), tearfund has rightly been challenged about the enduring legacy of colonialism, as well as its own role in the west’s representation of itself (zadeh-cummings 2022). we have come to realise that we cannot do our work in ways that are just unless we decolonise our own practices and attitudes too. in terms of the moral and practical imperative for tearfund, then, decolonisation takes on a dimension that is personal, pressing, and current. as one colleague from the philippines observed: “colonialism has caused deep wounds which will take a long time to heal—and both perpetrator and victim need healing.” 4 in this article, we explore what decolonisation means to tearfund and outline some of our practical efforts to intentionally “reset” and decolonise our corporate culture, organisational structures, and ways of working. we use first person plural pronouns to refer to tearfund since for us the purpose of this article is to tell a story about the journey that we have been on as an organisation. we trace an arc leading from 2017 to the present (2023) and assess how our ongoing shift from british charity towards an authentically inclusive, global organisation has fared. we detail specific organisational initiatives that aim to shift power and maximise inclusion. 5 before doing so, however, we briefly explain how tearfund’s jubilee period helped create a theological foundation for tearfund’s organisational 3 “they talk to me about progress, about ‘achievements,’ diseases cured, improved standards of living. i am talking about societies drained of their essence, cultures trampled underfoot, institutions undermined, lands confiscated, religions smashed, magnificent artistic creations destroyed, extraordinary possibilities wiped out” (césaire 1972). 4 rei lemuel crizaldo, personal communication, 1 november 2022. 5 the term “shifting power” is contentious, but within the sector tends to be used in relation to existing power structures that need to be challenged. catriona dejean, head of strategy at tearfund, has pointed out that merely “shifting power” could inadvertently shift unhelpful power dynamics or bad practices from the uk to regions; the act of moving power elsewhere is insufficient, we need to change the very nature of the power dynamic itself by rethinking how we hold power, regardless of where we are sitting in the world. thus, she notes that the term “recalibration of power” might be more helpful. renewal with a focus on restoring relationships, including those affected by colonialism and/or racism. jubilee as foundation in hindsight, tearfund’s jubilee year in 2018—its 50th year—stands out as a significant spiritual milestone in the organisation’s decolonisation journey. jubilee’s underlying theology is one of: justice: redemption and restoration; liberation and renewal…being radical and countercultural—both in the ancient world and today— and prophetic… [providing] a model for a community living well according to god’s will for his creation so that they can flourish and thrive as individuals and a community, and so that they can be an example, or light, to the rest of the world (tearfund 2018c). this theology provided tearfund with an opportunity to consciously decide how to conduct itself going forward and provided a foundational basis for doing so. tearfund’s jubilee preparations from 2017 and the celebrations and reflections during 2018 not only created organisational, church, and supporter resources that helped tearfund celebrate its 50th year, but also provided evidence and contemplation on the wider role of faith in development and on tearfund’s place in that journey. jubilee devotional prayer spaces and celebrations were held across the organisation, including a global jubilee staff conference from which flowed organisational commitments based on what we believed god was calling us to focus on as individuals and as an organisation going forward; namely, freedom from injustice, oppression, and poverty; and restoration of relationships. not only did jubilee and its foundational theology provide us with the opportunity to reflect collectively as an organisation, but it also helped create a shared desire for organisational healing and renewal, which through the creation of various organisational initiatives also helped achieve greater receptiveness and collaboration with regard to anti-racism and decolonisation efforts. dr ruth valerio, our head of global advocacy and christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 mahdi and ncube, et al., tearfund’s decolonisation journey–from jubilee to the present 21 influencing, wrote at the time: “we believe that the essence of jubilee is its provision of a way of life for god’s redeemed, liberated people, enabling us to flourish and thrive through the restoration of our relationships with god, with an understanding of ourselves as god’s children, with one another, and with all creation” (tearfund 2018b). our jubilee, with its shared principle of restoration, helped us, as an organisation, lay the foundation for a ‘reset’ of our structures, values, and enablers. it also strengthened our organisational resolve to embed diversity and inclusion (d&i) as a key organisational enabler, 6 to live out our values at work and model the restoration of relationships, which has become an integral part of our decolonisation efforts. restoration of relationships adopting a wider understanding of decolonisation is important to us as a faith-based international nongovernmental organisation (ingo), because our vision is to restore broken relationships, by extension also those relationships damaged by colonialism as well as practices and attitudes flowing from the legacy of colonialism. we have found it helpful to view decolonisation within tearfund as a journey that requires us to continually work at (1) being as inclusive as possible, including fostering an inclusive culture and (2) shifting or recalibrating power. 7 while we acknowledge that decolonisation as a concept is distinct from d&i work, in practice there is a significant overlap between the two. d&i helps create the necessary awareness and desire to change the “traditional, and exclusionary norms and culture of an institution” (blackwood 2020). it is important to recognise, however, that decolonisation may have different nuances depending on history, culture, and sociopolitical context; and that it can evoke different 6 strategic enablers contribute to tearfund being a vibrant, well-connected, global organisation that values diversity, is inclusive of all, supports staff development, and has spirituality and god at the centre. as of 2023, tearfund’s strategic enablers are: people and culture, diversity and inclusion, digital and technology, strategic networks and partnerships, strategy, impact and evidence. 7 initiated at the 2016 global summit on community philanthropy, “shift the power” is a growing movement of people challenging the traditional top-down paradigm, ways of working and decision-making within international development aid and philanthropy. the movement calls for new behaviours, mindsets and work approaches that shift power and resources, and promote more equitable and people-led change. 8 it is important to acknowledge that some, such as jeroo billimoria, view “localisation” as an unhelpful term. billimoria suggests that the term “ecosystem development” be used instead, and in the place of “decolonisation,” she suggests using the term “proximate leaders” (ainsworth and byatnal 2022). 9 the friendship model is a highly relational and catalytic approach to movement-building and abundant africa is a development process and coalition toward an african restorative economy, one that functions within environmental limits, ensures everyone can meet their basic needs, and prevents unreasonable inequality. responses and emotions, depending on people’s lived experiences. improving inclusion and shifting power to restore relationships have been foundational to many recent organisational change processes at tearfund. we know that the legacy of colonialism has created an imbalance of power, which means we need to be intentionally aware of our own use of power in order to better walk alongside others and actively guard against the distorting effects of power and hierarchy on relationships. where there are imbalances of power, those with power (which can manifest itself through location, job title, race, gender, ethnicity, ability, use of language, etc.), need to recognise their privilege and work to open the space for the benefit of others. in practice, some of the intentional power shifts we are trying to effect are about understanding where power lies and decision-making takes place in order to enable the outworking of being both a global and local organisation. we have set a course so as to move the centre-ground from west-practice to rest-of-worldpractice, from uk-based dominance to regional and country ownership, from centralisation to localisation, 8 from importation to indigenisation, from donor to participant, and from extraction and control to communion and friendship. for example, capacity assessment processes used by tearfund and other ingos, are rooted in west-practice with little room for contextualisation. this can be contrasted with the friendship model and abundant africa, 9 both of which were shaped by people in local contexts. many of these shifts have been underway at tearfund for many years, and while much work still lies ahead, in the five years since our jubilee, significant acceleration has taken place. to say that our decolonisation journey has always followed a grand master plan would be misleading and misrepresent the messiness of cultural and attitude change over time. it would be more accurate to characterise it as one of gradual emergence and often christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 mahdi and ncube, et al., tearfund’s decolonisation journey–from jubilee to the present 22 separate decisions and initiatives, including the ones highlighted in this article, coalescing into what has clearly become the journey we are on. the organisational initiatives listed below and covered in more depth over the remainder of this article, serve as important, if imperfect, examples of how tearfund has practically tried to shift power and widen inclusion, while also aiming to become more effective as an organisation and more sensitive to those we serve: ● embedding d&i as a powerful organisational enabler, ● transforming organisational leadership with our leading tearfund together (ltt) initiative, ● the international review (the organisational change process tearfund underwent from the end of 2017 to 2020 in order to shift power and decision-making away from the uk and towards regions, countries and communities), ● building a board of trustees with significant representation from countries and regions where tearfund works, ● contextual approaches in agency and allyship, specifically the asian friendship model and abundant africa, ● intentionality around inclusive language, translation, and communications practices and policies, and ● localisation of our humanitarian work. diversity and inclusion (d&i) in 2017, tearfund embarked on a proactive journey of placing diversity, inclusion, accessibility, and representation at the heart of its organisational enablers and values, as well as shifting power and decisionmaking away from the uk. it was borne from a recognition that “as a british, christian organisation, operating globally in a post-colonial context, we needed to consider how we have been shaped by broader historical and political ideologies, and how the legacy of these continues to impact our organisational systems and social norms” (tearfund 2018a). our dna as a faith-based organisation, including our belief that everyone is created in the image of god, galvanised our resolve to restore relationships and challenge injustice, including that caused by colonial practices and attitudes. our worldview that the injustice and marginalisation that cause poverty are not god’s plan is foundational to our determination to disrupt racist, exploitative, and unjust practices. our engagement in a wider conversation about d&i and decolonisation has enabled us to look with fresh insight on our own cultural context to better align and deepen our responses to these evils. as part of tearfund’s anti-racism work, we have come to acknowledge that colonialism continues to contribute to inequality, given that “racism manifests in the very structure of international aid” (house of commons 2022). in 2021, tearfund renewed its commitment to “deliver programmes in inclusive ways; taking practical steps to shift power and decisionmaking in regions and countries where we work, and evaluate the philosophy and culture of our work” (tearfund 2022a). having d&i as one of our key organisational enablers has allowed it to be championed at multiple levels of the organisation, from the board to teams and individuals. a tearfund d&i committee, established in 2021 for an initial two years, has also raised the organisational profile of d&i work. the appointment of a dedicated d&i lead reporting directly to the executive team and also operating as our ceo’s chief of staff, has helped to embed and advance d&i initiatives and culture change across the organisation. this culture change has been supported by regions and groups through groupspecific annual diversity and inclusion action plans, regular drop-in sessions, deep-dives on d&i topics, d&i workshops within regions and groups, and a weekly anti-racism conversation. the conversations support staff to explore d&i topics and offer safe spaces for questions, discussion, and collective learning. key to these plans have been training and empowering a cohort of d&i mobilisers across tearfund, with a mandate to make space within our team rhythms for hosting d&i conversations. during the time of the global outcry about racism, after the murder of george floyd, tearfund responded with the capability we had at that time. while we had been taking positive steps forward as an organisation prior to this, it enabled us to reflect on our shortcomings. we acknowledged that even though racial and ethnic injustice are key drivers of poverty, we had not done enough in the past to dismantle the systems, policies, and processes that keep systemic racism alive. the legacy of colonialism that contributes to inequality in many of the countries where we work has tainted the experiences of people who live in or have their roots in these places. we were deeply grateful that we already had a d&i framework embedded within the organisation, because it helped us hold honest and brave conversations at such a sensitive time. nevertheless, there is much more to do. while the championing of organisational accountability in relation to d&i has progressed well, our efforts to develop metrics for d&i purposes have been hampered by the lack of data on gender, ethnicity, and disability. this depends on the willingness of employees to share this information, and acknowledging that, in some contexts, revealing racial or ethnic data can expose people to risks and even christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 mahdi and ncube, et al., tearfund’s decolonisation journey–from jubilee to the present 23 endanger people’s lives. additionally, as a christian organisation, tearfund is acutely aware of the spectrum of christian views on disability, which can also make disclosure difficult. in order to ensure that we understand who is within our workforce and to help us target interventions, we need data. it helps to identify whether action is needed and can sometimes provide the legal basis necessary to use interventions such as positive action in recruitment to ensure we hire a more diverse workforce. because we do not want anyone to feel at risk as a result of disclosing diversity data, we must find alternative data-sets and pathways to ensure people are fully represented. our intentional engagement with the black majority church 10 has been another important part of our inclusion journey. in the uk context, we made a conscious decision not to be complicit in reproducing past shameful and unjust patterns of separation of faith communities according to race. engaging with and serving the global church, including the black majority church in the uk, has led to the creation of the well, in recognition of the powerful encounter between jesus and the samaritan woman at the well which overcame so many of the cultural, racial, and political barriers. this powerful collaboration between tearfund and black majority churches and christians of african and caribbean heritage has been described by bishop joshua nk banda of northmead pentecostal assemblies of god (paog) church, zambia as “a journey that will help us fulfil our vision to see every paog church become a centre of transformation” (tearfund, 2022b). the chair of the well committee also sits on our board, as part of our uk engagement work, with the aim for tearfund to be much more reflective of the diversity of god’s church across the world. leading tearfund together during the jubilee year, and as tearfund walked through the international review (see below), we recognised that the organisation was entering a season of considerable change and adaptation and that this called for significant investment in our global leadership group, representing senior leadership from all geographical regions. the following year, funds were allocated to equip, support, and encourage our global leadership to lead together, on behalf of tearfund. this programme, named leading tearfund together (ltt), started in 2018 and included core components on leading self, leading team and organisation, and sustaining and embedding change. the vision for this programme continues to encourage and foster a cadre of senior leaders who are 10 black majority churches in the uk originated in the early twentieth century under the leadership of those who migrated to the country mostly from africa and the caribbean. for more information, see olofinjana 2010. ● aspiring to work together and have a “one tearfund” mindset and approach, ● distinctively christ-centred and servant-hearted in engagement and relationships, ● focused on aligning work to tearfund’s priorities, and ● playing to each other's strengths and releasing the rest of tearfund’s employees to play to their own strengths. ltt has been running continuously for five years now, equipping and supporting our leaders and creating a single leadership cohort, with regular training and collaboration time together. ltt has helped foster the understanding that tearfund is not led from the uk, instead placing an emphasis on leading tearfund “from where you are.” this formed a vital part of our decolonisation journey, because we consciously wanted to shift power away from our uk-based office toward where leadership was based around the world. the result of the leadership development process of these first three cohorts was that it became clear that this group of leaders, the country directors, regional directors and “heads of” should collectively form the global leadership team that was inaugurated at focus fortnight in june 2019 by tearfund’s ceo, nigel harris. ltt and the formation of the global leadership team, together with the international review (see below) has formed a vital part of our decolonisation journey as we consciously shift power away from our uk-based office toward leadership based in the countries and regions where we serve. the first three cohorts of leaders graduated in the autumn of 2019, ensuring that the sense of global unity, leadership skills, confidence, and mandate were honed and ready for the pandemic period that followed. an exercise in “listening to god” formed a part of the final module and led to a significant set of scriptures and prophetic pictures being shared (a boat leaving safe harbour, an orchestra, a tree with deep roots, and a tent spreading wide and strongly pegged) that served to encourage the whole organisation through the early months of the pandemic. tearfund has benefited greatly from this investment in its global leadership cohort, fostering a “one tearfund” approach, a deepening respect and unity across the global leadership team, and growing leadership competence and confidence based as much on personal spiritual formation as on well-regarded leadership theory and practice. going forward, we will continue to adapt the format to improve greater global inclusivity and participation. christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 mahdi and ncube, et al., tearfund’s decolonisation journey–from jubilee to the present 24 international review a listening exercise conducted by tearfund’s then newly appointed international director led to the international review (tearfund 2019), which commenced in 2017 with the aim of transforming tearfund into an organisation more reflective of its global work, including moving power and decisionmaking closer to the communities it serves. the specific aims of this major change initiative included: ● creation of a more decentralised, global organisation, ● location of decision-making and resources as close as possible to the communities the organisation serves, ● movement of teams out of the uk into regions, staffed primarily from within the region, ● changed and improved organisational processes, procedures, and systems, ● clarification of decision-making and accountability through a decision-making and accountability framework (dmaf), and ● creation of a set of shared organisational behaviours and characteristics. alongside the structural changes brought by the international review, tearfund characteristics were developed to help provide a framework for our interactions with each other, support our d&i efforts, and forge a better organisational culture. these characteristics (create space for god and ourselves, learn and grow, include and value each other, work together, communicate bravely, and act with integrity) were worked into various bible studies, team activities, annual appraisals and other key processes and organisational rhythms. they are the behaviours we aspire to. they are built on a number of principles and aspirations we believe are critical to our vision and mission, which in turn have helped us maintain the momentum of change processes like the international review and subsequent corporate initiatives aimed at shifting power. these characteristics continue to be a useful basis for helping us lean into difficult conversations about power and inclusion with grace and openness. a recent external report concluded that the international review has indeed helped make tearfund a more inclusive global organisation, enabling a power shift and bringing decision-making closer to programmes, partners, and communities, as well as increasing our focus, energy, and agility to respond to the needs of those we serve (maramba 2021). but the job is not yet finished. the report highlights the work that must still be done to reduce organisational complexity and the burden of our processes and systems, particularly in light of the introduction of additional compliance and risk controls in the wake of the charities commission report into the oxfam safeguarding scandal (maramba 2021). a live issue for us, as with many other ingos, is how we measure impact in ways that encourage inclusion and ownership, and measure complexity in ways that reduce any sense of extraction. we also need to press even further into global representation and inclusion work within our operational structures, given that regional power structures can unintentionally replicate colonial patterns of behaviour. there is an ongoing conversation within tearfund about how best to achieve mindset change and adaptation of working practices across all parts of the organisation, given the shift in power brought about as a consequence of the international review. board of trustees in 2018, when tearfund appointed its first ever female chair of the board, it also decided significantly to increase representation from countries and regions where we work. as a christian faith-based ingo, tearfund recruited people from across the diversity of churches that we serve. the board thus decided that it should be constituted with no fewer than a third females and no fewer than a third from majority-world heritage. the board took this decision as a way to encourage it towards more intentional consideration and recruitment of a range of board members from different backgrounds, cultures, and experience. over time, the board has become more representative of the communities and churches we work with, bringing better quality of debate, discussions, and inputs. the board now has one south african national based in johannesburg, one rwandan based in kigali who is also a church pastor, and one indian trustee based in chennai. it includes a former refugee; another who was forced to flee his country due to internal violence; another with personal experience of deep poverty. one trustee is a leader from the elim church network and another from the redeemed christian church of god. the board and executive team formally assess the effectiveness of the board annually, commenting in recent years on the value of the increased diversity and experience on the board; informal comments have also noted that the quality and rigour of debate has increased as a result of the increased range of views and perspectives around the table. a stronger and more energised commitment to d&i is reflected in the board members themselves, offering expertise from finance to theology to marketing, including personal experience of poverty and refugee status, and bringing together voices from three different continents. with board members located across the globe, scheduling board meetings has christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 mahdi and ncube, et al., tearfund’s decolonisation journey–from jubilee to the present 25 not always been easy, but covid-19 lockdowns accelerated the adoption of online meetings. our board members bring a wide range of professional experiences along with very different lived experiences. having board members allocated to specific working committees (e.g., impact, fundraising, theology) utilises their deep and specific skills to hold tearfund to account for progress on specific initiatives. other helpful learnings from the board’s experiences over the last four years include: ● the benefits of having “board buddies” who look out for each other on the board, offering informal support and helping build a sense of belonging and trust, ● being open to non-western approaches of governance, given that governance could look different from a global perspective versus a uk perspective, and ● creating more diverse shortlists when recruiting new board members, with selection panels intentionally considering the value of broad diversity of experience and location in the decisions they make. tearfund has greatly benefitted from having a much more diverse and dynamic board and this may offer some insights on initiatives to help further globalise tearfund’s executive team. improving representation across leadership and decision-making positions can be a slow process, so to achieve greater global representation of leadership groups going forward we are working with our staff council, recruitment team, and hiring managers to see how this can be accelerated. contextual approaches in agency and allyship tearfund wants to play its part in restoring relationships and disrupting colonial patterns of behaviour. in our work alongside communities and churches, we remain vigilant to the distorting effects of power, and consciously aim to shift power and agency in favour of the communities and churches we serve. in all our work across regions and countries we prayerfully seek god’s guidance in how to do this with humility, wisdom, and grace, serving god’s church in transformative mission and putting church and community transformation at the heart of what we do. over time, with the help of our friends and allies, we have developed contextualised approaches aimed at serving the local church from where it finds itself, rather than where tearfund is at. contextual and locallydesigned approaches include the friendship model in asia and the abundant africa coalition for a restorative, sustainable, and abundant future. the aim of these two approaches, as well as other highly contextualised and locally-designed approaches, guided by our church and community transformation principles with biblical theology and holistic change at their core, is to enable the organisation to continue working towards a peaceful and inclusive world with restored relationships at its heart. friendship model: the friendship model is the partnership model that tearfund uses in east & south east asia—a model that seeks to remove the power relationships inherent within the donor-recipient model. at the heart of the friendship model is a recognition that by virtue of who we are, regardless of our intentions, we could unintentionally wield power over the communities we aim to serve or over the partners we serve with, and that we therefore consciously and continuously need to consider how to shift power. the analogy of a dinner table laid out for guests has been useful to our approach. it is not merely about inviting more people to the table, but laying the table for others to serve themselves, intentionally stepping back from our power and deconstructing the way we do things. this means shifting from funding to befriending, and from a logic of control to a logic of trust, where the trust must be intrinsic because of a belief in the good of the cause, rather than because there is a business case for it. key to the friendship model is considering how conversations are introduced, how they are held, where they are held, who decides what is important, who is responsible for the actioning of decisions, and who monitors progress. this approach helps to build healthy, interdependent relationships instead of “colonial” relationships in which things are done for and to people rather than with people. under the friendship model, tearfund’s partners set the agenda, deciding what conversations should occur and how, where meetings are held, who is invited, and so forth. when tearfund is invited to the table, it comes as a participant. tearfund’s primary role is to listen—not as a donor coming to pay for what has already been decided, but as a friend, offering suggestions as appropriate, but on the understanding that these can be accepted or rejected by partners. this also requires recalibration of the balance between storytelling and reporting, being mindful of fulfilling due diligence requirements without overburdening communities and churches. this means delighting in sharing and hearing stories as friends on a journey together, instead of being “monitored and evaluated.” the friendship model offers a postdevelopment, post-colonial foundation for developing healthy, reciprocal relationships with everyone, recognising that we are all made in the image of god. it is about shaping each other, learning from each other, and connecting with each other to experience the fullness of life. https://abundant.africa/about/ christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 mahdi and ncube, et al., tearfund’s decolonisation journey–from jubilee to the present 26 abundant africa: abundant africa is an advocacy movement that developed out of tearfund’s church and community transformation work for a future as envisaged by people living in countries across africa. an african-centric and african-designed approach, it emerged from a tearfund devotional space to counter the often pessimistic or saviourist narratives that dominate so much of the international press coverage about africa. the abundant africa vision was developed as a counter-narrative to what some recognise as colonial framing by taking inspiration from black consciousness and radical black philosopherleaders such as steve biko and frantz fanon. during the emergence of the vision for an abundant africa, african theologians convened by tearfund proposed an approach centred around the creation narrative with god and humankind working together, placing agency within the hands of the oppressed and not the oppressor. as a continent and people, the vision is for africa and african people to reclaim their agency as people made in the image of god in a way that resonates with the next generation. 11 it embeds political thinking, identity, theology, discipleship, and movement building into an authentically african narrative. language and translation language and power are related. the languages we use, and the ways we use them, can create or perpetuate harmful power dynamics and can determine whether people feel included or excluded. feelings of exclusion can arise, for example, when interpretation is not offered at corporate communications events to cater for people whose first, second, or third language is not english. recognising the potential for language to cause harm, tearfund has developed guidelines to help ensure that the organisation’s written and verbal communications are respectful and do not negatively affect people’s identity, rights, or dignity. this includes the use of clear, accessible language and the avoidance of outdated terms and harmful stereotypes. this approach is often referred to in ingo circles as the “decolonisation” of language. tearfund has also recently approved a language and translation policy that supports the decolonisation of language as well as other inclusive linguistic practices. these include: 11 as part of decolonisation discussions around the abundant africa report (2021), which was spearheaded by miles giljam, different regional nuances emerged that were important for the framing of the report and subsequent movement-building initiatives. 12 editors’ note: for more on capacity building, see the contribution by toluwanimi jaiyebo-okoro in this issue. ● increased emphasis on languages other than english, including growing the number of resources that are written and developed in other languages, ● proportionate investment in translation and interpretation to enhance both internal and external communications, and ● regular assessment of tearfund’s language and communication needs as the organisation becomes increasingly linguistically diverse. speaking about the language policy in her recent book, academic and researcher wine tesseur (2022, 40) notes, “tearfund’s initiative indicates a potentially significant shift towards a more overt consideration of the link between language and inclusion, which positions tearfund as a leading example in the ingo sector.” challenges remain in relation to how best to fund the cost of translation and interpretation as demand for these services rises across the organisation. but when translation is viewed through a d&i lens, what might initially seem like cost overheads become investments in inclusivity. humanitarian work tearfund’s humanitarian teams engaged with decolonisation earlier than other parts of the organisation, on account of the ongoing debate within the sector about the nexus between development and emergency response, and how best to protect and support people when conflict and crisis threaten to overwhelm national capacity and resources. it is important to note that narratives around “capacity building” can either uphold colonial logics or be intentionally decolonial themselves; it is the latter that we strive for. 12 for tearfund, like many other agencies that responded to the devastating earthquake in haiti in 2010, events there became a turning point in realising the extent to which the collective humanitarian response system trampled on national capacity, undermined local agency, and missed opportunities to accompany local partners. even though colonisation was not the primary focus of the analysis of the experiences in haiti, it is clear that if a decolonisation lens had been applied to the haitian humanitarian intervention, it could have made a huge difference to the tone, quality, and effectiveness of the response. it is generally agreed that the 2010 haiti earthquake response lacked accountability, sensitivity, and a christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 mahdi and ncube, et al., tearfund’s decolonisation journey–from jubilee to the present 27 localisation focus on the part of donors and responders. these lessons, in addition to various reports about subsequent missed opportunities in pakistan, south sudan, and nepal, provided a strong impetus for the 2016 world humanitarian summit enshrining localisation in its outcomes (zadeh-cummings 2022), and the subsequent charter for change 13 and the grand bargain, 14 both of which are commitments to transform the way the humanitarian sector operates, and both of which tearfund has signed up to. coinciding with the 2016 world humanitarian summit, tearfund began work as part of the start network 15 to “create systems change within the humanitarian system” through a series of “shifting the power” projects. these initiatives aimed to improve the humanitarian architecture by building the capacity of local counterparts according to global standards, using self-assessment and locally owned capacity frameworks for local ngos. many of the innovative programmes that start network piloted helped push the boundaries of paradigm change. the shifting the power project continually built on national partners’ voices, on their choices and how they wanted to strengthen their capacity against their own strategic goal to be national responders. this contrasted greatly to what international aid responders perceived to be the shortcomings of national actors, often viewed through sub-contracts where international aid agencies benchmarked a partner's performance against a series of standards designed by international actors. tearfund chose to continue shifting the power through a process called disaster management capacity assessment (dmca). investing in national capacity through local and regional staff members was always a strategic goal, but it required a systematic approach. the establishment of a capacity strengthening fund was a step towards this. the internal fund provides resourcing and funding for dmca in countries where tearfund works, with a view to rolling it out across all of these countries by 2025. since the haiti earthquake in 2010, tearfund had already embarked on a trajectory away from expatheavy disaster response teams towards integration of 13 see https://charter4change.org. 14 see https://interagencystandingcommittee.org/content/grand-bargain-hosted-iasc. 15 see https://startnetwork.org/about. 16 accompaniment is generally taken to mean working side-by-side with local communities in a humble attitude of learning. in the humanitarian context, it means moving away from directly responding, to working with or alongside our partners to enable them to directly respond. it also involves sharing understanding of international humanitarian aid structures and standards, and supporting partners to apply directly for funding themselves. the accompaniment model also formalises roles that provide technical support, such as those that support local partners to develop their own capacity strengthening plans funded by tearfund. 17 cyclone idai was a devastating cyclone that hit mozambique in march 2019. development, resilience, and response at the most local levels possible. accelerating the shift towards a lean humanitarian support team (hst) with a focus on accompaniment was difficult and painful for both the hst and regional teams, 16 and some of the steepest learning and adaptation had to occur while simultaneously responding to large-scale disasters such as cyclone idai. 17 the most challenging changes relate to the requirement for regional teams to build up local humanitarian capacity in preparation for crises, given the pressing weight of development priorities, whilst the global hst team’s limited involvement in the later phases of the humanitarian response cycle at times proved disheartening to individuals who had to step back from parts of the disaster response cycle they were previously accustomed to leading. over time, teams and staff members have settled into new ways of working. in 2019 the resilience unit merged with the humanitarian support team to form the humanitarian and resilience team (hart) to drive a greater focus on readiness and local resilience in the face of increasing severity and frequency of crises. an increasing requirement is for responders and resilience workers to be based as locally as possible. this trajectory was already set in motion with the inter-asia ministerial conference asean declaration “by asia for asia” in 2018, allowing only asean passport holders to be responders during the sulawesi tsunami. tearfund’s humanitarian and resilience team has actively sought to work within the spirit of this declaration, increasingly shifting from internationally pooled response teams towards accompanying national responders where possible. this approach was vindicated during the covid lockdowns, when borders were shut, and only local and national assistance was available to communities. tearfund recognises the importance of deconstructing stereotypical western representations of “aid recipients” and is actively engaged in correcting this through mindful use of images and language. some in the aid sector have suggested shifting from “humanitarian aid” toward a “reparations” movement to redress colonial wounds and structural consequences https://charter4change.org/ https://interagencystandingcommittee.org/content/grand-bargain-hosted-iasc about:blank christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 mahdi and ncube, et al., tearfund’s decolonisation journey–from jubilee to the present 28 such as inequality, injustice, poverty, and conflict. these are all issues we continue to grapple with at tearfund. tearfund continues to move away from globally directed work in favour of contextually determined goals and priorities. the increased remit for nationalised country offices to fundraise locally could inadvertently present a dilemma in the humanitarian sphere. establishing national offices could in theory displace home-grown organisations, or unintentionally reduce the funding and resource pool for national partners. we remain mindful about reverting to “donor response” mode during times of crisis, instead championing, accompanying, and intentionally making space for national actors to access their own humanitarian funding as far as possible. we still need to fine-tune which functions should be held globally, regionally, and locally, especially given the need for long-term capacity. we have completed our country level emergency response guidelines or procedures and are launching a framework for achieving best quality preparedness and response practice whilst building in locally led adaptability. our goal is ultimately to localise all response capacity, recognising that given the relatively small size of our organisation we will need to maximise advocacy and influencing opportunities and alliances to strengthen disaster and crisis response capacity, legalisation, and prioritisation. these alliances increasingly include members of the tearfund family, the integral alliance, and the start network, as well as other civil society organisations and governments. going forward, tearfund remains committed to localisation and national response capacity as a priority, 18 but the precise path our decolonised journey will take within the humanitarian response system is not yet certain. conclusion if “decolonisation is understood as to release what was taken over” (sarmiento 2022), we know there is still much to restore and to make right, requiring continuous re-imagining, renewal, and restoration. colonisation destroyed identities for the sake of empire—artificially elevating some as superior whilst treating others as inferior. repenting now of this destruction requires us to work toward the restoration of identity, and not only those of others, but also our own internal identities as individuals and who we are and what we do as tearfund. 18 this is in line with the sendai framework for disaster risk reduction (2015-2030), adopted by the un member states in 2015. 19 miles giljam, personal notes, tearfund staff conference, june 2017. 20 a sabbath day is a calendar day when all staff stop work in order to pray and reflect together. since our jubilee year, so much has happened within tearfund to improve inclusion, globalise our culture, and shift power. after fifty years of service, we were able to pause and reflect on how we wanted to conduct ourselves in future years, including how best to grapple with our collective colonial legacy. looking back, our jubilee period was indeed a key turning point, where as an organisation we allowed the pain of that legacy to emerge through honest conversations within and across teams, prayers, and reflection globally. only through such a process would people feel ready to be vulnerable and share with others how they felt in relation to tearfund as an organisation, both individually and collectively. during our jubilee year, a spiritual shift happened as we prayed together across the globe, possibly unwittingly achieving a spiritual milestone during our decolonisation journey, with positive reverberations that we could not possibly foresee at that point. it seems god in his grace used our jubilee process to start a renewal process amongst us. looking back, the path tearfund chose feels like an example of jubilee in action, where those with power voluntarily agree to reset the power relationships. 19 our jubilee was a time of release, restitution, and relationship-building, following which rest was needed. it thus provided the impetus for tearfund establishing organisational sabbath days to allow for periodic reflection and to create space for true vulnerability and healing, towards a new tearfund identity to deliver our vision. 20 despite significant progress in our hearts, minds, and behaviours towards a globally inclusive culture and workplace with accompanying power shifts well underway, tearfund’s decolonisation journey is by no means complete. we still need to reduce the complexity of our systems and processes as we transition from being a donor toward becoming an invited friend and accompanier. further, we operate within a system that currently demands systems of reporting in ways that this journey may lead us to question, but we cannot alone remove those demands or fail to comply with them—decolonised systems of accountability remain an ongoing challenge for the sector as a whole. overall, we still have much healing and restoration to embrace and work toward, with many more practical obstacles to overcome. despite inevitable bumps in the road, we believe in the benefits of becoming a truly inclusive, diverse, and global organisation. we continue to keep an open mind as to what tearfund will look like in decades to come, christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 mahdi and ncube, et al., tearfund’s decolonisation journey–from jubilee to the present 29 but we remain confident in our role supporting, serving, and convening the global church, even as our decolonisation journey accelerates. references ainsworth, david and amruta byatnal. 2022. “localization? i hate the word. decolonization? i hate that even more.” devex. november 21. https://www.devex.com/news/localization-i-hatethe-word-decolonization-i-hate-that-even-more104340. berkeley center for religion, peace and world affairs. 2022. “500 years of christianity and the global filipin@: postcolonial perspectives: reappropriation, resistance, and decolonization.” webinar, february 9. blackwood, lauren. 2020. “the reality of diversification without beginning the process of decolonisation.” diversity digest, may 28. https://blogs.kcl.ac.uk/diversity/2020/05/28/the-realityof-diversification-without-beginning-the-process-ofdecolonisation/#:~:text=without%20decolonising%20w ork%2c%20diversification%20exists,the%20workplace %20and%20the%20classroom césaire, aimé. 1972 [1955]. “between colonizer and colonized.” in discourse on colonialism. translated by joan pinkham. new york: monthly review press, 20-25. danaparamita, aria. 2019. “indonesia: decolonising the mind – counter narratives.” histori bersama. january 30. giljam, miles et al. 2021. abundant africa: our decade to shape the african century. https://abundant.africa/wpcontent/uploads/2021/06/abundant-africa-ourdecade-to-shape-the-african-century.pdf olofinjana, israel oluwole. 2010. “the history of black majority churches in london.” building on history: religion in london. the open university. otele, olivette. 2023. “the logic of slavery reparations.” the guardian. march 31, 2023. sarmiento, emily. 2022. “decolonizing justice.” the justice conference. tearfund. 2018a. diversity and inclusion. internal report. tearfund. 2018b. jubilee dinner booklet. tearfund. 2018c. theology of jubilee. internal paper. tearfund. 2019a. international review focus areas. internal document. tearfund. 2019b. understanding poverty: restoring broken relationships. tearfund. 2022a. anti-racism update 2021-2022. internal document. tearfund. 2022b. the well strategy 2022-2025. internal document. maramba, mojgan. 2021. international review: assessment and recommendations v2.1. for tearfund. tesseur, wine. 2022. translation as social justice: translation policies and practices in nongovernmental organisations. new york: routledge. united kingdom. house of commons. international development committee. 2022. “racism in the aid sector.” first report of session 2022-23. june 23. warwick university, “what is decolonising methodology?” n.d. zadeh-cummings, nazanin. 2022. “through the looking glass: coloniality and mirroring in localisation.” the humanitarian leader, working paper 031. november. bikita mahdi is a business analyst and horizon scanner in tearfund's strategy & impact team working on a wide range of corporate projects. prior to joining tearfund, she worked for andersen consulting (now accenture), bloomberg news, and the london stock exchange. she is an alumna of stellenbosch university and the london school of economics. bikita is a global citizen living in london, with a keen interest in sustainable development, international relations, and economics. thobekile ncube is an organisation development manager at tearfund zimbabwe. she holds a bachelor’s in business administration (financial management) from solusi university, a postgraduate diploma in organisation development practice from roffey park (uk), is a certified facilitator, and is currently studying for her master’s in organisation development at roffey park. she has supported programme leaders working with children at risk in eleven countries, as well as the organisational development of ngos in zimbabwe and eight other countries in southeast africa. she lives in harare, zimbabwe. https://www.devex.com/news/localization-i-hate-the-word-decolonization-i-hate-that-even-more-104340 https://www.devex.com/news/localization-i-hate-the-word-decolonization-i-hate-that-even-more-104340 https://www.devex.com/news/localization-i-hate-the-word-decolonization-i-hate-that-even-more-104340 https://blogs.kcl.ac.uk/diversity/2020/05/28/the-reality-of-diversification-without-beginning-the-process-of-decolonisation/#:~:text=without%20decolonising%20work%2c%20diversification%20exists,the%20workplace%20and%20the%20classroom https://blogs.kcl.ac.uk/diversity/2020/05/28/the-reality-of-diversification-without-beginning-the-process-of-decolonisation/#:~:text=without%20decolonising%20work%2c%20diversification%20exists,the%20workplace%20and%20the%20classroom https://blogs.kcl.ac.uk/diversity/2020/05/28/the-reality-of-diversification-without-beginning-the-process-of-decolonisation/#:~:text=without%20decolonising%20work%2c%20diversification%20exists,the%20workplace%20and%20the%20classroom https://blogs.kcl.ac.uk/diversity/2020/05/28/the-reality-of-diversification-without-beginning-the-process-of-decolonisation/#:~:text=without%20decolonising%20work%2c%20diversification%20exists,the%20workplace%20and%20the%20classroom https://blogs.kcl.ac.uk/diversity/2020/05/28/the-reality-of-diversification-without-beginning-the-process-of-decolonisation/#:~:text=without%20decolonising%20work%2c%20diversification%20exists,the%20workplace%20and%20the%20classroom about:blank about:blank about:blank christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(1), summer 2024 hoksbergen, bronkema, and kurlberg, editors’ introduction i editors’ introduction roland hoksbergen, david bronkema, and nina kurlberg crda co-editors to open this issue, we remind ourselves of the basic mission of the crda journal, which is to contribute to the learning on how to improve the way faithful christians, whether practitioners, academic researchers, or both, engage the world and work to create thriving communities, both local and global (see “about the journal”) as editors, our understanding of what thriving communities look like is broad, or holistic, and includes every area of life and an understanding that christ reigns. but working towards this holistic approach is easier said than done. as we have learned over the years, getting this basic mission right is exceedingly hard. on one side lurks the danger of over-spiritualizing everything, and ultimately acting as if conversion, true faith, prayer, and hope in the afterlife are the only things that really matter. on the other side, partly because integration is so hard, we fall into practices of focusing only on important, yet incomplete, material human needs, like agricultural yields, economic well-being, physical health, and the techniques and practices that achieve them. even though it is complex and hard to achieve, a holistic approach to our mission is and will continue to be central to every activity associated with nurturing thriving communities. it is thus essential that we foster constructive conversations that address the questions of basic human needs directly, even as we continually encourage contributors intentionally to address the faith-based elements of their work and research around it. just as the israelites were instructed to continually talk about the law as given to moses on the mountain, we too must talk about these things all the time so that they become a part of who we are (deuteronomy 6:49). in the current issue, there is some of both of these elements of integration. first, basic questions of the role of spirituality and spiritual impact measurement methods are discussed directly in the contributions by fellow crda editor, david bronkema, a conversation that continues in the curated transcript of the webinar crda hosted on the topic. participant comments refer back especially to the contribution jayakumar christian made at the accord meetings in october of 2022 when he expressed concern that measuring spiritual factors threatened a “slicing off” of spiritual issues from all the others relevant to thriving communities. the journal then turns to two topics of practical interest for christian relief and development practitioners. first, scott sabin and his team at plant with purpose present an impact study of a joint pwp/hope international program in burundi that combines agriculture and creation care with a savings group program created and managed by hope international. agricultural production, increased savings, improved soil health, and community spiritual support all form part of the indicator package pwp finds compelling and worth measuring. the next article focuses on recovery from substance abuse. researchers from the meros center analyze a faith-based program that combines recovery techniques with financial literacy training. more research is necessary, but this pilot study marks the path. while the location of this study is in the united states, which is quite unusual for the articles of our journal, peer reviewers judged this to be of interest for our international audience because of its generalizable implications. the issue concludes with a book review of andrea nelson trice’s strong together, which encourages us to build culturally sensitive partnerships across the world’s different cultures. roxanne addink de graaf of partners worldwide gives the book high marks in bringing forward “insights … (that) can help build restorative relationships that bridge divides” (p. 36 in this issue). looking ahead, the crda journal anticipates a number of special issues on topics of great interest to the crda community. a special issue on gender mainstreaming and another on peacebuilding, are nearing completion. other special issues currently in initial stages will address agriculture, wash, and the role churches play church in relief, development, and advocacy efforts. there is so much more that needs our attention. as you are led to address crda issues in your own arena, keep this journal in mind as a venue to share your research and reflections with like-minded people in this supportive community. please reach out to us as editors as you begin thinking about and planning any such potential research; we would love to walk with you in the process of publication. https://crdajournal.org/index.php/crda/about christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 kuperus, decolonizing global development theory and practice through “centering” the work of robtel neajai pailey 97 decolonizing global development theory and practice through “centering” the work of robtel neajai pailey by tracy kuperus this essay discusses the contributions of robtel neajai pailey, a liberian scholar and activist, to the decolonization movement within global development. some of pailey’s scholarship centers on directly critiquing the “white gaze” of development. she points to how development practice and scholarship remain beholden to western, white knowledge and power dynamics. for this reason, pailey urges both scholars and practitioners to reverse the white gaze of development. pailey does this with her scholarship on liberia. she also offers ideas for practitioners. the essay concludes with how christian scholars and practitioners might engage with the decolonialization movement. in 1992, my husband and i spent nine months in south africa, where i was engaged in dissertation field work on the dutch reformed church’s contribution to the theology of apartheid, and my husband taught short courses in engineering at the university of cape town. halfway through our time in south africa, we felt the need to “give back.” we were living a comfortable life in the southern suburbs of the cape peninsula--on graduate student salaries no less--and felt the tug to help those less fortunate. the church where we were worshipping supported a crèche (day care center) in the south african township of guguletu. upon arriving at the crèche, the director showed us around the property, introduced us to the staff and the children, and invited us into her office. “tell me a little bit about yourselves and why you’re here?” she asked. we answered: “we’re americans living in south africa for about nine months and feeling unsettled about our life in the white suburbs. we’d like to discover how the ‘other side’ lives in south africa, and we’d like to help out at the crèche in any way we can.” the director responded, “what do you really know about how the other side lives in south africa? how can you possibly come in and help, knowing next to nothing about the people we serve and our community?” this was my blunt introduction to the “white savior complex.” certainly, i have witnessed it from other angles. the church i attend in grand rapids, michigan sent a youth group to guatemala several years ago. the teens painted a home and ran a vbs (vacation bible school). they returned with good vibes. the video they shared with the church afterwards showed how much they had helped the community, and they reveled in the happiness of the people they served despite their living in abject poverty. it was unsettling, but i had been in that same place two decades prior. the white savior complex is a large part of the “white gaze” of development and its colonized hold on the field. robtel neajai pailey, a liberian scholar and activist, offers some astute reflections on this reality. in her article, “de-centring the ‘white gaze’ of development,” she states, “in its crudest form, development has traditionally been about dissecting the political, socio-economic and cultural processes of black, brown, and other subjects of colour in the socalled global south and finding them regressive, particularly in comparison to the so-called progressive global north” (2020a, 729). she goes on to urge her readers to de-colonize the field and turn “the colonial, ‘white gaze’ on its head” (2020a, 729). critiques about development are nothing new. dependency theory, world systems theory, feminism, and post-developmentalism represent a few of the critical development theories that have centered on mainstream development’s flaws. what, then, makes the decolonization critique unique, and why should christians pay attention? more importantly, how christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 kuperus, decolonizing global development theory and practice through “centering” the work of robtel neajai pailey 98 should christian scholars and practitioners working in development respond? according to pailey, the decolonization critique is unique because it acknowledges the “proverbial elephant in the room of development: race” (2020a, 729). readers of this journal are likely aware of the development field’s uncomfortable relationship with religion, and we may even be familiar with kurt ver beek’s (2000) excellent article pointing to the field’s avoidance of the topics of spirituality and religion. sadly, the situation is similar when it comes to race. pailey herself searched conference proceedings, journal articles, and non-governmental (ngo) reports, and found that references to race are perfunctory. she then observes that “in its constant negotiation of poverty, power, politics and privilege, development continues to be structured in hierarchies of race and place” (2020a, 730). pailey’s scholarly and activist work adroitly exposes the problematic white gaze of development within the context of empire and colonization. pailey joins other scholars, like edward said (1978), uma kothari (2006), and paul zeleza (2009), who note that the racial hierarchy of colonization-where white westerners are equated with being civilized, while black, brown, and other subjects of color are understood to be uncivilized--is alive and well. in the development field today, the same countries and peoples are still considered developed. they are the standard by which so-called “third world” countries and peoples are measured and found lacking. “in essence,” pailey notes, “white is always right, and west is always best” (2020a, 733). finally, the “white gaze” of development maintains the racial coloniality of power through systemic inequality and injustice while at the same time suggesting that western agents in the development process are benevolent and altruistic. pailey provides plenty of examples of “epistemic colonization” in development. she notes that “the levers of power over development--be it in policy making, practice or scholarship--are still mostly controlled and sustained by white people” (2020a, 735). certainly, change is happening. more progressive people of color are entering the field of development, but she notes that the majority of institutions that scaffold what we know as development, from international financial institutions like the world bank and the world trade organization, to prominent ngos like oxfam, and international development departments at academic institutions like the school of oriental and african studies, all continue to reinforce rather than subvert the white gaze of development. and pailey gives many more examples (ibid., 736). international migration patterns show how the white western world tries to keep out brown and black people. world leaders argue that black and brown people lack the willpower, intelligence, or character to contribute positively to the development of global north countries. better to keep them out with fortified walls, fences, and executive bans. or take the charity appeals of many non-governmental organizations--these white savior-based calls for financial contribution rest on the assumption that whites know best how to guide people of color who lack agency. pailey is an academic as well as a public scholar, whose scholarship and writing range from opinion pieces on a variety of topics to personal stories to make her points. for example, her op-eds for outlets like the guardian, al jazeera, and the washington post dissect how liberia is still not free of colonialism’s hold. its existence as a state is rooted in the american colonisation society, an organization made up of influential whites who wanted “to rid the u.s. of free blacks” (pailey, 2020b). this disturbing origin story contributes to the country’s ongoing racial tensions. indeed, liberia’s lingua franca of liberian english, “a mix of american twang, caribbean patois, and west african pidgin,” is another pervasive colonial legacy (pailey, 2020b). finally, her scholarship offers personal stories that buttress her points about the white gaze of development. shortly after graduating from college, pailey served as ellen johnson sirleaf’s special assistant for communications. within weeks of working in the offices of the liberian presidency, pailey noticed how the advice of three white, male colleagues, deployed to liberia from great britain, was regarded with the highest respect. their counsel was rarely questioned or dismissed. indeed, their suggestions were taken as expert advice even though they had no post-war managerial experience. whiteness, pailey noted, wielded “structural power and privilege in development corridors” (2020a, 731), and africans themselves, in kowtowing to this so-called white expertise, “have thoroughly internalized the ‘white gaze’ of development” (2020a, 732). pailey’s work is as much a critique of the white gaze of development as it is a call to action. she provides many ways for both scholars and activists to challenge and subvert it. she directs most of her attention to scholars. they can ‘reverse’ the white gaze of development by acknowledging structures of racial domination in colonial and post-colonial contexts. many academics have already done this. the work of edward wilmot blyden, w.e.b dubois, and frantz fanon exemplifies early epistemic decolonization, while the scholarship of chandra mohanty (1988), kalpana wilson (2012) and sylvia tamale (2020) are more recent contributions. all of us writing in the development field need to read the work of these scholars and take it seriously. in short, "scholarship that “centers” the perspectives and experiences of black and brown christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 kuperus, decolonizing global development theory and practice through “centering” the work of robtel neajai pailey 99 peoples in the global south help subvert the development field’s white gaze. this would include academic work, by way of example, that highlights indigenous knowledge systems, “south-south” migration, or india’s role as an upcoming development actor. pailey herself (2016, 2021) has produced scholarship that explores how liberia’s “socioeconomic development is mediated by race and citizenship” (2020a, 741). liberia is one of only a few countries where black personhood is centered. a “negro clause” in its 1986 constitutions confers citizenship to blacks only. this challenges the colonial white gaze of development. it also upends the understanding of citizenship as grounded in white liberalism. this development, though, is not without problems. for example, it excludes brown southern migrants from citizenship, including lebanese and indian migrants who dominate liberia’s service and retail sectors. still, pailey’s work illustrates the centering of “black and brown people as active subjects rather than passive objects of scholarly inquiry” (2020a, 742). pailey has less to say to practitioners, as her world is mainly occupied by the academy, but she does call on everyone in the development field to pay attention to grassroots social movements like #black-livesmatter or the senegalese activist movement, y’en a marre (“fed up”) that automatically de-center the white gaze of development by asserting black and brown personhood as the norm. these movements also expose the structural violence that privileges whites and undermines people of color. one way development practitioners can subvert the white racial frame is by recruiting “radical rabble rousers who challenge and dismantle the status quo” (2020a, 742). pailey cautions against hiring people of color to fill the diversity quota. only “emancipatory” recruitment efforts can center development offices with the insights and perspectives of people of color. moreover, white development workers (and scholars) must “confront how they benefit from the racial hierarchies that underpin this field, and actively work to upend their unearned privileges” (2020a, 742). finally, development projects can decolonize the field by mainstreaming race into project analysis the same way they do gender, human rights, or class. ngos could also form “evaluation advisory groups” (eags) that decenter the white gaze of development “through the direct involvement of community members as advisors to, and even employees of, the evaluation” (johnston-goodstar 2012, 111). eags would have a better handle than ngo staff members on whether the needs and desires of the community are being met by the development project. the locally based actors serving on eags could also add invaluable insight and historical perspective to the evaluation process. should christian scholars and practitioners pay attention to the decolonization trend? absolutely. it is an excellent reminder of the reality of race, hierarchy, and hegemony endemic to the field of development. more importantly, it can inspire an even deeper transformation of the development field--helping us decenter the role that white, privileged christians play within it. one of the features that distinguishes christian development scholars and practitioners is a conviction that faith conditions our global service. our theology tells us to care deeply about the well-being of god’s children throughout the world, a commitment rooted in a desire to “love your neighbor as yourself” (luke 10:27). if our neighbor fails to flourish due to natural disasters, injustice, famines, or government corruption, we feel the call to respond, even if it means reaching across cultural and religious lines to help our neighbors achieve human and community flourishing. while this theology is sound and the commitments well and good, have we stepped back and acknowledged how much race and colonialism have factored into the ways we engage with relief and development? bryant myers’ (2011) classic walking with the poor helpfully explains the ubiquity of the godcomplex in the development process. prompted by pailey, one cannot help but notice that absent from myers’ definition of “god-complexes” is any mention of how race factors into it. race does not even appear in the book’s index. too often christian scholars, like secular scholars, have more or less ignored the proverbial elephant in the room; we too have adopted a “color-blind” outlook. to avoid the white gaze of development, christians in the development field must grapple with the following foundational questions: how can we love our neighbor in a development context when christian white privilege is dependent on the marginalization of others and in which the work of faith-based organizations (fbos) gives white practitioners additional opportunities and status? how can we love our neighbor in a development context in ways that are gracious, mutual, and helpful while also acknowledging the structures of privilege and power based on race and the legacy of colonialism? should love of neighbor, if we acknowledge the reality of race and colonialism in development, compel churches and fbos to directly apologize for development appeals based on “white savior”-based messages? finally, though churches are seen by many as the central institution of fbo development work (slimbach 2023), it is important to recognize that there are still churches over which western missionaries exert significant control. this neo-colonial situation begs the question—should we decenter the hold of churches on the execution of development projects due to the replication of a christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 kuperus, decolonizing global development theory and practice through “centering” the work of robtel neajai pailey 100 “civilizing” mission targeting change for people of color in the global south? in its place, the faith-based development project must build up local participation and empowerment and partner with organizations that root out systemic injustice, challenge corruption, and undermine the white gaze of development (ibid.). references fanon, frantz. 1952. black skin, white masks. new york, ny: grove press. johnston-goodstar, katie. 2012. “decolonizing evaluation: the necessity of evaluation groups in indigenous evaluation.” in evaluation advisory groups: new directions for evaluation, edited by ross v. roholt and michael l. bazerman, no. 136. hoboken, nj: jossey-bass, 109-17. kothari, uma. 2006. “an agenda for thinking about ‘race’ in development.” progress in development studies 6 (1): 9-23. mohanty, chandra. 1988. “under western eyes: feminism scholarship and colonial discourses.” feminist review 30: 61-88. myers, bryant. 2011. walking with the poor. 2nd ed. maryknoll, ny: orbis books. pailey, robtel neajai. 2016. “birthplace, bloodline and beyond: how ‘liberian citizenship’ is currently constructed in liberia and abroad.” citizenship studies 20 (6-7): 811-29. pailey, robtel neajai. 2020a. “de-centring the ‘white gaze’ of development.” development and change 51 (3): 729-45. pailey, robtel neajai. february 9, 2020b. “this is our country.” warscapes http://www.warscapes.com/literature/our-country. pailey, robtel neajai. 2021. development, (dual) citizenship and its discontents in africa: the political economy of belonging to liberia. cambridge: cambridge university press. said, edward. 1978. orientalism. new york, ny: pantheon books. slimbach, richard, “asking tough questions about transformational development.” christian relief, development and advocacy: the journal of the accord network 4 (2): 51-63. tamale, sylvia. 2020. decolonization and afrofeminism. ottawa: daraja press. ver beek, kurt. 2000. “spirituality: a development taboo.” development in practice 10 (1): 31-43. wilson, kalpana. 2012. race, racism and development: interrogating history, discourse and practice. london: zed books. zelesa, paul. 2009. “african studies and universities since independence.” transition: an international review 101: 110-35. tracy kuperus is a professor of political science at calvin university. she has published articles on religion, citizenship, and democratization in edited volumes and journals, and recently co-authored the book african urban youth: challenging marginalization, claiming citizenship (cambridge university press 2023). author email: tlk5@calvin.edu http://www.warscapes.com/literature/our-country mailto:tlk5@calvin.edu christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(2), winter 2024 toop/slimbach, tough questions on faith and field partnerships: a reflection 142 tough questions on faith and field partnerships: a commentary katie toop and richard slimbach the following is a response by katie toop (senior director of transformational development with world concern) to the three questions richard slimbach poses on faith and field partnerships 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, is published in 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 katie toop responds are: 1. does danladi musa (2012) accurately portray typical ngo-local church relations? how should christian ngos from the global north relate to local churches in the global south? what are the best ways to approach such partnerships? what are the major pitfalls? 2. why do many christian congregations and development agencies tend to shy away from partnerships with non-christian faith communities, non-sectarian grassroots ngos, municipal government agencies, and non-violent protest movements? how accurately does james davison hunter diagnose the problem, and what implications might it have for the work of christian ngos? 3. what missiological, theological, sociological principles (“theory of change”) are implicit within your organization’s external relationships (partnerships, networks, alliances, etc.)? katie toop like philip and ravi, i also appreciate rich's work in writing this article and highlighting these issues. i love tough questions when they produce rich conversation, and these questions do just that. i have the privilege of working on the third topic of faith and field partnerships. the first question is really sneaky, with four great questions all in one. i will not exhaustively respond to any one of them, but i will spend probably the majority of my time on question one and then touch briefly on questions two and three. question one asks if musa accurately portrays typical ngo-local church relations, and in part he is portraying a local church that is on the receiving end of kind of a pre-cooked vision and plan that carries out assigned activities and leverages their relationships for organizational goals. like the other respondents, i answer only from my own experience, but i would say yes, much of this rings true with what we encounter in the field. the power imbalance that musa is depicting between ingos and the local church or between the national or denominational agendas in local churches is real and tends to lead to a fragmentation of vision, and often of the team itself, that is serving in the church. gratefully, there has been a growing awareness of this in recent years, specifically among christian ngos, and there are models and tools that actively seek to rectify that power imbalance. but yes, these dynamics are at play, and the default narrative or the kind of historical role models of benefactor and beneficiary are still very much alive in these relationships. the second part of the question is how christian ngos from the global north should relate to the local churches in the global south. in some ways, i do not want to fully grant the premise of the question, because depending on how one reads it, it could seem to presuppose that people in a christian organization are sitting at a desk in the global north and directly driving relationships with the local church in the global south. and that speaks to the need for a larger shift in a rebalancing of power within the organizations themselves, if we are going to reflect god's design. that is part of what richard's article touches on in terms of 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 toop/slimbach, tough questions on faith and field partnerships: a reflection 143 the next generation's disillusionment with ministry. they are ready for a shift in the balance of power. my response is that christians and others from the global north need to be receiving direction from their own leaders in the global south to guide and inform strategies for local church engagement, which will be and must be highly contextual. in the third part of the question on how we approach these partnerships, much could be said. i appreciate the perspective of the late dr. richard twiss, a member of the lakota tribe, and a theologian, author, and pastor, speaking on the relationship between the first nations or indigenous peoples and the church in the us, which really parallels in many ways the dynamics between the global north and the south. at one point, referring to members of the first nations, he says: we would hope…that the church would see us as co-equal participants in the life, work and mission of the church...out of a sense of mutuality can come legitimate christhonoring partnerships and relationships and then we can say together: “what can we do to advance the understanding of people of what it means to really authentically walk with jesus in the context of who god created them to be?” (2008, 1:52, 2:44) perhaps part of the how is the establishment of coequal partnerships in life, work, and mission with the local church. we have to wrestle with what mutuality looks like. we need to ask ourselves not only what we offer in service to the church, but where are we also being led by her? how can we both serve the church and serve alongside her? in terms of how, there is a lot to consider as well, in structure, transparency, and myriad other issues, but beyond the mechanics of partnership, we also need to seek to discern organizationally what the spirit is inviting us into. i served for several years in a creative access context and spent the first two years evaluating different people's approaches to engagement with the local church, trying to figure out who was doing it right and who was doing it wrong. then, after about two years of being tied up in knots and pretty tired from all the judging i had taken upon myself to do, the lord kind of tapped me on the shoulder and said, “you know, has it dawned on you that i may be calling different people with different gifts to serve in different ways? and do you want to stop worrying about what everyone else is doing and know what i have for you to do?” i am not suggesting that we all just pull the god card and do whatever god tells us to do without listening to the wisdom and counsel of others. i am simply encouraging us to invest time and energy as organizations to discern the role that god has for us, because it very well might look different than the role he has for our neighbor, and perhaps that is going to be okay. in the last part of this question about the pitfalls, we have recently been asking that of our teams and church partners, and there are a lot of items on the list. again, i cannot be exhaustive, but here are some: • denominationalism. how do we help overcome denominationalism, yet also work within it? • inter and intra church politics that create a bit of a minefield for workers who may not be aware of them. • navigating theological differences, especially for staff who are not theologians. • lack of training on how to engage churches. • how to speak the language of a church, or of a pastor. • hidden agendas at times, and the desire for control, which can show up on both sides of passionate partnerships like this that are so linked to our central mission. i want to talk just briefly about question two, the question about why many christian ngos shy away from partnership with different types of non-christian actors. again, there is no simple response, because it is a really complex topic. still, the first reason that comes to my mind is fear. we all have a fear of what we do not know; it is human nature. there are strong narratives that have turned flesh and blood actors into enemies in place of the powers and principalities that scripture tells us we are at war with. the most common command in scripture is “do not fear.” it is easy to see its purpose in preparing for battle, but could it also be a command that is relevant in preparing for partnership? maybe “do not fear!” is a good starting point for considering our partnerships. i am not saying “do not discern!” or “do not be wise!” or “do not have conviction!” but “do not fear!” the reality is fear of the unknown, fear of losing funding, or fear of the enemy we have created. all of these can stand at the root of a lot of what we avoid. and this phrase “shy away from” that is in the question does kind of paint a picture of avoiding. at the same time, there are many who would not characterize their decision as “shying away” but as a thoughtful act of obedience to how they believe god calls us to live. they may point to the guidance of scripture as their reasons for not entering into partnerships, particularly with non-christian faith communities. i imagine many would cite 2 corinthians 6 and paul's exhortation not to be unequally yoked to unbelievers, or proverbs 13 about walking with the wise, or james 4 about friendship with the world that makes us an enemy of god. there is a lot that people might bring into this. both fear and theological conviction can be powerful drivers in decision making christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(2), winter 2024 toop/slimbach, tough questions on faith and field partnerships: a reflection 144 around some of these partnerships, among, of course, many others. in terms of the question about hunter's diagnosis, he has definitely spent a lot more time thinking and writing about cultural change than i have, and i have only read a little bit more than what was put in the article in terms of what hunter has to say. i can only respond with humility. i can agree with him that cultural change is complex and slow and made up of many factors. but i do not know if i can agree with his statement that changes in the hearts and minds of ordinary people are insignificant factors in cultural change. we see in the history of the early church people whose compassion and sacrificial love impacted the hearts and minds of their neighbors and transformed significant aspects of culture in the roman empire, in ways that were thought impossible without battle or without a military overthrow. and we should not be too quick to decide who is ordinary and who is extraordinary. remember that the people of jesus’s day wondered what good could come out of nazareth. our perspective on what is ordinary or insignificant is often skewed. part of the point being made in bringing up hunter is that there is more to be done at levels other than the individual. and with that, i do not disagree, and philip touched on that as well. systems and networks and the depravities that they carry are significant drivers to entrenched poverty in the cultures that we seek to influence, both in the global north and the south. as organizations, we must wrestle with our role in systemic reform. are there ways that we are uniquely positioned to raise awareness or to advocate? are there issues that we ourselves are being called to lead in awakening and repentance and lament? we cannot allow fear to keep us from asking costly questions. we need to be careful not to idolize our own presence in the country, which can lead to us trading our opportunity to speak or pursue justice for the sake of self-preservation. and, in my last fifty seconds, on the third question of missiological, theological, and sociological principles, we are not going to do a deep dive there. the challenge is for each of us to ask these questions of ourselves. does a belief in common grace impact how and with whom we partner? would outsiders looking in know that we believe that there are uniquely beautiful expressions of the image of god in each community by the way we forge our field relationships? are partnerships a means to mission or a mission strategy themselves? and is that answer universal or contextual? i would just share in closing one aspect of our journey as world concern. we have done a lot of work in considering our why, and there are a lot of great transactional reasons to pursue partnership. but ultimately for us, the local church is a distinct partner. we call ourselves a christ-centered organization, and if we believe the church is the bride and the body of christ (eph. 5:25-32 and eph. 1:22-23), then our commitment to her has to be of an entirely different nature than that of a partner who is merely strategic, because the church is the beloved of the one at the very center of our identity. we are compelled to remain faithful to her even when the projected roi does not land in her favor. we just pray that we will do that with faithfulness. thanks so much. richard slimbach in terms of katie's comments on hunter and ravi's mention of structures and systems, when we have this fourfold repair of alienations, toward god, self, others, and the earth, the “others” seem to be conflated with institutions. they need to be separated, such that institutions, structures, and systems are better theorized. what hunter was saying is that ideas are very important. to give some negative examples, ideas like individualism, white supremacy, male dominance, meritocracy, unlimited progress, and consumerism as a pathway to happiness are important because they have consequences in history when they penetrate the mythic fiber and fabric of the social order in school, music, film, etc. they reorganize the structures of our consciousness and guide our desires, our impulses. hunter would say that without a fundamental restructuring of the institutions of cultural formation and transmission, what we hope to be the result of evangelism or, in the larger case, revival, will be neutralized. they will have a negligible effect on the reconstruction of the culture. his call, and the call of a rising generation, is for the church to provide a more thorough and courageous critique of the cultureforming institutions of our society, which are laden with mythological meaning and are oftentimes co-opted and co-opt the church's consciousness. that kind of critical capacity is one of the great challenges for the church today. references twiss, richard. 2008. “hope for the american church.” youtube video, 3:11. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehktdoko d80. katie toop is senior director of transformational development at world concern, and one of the accord network fellows for 2023. she has served in disaster response and community development work internationally for 18 years. her current role focuses https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehktdokod80 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehktdokod80 christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(2), winter 2024 toop/slimbach, tough questions on faith and field partnerships: a reflection 145 on staff capacity building and strategic approaches to community engagement. author email: katiet@worldconcern.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 about:blank mailto:rslimbach1@gmail.com christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(1), summer 2024 bronkema et al., “spiritual metrics as a bulwark against secularization:” responses and dialogue 4 “spiritual metrics as a bulwark against secularization:” responses and dialogue david bronkema, jayakumar christian, james waters, katie toop, subodh kumar, and victor cortez almost a year and a half ago, on may 4, 2023, the accord research alliance (ara) community of practice of the accord network organized a virtual symposium to discuss david bronkema’s “spiritual metrics as a bulwark against secularization: reflections on jayakumar christian’s words at the ara on “slicing off” the spiritual.” the purpose of the symposium, and of bronkema’s thought piece that underpinned it (and published as part of this issue of the journal), was to tackle the critique advanced by jayakumar christian in the ara pre-conference intensive of october 2022 on the danger of engaging in spiritual metrics in a way that separated out the spiritual from everything else. the symposium was moderated by peter howard of the accord network. the first part consisted of introductory remarks by david bronkema (a professor at eastern university) and responses to bronkema’s paper by jayakumar christian (former national director, world vision india), james waters (founder and director kingdom impact, ltd.), katie toop (senior director of transformational development at world concern), subodh kumar (vice president of mission impact for food for the hungry), and victor cortez (regional director for latin america at water mission). this was followed by a discussion in which david bronkema and jayakumar christian responded to the comments that had been proffered, after which the respondents were given the opportunity a to add their own observations to the discussion. below is an edited version of the remarks at the symposium. the full recording of the symposium can be found at https://vimeo.com/823841424. david bronkema thanks, pete and thanks, jayakumar, james, katie, subodh, and victor for all the time and effort you’ve put into preparing for this symposium, and welcome to everyone who is with us today. i trust that everybody has had a chance to look through the “thought piece” (bronkema 2024) you received with the link to this webinar in response to jayakumar’s caution at the ara intensive of october 2022 against slicing off the spiritual and trying to measure it. what i am going to do with these brief introductory remarks is to simply summarize the main arguments in it. please feel free to refer to it for more details around those arguments. before i do that, however, it might be useful to frame this discussion with a bit of context, at least from my perspective. it has been twelve years now since we convened the spiritual metrics conference in 2011. at that time, it was not unusual for christian philanthropic organizations and other donors, as well as christian relief, development, and advocacy organizations, to think of conversions as their spiritual metric default option. i certainly want to continue to uphold the fundamental importance of evangelism understood as leading people to professing christ as their lord and savior, and i can’t make that point strongly enough. but seeing conversions as the sole metric or even the most important metric is neither biblically nor theologically sound; in fact, it tends to be quite counterproductive, as dallas willard and others have pointed out for quite some time. thankfully, i think it is fair to say that there has been a sea change in that respect over these last twelve years, due to the faithful, prayerful, and discerning work of so many of you participating in this event today; in fact, this conversation is one indication of that change, and it is so exciting to see. at the same time, we are still in the beginning stages of puzzling through this area of measuring spiritual impact; the struggle of how best to go about planning for and assessing spiritual growth and maturity is very much alive, with all kinds of uncertainty; as a result, there https://vimeo.com/823841424 christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(1), summer 2024 bronkema et al., “spiritual metrics as a bulwark against secularization:” responses and dialogue 5 continues to be important work ahead of us in many different dimensions of this endeavor. let us now turn to the issue at hand, which has to do with jayakumar’s caution against “slicing off the spiritual” from everything else and trying to measure it. he fears doing so leads us into propagating a worldview and an approach that see and treat the spiritual as something separate from everything else. in essence, the main question jayakumar poses for us on a practical level is this, how does one ensure that measuring spiritual impact and engaging in spiritual metrics promote our understanding, and that of the people we work with, of seeing god and god’s design, purpose, and calling in everything, and that we think, talk, plan, and act accordingly? the thought piece you received attempts to answer that question, with the following points. first, there are four main relationships we need to pay attention to; our relationship with the triune god, and our relationships with ourselves, each other, and creation. the problem that jayakumar alerts us to is that in our relationships with ourselves, others, and creation, in those areas labeled as mental health, economics, politics, and the environment, for example, the world encourages us to push god out of the picture, to secularize things, to slice off the spiritual dimension and allocate it only to our relationship with god, to the “religious” realm. the questions become how do we prevent such secularization from happening in our programs?, and how do we protect and deepen their spiritual dimensions? this is where spiritual metrics, if done well, show their true value; they can act as a bulwark against secularization and provide a way to plan for, implement appropriate programs, and assess spiritual growth and maturity. but to do this well, the process of measuring spiritual impact needs to start with the planning phase rather than the measurement phase, and in most instances such planning is best carried out as a highly participatory endeavor with our staff and the people we work with. there are two reasons for this: first, broad participation forces everyone involved in planning, implementing, monitoring, and evaluating to wrestle with exactly how what we are doing is spiritual, thereby deepening the awareness and understanding of the presence of god in all that we are doing. second, it requires us to think, discuss, and pray about what increasing levels of spiritual maturity might look like, how best to pursue those outcomes, and what the evidence might look like as part and parcel of our programs and projects. this is why i tend to be cautious about using universal spiritual outcome indicators, even though they can be a valuable part of the discernment discussion. not only do universal indicators generally not fit the particular contextual needs, they also truncate the collective organizational and participatory process of discussing how the spiritual is and should be manifested in that particular context and calling. this process in and of itself creates the bulwark against secularization that jayakumar is so concerned about. i will stop here and am very interested to hear what jayakumar and others have to say. jayakumar christian i enjoyed reading david's reflections and the way he framed his question about spiritual metrics and secularization. we have been looking at how david uses spiritual metrics as a bulwark against secularization. i would like to push it a little further and say that spiritual metrics should not simply be a defense for us but position us to aggressively challenge secularization. i suggest this be the purpose of our work in framing “spiritual metrics.” i fully agree with david's comment that before we talk about metrics, it is important for us to start right at the beginning with the planning. the challenge before faith actors that david refers to in his paper is the tendency to slice off the spiritual, reflecting a dualistic understanding between the spiritual and the secular. in the process we tend to push god out of the picture— despiritualization. these are frames and labels that david uses in his paper. i would like to add a few thoughts for our consideration. the secular ideologies that govern much of our humanitarian industry seeks to marginalize and isolate the spiritual and branding faith of christians as being irrelevant, discriminatory, and irrational. we are constantly being pushed to defend ourselves. it is important for us to take an aggressive stance rather than simply a defensive stance. the “spiritual,” borrowing from the definition in david's paper, is the existence of and the possibility of a relationship with the divine, which the christian faith defines as a relationship with the lord and savior jesus christ, and the consequent belief that all things come under the purview of the divine and of the christian faith. we refer to this as our continued growing understanding of the kingdom of god and the lordship of christ. this is our operational definition of what “the spiritual” means for our conversation. there are four myths to be conscious of as we develop our spiritual metrics. first, the need to take care that we do not assume “spiritual” is simply about religion. there is an underlying “spirituality” in all domains of relationships including structures, systems, institutions, and processes. this tendency to relegate spiritual only to the realm of “religion” is often a western problem. the second myth is the secular/sacred divide. strangely, the ones who really christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(1), summer 2024 bronkema et al., “spiritual metrics as a bulwark against secularization:” responses and dialogue 6 practice the wholism that we preach about are nonchristian cultures. it is so seamless with them. they do not compartmentalize their lives. third, we are not simply measuring what we define as spiritual aspects of our program. we use spiritual metrics to measure the whole. the fourth myth is that wholism is about quality of well-being and not quantity. we often confuse wholistic with being comprehensive. wholism is not about the parts, but the whole. the two bookends of our exercise on developing these metrics to measure wholism should be embedded first, like david says, in our planning: in our understanding of the root causes of poverty, marginalization, oppression, fragile states, etc. second, we need to ensure our growing and common understanding of the kingdom of god, and must mold our definitions of impact and influence to it. the root causes of poverty are embedded in various domains of relationships, and they could be social, political, bureaucratic, religious, and economic domains. it is important that we understand these broken relationships in the context of the personal/community, micro/macro, and global levels with all its ramifications in the systemic, structural, institutional and process dimensions. the structures, systems, institutions, and people are held together by an “ideology” — the worldview of structure, people, and systems. it is important that we address the ideology that holds these together. it is not enough simply to address structures, people, and systems. borrowing from walter wink — in his book engaging the powers, he calls this ideology the “spiritual interiority.” for sustainable, wholistic impact it is important to address this “spiritual interiority” — the world view that holds structures, systems institutions, and processes that marginalize the poor, together. it is not enough simply to rearrange structures, people, and systems. our spiritual metrics must also measure the impact of our work on these “ideologies-spiritual interiority—worldview.” our advocacy must challenge these ideologies that do not recognize the existence of god. finally, developing spiritual metrics must be a “whole organization” responsibility. it is important to embed organizational understanding of the root causes of poverty, including flawed spirituality and the kingdom of understanding of impact, into at least two aspects of the life of an organization—first in the organization’s theory of change, and second in the ethos of the organization. james waters in response to david's paper, essentially i agree with the theological foundations, and i love that he says “spiritual metrics helps us to graft the spiritual dimensions back into situations where they are absent and nurture and deepen those spiritual dimensions where they are already present” (bronkema 2024). what i advocate for is that we definitely should not slice off, but, to use an analogy that might fit, we should actually bake in certain ingredients that you cannot taste elsewhere. we should be able to slice, but not slice off, because there is a tension here – yes, everything is spiritual, but there should be something “salty” about what we are doing, something distinctive. we should be pushing back against dualism, but there should also be something distinctive about our work. i also believe that measuring the spiritual dimensions will affect the rest. therefore, it is not about slicing off, but, as jayakumar said, about acknowledging that the spiritual is a critical part of the whole. it is about having a holistic and rounded definition of well-being or thriving, which may be our ultimate goal. here are some quick examples to make this point: international care ministries (icm) has managed to capture health and livelihood outcomes and analyze those alongside spiritual outcomes. compassion international is doing some great work to validate “growth in christ” metrics. and while david says that the world encourages us to push god out of the picture, i am actually encouraged that there are elements of the world that are not doing that and are instead acknowledging the spiritual. for example, mckinsey just included the spiritual as a critical dimension of measuring health. harvard is including the spiritual when they think about a definition of human flourishing. currently, i am engaging with two secular impact platforms that embed well-being, holistic wellbeing, and are interested to include , including spiritual metrics, in what they are doing as a global reach. i would actually argue that the world is asking for and acknowledging this [an articulation of spiritual wellbeing], and will get to it if we don't get there first. that is why our kingdom impact framework (kif) survey measures these three relationships. we need this integrated approach where we are measuring one's relationship with god, self, and others, and creation. one final thought is that only by measuring the spiritual as distinct in some way can we see the impact and influence of the spirit at work within us. i don't think we've managed to do that well yet, but this will allow us to give glory to christ. we should not slice this off, but there should be a slice that is part of an integrated and an overall whole. katie toop this is such a critical conversation, because i see the sacred/secular divide as a key strategy the enemy uses to keep us from the fullness and the abundance of life that god has designed us for. as jayakumar pointed christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(1), summer 2024 bronkema et al., “spiritual metrics as a bulwark against secularization:” responses and dialogue 7 out, this is especially evident in the western worldview. indeed, that is why it is so important to consider how this view is embedded in our staff. i see a large part of this as a discipleship issue, and spiritual metrics as a potential discipleship tool or discipline that, like any other tool, can be used or misused. one of the most helpful things i’ve heard around spiritual metrics and the sacred/secular divide was at an accord research intensive years ago when guest speaker michael woolcock talked about spiritual metrics falling into this category of what he called “essentially contested concepts.” these are concepts that are not easily defined, that are almost impossible to measure, but that, most importantly, do their work through the kinds of conversations they elicit. that has really stuck with me over the years. this is part of why i agree with what david said about universal indicators in spiritual metrics being less helpful; they cut off the conversation. spiritual metrics are a tool to keep the conversation at the forefront and centered around christ and around what the spirit of god is doing, and a tool to guard against separation. this conversation brings to mind a young man on our staff in one of our creative access contexts who recently came to faith from a buddhist background. if you asked him right now to construct a sacred/secular divide in his life, he wouldn't be able to do it. his spirit is so responsive to what god has done in his heart. his joy is so full. his love for jesus is so permeating every conversation and every interaction that he would not be able contain it and cordon it off into a section of his life if he tried. he reminds me very much of mary right now when she broke the jar of perfume and anointed jesus as an act of worship. i was looking at that story in scripture and also at judas's response, and wondering whether it reflects in some way this sacred/secular divide. judas is not openly saying “don't worship jesus,” but rather something like “don't let your worship of jesus mess with your efficiency in your ministry outcomes. there are better ways to spend this money that have a return on investment (roi) that we'll be able to see.” the challenge here is to see ourselves in judas, who also perhaps came from a very genuine first love when he decided to follow jesus. in short, i see a lot of this sacred/secular divide as a discipleship issue in part, and as a question of how we can help one another in our organizations cultivate hearts that cling to our first love. how can spiritual metrics be part not only, as david said, of guarding against this divide but, as jayakumar talked about, part of actively pursuing a growing identity as a christworshiping people and doing it with humility, recognizing while we measure that we likely have very little idea of what god is really doing. we are very often wrong, as the disciples were all the way to the end. we may still be wrong about what god is doing, but we try to discern it with faithfulness and humility. subodh kumar one of the insights jayakumar provides is an understanding of poverty, emphasizing the impact of systems, structures, and relationships. poverty is not simply about broken relationships. rather, poverty is a symptomatic manifestation of broken relationships. it is a complex phenomenon that cannot just be put into metrics. one of the key reasons we are having this conversation today is predominantly around one particular phenomenon, which is the missing “why.” the missing “why” has fallen victim to the “what,” “how,” “when,” and “who.” the key question for metrics is “why are we doing this?” or “what are we doing this for?” as jayakumar said, spiritual formation or spiritual impact is not just a programmatic phenomenon but an organizational one. it is embedded into the overall theory of change, why god has called a particular organization to do what it is doing. most of the time, spiritual formation and impact are not readily captured by simple metrics. metrics give this connotation of linear causality. our programs and projects are simply instruments, vehicles that god uses to establish his kingdom. if poverty is about broken relationships, then our programs should basically address and measure the restoration of these broken relationships. that is what our impact measurement should focus on. the process of doing is thus related to the purpose of doing. based on this, i have two thoughts to share with you today. one goes back to jayakumar’s argument that all metrics are spiritual metrics. i tend to agree with that because one thing missing in our monitoring and evaluation (m&e) world is a theological rationale. that is, we create indicators and write a developmental rationale for each particular indicator, but we forget that every metric should also have a theological rationale. as i wrote in an earlier article (kumar 2022), in measuring impact everything should start with our theology. our theory and its operationalization are built on theology. if our program is about broken relationships, then all our metrics should measure that. any metrics we pick, therefore, must have a theological rationale and not just the developmental rationale. that will really help us focus on what we measure. the second thing, referring again to my article, starts with the “why” question. a critical element we are missing in our m&e world is a hermeneutic that helps us interpret the data and connect it to spiritual measurement. that is why the theological rationale of measurement will help us understand, create a bulwark, and thus defend against and address this artificial christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(1), summer 2024 bronkema et al., “spiritual metrics as a bulwark against secularization:” responses and dialogue 8 differentiation between spiritual and non-spiritual metrics. victor cortez something i would like to emphasize and that helped me a lot is that we must be aware that everything we do, consciously or unconsciously, communicates a philosophy, a belief, a worldview. so, the question our organization asks us to ask ourselves is “what kind of worldview are we promoting right now with our activities and our projects?” i agree that even before defining indicators, we must plan. but before that, we must make an assessment. we need to have the courage to recognize that, because of our fallen nature, we have been contaminated with the worldviews of the development industry, making it likely that we are promoting secular, humanistic, mechanistic, reductionist, or dualistic worldviews. my question to jayakumar and to david is what they recommend for our organizations to evaluate our current activities and projects against a biblical worldview. how can we identify the worldviews, ideas, and beliefs we are promoting right now? second, talking about indicators, we must define interconnected indicators. right now, the mechanistic and reductionist mindset forces us to measure in an isolated way. why don't we define interconnected indicators that can help us measure the quantitative and qualitative at the same time? for instance, if we measure improved agricultural production, why don't we measure, at the same time, whether the farmers increasing their agricultural production are understanding, from the biblical perspective, their identity and vocation? we should also ask about farmers’ motivations. these farmers are now improving their agricultural production because they understand that they need to provide for their families, but also to bless their neighbors, and to do this as part of god's full mandate to honor god. it is not just the “what,” but also the “who.” we, with our direct interventions, can help farmers recover that identity and vocation and understanding that what they are doing is part of the mandate they received from god. finally, i like the idea of how we can transfer power to the most vulnerable. we need to accept with humility that we are all in a process of mutual transformation. therefore, we are not just agents of transformation, but also subjects of transformation. when we start a relationship with the most vulnerable communities, it is because we understand that they are poor, but we also have our own poverty. transformation must happen in the communities, but also in our organizations and the staff of our organizations, and even in the donors. monitoring and evaluation processes should be mutual, which is to say that communities should have the agency to evaluate us. in this way, we need to promote two-way monitoring and evaluation. david bronkema let me pick up on what victor just finished saying, because it ties in with a couple of things, and what victor is saying is so important. sometimes it seems there is a default belief that the poor are also spiritually poor and that we don't have much to learn from them on the spiritual side, which is of course problematic. that would be an aspect of the kind of worldview and the ideology that we succumb to, as victor said; that the poor are inferior technically in terms of knowledge and other ways. victor also asked how to construct in each organization a process by which one evaluates and assesses how we are doing discipleship-wise in terms of our worldview and our ideology. while i have no concrete answers, i would point out that it is a contextual issue as well, a process that an organizational community needs to undertake. just asking that question, just putting the question out there, launches the process. how best to carry that out would be up to each organization. in terms of the definition of poverty and the focus on relationships, this might be provocative, but it may be useful to make a distinction between defining poverty and understanding poverty. obviously, they are related, but when i look at scripture, and i may be wrong about this, what i see is that the word “poverty” is used almost exclusively to talk about material poverty, as in “the rich” versus “the poor.” if we start there, it points us to what james was saying, that we are flesh and spirit, that there is a biological, a material element involved. while not separate from the spiritual, these biological and material aspects do have a life of their own, which is why we struggle both with the flesh and the lack of material resources. in summary, while it is useful to see the causes of poverty as rooted in broken relationships, i am not so sure it is as useful to define poverty as consisting of broken relationships, because that can lead us to ignore certain aspects of poverty that are crucial. finally, somebody commented in the chat that “all metrics are spiritual metrics.” i wish and hope that were the case, but i’m not so sure. i agree that everything has a spiritual dimension to it, but if we are not focusing on those spiritual dimensions and the extent to which people are aware of those or not, then i am not so sure we can say we are engaging in spiritual metrics. in other words, the way i would put it is that all our spiritual metrics should carry an intentionality around spiritual dimensions, and it seems to me that there is quite a ways to go for us to get there. christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(1), summer 2024 bronkema et al., “spiritual metrics as a bulwark against secularization:” responses and dialogue 9 jayakumar christian a few additional thoughts. first, i fully agree that understanding the root causes of poverty and the interpretation of data are important organizational disciplines. that is because we are about providing thought leadership, not simply fulfilling “a checklist.” all christian ngos are called to be thought leaders, because we are dealing with worldview issues, not just simple nuts and bolts. so how do we equip christian organizations to be thought leaders if we do not invest time to interpret and understand the root causes of poverty and interpret the data that come out of our various evaluations to connect the dots? second, it is important that we ground our programming, advocacy, and everything else that goes with it, in our theology. without theology, without ideology, we cannot be thought leaders, and our ideology comes from faith, which is why we refer to it as “theology.” unfortunately, the poverty of christian ngos does not position us to be thought leaders, because we have not done our homework to be grounded ideologically on the theology. we don't really do due diligence on grounding our response and everything else in our ideology. the third thing i wanted to flag is that there is no way we can pursue kingdom impact, which includes everything in its scope, without being multidimensional. that is the function of the kingdom of god. it is not the function of our metrics. metrics that seek to measure kingdom quality impact will, of necessity, have to be multidimensional. we cannot say we are about the kingdom of god unless we agree with what david says in psalm 24:1, “the earth is the lord’s, and the fullness thereof” or as missiologist abraham kuyper says “there's no time, breadth, or space about which god doesn't say ‘that belongs to me’.” the secularization process addresses this fragmentation by giving lip service to the spiritual and slicing it off and saying it deals with religion. it might deal with a few values here and there, but it does not cover the whole. the kingdom of god challenges that assumption. the kingdom of god says our god is the god over all aspects of human life, over every relationship. naturally, then, the metrics we develop will have to be multidimensional. there is no way we can be about the kingdom and not be multidimensional. what is coming through is not simply how to keep bridging the spiritual and the secular. what is coming through is that the roots of that bridge might be in addressing worldview issues. it is not just doing some artificial bridging between the secular and the spiritual; the root of that fragmentation, unfortunately, is an inability to address worldview issues, and, once we acknowledge that, we can start addressing the real issue. we also need to acknowledge that we have a flawed worldview, or that our worldview is not perfect. we ourselves are candidates for transformation, which brings integrity into our model of transformation. if jayakumar is not transformed, there is no integrity in our model of transformation. finally, that last issue concerns the multi-faith context. there is no way we can enter multi-faith contexts as ones who have no bias. we do have a bias, and we need to be transparent about the bias. the hindu poor will be suspicious of someone who claims and says, “i have no bias.” they will say, “you're not being transparent.” it is important to declare our bias, to be honest with our bias, not arrogant with our bias, to be secure with our bias, and to be out front by being servants, as the bible says. it is important for us to recognize that it is precisely our multi-faith context that demands that christians do not play hide-and-seek with our bias. we have a worldview. we have an ideology. we have a faith. when we play hide-and-seek with our faith issues, the hindu poor will say, “there's much more. we need to know the whole story.” david bronkema just to jump in on that last point, certain organizations, both mission organizations as well as christian development organizations, working in multifaith contexts or especially in restricted area contexts, are taking some cues from what is called the “engel scale.” jim engel created a scale where he said, and i am paraphrasing, that we are on a scale from complete hostility to christ all the way up to completely submitting ourselves to christ’s lordship. what it helps us see is that when we enter restricted area contexts, the labor of missionaries is not simply to gain converts. it is also, and perhaps even more, about relationships that may eventually lead others to reap the harvest. when they leave the context, it may be that the local people from that restricted area context are now saying “hey, these christians are really nice people.” according to the engel scale, they bumped up from a situation of hostility to christians to being open to engaging in relationships with them, which then opens more doors to what jayakumar said is so important, that we don't want to hide the fact that we are christian and that we know that the lord is leading us in particular ways. the engel scale, therefore, is sometimes helpful as programs prayerfully discern and assess the change they might be able to achieve, plan the activities to achieve it, and finally assess and evaluate progress toward it in a way that helps us improve what we are doing. james waters a few quick thoughts. first, i was also going to push back on “all metrics are spiritual metrics.” there is a real possibility with that kind of approach that we will christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(1), summer 2024 bronkema et al., “spiritual metrics as a bulwark against secularization:” responses and dialogue 10 just end up going around in circles. i've proposed that there are tensions here that we need to acknowledge, just as there are tensions in the bible that jesus talks about as being “mysteries.” one of them is present here, which is that while there needs to be something distinctive about what we are doing, at the same time it will influence everything else, that it will be multidimensional. i love the point that jayakumar made about how we need multidimensional metrics. if we can acknowledge this as a tension, we probably won’t need to be talking about this in ten years, although we probably still will be. second, a quick pushback around the case against universal spiritual metrics, which david put forward. (some of this outworks in how we define “metrics” – it is important to separate outcomes, indicators, and metrics/questions.) i am obviously passionate about universal metrics, and don't think it necessarily truncates the participatory processes. i would love a follow up conversation on this to get a little bit more practical; there are quite a few comments in the chat about what these metrics actually look like. that would seem to be a next step conversation, and i would love to get into the weeds with this. the contextualization happens in the process; it happens in the planning, in the strategy, in the choosing and the adapting of metrics. if i've learned anything from other places in the world, it is that having best practices already validated and identified helps people who don't have the capacity to engage research institutions or universities and validate their own scales. [later comment added from thinking and discussions since: for instance, you can have helpful outcomes categories of spiritual well-being that have robust theological and sociological underpinning. but you can also go through a grounded, bottom-up process to listen to local articulations of impact that shape how you measure those categories, and indeed if there are categories that you have missed. i don’t think it has to be top-down or bottom-up; there can be a healthy combination of both.] i have actually proposed that kind of universal multidimensional tool. david and i both want to engage in this conversation and are proposing the creation of a learning community where these kinds of conversations can get into the types of details. it is not so much whether a tool should be universal or not, but about the application of how we make this process of spiritual metrics really possible, especially for some of the smaller organizations or the lower capacity organizations in this space. finally, i agree with something already said here: we found recently a huge interest in uptake in thinking about the spiritual health of organizations internally. as we think about this as leaders, staff, and organizations, it is quite a kingdom model to think about the insideout nature of the kingdom, in this case of the organizations. let's think about ourselves and our cultures, and then the implications for how we go beyond that, including with donors. katie toop yes, and amen. i do think we will be talking about it in ten years. this conversation is always going to be rich; it is always going to be part of the beauty and the mystery of seeking to discern what the spirit of god is doing among us; and then how we celebrate, how we respond, how we worship, and how we partner with what we see the lord doing, and how we repent. and i love this question about multi-faith contexts. for us, this has been a place where being able to do our own spiritual metrics, our own assessment, how we are doing spiritually, has been an opportunity to share good news with those in our organizations who are not yet followers of jesus. in part, that is where we see people choose to follow him. this process can be a beautiful and transformational discipline itself. subodh kumar i want quickly to mention few things. the first is what david also mentions in his paper, how critical the elements of designing and planning are. i also endorse what victor said about going back to the assessment, because if our bias in assessment is towards the development side of things, then our programing will not address the spiritual aspect of the root causes. second, we have been working in development for years and use this deficit, linear-based approach of inputs to outputs to outcomes to impacts. as a monitoring and evaluation person, i am beginning to wonder if that linearity still works in a context of systems when we are dealing with poverty. maybe we need an approach that helps us understand things in a different way, because these are complex relationships we are talking about. using a systems-based approach to view things solely through a deficit lens and as a metric for understanding does not prove effective. victor cortez i will advocate for people in the community because it feels like we are looking at them first as objects of our study, and then we define what we have to know and what we have to accomplish. in our participatory system, their role is just to bring us information. i do not see efforts to help them become the ones to define things as well. why don't we present the indicators to them and discuss with them if these are the appropriate indicators to measure in that community? we must start thinking how we can make sure the families and poorer communities have more agency in the things we define. christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(1), summer 2024 bronkema et al., “spiritual metrics as a bulwark against secularization:” responses and dialogue 11 david bronkema just a couple of quick points to help point us forward. first, many of the issues we addressed today and those in the chat have quite a bit of work that has been done around them. please be in touch with me or pete if you are interested in those resources. second, katie mentioned humility, victor and others mentioned participation, and i so appreciate how all the presenters today are seeking the same thing, which is to follow where god is leading. there may be some differences of opinion on certain things, but as katie said, as we work through these things, that is where the richness lies, and that is where we continue to learn from each other. hopefully that is how we all keep ourselves humble and open to god's leading. references bronkema, david. 2024. “spiritual metrics as a bulwark against secularization: reflections on jayakumar christian’s comments on ‘slicing off’ the spiritual.” christian relief, development, and advocacy: the journal of the accord network, 6(1), 23-26. kumar, subodh. (2022). “toward building evidence of kingdom impact.” christian relief, development, and advocacy: the journal of the accord network, 3(2), 24–36. https://crdajournal.org/index.php/crda/article/view/ 507. david bronkema is a professor at eastern university in the phd in organizational leadership program and an editor of this journal. before coming to eastern in 2006, he worked in the field of international development for 13 years, and enjoys the continuing process of working with and learning from colleagues directly involved in that work. author email: dbronkem@eastern.edu vidhya & jayakumar christian live in chennai, india. they worship at emmanuel methodist church. jayakumar served world vision in various roles until august 2017. author email: jayakumarchristian@gmail.com james waters is the founder and director of kingdom impact ltd. previously he worked as an international development consultant and completed a phd on the resilience of slum-dwellers in uganda. author email: james@kingdomimpact.co.uk katie toop is senior director of transformational development at world concern, and one of the accord network fellows for 2024. she has served in disaster response and community development work internationally for 18 years. her current role focuses on staff capacity building and strategic approaches to community engagement. author email: katiet@worldconcern.org subodh kumar is senior vice president of theology, innovation, and data4good at food for the hungry. he is passionate about data-informed transformation, integrating theology, system thinking, and humancentered design to tackle poverty and injustice. author email: mamtasubodh1703@gmail.com victor cortez is originally from bolivia and serves as senior director for the latin america and caribbean region at water mission. he has more than 35 years of experience in the design, implementation, and evaluation of holistic transformational development projects. author email: vcortez@watermission.org https://crdajournal.org/index.php/crda/article/view/507 https://crdajournal.org/index.php/crda/article/view/507 mailto:dbronkem@eastern.edu mailto:jayakumarchristian@gmail.com mailto:james@kingdomimpact.co.uk mailto:katiet@worldconcern.org mailto:mamtasubodh1703@gmail.com mailto:vcortez@watermission.org christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 romero-medina, book review 105 book review eight million exiles: missional action research and the crisis of forced migration by christopher m. hays reviewed by amanda romero-medina grand rapids: eerdmans. 2024. $24.99. christopher hays’ eight million exiles is a book about the construction of a new missional methodology called missional action research (mar), undertaken under the auspices of the biblical seminary of colombia (fusbc) and its “faith and displacement” project that ran from 2014-2022. this project, and the mar methodology that underpinned it, was geared to equip and encourage local protestant churches to respond to the needs of the more than eight million internally displaced persons (idps) in colombia in overcoming poverty, discrimination, deep trauma, and lack of assistance caused by the longstanding armed conflicts in that country. these idps were people from rural-urban communities with different ecclesial affiliations, geographies, and ethnicities (indigenous peoples, afro-colombian and mestizo persons). deeply rooted in the combination of the tenets of participatory action research (par) and integral mission/missiology (im), elaborated by colombian sociologist fals borda and ecuadorian theologian rené padilla respectively, this mar approach was the product of an interdisciplinary effort between theologians and social scientists. six interdisciplinary research teams focused on topics of economics, sociology, psychology, pedagogy, public sector interaction, and missiology “in order to give attention to the multidimensional nature of internally displaced person (idp) suffering” (46). they promptly embarked on planning for the six phases of the mar “cycle:” initial research, construction of an ecclesialbased intervention, execution of the intervention, impact analysis, revision of the diagnosis or intervention, and re-implementation. the initial research phase of the project was launched in 2016 in six “pilot” idp communities that were diverse in terms of geography (urban, semi-urban, and rural), ethnicity (mestizo, afro-colombian, and indigenous), and presence of ministries from different denominations. true to the tenets of participatory action research, two “co-researchers” from each of the communities were brought on board (both of whom ended up being crucial to the success of the project as a whole), and representatives of the six teams carried out their research in the idp communities through interviews, focus groups, and bible studies, making sure that a psychologist was always present in order to provide emotional care if trauma should manifest itself, whether among the idps or the researchers themselves. interviews and surveys were also conducted with leaders of congregations ministering to idps, professional persons within those congregations, experienced teachers of idps, leaders of adult discipleship programs in the local churches, and christian businesspeople and entrepreneurs. based on the results of this research, the faith and displacement project decided to “create an educational intervention to mobilize the human capital of local churches, along with that of the idps themselves, for the purpose of fostering holistic idp flourishing within the scope of the integral mission of the church” (121, italics in the original). this three-step “intervention” consisted of convincing local pastors of the call to work with idps using the skills of the professionals in their congregations, mobilizing those christian professionals, and using them to build the capacities of idps through curricula they would facilitate. each team designed its christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 romero-medina, book review 106 own curricula based on their topic, guided by six principles geared towards ensuring that the curricula were contextualized to the situation of the idps themselves and that there was full integration of social sciences and theology into each of them. a total of 19 curricula were created, all of which are available in spanish at https://www.feydesplazamiento.org/. finally, an impact evaluation was carried out after the implementation of the intervention, yielding feedback and insights that were incorporated into a significant revision of the curricula and the scaling up of the project to nine geographic hubs based on a more formalized “diplomado” course. this book provides an honest assessment of the successes and weaknesses of the project. a key aspect of the success was the wise steps and impact evaluation designed in the project, starting with an initial assessment to identify the main problems and factors involved in the idp situation that included field work and extensive bibliographical research. a second crucial feature was that the project invited theologians, like the author, and other researchers from regions outside of latin america to join those who were local. these allowed the project to succeed in putting together dialogues between idps, social scientists, and theologians from a variety of perspectives in such a way that not only was their combined input transformative, but they themselves learned from idp testimonies, including new understanding and insights into the scriptures as detailed in the book. at the same time, there were challenges that had to be overcome. one such challenge occurred when the creative didactic materials and instructions to use them ran into difficulties, because the authors had not considered that the participants in the project were not used to reading and following instructions. nevertheless, the faith and displacement project exceeded expectations, enabling local churches to become involved in outreach to idps and helping the latter in a number of ways, including starting new microbusinesses and receiving psychosocial support, such as counselling for victims of sexual abuse and disenfranchisement. these successes were enhanced in the scaling up of the project and the revision of the educational materials based on the impact evaluation that highlighted the “cyclical” interactions happening in the uncertain nature of social life and the alternatives the project enabled. this reminds us that every assessment requires contextual analysis of contingent facts, especially in a conflictive country like colombia, where new expressions of armed actors pose serious risks to important sectors of the population living in poverty both in cities and in rural areas. in addition to the methodological insights and examples this book provides, it also addresses a number of other issues relevant to evangelical relief, development, and advocacy in general and latin america in particular. the first has to do with how to integrate social-science-led research into a seminary context that was focused on the training of pastors and was cautious not to stray from that mission. the book details the struggles as the project sought to give attention to a humanitarian crisis affecting idps based on the integration of academic research and a faithbased approach. the second issue involves how colombian protestants rely primarily on the bible for their theological integration, whereas catholics include insights from church doctrine that is more systematic in its analytical approach. the protestant approach, rooted in the integral missiology of the latin american theological fraternity (ftl), helped build common ground based on the local theologians’ experience and methodology that emphasized “the role of the bible in doing theology; the social realities in latin american contexts, and lay participation in the work of the church” (42, italics in the original). project materials were thus connected “always to scriptural texts” (43) rather than to systematic theological categories. third, the book acknowledges the key role played as an interlocutor to integral missiology by latin america’s liberation theology movement, which reconciles spiritual and material needs. as explained, protestant latin american theologian rené padilla developed his understanding of integral mission (or missiology) parallel to the catholic ecclesial-based communities in this region. his affirmation that “[a]ttention to justice and development needed to be central components of christian mission” (41) is the idea that inspires the text by giving moving examples of the commitment of pastors, social scientists, and coresearchers who were members of colombian evangelical congregations. the book thus underlines how “humble service and solidarity with the poor” (43) are key values of integral missiology as its guiding theological framework. there are two main critiques i make of the book. first, one weakness of the mar approach has to do with its use of the term “intervention” for one of its phases. although hays criticizes “extractive” research, the label "intervention” has been questioned in latin america for its meaning of someone going to a community and imposing certain views. the “politically correct” term adopted in this region to describe engagement has been “interaction,” because it reflects the horizontal, democratic, and respectful exchange between the people in local communities and the researchers. second, the book misses important references to the history of massive slaughter and forced dispossession of lands that increased the number of people living in the countryside and founding slums in colombian cities, both of which spawned liberal and https://www.feydesplazamiento.org/ christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 romero-medina, book review 107 communist guerrillas in the middle of the 20th century. by not including a description of the root causes of this conflict, the book presents the guerrillas as the single, original cause of internal displacement, while official data indicate that right-wing paramilitaries (“autodefensas”) were, at that time, the main authors of this human rights tragedy, in collusion with the official armed forces, as in the case of tierralta. this first wave of displacement between 1982 and 1993 that saw forty massacres affecting 267 victims, has been well documented (pabón soto 2021). saying the opposite is true only for certain conservative sectors of the country that believe, as the book echoes, that “[a]t one point in colombian history, it was possible to view the autodefensas as part of a solution to the guerrilla problem” (5). it is worth mentioning, in this context, that in towns on the caribbean coast, like in sucre, paramilitary groups wiped out catholic ecclesial-based communities, accusing them of being “communist” but allowed some evangelical churches whose pastors were politically sympathetic with conservative governments, to operate (lozano garzón 2009). 1 in sum, this book is a must-read for anyone interested in integrating faith and participatory approaches to relief, development, and advocacy, and who are particularly interested in engaging local churches in that task. it provides an outstanding case study for how to do so, replete with a detailed discussion of practical, theoretical, and theological challenges. moreover, it intersperses moving and often difficult-to-read vignettes of individual stories of displacement (many of them of the co-researchers for the project) to keep the focus where it should be, which is on the internally displaced persons themselves. 1 it is not exact to say, as this book does, that the liberation theology’s thesis was “that the poor would be saved through communism” (41). as the noted brazilian catholic bishop dom hélder câmara said, “when i give food to the poor, they call me a saint. when i ask why they are poor, they call me a communist.” this “why” turned him overnight from a “saint” to a “communist” (see dimitriadis 2019, 431). references dimitriadis, vasilios. 2019. “gustavo gutiérrez: liberation theology for a world of social justice and just peace.” journal of ecumenical studies 4 (3), 431–441. https://doi.org/10.1353/ecu.2019.0033 lozano garzón, liz carolina. 2009. “spiritual evangelical war or indigenous witchcraft? magic-religious practices of former combatant paramilitary members in war contexts in córdoba (colombia).” universitas humanistica 68 (july/december). http://www.scielo.org.co/scielo.php?script=sci_artt ext&pid=s0120-48072009000200006 pabón soto, gabriela. 2021. “¿para qué nos quitan la tierra? el ciclo de una ruina eterna. estudio de caso: análisis del desplazamiento forzado y despojo de tierras en tierralta (1997-2003).” grade thesis. universidad javeriana. amanda romero-medina is an independent human rights researcher, lecturer, and activist. she holds a phd in education from the pedagogical university of colombia (upn) and a master’s degree in social and educational development from cinde-upn. her main areas of study include ethnicity, peacebuilding, environment, gender and business, and human rights. author email: amanda.romero@esap.edu.co https://doi.org/10.1353/ecu.2019.0033 http://www.scielo.org.co/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=s0120-48072009000200006 http://www.scielo.org.co/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=s0120-48072009000200006 mailto:amanda.romero@esap.edu.co christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 petzey chiviliu, et al., along the road of decolonization: shared priorities in development justice 30 along the road of decolonization: shared priorities in development justice a collaborative case study written by staff members from mennonite central committee (mcc) guatemala and asociación nuevo amanecer de santiago atitlán (anadesa) guatemala carmen lourdes petzey chiviliu, jacob lesniewski, josefa damian sosof, mayra magdalena reanda tacaxoy, and sara wyngaarden (see box on next page) decolonizing development is necessary to address the colonial legacies that contribute to injustices faced by guatemala’s indigenous populations. through collaborative reflection, staff members from two non-governmental organizations (ngos) share a case study of their ongoing processes of decolonization through 17+ years of shared relief and development work among indigenous tz’utujil communities in guatemala. the authors argue that implementation of a localization model has fostered an environment of mutuality and learning in which decolonization processes could take place, effectively addressing and continuing to address colonial legacies within each organization and between these two institutions. grounded in the practical experiences of an international ngo from the global north and a locally rooted ngo from the global south, this article contributes to the ongoing discussions on decolonizing development. introduction in the field of international development, the role of structural racism in perpetuating colonial legacies has been highlighted as a barrier to decolonization (peace direct 2021). the reality of structural racism is evident in the context of guatemala, where the impacts of external colonial influences from europe, north america, and asia have been compounded by internal colonial dynamics in which a non-indigenous, “ladino,” and globalized elite hold economic, political, social, and cultural power over guatemala’s indigenous communities (grandin 1992; nolin 2018; perera 1995). decolonizing development is urgently necessary to address ongoing development injustices faced by guatemala’s indigenous populations. this process is particularly critical for members of indigenous communities whose marginalization is exacerbated by other demographic markers, such as being female, coming from a rural area, and/or having low educational attainment. this article is the product of collaborative reflection on the part of two development organizations: one an international non-governmental organization (ingo), the other an indigenous-led guatemalan ngo supported by the ingo. together, representatives of these organizations present a case study of their integrated and ongoing processes of decolonization in the context of 17+ years of shared relief and development work among indigenous tz’utujil communities in santiago atitlán, guatemala. in alignment with decolonization theorists (garreau 1998; alatas 2016; said 1993), this article draws on a definition of “colonization” that goes beyond the specific practices of the colonial era (although these are highly relevant) and includes various ways that the lives and futures of the colonized have been and continue to be constrained by unwelcome external imposition. the story and perspectives shared in this article align with framings of decolonization as a forward-moving process through which the colonized become protagonists of post-colonial identities, politics, and social organization (fanon 1961). most importantly, in the same way that colonialism took years, decades, even centuries to become entrenched and bear its destructive legacies, we acknowledge decolonization as a long-term process, requiring consistent effort to build relationships, organizational forms, and practices that are liberating for indigenous peoples and restorative of indigenous sovereignty. christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 petzey chiviliu, et al., along the road of decolonization: shared priorities in development justice 31 in this article, we argue that dedication to a localization model of international development has fostered an environment of mutuality and learning in which decolonization processes could take place, effectively addressing and continuing to address colonial legacies within each organization and in the relationship between these two institutions. the article begins with theoretical framing, followed by context for indigeneity in guatemala, an introduction to both development organizations, and an overview of the methods used for preparing the article. next, we provide a description of the processes of decolonization carried out by each of the organizations and go on to explain how these processes were integrated and iterative. we close with some comments on both the challenges and importance of sustaining these longterm processes. this article makes an important contribution to ongoing discussions on decolonizing development by grounding these discussions in the practical experiences of an ingo from the global north and an ngo from the global south who, together, are navigating a localization model within the social, political, cultural, and historical legacies of colonization among--and structural racism toward-indigenous peoples in guatemala. authorship authors are introduced alphabetically by last name. their contributions are described in the methods section. carmen lourdes petzey chiviliu is a tz’utujil woman and guatemalan citizen. since 2018, she has worked as a teacher in the triumphant children and youth project run by anadesa and funded by mcc. lourdes is one of the main presenters during anadesa’s cultural nights and has participated in partner encounters on themes of decolonization, run through a collaboration between mcc and the american friends service committee. she is currently completing a degree in social work at universidad mariano gálvez in guatemala. jacob lesniewski is a white, male, us citizen, serving as the co-country director for mcc in guatemala and el salvador since 2017. jack holds a phd in social service administration (university of chicago, us 2013), a master of social work (university of chicago, us 2007), and a bachelor of arts in political science (wheaton college, us 1999). jacob and his partner, sarah lesniewski, previously served with mcc in the q’eqchi region of guatemala (2001-2005). since 2017, they have worked closely with indigenous and non-indigenous guatemalan organizations on agroecology, food sovereignty, solidarity economies, migration, youth organizing, and women’s empowerment. josefa damian sosof is a tz’utujil woman and guatemalan citizen. josefa coordinates the proactive women’s project run by anadesa and funded by mcc. she has been part of anadesa since the organization was founded in 2005, has previously served as the organization’s legal representative, and continues to serve as a board member and partner of the association. josefa had the opportunity to study up until the third grade. she has one young child and is very involved in her community. mayra magdalena reanda tacaxoy is a tz’utujil woman and guatemalan citizen who was personally impacted by tropical storm stan in 2005. mayra started working with asociación nuevo amanecer de santiago atitlán (anadesa) in 2015 as an office assistant, then as a teacher in the education project, after which she became the coordinator of the women’s project. since 2019, she has held the role of general coordinator. she is the only university graduate and professional in her family of eight siblings, holds a degree in business administration (universidad mariano gálvez 2018), and can work in tz’utujil, spanish, and english. mayra has two young children. sara wyngaarden is a white, female, canadian citizen serving as the planning, monitoring, evaluating, and reporting coordinator for mennonite central committee (mcc) in guatemala and el salvador. sara is trained in agriculture/international development (bas, university of guelph, ontario, canada 2016), and public health/rural development research and evaluation (msc, university of waterloo, ontario, canada 2020). she previously served with mcc in india (salt program 2017-2018) and has been serving with mcc guatemala-el salvador since july 2021. christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 petzey chiviliu, et al., along the road of decolonization: shared priorities in development justice 32 methodological lens: colonialism, colonialidad, and decolonization this article draws on a broad definition of colonialism as a set of external political, social, cultural, and economic interests, values, and practices that are imposed, unwelcome, upon local communities. this definition, of course, relates to the historical and ongoing processes by which nations in the global north and their corporate proxies have imposed non-native order on territories in the global south to transfer resources from the racialized periphery to the racialized core (gunder-frank 1986). latin american scholars use the term colonialidad to refer to how the legacies of these political and economic processes continue to be felt and lived in the bodies, stories, relationships, and daily lives of colonized peoples (quijano 2000). colonialidad is the social, cultural, and ideological residue left behind by the identity-defining project of colonialism, a common logic that manifests itself in different aspects of social life, patterns of thinking, education systems, and race, where racialized categories of ‘fully human, somewhat human, not human’ (de lima silva 2011) take away the ability of individuals to define their own humanity. in the context of this article, the above definition of colonialidad is also understood to relate to other processes that displace populations from land or affect their access to resources while devaluing existing cultural identities and imposing others. more specifically, we observe that within this case study, gender-based power differences contributed to patterns of oppression between indigenous men and women that rearticulated colonial patterns of domination and submission. as intersectionality theory brings to light (crenshaw 1989), the residues of colonization have differential consequences for different sectors of communities. thus, their processes of liberation can be expected to take different forms. while we define colonialism broadly, neither “colonization” nor “decolonization” are defined loosely within this article. we strongly agree with tuck and yang’s (2012) warning that decolonization should not be treated as a metaphor or a kind of “keyword” denuded of its political and social power and import (williams 1983). given the fundamental injustice of colonization, and the evident and ongoing destructive legacy of colonialidad, it would be incomplete merely to engage in anti-racist practices, increase inclusion of women, or develop a subset of neoliberal diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives and call them 1 neoliberalism describes the resurrection of free market economic policies that have been promoted, even pushed by the global north, in response to the debt crisis of the 1980s. it centers economic arrangements, public policy, and cultural identity around the notion of an economically rational individual subject, downloading responsibility for social welfare onto the individual and shifting questions of identity to consumable signifiers of diversity and inclusion. “decolonization.” 1 we, therefore, define decolonization most basically as the opposite of colonization, proposing that it must be a reparative, restorative, and redistributive process that directly responds to the historical processes of colonialism and colonialidad. decolonization, then, must seek to unmake the political power dynamics and extractive economic relations imposed by colonialism, redistribute resources and power back from the core to the periphery, and repair the economic, political, social, and cultural damages of colonialism. in this way, processes of decolonization can restore conditions that allow colonized communities to pursue collective selfdetermination, interdependent relationships with other communities, and a (re)definition of their post-colonial collective identities freed (to the extent possible) from the vestigial beliefs and ideologies embedded in colonialidad. while decolonization seeks to “undo” and “restore,” fanon (1961) provides an important reminder that this is a forward-moving process. decolonization cannot return the colonized to an imagined pre-colonial state, or restore the colonized to an imagined pre-colonial identity, because colonization has fundamentally and irreversibly changed the context, the colonized subjects themselves, as well as their colonizers. therefore, just as the destructive legacies of colonization are multi-layered and ongoing, the restorative processes of decolonization must be multilayered, ongoing, and responsive to a changing world. at their core, however, fanon argues that these processes must create spaces in which colonized subjects can integrate their experiences in order to develop, articulate, and become protagonists of a postcolonial identity they claim as their own. decolonizing international development requires the redistribution, return, and restoration of resources from the global north to the global south so that local communities can control the use of, and the benefits generated from, those resources. it also requires a commitment to not engaging in new and complex forms of the resource extraction and cultural imperialism that characterized the colonial project. localization strategies have been forwarded as one way of working toward these needs. broadly, localization seeks to provide emergency and development aid through local organizations, avoiding intermediaries. the intention is that international non-governmental organizations, bilateral aid agencies, and other donor agencies provide funds to local organizations that then implement projects that these local organizations themselves have christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 petzey chiviliu, et al., along the road of decolonization: shared priorities in development justice 33 developed. in other words, this method strives to shift resources and decision-making power from global north-based development institutions to local institutions in the global south to design, implement, and monitor development projects. the use of localization as a strategy for decolonization has been formally articulated in various international development forums (fine 2022; mutimbanyoka 2022; russu 2021), perhaps most famously in the 2016 grand bargain documents (grand bargain 2016). 2 unfortunately, progress toward localization as described above has been miniscule compared to the ambitions set out and agreed to in the grand bargain documents. instead, critics argue that many ingos have applied a “localization spin” to their work, using the rhetoric of localization to obscure ongoing reinforcement of and commitment to systems and structures that perpetuate a colonial status quo (peace direct 2021). in this context, our article provides a critical case study to development agencies that sincerely strive to use localization as a strategy to move along the road of decolonization, by illustrating an experience of localization that has been mutually transformative for both institutions. case study background indigeneity in the context of relief and development in guatemala through the imposition of a racialized social and political order by colonial authorities in guatemala, the racial category “indigenous” became synonymous with rural, poor, uneducated, exploitable labor (casuás arzú 2018). patterns of exclusion and exploitation set down during the colonial period (1524-1821) were codified during the post-independence period, especially through the liberal reforms of the 1870s (grandin 2002). the guatemalan state defined racial categories in the 1871 constitution, with “liberal reforms” that eliminated collective land rights of indigenous peoples, led to the creation of vagrancy laws that made indigenous peoples economic captives of large landowners, and created a monolingual educational system. in other words, exclusion and exploitation of indigenous peoples were translated quite literally into structural forms of racism, the legacies of which have continued to constrain the lives and futures of indigenous peoples in guatemala. five hundred years of racialized exclusion and colonialist exploitation of the indigenous populations in guatemala have had significant consequences for the 2 the grand bargain is an agreement that has endeavored to improve the efficacy of humanitarian work through various commitments on the part of donors and aid agencies involved in humanitarian work. one key focus of the agreement is movement toward localization. health and well-being of indigenous peoples. in 2019, approximately 56% of guatemala's population lived below the poverty line and 27% of the population lived below the extreme poverty line. meanwhile, among indigenous peoples, these rates were 79% and 40%, respectively (sdgf 2017, world bank 2018). the world food programme (2018) estimates that 70% percent of the country's arable land is owned by less than 3% of the population while 90% of rural farmers (primarily indigenous) do not have enough land to achieve subsistence. furthermore, guatemala’s high incidence of chronic malnutrition (4th in the world according to the world food program 2018) is concentrated within indigenous communities. because of these particular vulnerabilities, many relief and development interventions in guatemala focus on indigenous communities (iwgia 2023; usaid 2023). wide disparities in official estimates of the indigenous population of guatemala speak to both the social construction and the stigmatization of racialized indigenous identity, reflecting embedded colonialidad (quijano 2000). while some estimates of guatemala’s indigenous population are as high as 60%, the 2018 government census reported that 47.1% of the guatemalan population self-identified as indigenous (ine 2018). in present-day guatemala, indigeneity is constructed by physical signs, such as wearing specific kinds of clothing, speaking one of guatemala’s twentythree indigenous languages, having a particular last name, and exhibiting certain speech patterns and accents when speaking in spanish. because of persistent racism--both overt and structural--toward indigenous peoples in guatemala, some individuals and families have chosen to shed indigenous features. while features can be borne or shed to some degree, the ability to shed one’s indigenous identity and participate more fully in guatemalan society, politics, and economy is itself constrained by the educational, economic, and political inequalities associated with being indigenous. considering the socio-economic and socio-cultural realities for indigenous guatemalans, development efforts that focus on the challenges faced by indigenous communities in guatemala require an understanding of how settler colonization, post-independence liberal reforms, and structural racism have not only shaped the circumstances in which indigenous peoples live, but have also shaped their identity and self-image. for indigenous communities in guatemala, colonialism is not merely a legacy, but is an ongoing reality, embedded in the social, political, economic, and cultural structures christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 petzey chiviliu, et al., along the road of decolonization: shared priorities in development justice 34 that shape their daily lives and possible futures. development work that ignores or minimizes the impacts of colonialism on indigenous communities is more than merely incomplete; it perpetuates dominant structures and patterns of interaction that limit the flourishing of indigenous communities and prolong their status as “colonized.” introduction to the case study organizations this case study is based on the relationship between two development organizations: mennonite central committee (mcc) and asociación nuevo amanecer de santiago atitlán (anadesa). mcc is a global development organization with a binational administrative structure governed by two administrative boards made up of representatives from anabaptist church conferences across the us and canada. mcc began its relief work in 1920, responding to a call for food assistance from mennonite communities in russia and ukraine. the organization expanded to accompany relief, development, and peacebuilding efforts in mennonite and non-mennonite communities around the world, while originally also providing spaces for mennonites from the us and canada to serve in and with those communities (service opportunities have since expanded further, as explained by the epp weaver and smith cain article in this same issue of crda. mcc became known for its grassroots accompaniment of marginalized communities, commitment to peacebuilding and nonviolence, and simple living on the part of its international “service workers.” mcc’s guatemala program launched in 1976 in the aftermath of a serious earthquake. historically, most of mcc guatemala’s leadership staff, field workers, and service program participants came from canada and the us. in recent decades, the leadership staff team has included workers from guatemala, el salvador, honduras, and colombia, alongside an increasing number of service program participants from central and south america. in october 2005, tropical storm stan passed through central america and mexico. parts of guatemala were affected by heavy rainfall, causing destructive and deadly mudslides. the community of panabaj in santiago atitlán in the department of sololá was buried and over 300 people were killed. with support from mcc, mennonite churches in guatemala city organized an emergency response. after the initial disaster response, a group of indigenous maya tz’utujil women from santiago atitlán came together to form a local development organization that would respond to broader community needs. this organization later became known as asociación nuevo amanecer de santiago atitlán (anadesa): the new dawn association of santiago atitlán). with support from mcc, anadesa currently runs an economic empowerment project for tz’utujil women (proactive women) and an educational reinforcement project for tz’utujil students (triumphant children and youth). anadesa's unique position within mcc guatemala’s network of partners makes it a critical case study for understanding how accompaniment-based localization can contribute to decolonizing development. while mcc guatemala’s other partners exhibit one or more of the following characteristics, only anadesa exhibits all of them: 1) their connection to mcc started through an emergency response/relief project; 2) they have developed a longterm institutional partnership with mcc and 3) have expanded into broader community development and peace-building; 4) their staff and leaders have varying levels of formal education, but 5) most are not formally educated as development workers. in addition, mcc is anadesa’s main and, for most of its history, only funder. it is important to note that mcc guatemala’s process of implementing a localization model began around the same time it began its relationship with what would become anadesa. taken together, these characteristics of the relationship between mcc and anadesa offer a rich opportunity to understand more deeply the role of accompaniment-based localization in decolonization processes within the field of development. methods in october 2022, mcc was invited to contribute to crda’s special issue on decolonization. mcc guatemala staff identified anadesa as an interesting case study. having recently participated in a series of workshops on decolonization organized jointly by the american friends service committee and mcc, anadesa staff were eager to explore this theme more deeply in the context of their organizational history and relationship with mcc. this article presents the reflections and perspectives of mcc and anadesa staff through a review of 115 organizational documents (including personnel placements, internal mcc assessments, and reports on anadesa’s project and non-project activities) dated between 2010 and 2023 as well as recent discussions between staff from both organizations. using an open-coding process (emerson, fretz, & shaw 1995), co-authors from mcc examined how the relationship between mcc and anadesa developed and changed over time and explored what insights these documents could provide on successes and challenges in decolonizing development. through reflective discussions with anadesa and mcc staff, co-authors from both organizations elaborated how these themes reflect shifting priorities and practices within each organization, where they have fallen within structural christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 petzey chiviliu, et al., along the road of decolonization: shared priorities in development justice 35 and strategic changes across time, and current manifestations of these themes. the development of this article was a collaborative process that occurred in stages (see table 1). coauthors josefa damian sosof and carmen lourdes petzey chiviliu provided reflective analyses on the initial findings from the document review and broader critical analysis of anadesa’s organizational history and relationship with mcc. co-authors sara wyngaarden and jacob lesniewski conducted in-depth analyses of documents and reflective discussions, incorporated perspectives from mcc’s current and former staff, prepared the written article, and responded to feedback from the journal’s editors. coauthor mayra magdalena reanda tacaxoy reviewed drafts of the written article and provided ongoing detailed feedback on the thoroughness and accuracy of content written by mcc staff, representing perspectives and experiences from anadesa. the division of labour was based on co-authors’ availability to contribute to article preparation. while mcc staff took the lead on writing, all communication with co-authors from anadesa emphasized a desire to accurately represent their perspectives, experiences, and voices, consistently inviting their explicit and critical feedback. the process of article preparation has fostered further discussion and growth on the part of both organizations in relation to these themes. table 1: overview of the writing process from implementation to localization: decolonization within mcc as noted in vision/mission section of the mcc website, mcc “envisions communities worldwide in right relationship with god, one another, and creation.” the organization’s partnerships and programs are all oriented by this vision and are rooted in a historic peace theology. part of mcc’s theory of change (the way it understands how sought-after change comes about) is that humans establish right relationships and build 3 mcc’s connecting peoples program offers various opportunities to live, serve, share, and learn with mcc teams and partners across the world. communities of peace by “connecting peoples” 3 across differences such as geography, language, culture, ethnicity, race, gender, faith, socio-economic status, political orientation, etc. mcc’s move from implementation to localization reflects a recognition that “connecting peoples” is not synonymous with “establishing right relationships” if those relationships continue to be steeped in power imbalances that reflect historical development injustices (including but not limited to colonial legacies). these stage activity mcc’s role anadesa’s role 1 document review (october 2022) reviewed 115 documents dated between 2010 and 2022 that were present in mcc’s database (project proposals, progress reports, evaluation reports, etc.). faithfully prepared and submitted organizational documents to mcc throughout their partnership history. 2 initial discussion (november 2022) prepared questions for a semistructured discussion with anadesa leaders about their understanding of colonization/decolonization and how that has played out in their organizational history. articulated the definitions of colonization and decolonization used in this article based on recent involvement in exchanges with other indigenous-led organizations. shared reflections on how these definitions relate to their organizational history and ongoing work. 3 initial article drafts (december 2022, april 2023) based on document review and initial discussion, prepared a draft of the article for initial review. reviewed the draft article and provided feedback on thoroughness of content and accuracy of interpretation. 4 editing and preparation for publication (june-august 2023) worked together with anadesa and journal editors to finalize the article for publication. provided ongoing feedback and final approval of the article for publication. https://mcc.org/about/vision https://mcc.org/about/vision christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 petzey chiviliu, et al., along the road of decolonization: shared priorities in development justice 36 relationships, then, are not “right” and must be critically reexamined. throughout the years, mcc’s theory of change has expanded to reflect a belief that “right relationships” require recognizing and deconstructing the privileges and power imbalances that perpetuate development injustices and building alternative forms of relating that are based on mutual learning and respect, genuine care and solidarity, and recognize and embrace interdependence. mcc’s shift from implementation to localization has been a decades-long process (described in further detail by epp weaver and smith cain 2023). initially, most of mcc’s project funding was attached to international service workers who moved from canada or the united states to communities in the global south, where they designed and were responsible for implementing projects that addressed development needs in those communities. by the 1970s, mcc was taking initial steps toward localization by shifting towards a partnership model, in which projects were implemented through local partner organizations rather than mcc staff. within this model, service workers continued to play a key role on the ground as “community development workers” seconded to partner organizations. while their primary role was to provide “accompaniment” to the partner organization, project, and participating communities--a strategy rooted in decolonial concepts of local autonomy and control--service workers still tended to take on (or be given) clear leadership roles in project design and implementation. throughout the 1970s and 1980s, seconded service workers expressed increasing discomfort with the “heavy hand” of canadian and us citizens in mcc’s projects in the global south. additionally, concerns with the temptation to fall into clientelist dependency thinking in relationships with partner institutions emerged (fraser and gordon 1984; williamson 2000). discussions of colonial legacies and problematic power relations became prevalent, fueling mcc’s deeper engagement with localization. as mcc moved away from seconding service workers, its focus moved toward becoming more of a granting agency. in this localization model, resources are transferred from mcc to local partners who design and run the day-to-day operations of relief, development, and peacebuilding projects while providing biannual reports to mcc’s in-country offices. this arrangement changes mcc’s relationship with its partners to a more interdependent one, in which local partner ngos rely on mcc for financial resources (and sometimes technical support) while mcc relies on local partners for progress reports that communicate both challenges and positive outcomes of their activities. mcc also relies on partners for the actual work of projects, including their outcomes, successes, and failures. through reports and forms of accompaniment such as field visits, mcc staff learn how to support partners more effectively while also gathering data and stories that help mcc raise funds from donors in canada and the us, thus continuing mcc’s existence and shared relief, development, and peacebuilding work. today, mcc’s partnership-granting localization model remains rooted in “accompaniment,” but rather than seconding workers to engage in project implementation alongside partner organizations, the focus for mcc staff is on understanding, effectively supporting, and accurately representing the local work of partner institutions. for mcc, the decolonial approach of “accompaniment” focuses on minimizing external imposition on the part of mcc and maximizing opportunities for partner organizations and communities to define what development means in their context and design interventions that actualize that vision. it takes the long view, recognizing that deconstructing the legacies of colonization and the impacts of colonialidad takes time and concerted effort on the part of all involved parties, requiring long-term relationships that function well beyond project funding cycles. importantly, mcc’s long-term accompaniment model assumes change over time on the part of both mcc and its partners: not just changes in project activities, monitoring practices, or resource management, but also changes in institutional priorities through processes of formation, growth, and development of institutional identity. in the guatemalan context, most of mcc guatemala’s partners are indigenous-led organizations and/or ngos supporting indigenous communities (anadesa falls into both these categories). thus, mcc guatemala has taken special care in creating spaces for these institutions and communities to practice self-determination and become protagonists of post-colonial identities, politics, and social organization (fanon 1961). acting as a granting agency does not automatically resolve all tensions or power imbalances: mcc continues to have financial power in its relationships with partners and experiences other privileges associated with being an institution based in canada and the us still, through this model, mcc is able to use its privilege to redistribute resources from the global north to the global south--from the racialized core to the racialized periphery--thus contributing to a reversal of colonial patterns of resource extraction. this model returns power to local communities and institutions to define what meaningful change looks like in their communities and then design and implement local development initiatives that actualize that change. additionally, this model complicates power dynamics that are typical to north-south development connections by establishing a more interdependent christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 petzey chiviliu, et al., along the road of decolonization: shared priorities in development justice 37 relationship between this ingo and local ngo partners as well as the communities they serve. while one could argue that the use of data from development projects as a fundraising tool is simply another means of resource extraction, the intended ends of this “extraction” process are quite the opposite of the colonial agenda: the goal is to facilitate an ongoing redistributive and restorative process that returns power to marginalized populations to define, direct, and defend their own humanity and choices about their own development. in these ways, mcc strives to engage in partnership-granting localization as a form of “reparations” responding to a colonial past (peace direct 2021). the transition from implementation to localization has occurred unevenly across mcc. by the mid-1980s, some country programs were almost entirely engaged in a partnership-granting model. meanwhile, in other country programs direct implementation and/or partnership-secondment remained prominent into the 2000s. while some direct implementation and secondment-based programming continues within mcc, it is now the exception rather than the rule and is based on partnerand community-led discussions on local priorities and needs. in the guatemala country program, the transition from secondments to grants was underway by 2005, the same year that mcc first connected with what would become anadesa. anadesa has played a key role in helping mcc guatemala learn how to engage a partnership-granting localization model well, taking their own steps along the road of decolonization throughout their partnership with mcc. in particular, we assert that mcc’s commitment to localization-based accompaniment has offered anadesa the space and freedom to define its own leadership structure and strengthen its institutional processes; to develop its own theory of change, including its specific methods of program implementation; and to tell its own story with confidence. these processes are described in the following section. organizational structure, ideology, and identity: decolonization in anadesa from aid recipients to local development leaders after the mudslide response in 2005, mcc guatemala continued working alongside the mennonite church in guatemala city to provide relief to santiago atitlán and assist anadesa in getting established as an organization. as part of this early partnership, mcc brought groups from canada and the us as “work teams” to help build anadesa’s infrastructure (especially their main offices in panabaj). these groups often raised funds for these projects before arriving. meanwhile, as noted above, mcc guatemala had started implementing the institutional shift from partnership-secondment localization to partnership-granting localization. through feedback from anadesa staff, project participants, and “work team” participants, mcc guatemala staff realized that this shift could be paralleled in the “work team” programming. as mcc and anadesa continued discussing anadesa’s institutional principles and priorities, and as mcc guatemala deepened its engagement with localization as a decolonization strategy, these groups gradually shifted from “work teams” to “work and learn teams” to “learning tours” by 2016. this shift changed the focus of visits from providing material and financial assistance to anadesa to mutual learning and developing solidarity-based relationships with anadesa, its project participants, and their communities. in turn, anadesa and the communities they serve shifted from being recipients of assistance from canadian and us visitors to being experts who teach these same visitors about their culture, history, and current living situations, as well as the development interventions they actively implement within that context. changes in anadesa’s relationship with canadian and us groups and institutions occurred alongside anadesa’s growth into an implementing organization for development projects. this change occurred through direct discussions between mcc guatemala leadership and the (then-male) leadership of anadesa. since those first discussions, anadesa has experienced three distinct periods of organizational development which, we argue, taken together, illustrate steps in anadesa’s own process of decolonization and liberation. the first period occurred between 2012 to 2016, when anadesa focused on formalizing themselves as an organization and building relationships with churches, schools, and universities in canada and the us. we observed that rhetoric used by anadesa’s then-current leadership to portray their own indigenous tz’utujil communities reflected the colonialidad embedded in anadesa’s organizational narratives at the time. for example, in organizational documents, anadesa articulated that the purpose of their relationships with canadian and us institutions was to generate resources and create service opportunities to “help” or “assist” “the poor, under-educated, and suffering” populations in santiago atitlán. for the second period, from 2015-2018, documents show an increasing focus on education alongside ongoing embedded colonialidad. at the time the same documents show concerns among mcc staff over the disconnect between anadesa’s stated organizational identity as a colectivo (grassroots organization) of tz’utujil women and the emphasis on the need for computer and english classes for students christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 petzey chiviliu, et al., along the road of decolonization: shared priorities in development justice 38 in their education programs to bring children into the “modern era.” additionally, there was an articulated need for youth to develop an “entrepreneurial spirit” to overcome poverty and “backwardness.” in this period, anadesa’s implicit and explicit understanding was that the tz’utujil of santiago atitlán suffered from cultural deficits and that anadesa should work to overcome these deficits through encouraging participants to become more like the dominant culture in their decision-making, values, language, and understanding of their place in the world. anadesa’s third period of organizational development, which started in 2018 and continues to the present day, began when the women staff and women board members took over the leadership of the organization from its formerly male executive leadership. for its entire history, anadesa’s staff and board were made up almost entirely of tz’utujil women, while executive leadership was entirely male. much like fanon’s description of the colonial administrators (fanon 1964, 30ff), these indigenous tz’utujil men acted as intermediaries between the rural tz’utujil women that made up anadesa’s staff, board members, and project participants, and the external powers (in this case canadian and us institutions and ingos) that had connected with these communities. these male leaders absorbed and passed along the explicit racialized and gendered cultural critiques of the dominant ladino elite in santiago atitlán and the implicit critiques of canadian and us outsiders in ways that further marginalized the women associated with anadesa and added to their tangible burdens of poverty and exclusion and psychosocial burdens of colonialidad. in other words, being female, indigenous, and rural dwelling was more disadvantageous than being male in the same context. one consequence of the leadership arrangement within anadesa was that communication between women staff and women board members was largely managed and/or overseen by the male executive leadership. both groups of women were discontented with how the organization was being led, but each group was under the impression that the other had approved these circumstances. it was only when staff members managed to communicate directly with board members, in the absence of male leaders, that they realized both groups experienced the then-current leadership style as exclusionary and exploitative of women. both groups saw this leadership style as an unwelcome external imposition. in other words, based on the broad definition presented in this article, women staff and women board members experienced this arrangement as a form of colonialism that was impeding the development goals they had for their families and communities. in 2018, these women approached mcc guatemala with their plan of action to remove the male intermediaries and set the stage for anadesa to be an organization led by women. taking over the leadership of the organization was an act of bravery and strength on the part of anadesa’s female staff members. in a cultural context of machismo (a belief ascribed to latin american cultures that women should be under the power and authority of men), this act was particularly symbolic, countercultural, and revolutionary. mcc staff stood in solidarity with the women as they identified and articulated how their intersectional identities had exacerbated their experience of marginalization, and then asserted themselves to counter the machismo they had identified within their own institution. today, anadesa staff state that the leadership takeover would not have been possible if these women had not become empowered and experienced solidarity and concientización (a heightened sense of critical awareness) through their own involvement in anadesa. furthermore, staff state that the leadership takeover would not have been possible without organization and communication between staff members and the board of directors. we suggest that it also would not have been sustainable if the women did not have a vision for their organizational identity and for how they wanted to contribute to community development. the movement of women into anadesa’s leadership has fundamentally shifted how anadesa presents itself to outside organizations and groups. instead of “welcome to our community, these are our needs, thank you for helping us meet them,” anadesa now communicates “welcome to our community, this is who we are and what we do, thank you for accompanying our work.” in other words, they have pushed off various layers of colonialidad, integrated their experiences to create a new postcolonial identity (as explored below), and become protagonists of an ever-developing post-colonial identity. anadesa has established itself as a local development leader. while mcc remains their primary project funder, examination of project documents shows anadesa’s increasing confidence in its ability to generate resources and create networks of support with other external organizations. anadesa also documents its successes in asserting itself in guatemalan-ladino contexts, a particularly challenging prospect for an organization of indigenous women in the context of internal colonialism and structural racism in guatemala (grandin 2002; tuck and yang 2012). today, anadesa is recognized as a vital partner for local public schools, participates in various planning commissions of the municipality of santiago atitlán, and is a member of the local branch of a national non-profit network. christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 petzey chiviliu, et al., along the road of decolonization: shared priorities in development justice 39 promoting and defending local cultural identity anadesa’s organizational mission is to support “[holistic] training and sustainable community development of children, adolescents, young people, and women of rural communities [in santiago atitlán] through education, training, and community development programs” (anadesa). anadesa’s organizational mission is to support “holistic training and sustainable community development,” particularly among children, adolescents, and women from rural communities around santiago atitlán. while the organization started as a way of channeling material resources to meet material needs, anadesa’s current projects focus more on expanding and reinforcing the capabilities present among program participants so that they can be empowered through increased autonomy and use their voices to stand up for themselves and support their families and communities. in other words, anadesa’s theory of change (again, the understanding of how sought-after change comes about) shifted from the ideology that external aid will create positive change in local communities to the ideology that local people are capable of creating positive change within their own lives, families, and communities, and supportive local institutions can help them visualize and actualize that change. the shift to this theory of change-with greater focus on inclusion, accompaniment, capabilities, and empowerment--has occurred over time, as anadesa developed a distinct understanding of the challenges facing tz’utujil communities and defined its role in addressing those challenges. in other words, anadesa’s theory of change (again, the understanding of how sought-after change comes about) shifted from the ideology that external aid will create positive change in local communities to the ideology that local people are capable of creating positive change within their own lives, families, and communities, and supportive local institutions can help them visualize and actualize that change. one way that this shift is visible in project proposals and reports is that anadesa uses less deficit language regarding the needs of their constituents and program participants. for example, rather than broadly painting tz’utujil communities as culturally deficient, anadesa discusses specific cultural challenges, such as how machismo results in the exclusion of women from decision-making spaces and creates challenges for girls in pursuing education. the interventions in their women’s empowerment project then focus on the capabilities that program participants can develop and are developing through the accompaniment of anadesa’s staff team to confront these challenges in their daily lives. another example of this shift in ideology is the way that anadesa talks about their integration of tz’utujil, spanish, and english languages in their education programming. in anadesa’s thinking, a focus on just spanish and english would devalue tz’utujil culture, identity, and heritage in a way that perpetuates the legacies of colonization. on the other hand, a focus only on tz’utujil language would minimize opportunities to share cultural practices and beliefs with others and defend tz’utujil communities in the public sphere, once again placing cultural survival at risk. rather than continuing to see spanish and english capacity as a way to leave behind tz’utujil language and culture and bring children into the “modern era,” anadesa has come to see spanish and english as tools that can enable tz’utujil people to promote and defend their culture, including their language, to spanish and english speakers. anadesa’s “middle ground” approach allows them not only to continue developing their cultural identity within a changing world, but also to be protagonists of that identity among external audiences. anadesa developed this perspective based on experiences of tz’utujil people who, during the internal armed conflict, did not have the language skills to defend themselves from the guatemalan army and were therefore assumed to be insurgents. thus, it represents one way that anadesa has integrated its experiences of colonization into an emerging post-colonial identity. another key factor in changing organizational priorities is that anadesa staff have integrated learning from earlier projects with their identities and experiences as tz’utujil women. the women leaders of anadesa know firsthand the experience of social exclusion and not having their capacities or opinions valued. anadesa increasingly prioritizes offering inclusive opportunities through their projects, providing space for participants to share their perspectives and to affirm that each participant’s opinion is valued. additionally, anadesa supports program participants in developing critical thinking skills and engaging in creative problem-solving to counteract a long history of lack of educational opportunities. anadesa staff first modeled these organizational priorities by standing up to what they considered oppressive and exclusionary male leadership. now they continue to model these priorities through collaboration and team decision-making, while looking to their board of directors--made up completely of tz’utujil women--to guide the organization’s future. mcc’s accompaniment throughout these processes has consisted of remaining faithfully present, asking questions, listening carefully as anadesa articulates their perspectives and approaches, and thoughtfully observing the ways they put these into action. http://anadesa.org/language/es/quienes-somos/historia christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 petzey chiviliu, et al., along the road of decolonization: shared priorities in development justice 40 owning their story: protagonists of a post-colonial identity “measuring” identity is a challenging task; however, one can use narratives that individuals, organizations, and communities develop about themselves to reveal understandings of their identity. a post-colonial identity emerges when colonized peoples experience the freedom to tell their own stories, articulating who they are and the futures to which they aspire. anadesa’s story reveals a gradual process of integrating experiences to reach greater institutional clarity on identity, priorities, and direction, albeit with complexity and nuance. below are three examples of how anadesa’s articulation of their identity has changed over time. anadesa staff and leadership have opportunities to express their understanding of their identity through presentations to “learning tours” and other visitors. two of these presentations stand out in how they have changed over time. first, anadesa’s headquarters in panabaj is located next to the parque de paz, a memorial to santiago atitlán residents who were massacred by the guatemalan army in 1990 while protesting the actions of drunken soldiers. this massacre set off a protest movement that succeeded in non-violently and permanently expelling the army from santiago atitlán, an unprecedented achievement in guatemalan history for an indigenous community. initially, anadesa’s presentations on what happened in 1990, what led up to the events of that night in december, and the aftermath closely matched the “between two fires” discourse of dominant political powers in guatemala (stoll 1993). this discourse situates indigenous communities as passive victims of the “two fires” of soviet-backed guerillas and the usbacked army fighting a brutal proxy war in the highlands of guatemala. the reality of the armed internal conflict in guatemala both generally and in santiago atitlán in particular is more complicated, and iterations of anadesa’s presentations between 2017 and 2022 have increasingly acknowledged that complexity; they have discarded the two-fires discourse for a more nuanced and personal understanding of their community’s resistance and resilience in the context of the armed conflict, thus restoring agency to past and present residents of santiago atitlán. second, anadesa’s descriptions of the “before” and “after” of tz’utujil cultural practice in santiago atitlán during their “cultural night” presentations have also changed. whether presenting clay pots and their modern plastic equivalents, showing the male traditional clothing that is no longer commonly worn, or sharing other lost artifacts locally produced and consumed, anadesa’s cultural night presenters lament the loss of circular solidarity economies, in which collective efforts provided for the collective benefits of the people of santiago atitlán. part of anadesa’s definition of their collective identity is connected to their critique of changes in the material and consumer culture of santiago atitlán. it is no longer consistently true that local resources are used to serve local needs, nor that the tz’utujil people of santiago atitlán work together to provide for and meet the needs of all their neighbors. this is a marked change from earlier presentations, which focused on the impracticality and expense of “ancestral” artifacts and the convenience of their modern equivalents. these presentations have allowed anadesa to develop and refine its voice and its own understanding of the history and culture of santiago atitlán. the changes anadesa has made to the narratives along the way are evidence of the process of decolonization in which the organization is immersed. furthermore, these changes have helped decolonize the experiences of canadian and us visitors, as anadesa guides them in situating their learning within broader economic, social, and political structures (villareal-sosa and lesniewski 2020). mcc staff have observed and taken note of these changes as they accompany groups to visit anadesa and take part in these activities. third, anadesa’s gradual adoption of human rights discourses, especially in relation to its work with women, is a change from earlier deficit-centered rhetoric around their communities. instead of presenting in project proposals, reports, and presentations a picture of a “backwards,” needy people who need external uplifting to enter the modern era, anadesa increasingly (but not exclusively) uses human rights discourses and gestures to form structural understandings of why their communities are the way they are. their solutions and interventions focus more on individual and collective empowerment through rights education, mutual aid, and productive project activities, and less on deficit-based education and entrepreneurship models. this change can be seen as an assertion that tz’utujil people, and women in particular, are worthy agents of change for themselves, their families, and their communities. it can also be understood as the development of a form of localized tz’utujil “community feminism” (latina feminist group 2001) that grounds the liberation of tz’utujil women in their own experiences, history, and cultural practices. understanding how anadesa talks about itself and the communities in which it is embedded and how that has changed over time helps illustrate the processes of identity formation they have engaged in during that time. these “perspectives about action” (snow & anderson 1991, 157) are necessarily retrospective and the product of anadesa’s own process of shaping rhetoric for external audiences; yet they can still be helpful in understanding how anadesa’s staff christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 petzey chiviliu, et al., along the road of decolonization: shared priorities in development justice 41 members and board of directors make sense of themselves and their context. the three rhetorical shifts noted above indicate a process of anadesa owning its own story of who they are and what it means to be an organization of tz’utujil women serving tz’utujil communities in santiago atitlan. this story is neither fully “pre-colonial” in that it acknowledges what has been lost permanently, nor is it “colonial” in that it asserts the importance of practices, beliefs, and orientations outside of dominant guatemalan-ladino culture. as noted throughout this paper, this emergent post-colonial identity has shaped anadesa’s approaches to its work in communities and its relationship with external actors, including mcc. mutual transformation: decolonization as an iterative process we argue that mcc’s partnership-granting localization and accompaniment model has created a safe, flexible, and relatively neutral space for anadesa to experience freedom in establishing, exploring, and expanding their institutional identity in the ways described in the previous section. one of the fruits of this process has been anadesa’s growing institutional self-confidence, which mcc has seen evidenced when anadesa pushes back on mcc staff and asserts their organizational preferences, priorities, and petitions. for example, when mcc contracted an external auditor to review anadesa’s financial systems, anadesa staff asked for a more rigorous analysis that would essentially audit their entire organization because they wanted insight into improving their systems and programming more broadly. furthermore, each year mcc invites partners to reflect on and adapt their projects in response to changing contexts and organizational circumstances. during these annual reflection processes, mcc staff have asked anadesa about specific indicators; whether they are useful and informative, or whether they have become onerous and should be adapted, replaced, or even removed from the monitoring system. anadesa has consistently affirmed that staff value the outputs from these indicators and would not like to make changes. on the other hand, anadesa has requested adaptations to project budgets to better suit their needs and priorities for resource management. mcc staff value these moments of “pushback.” in addition to indicating a level of comfort and security that anadesa experiences in their relationship with mcc, these moments are opportunities to learn from anadesa and thus experience mutuality in institutional growth and transformation. as noted 4 the washington consensus is a term commonly used for the set of free market, neoliberal policies heavily pushed by washington-based institutions like the world bank, the international monetary fund, and usaid. previously, the assumption of change over time on the part of mcc and its partners is foundational to mcc’s accompaniment model. beyond being a realistic assumption in any relationship, we argue that holding this viewpoint in grant-based partnerships is an important way of responding to the ongoing inevitable power imbalance between granter and grantee. an expectation of constancy and uniformity can set up a system where fund acquisition is based on compliance with granter-set standards, maintaining the status quo on the granter/grantee power imbalance. this system stifles growth and learning. on the other hand, an assumption of change over time can create a safe space where partner organizations have the freedom to reflect on their work, learn, adapt, and share this iterative process with mcc so that both organizations can grow. as has occurred with mcc and anadesa, these built-in incentives toward interdependency create a more neutral space in which both institutions can negotiate their ongoing relationship, including the standards of accountability to which they will hold one other. of course, “creating space for change” has not been a completely neutral process for mcc guatemala staff. over the years, mcc staff have held their own aspirations for anadesa’s development, many of which align with progressive ideologies that characterize mcc’s own organizational identity. as detailed above, anadesa’s earlier articulation of neoliberal development discourses as well as sometimes uncomfortable rhetorical relationship with tz’utujil identity and the story of the armed internal conflict were real challenges for mcc staff. mcc staff tended to have understandings of development rooted in progressive ideologies that critiqued the washington consensus, 4 which seemed inadvertently to inform so much of anadesa’s understandings of development. mcc staff also tended to have an understanding of tz’utujil identity and mayan identity that aligned with mayan cultural activists in guatemala, and an understanding of the armed internal conflict as a genocidal campaign against guatemala’s mayan communities. even so, mcc’s focus on local autonomy and control has remained central to the guatemalan country program strategy, reminding staff that minimizing external imposition, especially as it relates to community organization, vision, and identity, is a critical decolonial act. progressive, purportedly “liberating” ideologies can be just as much an unwelcome external imposition as ideologies that seek to confine and constrain if they misalign with a community’s current preferences and priorities. christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 petzey chiviliu, et al., along the road of decolonization: shared priorities in development justice 42 following anadesa’s lead and accompanying their work through careful listening, observation, questions, and discussions has taught mcc staff that not only does anadesa talk about their work in unique ways; they also do indigeneity, women’s empowerment, education, and economic development in ways that are their own and are radical, transformative, and impactful in their context. for example, anadesa asserts a feminist agency by broadly valuing women’s work, regardless of what that work looks like. in a context where “women’s work” is assumed rather than valued, this model of feminism is empowering. it asserts that traditional “women’s work” is not mere “drudgery,” but is critical to the functioning of households and communities. when this work is valued, it can also be shared between household members in such a way that women are freed to dedicate time to other activities, such as participating in anadesa’s trainings and social activities, getting involved with another community organization, or working on their own income-generating projects. in a development model that does not prioritize localization-focused accompaniment, the radical work being implemented by anadesa might be overlooked and imposed upon. but within the space created through mcc’s partnership, localization, and accompaniment strategy, mcc staff have consistently learned from and been challenged by anadesa’s team. in particular, mcc has deepened its understanding of the ways in which indigenous communities in guatemala navigate the challenges of adapting from their colonial past and working through ongoing colonialism and structural racism in the present, how learning tours and other visits fit within its theory of change and broader development work, and the importance of accompanying partners at the institutional level and not simply at the project level. because of anadesa’s organic development of program discourses and practices, mcc guatemala has gained a much richer understanding of the specific context in which they work and the ways they conceptualize meaningful change within that context. in this way, the environment fostered by mcc’s partnership localization and accompaniment model has been mutually transformative, moving both organizations further along the road of decolonization. vigilance for the road ahead while both mcc and anadesa have taken many steps along the road of decolonization, each organization recognizes that its own process as well as their shared process could easily get derailed through changes in organizational leadership, shifts in strategic direction, new partnerships that work out poorly, or even burnout among organizational staff. anadesa continues to encounter situations in which they need to assert their organizational identity and defend their autonomy. they have recently had to explain to prospective participants how their programming differs from paternalistic initiatives found in santiago, and they have had to distance themselves from institutions that took credit for anadesa’s work. additionally, staff members occasionally experience tension with board members, who still struggle to trust that executive leaders have their best interests and those of their families and communities at heart. in short, anadesa continues to grapple with the legacies of colonialism and colonialidad. mcc guatemala, in turn, occasionally faces questions around its long-term status as anadesa’s primary funding source, spurred by dominant development discourses around “dependency.” from the perspective of mcc guatemala staff, this invocation of dependency disregards the importance of long-term commitments to decolonization processes as well as institutional growth and strengthening. a parallel challenge is that mcc faces regular, planned staff transitions at all levels of its in-country staff. these transitions have implications for long-term relationship building and maintenance. while the intention among in-country staff is to build and strengthen mcc’s institutional relationship with partners rather than have partnership strength be dependent on individual personalities, new staff still have the potential to harm previous relational work and place ongoing relational development at risk. the process of forging a collective identity and working through the impacts of colonialism and colonialidad has shaped anadesa staff into a team that strongly asserts its organizational identity, conscientiously upholds their organizational priorities, and is vigilant against external imposition. we remain hopeful that this institutional self-confidence, rooted in an ever-developing post-colonial identity, will continue to serve anadesa well. and we are hopeful that as anadesa negotiates its relationship with future iterations of the mcc guatemala team, they will hold mcc accountable to its commitment to engage deeply in reparative, restorative, and redistributive processes that decolonize development. concluding remarks the process of decolonizing development is long, difficult, and non-linear. no single intervention strategy, theoretical orientation, or methodology will serve as a simply applied formula to undo the impacts of centuries of political, economic, social, and cultural violence and structural racism by redistributing political power and economic resources from the core to the periphery. this article presents a case study in which localizationbased accompaniment is shown to be an effective christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 petzey chiviliu, et al., along the road of decolonization: shared priorities in development justice 43 decolonizing mechanism in the work of, and relationship between, an ingo and a local communitybased partner in santiago atitlán, guatemala. we argue that a commitment to a localization approach that centers flexibility, focuses on organizational or institutional strengthening and development, and permits the local partner and ingo to learn from one another has opened space for a set of impactful decolonization processes for both mcc and anadesa and has enabled the development of a “uniquely anadesa” post-colonial identity. whether this process continues and grows depends on an overwhelming set of macro-, meso-, and micro-level factors both within and beyond the control of mcc and anadesa. fanon’s (1961) and other decolonial theorists’ pessimism about the possibilities of a peaceful and smooth transition to a more just and equitable post-colonial world reminds those involved in the world of international development that patience, flexibility, a constant and consistent commitment to mutual learning, and a long-term view are vitally important for the long struggle to decolonize the practice of international development. to these ends, we assert that a commitment to long-term localizationbased accompaniment can foster greater interdependence, more mutual growth, further formed post-colonial identities, and more moments of flourishing among development institutions committed to decolonization. it is an apuesta metodológica (a methodological bet) and a worthwhile one. references alatas, syed farid. 2016. “academic dependency and the global division of labour in the social sciences.” current sociology 51 (6): 599-613. anadesa. http://anadesa.org/language/es/quienessomos/historia. casaús arzú, marta elena. 2018. guatemala: linaje y racismo. guatemala: f&g editores. copeland, nicholas. 2015. “regarding development: governing indian advancement in postrevolutionary guatemala.” economy and society 44(3): 418-444. crenshaw, kimberlé. 1989. “demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: a black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics.” university of chicago legal forum 1: 139-167. de lima silva, silvia regina. 2011. “colonialidad, descolonización y lectura popular de la biblia.” pasos 151 (3): 23–31. emerson, robert m., rachel i. fretz, and linda l. shaw. 1995. writing ethnographic fieldnotes. chicago, il: the university of chicago press. epp weaver, alain and emma smith cain. 2023. “’outside agencies do not bring development:’ mennonite central committee and the decadeslong challenge of decolonizing aid.” christian relief, development, and advocacy 5 (1):7-18. fanon, franz. 1961. wretched of the earth. new york: grove press. garreau, frederick h. 1988. “another type of third world dependency: the social sciences.” international sociology 3 (2): 171–178. grand bargain. 2016. the grand bargain. official website: https://interagencystandingcommittee.org/grandbargain grandin, greg. 2002. the blood of guatemala: a history of race and nation. durham, nc: duke university press. gunder-frank, andre. 1986. the development of underdevelopment. new york: routledge. ine: instituto nacional de estadística guatemala. 2018. xii censo nacional de población y vii de vivienda. https://www.censopoblacion.gt/. jonas, susanne. 1991. the battle for guatemala: rebels, death squads, and u.s. power. westview press. latina feminist group. 2001. telling to live: latina feminist testimonios. durham, nc: duke university press. “guatemala’s public spending: worst in the world?” 2017. revista entremundos. http://www.entremundos.org/revista/economy/guat e-in-graphs/guatemalas-public-spending-worst-inthe-world/?lang=en&. nolin, catherine. 2018. “memory, truth, justice: the crisis of the living in the search for guatemala’s dead and disappeared. in henigan, stephen and candace johnson, eds. human and environmental justice in guatemala. toronto: university of toronto press: 34–55. olson, krisjon. 2016. “waging peace: a new generation of ixiles confronts the debts of war in guatemala.” journal of genocide research 18 (2–3), 343–359. https://doi.org/10.1080/14623528.2016.1186959 peace direct. 2021. time to decolonise aid: insights and lessons from a global consultation. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5db70e83fc 0a966cf4cc42ea/t/609d44600b38626868dadff7/16 20919397499/pddecolonising+aid+report_second+edition.pdf. perera, victor. 1995. unfinished conquest: the guatemalan tragedy. berkeley: university of california press. quijano, aníbal. 2000. “colonialidad del poder, eurocentrismo y américa latina.” in lander, http://anadesa.org/language/es/quienes-somos/historia http://anadesa.org/language/es/quienes-somos/historia https://interagencystandingcommittee.org/grand-bargain https://interagencystandingcommittee.org/grand-bargain https://www.censopoblacion.gt/ http://www.entremundos.org/revista/economy/guate-in-graphs/guatemalas-public-spending-worst-in-the-world/?lang=en& http://www.entremundos.org/revista/economy/guate-in-graphs/guatemalas-public-spending-worst-in-the-world/?lang=en& http://www.entremundos.org/revista/economy/guate-in-graphs/guatemalas-public-spending-worst-in-the-world/?lang=en& https://doi.org/10.1080/14623528.2016.1186959 https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5db70e83fc0a966cf4cc42ea/t/609d44600b38626868dadff7/1620919397499/pd-decolonising+aid+report_second+edition.pdf https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5db70e83fc0a966cf4cc42ea/t/609d44600b38626868dadff7/1620919397499/pd-decolonising+aid+report_second+edition.pdf https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5db70e83fc0a966cf4cc42ea/t/609d44600b38626868dadff7/1620919397499/pd-decolonising+aid+report_second+edition.pdf https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5db70e83fc0a966cf4cc42ea/t/609d44600b38626868dadff7/1620919397499/pd-decolonising+aid+report_second+edition.pdf christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 petzey chiviliu, et al., along the road of decolonization: shared priorities in development justice 44 edgardo, ed. la colonialidad del saber: eurocentrismo y ciencias sociales: perspectivas latinoamericanas. buenos aires: clacso consejo latinoamericano de ciencias sociales: 201-246. http://bibliotecavirtual.clacso.org.ar/ar/libros/lande r/quijano.rtf said, edward. 1993. culture and imperialism. london: chatto and windus. snow, david a., and anderson, leon. 1991. “researching the homeless: the characteristic features and virtues of the case study”. in a case for the case study, edited by joe r. feagin, anthony m. orum, and gideon sjoberg, 148-73. chapel hill, nc: university of north carolina press. sustainable development goals fund [sdgf]. 2017. case study: partnerships to combat malnutrition in guatemala. http://www.sdgfund.org/sites/default/files/case%20 study%20-%20guatemala%20nutricion%20%20en.pdf. stoll, david. 1993. between two armies in the ixil towns of guatemala. new york: columbia university press. tuck, eve and k. wayne wang. 2012. “decolonization is not a metaphor.” decolonization: indigeneity, education & society 1 (1): 1-40. williamson, john. 2000. “practical community empowerment: concepts, organizational issues, and the process.” mcc occasional paper, no. 27. world bank. 2018. world bank in guatemala: overview. retrieved from: https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/guatemala/ overview. world food program. 2018. world food program, guatemala country brief. https://docs.wfp.org/api/documents/wfp0000073422/download/?_ga=2.75712853.1963227 248.1548546154-2060367223.1538690903. carmen lourdes petzey chiviliu is a teacher in anadesa’s triumphant children and youth project. jacob lesniewski is the co-country director for mcc in guatemala and el salvador. josefa damian sosof coordinates anadesa’s proactive women’s project. she is also a board member and partner of the association. mayra magdalena tacaxoy is the general coordinator at anadesa. sara wyngaarden serves as the planning, monitoring, evaluating, and reporting coordinator for mcc in guatemala and el salvador. author emails: carmen lourdes petzey chiviliu: a.anadesa@gmail.com. jacob lesniewski: jacklesniewski@mcc.org. josefa damian sosof: a.anadesa@gmail.com. mayra magdalena tacaxoy: a.anadesa@gmail.com. sara wyngaarden: sarawyngaarden@mcc.org http://bibliotecavirtual.clacso.org.ar/ar/libros/lander/quijano.rtf http://bibliotecavirtual.clacso.org.ar/ar/libros/lander/quijano.rtf http://www.sdgfund.org/sites/default/files/case%20study%20-%20guatemala%20nutricion%20-%20en.pdf http://www.sdgfund.org/sites/default/files/case%20study%20-%20guatemala%20nutricion%20-%20en.pdf http://www.sdgfund.org/sites/default/files/case%20study%20-%20guatemala%20nutricion%20-%20en.pdf https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/guatemala/overview https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/guatemala/overview https://docs.wfp.org/api/documents/wfp-0000073422/download/?_ga=2.75712853.1963227248.1548546154-2060367223.1538690903 https://docs.wfp.org/api/documents/wfp-0000073422/download/?_ga=2.75712853.1963227248.1548546154-2060367223.1538690903 https://docs.wfp.org/api/documents/wfp-0000073422/download/?_ga=2.75712853.1963227248.1548546154-2060367223.1538690903 mailto:a.anadesa@gmail.com mailto:jacklesniewski@mcc.org mailto:a.anadesa@gmail.com mailto:a.anadesa@gmail.com mailto:sarawyngaarden@mcc.org christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(2), winter 2024 daugaard, book review 149 book review blood entanglements: evangelicals and gangs in el salvador by stephen offutt reviewed by andreas daugaard new york: oxford university press. 2023. $29.95. blood entanglements is a compelling account of the interactions between the two most dominant groups in lower-class el salvador: gangs and evangelicals. while the two groups might seem like polar opposites to most, offutt explains how these groups have more in common than typically thought. this has implications for understanding how the groups interact, and how evangelicals may work to reduce violence in gangcontrolled neighborhoods in el salvador and across latin-american. evangelicals and gangs certainly are different: whereas evangelicals are generally perceived to be doing god’s work and providing hope and light in difficult contexts, gangs’ interests are perceived to be much darker as they bring violence, extortion, fear, and sometimes even have a direct connection to satan (2). and yet, the two groups are subject to the same vulnerabilities and afflictions. they generally live in neighborhoods characterized by broken systems: deplorable health care conditions, inadequate schools, broken families, lack of jobs and dysfunctional political institutions. rather than comprising two groups from radically different realities, offutt argues that evangelicals and gangs share a common social reality (28). the book similarly points out parallels between how gangs and evangelical groups are structured: members of each share patrimony (e.g., meals, goods, and resources) with other members and these are managed by a pastor or, in the case of gangs, a palabrero. each group conducts rituals such as baptisms or gang initiations, they recruit locally through relationships, generate income through tithes or extortion, have codes of conduct and national as well as international connections to other churches or cliques (30-40). both groups provide feelings of belonging (30). in that sense, both groups provide a path for marginalized peoples to overcome the challenges in their social realities and “become someone,” which proves very attractive for people with few other options. furthermore, most gang members believe in god and even consider themselves to be evangelicals: 95.3% of gang members consider their relationship to god as important and 54.9% of them identify as evangelicals (50, see cruz et al. 2017). the main point of the book is that gangs and evangelicals not only live within these same realities, but their lives are entangled. for example, they share a similar belief system, and it is not unheard of for one brother in a family to be a pastor and another a gang leader. gangs and evangelicals sometimes form unusual alliances to benefit the communities they are both a part of: christians may seek out gangs for protection (121) and pastors may negotiate with gangs to prevent violence, settle disputes, or determine appropriate punishment for those who violate community rules (130), and churches and christian organizations may provide aid for gang-members and their families (137). offutt argues that, in the absence of a functioning government, gangs and evangelicals collaborate to fill that void (137). the book engages well with and builds upon previous literature, including particularly the works of steven dudley and the martinez brothers, who have christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(2), winter 2024 daugaard, book review 150 researched the workings of gangs for decades, but also brenneman (2012) and wolseth (2011), who have written about the relationship between gangs and christians. brenneman and wolseth write about the so-called morgue rule exception. traditionally, gangs do not permit members to leave the gang once initiated. yet the authors document a widespread practice that, by converting to evangelicalism, members are allowed to leave the gang, albeit under close observation to ensure the sincerity of their conversion. offutt builds on their work and finds this exception is not always respected. he documents a case where the rule was suspended by a gang because “many of them have cheated” (62). offutt describes the case of high-ranking ms-13 leader el piwa, who apparently used conversion as a disguise, acting publicly as a preacher while ordering assassinations. offutt also discusses the haven thesis, which is often used as a framework for understanding the role of evangelicals in society. the haven thesis describes how evangelicals traditionally chose to distance themselves from certain common practices of society: sometimes cutting ties to family, avoiding tobacco, alcohol, and extramarital relationships, or opting out of certain aspects of cultural and political societal life (8). the morgue rule exception is an example of the drastic change that becoming an evangelical can entail. yet, while haven theory was useful to understand the sense of separation (and often marginalization) felt by poor evangelicals in the 20 th century, the model no longer fully captures the reality of evangelical life in el salvador and the rest of latin america. evangelicals now include a healthy share of all economic/social classes and are a dominant force in lower class el salvador (18). offutt holds that better models are needed and proposes the entanglement thesis. in short, rather than understanding evangelical life as a haven separate from the society in which gangs reign, evangelical life is intertwined with the gangs because they live in the same neighborhoods and face the same problems, a reality that forces them to interact regularly and deeply. for those unfamiliar with the context, blood entanglements provides a very useful understanding of the history and rise of both groups in el salvadoran society. the book is engaging to read as it mixes context, history, and data with personal stories, though some parts may be somewhat technical and thereby less accessible to casual readers. a major strong point of the book is how it demonstrates why gang-life is attractive to many kids and young people on the margins of society. the book concludes with a set of policy recommendations for churches and christian organizations. after finishing the book, i was left wanting more on two fronts, both of which could be subjects of future research by offutt or others who follow up on his work. first, the entanglement thesis creates a whole set of ethical and theological dilemmas that the book acknowledges (191), but for which it does not convincingly provide answers. should churches provide aid and mentoring to gang members and their families, even while aware of the violence they may be committing once they walk out of church? should pastors negotiate with gang members to create a truce or reduce violence, or ask permission to work in a gangcontrolled area, knowing that doing so may increase the gang’s legitimacy, influence, and power? should pastors hide gang-sympathizers from repressive police raids? knowing that church and gang members are intertwined is one thing, but should church members and pastors intentionally increase those entanglements? such questions regarding our interactions with gang members bring up important and relevant questions about christian aid and advocacy in other arenas of public life. for example, should christians work with corrupt politicians to make structural changes, or with abusive police or military officers to provide security? should they work with corrupt judges in search of justice? offutt provides useful reflections on these questions. he argues that including gang members’ children in programming is part of the church’s mission to reach the most vulnerable and give everyone a chance to experience god’s love (173). he draws a parallel between gangs exercising criminal governance and the roman occupiers at the time of jesus and cites jesus’ comment about giving to ceasar what is ceasar’s (192), suggesting christians may have to accept the reality of gang control, and work to spread the gospel regardless. finally, he brings in a quote from martin luther describing christians as simul justus et peccator, saints and sinners entangled within the same personality (207). he argues the church will always be entangled with the sinful world. still, these questions beg for more and deeper reflection, both moral/theological and practical. “what would jesus do?” is an important question, but so is “how can a pastor keep his children safe?” the second question that stuck with me through the whole book was how the situation in el salvador has changed because of the extreme measures taken by current president nayib bukele. as the book mentions, bukele’s crackdown on gangs has been so severe that he incarcerated nearly 80,000 supposed gang members, which has, according to el faro (a bukele-critical investigative news outlet) effectively shattered the gang structure and eliminated their presence from most neighborhoods in el salvador (martinez et al. 2023). in light of bukele’s crackdown, it may be that the christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(2), winter 2024 daugaard, book review 151 description of gang-evangelical entanglement and the suggested policy recommendations are more applicable to mexico and the rest of central america than to el salvador. overall, blood entanglements is a valuable contribution to the understanding of interactions between gangs and evangelicals and will serve as required background for future research and discussions on the dilemmas created by those interactions in el salvador and the rest of latin america. but it is also a bit more than that. this book led me to consider how its title, “blood entanglements,” and its description of the way the violent reality of gangs intertwines with that of evangelicals, is perhaps an apt description of christ’s relationship with the church. jesus came to earth and entangled himself with sinners, the marginalized and outcasts, and ended up dying for them. in other words, not only does this book help us see more clearly those entanglements between gangs and evangelicals in el salvador, it also pushes us to think about entanglements in our own lives and how we should deal with them. references brenneman, robert. 2012. homies and hermanos: god and gangs in central america. new york: oxford university press. cruz, j. m., j.d. rosen, y. vorobyeva, and l.e. amaya. 2017. the new face of street gangs: the gang phenomenon in el salvador. kimberly green latin american and caribbean center at florida international university. dudley, steven. 2020. ms-13: the making of america's most notorious gang. hanover square press. martínez, carlos, efren lemus, and óscar martínez. 2023. “bukele government dismantled gang presence in el salvador.” el faro, february 3. https://elfaro.net/en/202302/el_salvador/26694/b ukele-government-dismantled-gang-presence-inel-salvador.htm wolseth, jon. 2011. jesus and the gang: youth violence and christianity in urban honduras. university of arizona press. andreas daugaard is deputy research director at asociación para una sociedad más justa (asj), the national chapter of transparency international in honduras. he holds an ll.m. in international law from copenhagen university and is currently pursuing a phd at the university of salamanca. his main areas of study include police and justice sector reforms, gangs, and organized extortion as well as christian aid and advocacy. author email: adaugaard@asjhonduras.com https://elfaro.net/en/202302/el_salvador/26694/bukele-government-dismantled-gang-presence-in-el-salvador.htm https://elfaro.net/en/202302/el_salvador/26694/bukele-government-dismantled-gang-presence-in-el-salvador.htm https://elfaro.net/en/202302/el_salvador/26694/bukele-government-dismantled-gang-presence-in-el-salvador.htm mailto:adaugaard@asjhonduras.com christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 tizon, mammon and empire: confronting the root of all evil 92 mammon and empire: confronting the root of all evil1 al tizon international development organizations assume that poverty is the core problem to be solved. this article makes the case that wealth is the ultimate problem, and poverty is the consequence. the pursuit of wealth, as defined by market-based societies, is driven by the spirit of mammon, which is also the spirit of empire. faithfulness to the gospel requires wealthy churches, which send missionaries and development workers to poorer regions of the world, to confront mammon—in themselves and in the world—and to do mission according to the upside-down economics of the kingdom of god. insofar as they do, they also undermine the power of empire. the problem of wealth wealth is the problem, not poverty. the driving question for community or international development studies seeks to address the problem of poverty. but based on paul’s teaching that “the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil…” (1 tim. 6:9), i contend that we do not primarily have a poverty problem; we have a wealth problem. poverty is the tragic result of the problem of wealth. this is not to say that the question of poverty and poverty alleviation is not within the purview of community and economic development theories and practices. i engaged in community development ministries for ten years in my homeland of the philippines, and i do not believe it was a complete waste of time. in fact, some families our organization worked with experienced genuine social uplift by virtue of some of the programs we introduced and facilitated. and yet, i am convinced, partly from my experience as a development worker, that if we do not tackle the problem of wealth, then at the end of the day, our wellintentioned development efforts only treat the symptoms and not the root cause of poverty, which explains the frustration and sense of futility that often accompany development work. when i talk about the problem of wealth in this article, i am talking about our wealth. those who 1 the author would like to thank orbis books for granting permission to include two passages from his recent book, christ among the classes: the rich, the poor, and the mission of the church. 2023. maryknoll: orbis. these passages are on pages 84-85 of this article. confess jesus as lord in affluent societies—which probably include most, if not all, the readers of this article—must be willing to ask hard questions regarding the wealth they have attained, as well as the current systems that have enabled economic excess for some and debilitating lack for others. “instead of asking why some people are poor,” argues elizabeth hinsonhasty, “we would ask why other people are so affluent” (2017, 14). she observes that very little research on affluence has been done in development studies, relative to material produced related to poverty. but this must change. “the ways we create wealth and the us patterns of consumption need to be carefully interrogated and examined to understand how they accelerate the wealth divide [and] arguably create poverty…” (hinson-hasty 2017, 15). by redirecting the development question toward the wealthy—toward us— we shift from treating the symptoms to looking at the causes. when we begin to do that—tackling wealth as the problem—we subvert empire. i will offer a definition of empire soon enough; for now, suffice it to say that when we take on the ideology of mammon, instead of just the consequences of mammon, we take on the very driver of the colonial and neo-colonial project. as such, when we critique mammon and our propensity to bow down to it, we engage in the decolonizing of our development christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 tizon, mammon and empire: confronting the root of all evil 93 and mission practices in the world, as well as the very theologies that drive them. i seek in this article to argue that the pursuit of wealth, as modern market-based economies encourage it, is incompatible with the gospel, and to the extent that the church rejects it in its own practices of international development and mission, it undermines the ideology of empire. jesus people in the midst of empire jesus teaches us plainly that “no one can serve two masters…[that] we cannot serve god and wealth” (mt. 6:24). paul translated this teaching in more practical terms as he taught his protégé timothy in his first letter: “those who want to be wealthy fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. for the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains” (1 tim. 6:9-10). that is the way the passage reads in the new revised standard version. but once in a great while, i prefer the wording in the king james (kj) version: “the love of money is the root of all evil,” it says in 1 tim. 6:10, “which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.” the kj version says that the love of money is not just a root of evil, but the root of all evil and that people pierce, stab, impale themselves with many deep, heavy, miserable sorrows. which resonates much more with jesus’s black-and-white statement about the incompatibility of the love of wealth with the gospel. jesus was not as either/or about any other matter as he was with the pursuit of wealth or the love of money. jesus was clear. paul was clear. and for the first 300 years of the church’s development, there is no indication that the jesus people strayed from this teaching, except in the case of ananias and sapphira, who found out the hard way just how serious the matter of financial integrity was in the church (acts 5:1-10)! positively stated, for the first 300 years, the church remained faithful to the economics of the kingdom as they bore witness to the gospel throughout the roman empire. granted, the opportunities for the jesus people to benefit from the economics of rome were slim to nothing, as they were a marginalized and persecuted religious sect. forced to the margins, the jesus people took care of one another in every way. from the margins, the church lived life under the reign of god, bearing witness to an alternative community amid the cruel, unjust, violent life of the empire. part of the formation of the alternative community of jesus people—the church—included a way of viewing and using material and monetary resources, not as conduits through which one gets rich, but rather as the means to ensure that all were taken care of, a community where no one had need. “there was not a needy person among them,” luke wrote in acts 4, “for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold. they laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need” (vv. 34-35). as such, part of the witness of the alternative community was to say, in the context of empire, that socio-economic justice is possible in jesus christ. empire-builders, of course, took (and take) offense at such a notion, because it issues an inherent challenge to the injustices of empire. in the case of market-based empires, the injustice is manifest in the cruel unevenness of wealth and poverty where opportunities for wealth creation abound for the rich and are hard to come by for the poor—this, in stark contrast to the false narrative that equal opportunity exists for all. socio-economic injustice was and is the natural consequence of the pursuit of wealth, a cornerstone of market-based societies, because the fittest survive and thrive while the less fit and the unfit have a harder time. the dogged pursuit of wealth (the love of money) creates a system of class in which rights and privileges sit at the top and diminish as they trickle down. in a class system, socio-economic injustice is perpetuated by the rich maintaining their privileged position by keeping the poor in their underprivileged position, which is called classism. the alternative community of jesus people was and is called to demonstrate another way. in every generation, god’s people need to be reminded of the nature of the church’s most formidable enemy—mammon, the root of all evil. to be driven by the “love of money” or the pursuit of wealth is to be possessed by the spirit of mammon. this reminder is not just so that individual believers can repent and adopt simpler and more generous lifestyles, but also so that the faith community can practice socio-economic justice amongst themselves as a prophetic witness against the unjust laws, policies, and practices of empire. mammon and empire i contend that mammon is the ultimate building block of empire throughout time. a simple definition of “empire” would be an ideology manifesting in a political entity (kingdom, nation, state, etc.) that is formed, maintained, and expanded by hegemonic power that is more often than not used to subdue, occupy, and exploit other peoples, lands, and resources. empire manifested itself with unprecedented force in the colonial era. “in a span of approximately five hundred years—from the late fifteenth to the mid-twentieth century—european nations and, later, north america, used their religiopolitical power and military superiority to extend their respective empires in the americas, africa, and christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 tizon, mammon and empire: confronting the root of all evil 94 asia on a grand scale never before experienced in human history” (tizon 2018, 39). colonialism was driven by the “four cs” of commerce, crown, civilization, and christianization (tizon 2018, 45)—in a word, empire. while the four cs of colonialism are not necessarily listed in any particular order, it is no surprise that commerce leads the pack. empire—whether we call it babylonian, roman, russian, chinese, or american—forms, maintains, and expands by the power of mammon. mammon enables empire; it drives it, maintains it, and grows it. the spirit of mammon is the spirit of empire; the power of mammon is the power of empire. the annihilation of whole cultures, the extermination and exploitation of peoples, and the confiscation of lands have been driven primarily by the pursuit of wealth, by the love of money, by mammon. classism drives all the other isms that empire creates, including racism. for example, in the case of the united states, the ethnocide of the hundreds of indigenous communities and the importation of africans who fell victim to chattel slavery were driven by the vision to be “the greatest nation on earth” (read: a wealthy nation of europeans with unlimited freedom). these overt acts of racism against the indigenous and enslaved africans were the necessities of classism, the shiny, hypnotic vision of wealth that propelled people forward in pursuit of more—more money, more land, more resources, more luxury—with little regard for anyone or anything else. when the church challenges mammon, it challenges empire. conversely, when it succumbs to mammon, it perpetuates empire. such has been the case for the christendom-soaked church throughout the last two millennia after constantine. with few exceptions, the 4th century church and onward has not only not been a model of anti-empire; it has in fact become a vital part of empire-building. at this point, allow me to fast-forward to the church’s collusion with the development of capitalism in the united states, which is arguably today’s most powerful empire. eugene mccarraher’s the enchantments of mammon masterfully tells of the history of american capitalism—an economic system based on a philosophy of self-gain—making the case that it constituted the core of the making of the nation. this is not a new idea, but mccarraher’s argument that capitalism functions as much like a religion as it does an economic system might be. “capitalism is a form of enchantment,” he posits, and “…its animating spirit is money” (mccarraher 2019, 5). he builds his case in part by arguing compellingly that the puritan vision of the “city on a hill” had an unmistakable economic component to it. with the divine vision of the new nation in their purview, the puritans set out to create “… a beloved community built on the foundations of capitalist enterprise” (mccarraher 2019, 117). the illegitimate union between church and state (christendom) undoubtedly contributed to the making of the western world, and elsewhere i offer my critique of this marriage (tizon 2018, 21-35). but the polygamous church had another mistress—the bank! mccarraher continues, “the puritan errand into the wilderness became an errand into the marketplace, and american life became an experiment in christian friendship with unrighteous mammon” (mccarraher 2019, 117). max weber’s seminal work, the protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism, connecting protestant faith and the flourishing of democratic capitalism still occupies a prominent place in western socioeconomic theory (weber 1930). the principles emanating from the reformation provided a way for christians to see faith, wealth, and philanthropy seamlessly. as melba maggay observes, “[protestants] saw business and wealth creation not as ‘worldly’ but as a vocation under god. riches were seen as a by-product of obedience, a trust that called for social responsibility” (maggay 2015, 72). a cruder version of such a notion is, “if you make me rich, god, i will give to the poor.” standing firm on the rock of capitalism, the rich and faithful today are those who basically believe that one can serve both god and money. in other words, jesus was wrong! or at least, he didn’t know, and could not have known, anything about the modern miracle of capitalism. based on the belief “that human welfare [is] best served when persons with entrepreneurial gifts are freed to be creatively self-centered,” capitalism enables people to love god and get rich too. “from this point of view,” william pannell reasons glibly, “jesus was a nice man, but basically naïve” about all things economic (pannell 1980, 23). needless to say, such notions make a mockery of jesus and the good news to the poor that he preached. the church’s affair with mammon needs to be named, confessed, and discontinued in order to recover the integrity of the gospel and the church’s prophetic witness against empire. this is a very tall order in the context of the church’s full embrace of the market as a way of life. it will take nothing less than deep conversion and a recovery of the mission of the church to demonstrate to empire what life can be like under the reign of christ. integral to that picture is socioeconomic justice. classism and mission i go more deeply into what the church needs to be and do in order to loosen mammon’s grip on the church for the sake of the world in the book christ among the classes (tizon 2023). for now, allow me to speak specifically about how we need to consider a different way of doing intercultural mission, which, of christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 tizon, mammon and empire: confronting the root of all evil 95 course, includes international development. i say, “of course,” since in this article, i simply assume the integral mission approach to the church’s engagement with the world. there is no other legitimate kind of mission, except integral mission! different names for this approach to mission have emerged in different parts of the world, but they all refer to a single movement that insists on the absolute integration of word and deed, spiritual and social, soul and body, evangelism and justice, church-planting and community transformation (tizon 2018, 158-164). scott bessenecker calls the aggregate of the church’s worldwide mission the “christian-industrialcomplex” (bessenecker 2014, 18-19). taking his cue from former us president dwight eisenhower describing the unholy alliance between the military and commerce as the military-industrial complex, bessenecker identifies an uncanny similarity in the unholy alliance between church and commerce as the christian-industrial complex. bessenecker’s basic thesis is that the modern missionary movement germinated around the same time that “the commercial corporation, as a manifestation of capitalism,” came into prominence. “in this organizational design,” he explains, “money is the central factor in decision-making. employees are valued mainly for their productivity. demand can be manipulated by marketing, and consumers are seen exclusively through the lens of their ability to purchase the product” (bessenecker 2014, 22-23). in time, the way of the corporation became the unquestioned way to get things done, to make progress, to accomplish significant objectives in every sector of society, including the church and its mission. bessenecker continues: “at that time it was axiomatic that if someone had a passion to advance anything in foreign lands, even christian mission, a corporation needed to be formed, complete with investors, boards of directors, executive officers, employees, recruiters, and accountants. the result was a missionary corporation, a christian version of the forprofit trading company” (bessenecker 2014, 30). it is difficult not to be troubled by such insights, and i see much more clearly why many of the problems we encounter in the missionary-host and the donorrecipient relationships have to do with money and power. indeed, the church has helped to expand empire throughout the world by way of the christianindustrial complex. how do we correct this? if corporate capitalism is truly the foundation of the church’s mission, do we need to take a wrecking ball to the whole thing and start over? perhaps, and we should not rule that out (mt. 2 for a more detailed treatment of shg and how zimele wethu implements this effective approach to empowerment, see matimelo 2016. 9:14-17)! deconstructing, decolonizing efforts articulated by the likes of kwok pui lan (2021), miguel de la torre (2021), and randy woodley (2022) may not be wrecking balls, but they do plant seeds of the kind of revolution that church mission needs. more modest proposals would include taking seriously alternative mission structures that have emerged on the scene. bi-vocational ministry or mission, what used to be called tentmaking, has made somewhat of a comeback. k.p. yohannan popularized the training of local, indigenous missionaries and creative ways to partner with them (yohannan 2009). diaspora mission, where christians who migrate for employment and/or other reasons are trained to bear witness to the gospel in their host countries, represents another radically different approach (tira and yamamori 2016). specifically for development in mission, appreciative inquiry approaches, women’s empowerment, advocacy, reparations, and mutuality in partnership signal positive pathways to less capitalbased community transformation. the zimele wethu foundation in south africa exemplifies these pathways. zimele wethu is “a non-profit company committed to creating self-sustaining communities through empowerment.” the poor have been told all their lives that they have little to nothing to contribute to their own betterment, that the only hope of social uplift must come from the outside. the power of the shg (selfhelp group) concept lies in its radically different messaging—namely, that together the poor have the resources to increase their capacity to transform not just their own lives but the lives of their neighbors too. in the words of zimele wethu’s cofounder and executive director, audrey mukwavi matimelo, “we … encourage [the poor] to start thinking about how they can change their poverty situation with what they have” (matimelo 2017). as for how zimele wethu partners with outside help, it seeks partners whose financial help goes primarily to training and encouraging its staff and community volunteers, but whose enduring help comes in the form of lasting intercultural friendships. 2 though zimele wethu and similar organizations throughout the world, as well as the mission practices mentioned above that represent less-cumbersome alternatives, have not posed a significant threat to the christian-industrial complex, they demonstrate possibilities and the way of the future. on the other hand, in light of the power of the mustard seed (mt. 13:30-32; mk. 4:29-31; lk. 13:17-19), these practices play their part in subverting the system. in the hands of god, the church’s small acts together become, in the words of tom sine, “the mustard seed conspiracy” christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 tizon, mammon and empire: confronting the root of all evil 96 (1981), undermining the works of empire until these acts overtake the garden in jesus christ. challenging the christian-industrial complex by striving in the spirit to find less capital-based ways of doing mission and development, as well as remaining faithful to the small but subversive activities of justice in the world, at least begins the process of conversion that the church desperately needs to undergo if it desires to weaken the power of mammon, and simultaneously undermine the imperial spirit, whose headwinds are blowing more aggressively throughout the world. references bessenecker, scott. 2014. overturning tables: freeing missions from the christian-industrial complex. downers grove, il: intervarsity press. de la torre, miguel. 2021. decolonizing christianity: becoming badass believers. grand rapids, mi: eerdmans. hinson-hasty, elizabeth. 2017. the problem of wealth: a christian response to a culture of affluence. maryknoll, ny: orbis books. maggay, melba. 2015. rise up & walk: religion and culture in empowering the poor. oxford: regnum. matimelo, audrey mukwavi. 2017. quoted in omega moagi, “turning poverty around,” news 24, april 4. http://www.news24.com/southafrica/news/turning -poverty-around-20170403. matimelo, audrey mukwavi. 2016. mobilizing community assets to alleviate poverty among women: a case study of zimele developing community self-reliance in rural kwazulunatal. phd dissertation, university of kwazulu-natal, pietermaritzburg, south africa. mccarraher, eugene. 2019. the enchantments of mammon: how capitalism became the religion of modernity. cambridge, ma and london, uk: belknap. pannell, william. 1980. “a call for a simpler lifestyle,” in living more simply: biblical principles and practical models, edited by ronald j. sider. downers grove, il: ivp. pui-lan, kwok. 2021. postcolonial politics and theology: unraveling empire for a global church. louisville: westminster john knox. sine, tom. 1981. the mustard seed conspiracy. waco: word. tira, sadiri joy and tetsunao yamamori, eds. 2016. scattered and gathered: a global compendium of diaspora missiology. oxford: regnum. tizon, al. 2023. christ among the classes: the rich, the poor, and the mission of the church. maryknoll, ny: orbis books. tizon, al. 2018. whole & reconciled: gospel, church, and mission in a fractured world. grand rapids, mi: baker academic. weber, max. 1930. the protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. new york: charles scribner’s sons. woodley, randy. 2022. mission and the cultural other: a closer look. eugene: cascade. yohannan, k.p. 2009. revolution in world missions. carrolton, tx: gfa books. al tizon is affiliate professor of missional and global leadership at north park theological seminary in chicago and lead pastor of grace fellowship community church in san francisco. he holds a phd in missiology from the graduate theological union (berkeley, ca). author email: drtizon@gmail.com about:blank about:blank mailto:drtizon@gmail.com christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 mckoy, jus ante bellum: enemy love and just war theory 126 jus ante bellum: enemy love and just war theory michael mckoy love for the enemy is a stated aim of just war. yet, we rarely consider the conditions that best encourage enemy-love. i argue a state’s relationship with the enemy prior to war will shape its love for the enemy during war. specifically, if the just-war state and the targeted enemy had a loving relationship prior to war, then the just-war state is more likely to abide by the just war principles in the negotiations prior to war and in their actions during war. however, if they previously had a hostile relationship, then the just-war state is more likely to ignore just war principles prior to and during war. i demonstrate this argument by analyzing the libyan regime change war in 2011. christians must take seriously christ’s command to love our enemies, so that we might love well in peace and hopefully avoid the devastations of war. a stated aim of just war, dating back to augustine, is to accomplish justice for the enemy aggressor as well as for those being threatened or victimized. augustine (1962, 182) states, “therefore, even in waging war, cherish the spirit of a peace-maker, that, by conquering those whom you attack, you may lead them back to the advantage of peace.” contemporary just war scholars acknowledge that just war requires showing love towards the enemy, though they emphasize that love for the enemy must not supersede love for the enemy’s victims (bell 2009; biggar 2013; miller 2021; patterson 2023). yet, even as love for the enemy is an aim of just war, there is often little consideration of how one develops and sustains enemy love. loving the enemy means love must endure the grievances, hardships, and atrocities that come with war, and it must motivate the just state to help the defeated enemy rebuild following war. these difficulties should not be underestimated, and they place a heavy burden on love. the just war tradition largely assumes love for the enemy can be generated volitionally, regardless of a state’s prior relationship with the enemy or the difficult circumstances created by war. in this essay, i seek to challenge this assumption. rather, i assert that love for the enemy is far more likely if there is a prior loving, or at least amicable, relationship between the two belligerents before the escalation to war. a preestablished love is much more likely to persist through war rather than somehow being developed during war, and it will likely moderate the belligerents’ behavior during war and strengthen their commitment to rebuild following war. in this essay, i first walk through the principles of just war in light of enemy love. i then argue why a prior loving relationship is likely critical for accomplishing jus post bellum, the establishment of a just peace. i then discuss the diverging responses to libyan leader muammar qaddafi after he threatened to enact human rights abuses on libyan rebels during the arab spring. those countries that had a hostile relationship with libya quickly advocated for war, in violation of the just war principle of war as a last resort. those leaders who had a more loving relationship with qaddafi, most notably south african president jacob zuma, prioritized peaceful negotiations to achieve an inclusive, stabilizing exit for qaddafi. the rush to war by arab and western countries had devastating effects on libya, from which the country has yet to recover. my hope with this essay is to spur us to consider more deeply christ’s command to love our enemy. enemy is a political term, but we rarely think of love in either political or collective terms. there is a welldeveloped academic literature on communal hatred and its political implications (kaufman 2015), but scholars have not given the same attention to love. this essay aims to be a first step in more deeply considering love’s political importance and implications. enemy love in the just war tradition the priority of enemy love is reflected in just war principles. these principles are traditionally grouped as christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 mckoy, jus ante bellum: enemy love and just war theory 127 jus ad bellum (justice before war), jus in bellum (justice during war), and more recently jus post bellum (justice following war). jus ad bellum principles include just cause for war, legitimate authority to decide for war, war as a last resort to settling conflict, reasonable confidence in the likelihood of success, and the right intent of establishing justice for all involved. jus in bellum principles include proportionality in the use of necessary force and discrimination regarding the use of force against only those who are armed (bell 2009; bellamy 2006). just war scholars have more recently given attention to jus post bellum and the responsibility to establish stable and just governance for the defeated country following war (bass 2004; patterson 2012). in theory, the principle of right intent addresses these issues, but the difficulties of postwar stabilization and reconstruction efforts in afghanistan, iraq, and libya revealed the neglect of postwar just principles. 1 this neglect of postwar justice is particularly problematic, because it is during the postwar period that enemy love is most positively expressed. when escalating to war and when fighting a war, just war principles express love through patience and restraint rather than through more active means. the principle of right intent prior to war expresses enemy love by rejecting vengeance as an aim of war. the principle of last resort expresses enemy love by requiring that all possible resolutions short of war be attempted before escalating to war. the principle of discrimination expresses enemy love by requiring restraint in the execution of war. it is only postwar that love is primarily expressed positively through right intent and the establishment of a just order. the postwar establishment of justice requires that the just-war state successfully depose and uproot the aggressive or abusive regime, supervise and finance (at least partially) the defeated country’s reconstruction, establish a just government, and provide security and social services in the meantime. these demands mark a shift from the negative love of restraint to the positive love of just state-building and (re)conciliation. just war principles assume that the love necessary to fight for just aims and to remain committed to these aims long-term occurs through the singular will and volition of the state or society engaging in just war. love is treated as a duty rather than a relationship. 2 but the burdens of this assumption become evident when 1 eric patterson (2012, ix) expressed dismay that, in a month-long seminar on just war that he attended in 2004, there was no discussion of postwar just principles: “the fact that we could spend a month talking about the morality of going to war (jus ad bellum) and the morality of how war is fought (jus in bello) without discussing the morality of conflict settlement and postconflict (just post bellum) should be startling to the outside observer.” 2 this is akin to the distinction thomas aquinas makes between charity and friendship. i thank peter campbell for this point. carrying out the demands of love, and they only become heavier as war progresses. the patience of last resort may wear thin if it threatens one’s own interests. the restraint of discrimination may be compromised if it hinders a quick victory or risks the lives of the just state’s own soldiers or civilians. the rejection of vengeance may succumb to temptation given the stresses, horrors, and drudgery of war. the right intent of just, stable governance may crumble in the face of reconstruction’s high costs, the enemy’s persistent violent resistance, and the perceived ingratitude of the people you believe you are helping. these difficulties are evident in the struggles inherent to the united nations’ responsibility to protect (r2p) doctrine. the united nations developed this doctrine following the genocidal civil wars in rwanda and yugoslavia during the 1990s. the r2p doctrine states that the international community has a responsibility to protect the human rights of a country’s citizens when that country’s government is either unwilling to or unable to. r2p’s responsibilities are often grouped as: the responsibility to prevent human rights abuses before they occur, the responsibility to react to human rights abuses once they occur, and the responsibility to rebuild a state that will respect human rights in the future. these responsibilities were designed to align with just war principles (evans 2004). r2p is motivated by the just cause of defending human rights. the responsibilities to prevent and to react ensure that the use of military force is available but as a last resort. the responsibility to rebuild is based upon the right intent principle of establishing just and stable governance following armed conflict. however, there has been a consistent disconnect between r2p’s honorable aims and its often disastrous outcomes in several post-conflict countries. roland paris (2014) blames this disconnect on what he considers the doctrine’s structural problems. these include what paris calls the end-state problem and the mixed-motive problem. the end-state problem highlights the high costs involved in rebuilding another society’s government and infrastructure. this effort may also include fighting against insurgent forces who oppose foreign occupation. such fighting only makes stabilization efforts more difficult, leading to a vicious cycle of fighting and instability without a clear end in sight. and these postwar costs of reconstruction come on top of the financial, emotional, and psychological costs of fighting the prior war itself. christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 mckoy, jus ante bellum: enemy love and just war theory 128 the mixed-motive problem questions whether a state would pay such high costs without expecting something substantial in return. while just war and r2p principles assume states and leaders will seek justice for its own sake, this directly contradicts common understandings of state motivations for humanitarian action. rather, state leaders must be able to show their supporters that humanitarian action and commitment will result in personal gain (gent 2007). these problems together severely undermine the just aims of just war. if countries must have selfish aims to engage in a just war, how likely is it that these selfish aims will be prioritized over the war’s supposed just aims? indeed, how can we know that any professed just aims aren’t mere rhetoric to justify more selfish aims? and even if just aims are the primary aims, are these just aims sufficient for the just-war state to remain committed to justice in the face of the extremely high costs of occupation and reconstruction? us secretary of state colin powell had such high costs in mind when, prior to war in iraq, he warned president george w. bush about the “pottery barn rule:” “you break it, you bought it” (woodward 2004, 150). even if one charitably assumes that the bush administration’s motives for war were primarily about bringing justice and democracy to iraq, the administration still failed to prepare for the high demands of governing iraq, resulting in catastrophe (allawi 2007; gordon and trainor 2006). just war and the impact of prior love nevertheless, one could imagine a state taking on the high costs for achieving justice for another society if, prior to war, the two societies had a loving relationship. there has been little research, or even scholarly consideration, on love between countries, though there is developing research on interstate friendship (koschut and oelsner 2014), and there are case-study analyses of the “special relationships” between israel and the united states (bar-siman-tov 1998) and the united kingdom and the united states (dumbrell 2006). this research provides guidance in considering the nature of loving relationships between countries. politically, love develops and is sustained through geopolitical and economic ties. culturally, love develops and is sustained through shared racial/ethnic heritage, language, religion, or history. interpersonally, love develops and is sustained through relationships between leaders, between ruling elites, and through people exchanges, such as immigration, tourism, and study-abroad programs. the existence of a loving relationship helps overcome the problems paris raises about the responsibility to protect doctrine and, by extension, just war. a loving relationship helps overcome the mixed-motive problem, because leaders and communities in the just-war state are more personally invested in the well-being of the defeated enemy. this, in turn, helps address the end-state problem, as the justwar state would be more readily committed to making the long-term investments necessary for the defeated enemy’s reconstruction. a prior loving relationship would also give the just-war state intimate knowledge of the targeted society’s culture, norms, and perspectives, all of which are critical to sustainably establishing justice and order. it would also give the just-war state greater credibility with the occupied population and thus could deter, or at least mitigate, internal resistance. a focus on the relationship between the war combatants, however, raises new questions about how the two sides escalated to war in the first place. for a just war to occur, it may not necessarily be the case that the two societies have personal animosity, but rather that one of them is persistently committing human rights abuses internally or acting aggressively towards another country. this, in turn, shifts the focus from the last resort of escalation to war to the “first resort” of asking why the country committed to justice could not convince its abusive ally to stop its aggressive acts. rather than focusing on the decision for war, our attention shifts to the negotiations for peace. this has at least two notable effects. first, it moves just war scholarship closer to current international-relationships scholarship, which focuses on why states choose war despite the high costs of war (blattman 2022). rather than simply considering war in pursuit of justice, we should consider more broadly strategies in pursuit of justice and why these succeed or fail. second, it highlights how prior relationships may affect such strategic choices. while a loving relationship will make a country more invested in another country’s good, such a relationship may also discourage countries from holding each other accountable for aggression or abuses. deeper analysis must consider these multiple potential effects. libyan regime change, 2011 in february 2011, following the downfall of authoritarian regimes in tunisia and egypt, protests broke out throughout several cities in libya. libyan leader muammar qaddafi’s regime responded by brutally suppressing protests in tripoli and threatening even worse violence elsewhere. qaddafi, specifically targeting the rebellious northeastern region centered around benghazi, made the “now infamous threat to go ‘zanga zanga, dar dar’ or from ‘alley to alley, house to house’ to ‘cleanse’ the ‘cockroaches’ and ‘rats’, [which to many] carried echoes of the 1994 genocide in rwanda, when the hutus described the tutsis in similar terms.” in response, libyan officials who broke with qaddafi formed the national transitional council (ntc), called for a nationwide uprising against christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 mckoy, jus ante bellum: enemy love and just war theory 129 qaddafi, and sought international recognition and protection (noueihed and warren 2013, 178–179). qaddafi’s long-time dictatorship over libya meant that libya’s relationship with other countries depended almost entirely on qaddafi’s sentiments and actions. qaddafi had long had turbulent relationships with many countries around the world. he understandably incurred the hatred of several african and middle eastern governments by calling for their overthrow and supporting revolutionary forces in these countries (de waal 2013, 366; pargeter 2012, 122–134). he likewise incurred the hatred of western countries by sponsoring international terrorism, most notably in the case of the lockerbie bombing in 1988. however, qaddafi’s relations with western countries significantly improved in the early 2000s after he dismantled his weapons of mass destruction program and largely desisted from sponsoring terrorism (chorin 2012). nevertheless, this lingering hatred led a coalition of arab and western countries to propose un resolution 1973 in march 2011, which established a no-fly zone in libya to prevent qaddafi from using aerial forces to massacre the libyan rebels. the no-fly zone succeeded in protecting the rebel forces in benghazi, but it left qaddafi in power with enough military force to defeat the rebels on the ground. arab and western countries, therefore, recognized the ntc as libya’s government and provided it with the military support necessary to defeat qaddafi (ibid., 215–232). throughout 2011, south african president jacob zuma advocated for a less aggressive approach in confronting qaddafi. unlike with other countries, qaddafi maintained a very warm relationship with the leadership of the african national congress (anc), who led the fight against the south african apartheid government and then became south africa’s dominant political party. qaddafi supported the anc throughout its long struggle against apartheid, even as the afrikaner regime received consistent us support. nelson mandela never forgot qaddafi’s steadfast support and maintained a close personal relationship with him, even while libya endured international sanctions for its terrorism sponsorship. during a press conference with us president bill clinton, mandela defended his friendship with qaddafi, stating, “our moral authority dictates that we should not abandon those who helped us in the darkest hour of this country. not only did they support us in rhetoric, they gave us the resources for us to conduct our struggle.” mandela went on to say that anyone who criticized him for maintaining his friendship “can go and throw themselves in the pool” (shogren 1998). mandela’s affection for qaddafi was matched by a broader philosophy that argued peace was best achieved through loving dialogue. in the same press conference with clinton, mandela stated, “the united states as the leader of the world should set an example to all of us to help eliminate tensions throughout the world. and the best way of doing so is to call upon its enemies to say, ‘let’s sit down and talk peace’” (ibid.). alexander beresford (2015), in analyzing patterns of south african foreign policy, argues that the anc’s strategy for peacemaking mimics its successful strategy towards the apartheid regime. this strategy relies on patient, quiet diplomacy, which fosters relationships between the conflicting parties without shaming or embarrassing either side. the ultimate aim is establishing a transitional power sharing agreement that allows the “losing” side to safely and gracefully relinquish power. zuma adopted this strategy towards qaddafi in 2011. very soon after the uprisings against qaddafi broke out, african leaders, including zuma, met under the auspices of the african union (au) and quickly concluded that qaddafi would need to step down and allow for the formation of an interim inclusive government. african leaders were concerned that qaddafi’s sudden overthrow would lead to a power vacuum and an expanding civil war that would destabilize libya and create a widening humanitarian crisis. zuma supported unscr 1973 authorizing a nofly zone in libya, in the hope that this would give space for the au to negotiate a peaceful settlement. unfortunately, he was stymied both by qaddafi’s intransigence and by arab and western impatience. in april, zuma and the presidents of mali, mauritania, and the republic of congo flew to tripoli and called on qaddafi to negotiate with the ntc and allow for free and fair elections, or else be overthrown by foreign forces. qaddafi refused, and arab and western governments largely ignored au leaders thereafter (de waal 2013, 370–372; grovogui 2020). instead, arab and western leaders provided the rebels with more direct military support, which was in direct contravention of unr 1973, which called for a cease-fire. foreign military support only served to escalate the conflict. by ignoring ongoing au attempts at a peaceful settlement, these leaders violated the principle of last resort, particularly since they themselves made no significant efforts to negotiate directly with qaddafi. zuma, however, maintained his efforts towards a peace settlement, flying again in may to tripoli to try to convince qaddafi to step down. nevertheless, he was rebuffed once more. when the civil war reached a stalemate in june, zuma called yet again for a cease-fire “with the aim of establishing an inclusive, consensual interim government, leading to democratic elections.” qaddafi finally expressed some interest in negotiating with the ntc, but by then most world leaders, including many african leaders, were set on overthrowing qaddafi militarily (de waal 2013, 374–375). zuma was completely marginalized and even christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 mckoy, jus ante bellum: enemy love and just war theory 130 villainized as sympathetic to a brutal dictator who helped pay zuma’s legal bills when he was facing rape charges (kirchik 2011). sadly, the au’s concerns about postwar humanitarian crises proved prescient. qaddafi’s forces were defeated in autumn 2011, and qaddafi was ultimately executed by rebels who found him hiding in a drainage pipe (chorin 2012, 257). following qaddafi’s downfall, the ntc was unable to provide the stable governance necessary to protect human rights in libya, nor did any of the countries that militarily or financially supported regime change. democratic elections initially led to a secular, moderate government, but the first prime minister lasted less than a month, and no subsequent government was able to provide order and unity. several rebel militias refused to disarm, and radical islamist militias, including alqaeda affiliates, took up arms against the newly installed government in libya and foreign forces stationed there. islamist attacks on foreign embassies— including the us consulate in benghazi—caused western countries to flee libya, abandoning their responsibility to rebuild. libya has since been wracked by a civil war between islamist forces supported by qatar, sudan, and turkey, and secular militarists with previous ties to the qaddafi regime supported by egypt and the united arab emirates. rather than human rights improving following qaddafi’s downfall, they have significantly worsened (kuperman 2015). moreover, what happened in libya did not stay in libya. radical islamists, having established a base in libya, launched attacks into mali, which until then had a stable democratic government. this created what the chair of the us senate subcommittee on african affairs called “the largest territory controlled by islamist extremists in the world” (ibid., 73). ironically, malian president amadou toumani touré was one of the au leaders most committed to negotiating a peaceful, incremental transition in libya. the decision-making from the au leaders and arab-western coalition corresponds with their relationships with qaddafi. the au leaders, including zuma and touré, combined a loving posture towards qaddafi personally with a commitment to a just outcome in libya. in keeping with the principle of last resort, they persisted in negotiating with both qaddafi and with the other un countries to achieve a settlement in which qaddafi stepped down peacefully. this would lay the groundwork for inclusive, democratic elections and provide consistent stable governance in the meantime. zuma, in particular, went the extra mile to appeal to qaddafi, reflecting the loving relationship between qaddafi and the anc leadership. the arab-western coalition, on the other hand, had a long hostile relationship with qaddafi, and as a result their pursuit of just war was contaminated by mixed motives and a disregard for last resort. the nofly zone’s success removed the threat of an imminent massacre in benghazi, so the arab and western countries had the space to negotiate a more peaceful transition. moreover, the establishment of this no-fly zone came at the same time that saudi forces invaded bahrain to suppress shi’ite demands for equal rights there. this assault sparked little international reaction, calling into question the motives of those who targeted qaddafi (noueihed and warren 2013, 153–158). this does not minimize qaddafi’s crimes nor invalidate the reasons why other countries hated him. yet, that is why just war must include the christian call to love enemies. by definition, the target of just war has committed or threatened to commit egregious actions. but when justwar states refuse to love the enemy they are attacking, they will likely fail to uphold the just principles they are supposedly promoting. conclusion just war doctrine aspires to love the enemy, but the way that is accomplished has been undertheorized. it assumes love can be generated during a crisis and expressed through the forbearance of right intent and the patience of last resort. if the crisis escalates to war, it further assumes love will endure the trials and horrors of war and express itself through the restraint of discrimination. if the just-war state is victorious, it assumes love will take on the heavy burdens of reconstruction, security and services provision, and statebuilding. it further assumes the justwar state can and will do this through its own principled volition without any subjective care for the enemy itself. these are herculean expectations. that does not mean, however, that such aims are unattainable. these aims are achievable if the just-war state has a prior relationship of love with the targeted enemy. this relationship provides a foundation and motivation by which the loving practices of forbearance, patience, restraint, and sacrificial giving are possible. it also makes an escalation to war less likely and may make a postwar occupation less costly. it also shifts the focus from those whose grievance carries a greater justification for violence—whether amharan, oromo, or tigrayan; arab or israeli; russian or ukrainian—to the recognition that such grievances will either end with annihilation or forgiveness (tutu 1999). it shifts the imagination to ideas like those from john paul lederach (2005), who called for permanent platforms of continued dialogue and relationships post-violence. this, in turn, requires a shift in our strategic vision from one of justice through military victory to justice through loving dialogue, as mandela envisioned. as martin luther king, jr. (1962, 48) stated, “[l]ove is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend. christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 mckoy, jus ante bellum: enemy love and just war theory 131 we never get rid of an enemy by meeting hate with hate; we get rid of an enemy by getting rid of enmity.” references allawi, ali. 2007. the occupation of iraq: winning the war, losing the peace. new haven: yale university press. st. augustine. 1962. the political writings of st. augustine. washington, dc: regnery. bar-siman-tov, yaacov. 1998. “the united states and israel since 1948: a ‘special relationship’?” diplomatic history 22 (2): 231–262. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-7709.00115 bass, gary. 2004. “jus post bellum.” philosophy & public affairs 32 (4): 384–412. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1088-4963.2004.00019.x bell, daniel. 2009. just war as christian discipleship: recentering the tradition in the church rather than the state. grand rapids: brazos press. bellamy, alex. 2006. just wars: from cicero to iraq. malden: polity. biggar, nigel. 2013. in defence of war. oxford: oxford university press. blattman, christopher. 2022. why we fight: the roots of war and the paths of peace. new york: viking. chorin, ethan. 2012. exit the colonel: the hidden history of the libyan revolution. new york: publicaffairs. de waal, alex. 2013. “african roles in the libyan conflict of 2011.” international affairs 89 (2): 365–379. https://doi.org/10.1111/14682346.12022 dumbrell, john. 2006. a special relationship: angloamerican relations from the cold war to iraq. new york: palgrave macmillan. evans, gareth. 2004. “the responsibility to protect: rethinking humanitarian intervention.” proceedings of the annual meeting (american society of international law) 98 (march 31-april 3): 78–89. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0272503700060857 gent, stephen. 2007. “strange bedfellows: the strategic dynamics of major power military interventions.” journal of politics 69 (4): 1089– 1102. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.14682508.2007.00609.x gordon, michael and general bernard trainor. 2006. cobra ii: the inside story of the invasion and occupation of iraq. new york: vintage books. grovogui, siba n’zatioula. 2020 (november 20). “by ignoring african leaders, the west paved the way for chaos in libya.” foreign policy. foreignpolicy.com/2020/11/20/by-ignoring-africanleaders-the-west-paved-the-way-for-chaos-in-libya/ kaufman, stuart. 2015. modern hatreds: the symbolic politics of ethnic war. ithaca: cornell university press. king, martin luther, jr. 1962. strength to love. minneapolis: fortress press. kirchick, james. 2011 (september 6). “south africa stands with qaddafi.” the atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/ 2011/09/south-africa-stands-with-qaddafi/244584/ koschut, simon and andrea oelsner, eds. 2014. friendship and international relations. new york: palgrave macmillan. kuperman, alan. 2015. “obama’s libya debacle: how a well-meaning intervention ended in failure.” foreign affairs 94 (2): 66–77. jstor.org/stable/24483483 lederach, jon paul. 2005. the moral imagination: the art and soul of building peace. new york: oxford university press. miller, paul. 2021. just war and ordered liberty. new york: cambridge university press. noueihed, lin and alex warren. 2013. the battle for the arab spring. new haven: yale university press. pargeter, alison. 2012. libya: the rise and fall of qaddafi. new haven: yale university press. paris, roland. 2014. “the ‘responsibility to protect’ and the structural problems of preventive humanitarian intervention.” international peacekeeping 21 (5): 569–603. https://doi/full/10.1080/13533312.2014.963322 patterson, eric, ed. 2012. ethics beyond war’s end. washington, dc: georgetown university press. patterson, eric. 2023. a basic guide to the just war tradition: christian foundations and practices. grand rapids: baker academic. shogren, elizabeth. 1998. “mandela gives clinton a lecture on libya, cuba.” los angeles times, march 28. https://www.latimes.com/archives/laxpm-1998-mar-28-mn-33490-story.html tutu, desmond. 1999. no future without forgiveness. new york: doubleday. woodward, bob. 2004. plan of attack. new york: simon & schuster. michael mckoy is chair of the department of politics and international relations at wheaton college (il). his research focuses on the international politics of revolutions, and more recently on the international political thought of dr. martin luther king, jr. author email: michael.mckoy@wheaton.edu https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-7709.00115 https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-7709.00115 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1088-4963.2004.00019.x https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2346.12022 https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2346.12022 https://doi.org/10.1017/s0272503700060857 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2508.2007.00609.x https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2508.2007.00609.x https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/11/20/by-ignoring-african-leaders-the-west-paved-the-way-for-chaos-in-libya/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/11/20/by-ignoring-african-leaders-the-west-paved-the-way-for-chaos-in-libya/ https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/09/south-africa-stands-with-qaddafi/244584/ https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/09/south-africa-stands-with-qaddafi/244584/ https://www.jstor.org/stable/24483483 https://doi/full/10.1080/13533312.2014.963322 https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1998-mar-28-mn-33490-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1998-mar-28-mn-33490-story.html mailto:michael.mckoy@wheaton.edu christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 reynolds, gendered leadership in accord organizations 45 gendered leadership in accord organizations amy reynolds attention to gendered issues among christian development organizations is often more likely to address external programming than internal organizational dynamics. in this paper, i examine how christian development organizations are gendered in their leadership structure. i specifically examine the demographics of leadership in accord member organizations at three periods in time: 2015, 2018, and 2021. relying in part on data from tax records, i evaluate board and executive team compositions, the presence of female ceos, and the wage differential among senior leaders. i find that women are significantly underrepresented in leadership, especially at top levels. women earn less than men in similar positions. a number of organizations stand out for lacking any female representation on their executive teams and/or boards. the paper ends with some questions for the sector to ask and address moving forward. introduction across the international development sector, the need to address gendered inequalities as part of a development paradigm is widely recognized. but not all inequalities receive equal attention. for example, many organizations have programs that address gender-based violence and unequal access to economic resources, while less energy is directed to dealing with the ways gendered organizational dynamics shape programming and organizational strategies. even as attention has increased toward addressing such internal dynamics in the last couple of decades, more effort is still directed toward external programs than internal dynamics. the christian development sector is no exception to this, especially when it comes to internal dynamics that pertain to the gendered makeup of leadership teams. as this paper shows, the dominance of male leadership in christian development organizations is not representative of the sector as a whole, where most program participants and those employed are women. yet as birmingham and simard (2022) persuasively argue, diversity matters both as a theological imperative and for missional effectiveness. as highlighted in the principles for equality in development organizations (2019) preceding this article, increased women’s leadership in christian organizations is critical to accomplishing the overall mission of promoting shalom. we lack adequate data to diagnose the current state of the whole christian development sector around these issues, but this paper attempts partially to remedy this data gap by analyzing the gendered demographics of leadership in organizations in the accord network (hereafter simply “accord”). it also points to where significant work needs to be done. it begins by reviewing trends in gender and development, as well as the overall state of women’s leadership in the nonprofit sector. it then addresses the unique challenges and opportunities around this issue for the christian development sector. after explaining the methods used to gather and analyze information on the gender breakdown of leadership within accord organizations, i present the data on the different levels of leadership and discuss the implications. the state of women’s leadership in development work since the 1970s, there have been several initiatives to promote greater use of a gender lens in the international development sector, starting with women in development (wid). early works (e.g., boserup 1970) called development actors to consider specific needs of women within economic development efforts and address the ways that discrimination and inequality hindered women. this framing shifted with the gender and development (gad) paradigm in the 1980s and 1990s. gad focused less on women’s issues and more on the gendered structures that result in women’s marginalization. one piece of this is gender mainstreaming, discussed in the introduction to this journal issue (2025). gender mainstreaming entails making gender central in all efforts and demands addressing internal structures that shape organizational policies (eyben and turquet 2013). one aspect of gender mainstreaming is seeking gender parity within organizational leadership. traditionally, this includes paid officers, such as the chief executive officer or executive director, vicehttps://www.accordnetwork.org/ christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 reynolds, gendered leadership in accord organizations 46 presidents and other c-suite officers, as well as the board of directors. women have been making significant gains in leadership representation within the sector and now make up 69% of staff in the nonprofit sector and 62% of ceos (clerkin et al. 2024). however, women who do serve in leadership positions are more likely to work in newer organizations with smaller budgets (gorman 2005; lennon 2013). women make up slightly over 50% of nonprofit boards and serve as board chairs in over 50% of organizations surveyed (board source 2021; clerkin 2024). the sector is moving closer to greater parity and tracking more data around various metrics. most of the data on gender in the nonprofit sector fails to consider different outcomes based on the intersections of gender and race. candid launched an effort in 2019 that encouraged nonprofits to report data on diversity and their gendered demographics and tied such reporting to transparency seals. 1 to date, over 62,000 organizations have reported (clerkin et al. 2024). the ceo level is one measure for which intersectional data have been recorded. of the 63% of nonprofits led by a female ceo, 29% of those are led by women of color (for a total of 18% of all nonprofit leaders). yet for both women more generally and women of color, they are more represented in the leadership of smaller vs larger organizations (clerkin et al. 2024). some qualitative studies also highlight that women of color face higher challenges in serving in nonprofit leadership (biu 2019). the demographics of leadership teams are important for multiple reasons and have multiple impacts. women’s presence on a board or on a leadership team does not automatically translate into greater gender awareness or increased missional effectiveness. even so, often the strongest efforts to promote gender equality by and within organizations are often linked to women in leadership. having strong female voices in leadership often furthers organizational efforts towards equality (wallace 1998). in terms of board impact, although the presence of one woman on a board does not correlate with significant changes in an organization, having a critical number of women (often 3 or more) is associated with better gendered outcomes in an organization (erkut, krame, and koinrad 2009). to take a specific example, the higher the number of women and ethnic/racial minorities serving on a nonprofit board, the greater likelihood that the organization will have whistleblower policies in pace (ostrower 2007). even with increased attention to issues of diversity in leadership in the last decade—and increased women’s 1 candid provides perhaps the most comprehensive data available on the nonprofit sector and was formed in 2019 when guidestar and the foundation center merged. they give nonprofits a “seal of transparency” (bronze, silver, gold, or platinum) based on their transparency and data they make available (candid 2024). representation in leadership across sectors—there are concerns that some of this progress may have stalled or reversed. the covid-19 pandemic saw a reversal of efforts towards gender equality across most professional sectors; within the nonprofit sector, women were often on the frontlines, and experienced higher rates of burnout and increased personal responsibilities (mckinsey 2021; clary and rose 2021). in the last few years, a number of organizations distanced themselves more from efforts to increase gender diversity and create more gender inclusive environments (mckinsey 2024). given the current political administration’s antagonism toward diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives (dei), there will likely be fewer resources in the nonprofit sector directed towards increased gender diversity and inclusion. the unique challenges and opportunities of the christian development sector reasonable estimates suggest that between 30-50% of the nonprofit sector in the united states has consistently been religious from its inception to the present day (mccleary 2009). of the 100 largest charities in the united states, about one quarter of these are religious, and half of those—or 13 of the 100 largest charities—are religious nonprofits focused on meeting international needs (forbes 2023). marshall (2010) highlights how religious development organizations and non-religious organizations are different in how they approach gender issues. this may include differences in perspectives on family, gender roles, and sexuality. religious actors may be wary of secular feminist organizations that ignore the importance of religion, and feminist actors may discount religious actors, viewing them mainly as the key drivers of gender inequality. this is not to say (and marshall does not suggest) that religious actors are more opposed to gender equality than are other actors. for example, among christian actors, there is a wide range of responses to issues of equity, often driven by understandings of the christian faith. religious communities have both contributed to and hindered women’s empowerment; in this volume, jones and odhiambo (2025) highlight some of the ways this plays out on the ground. in many christian traditions, and especially among evangelical christian traditions, restrictions are often in place on the roles women can hold. this is especially true when it comes to positions of leadership. for many ecumenical evangelical organizations which bring together people of various traditions, there is often a christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 reynolds, gendered leadership in accord organizations 47 lack of clear theology around the leadership of women. senior leaders in christian nonprofits often disagree on the perspective of their organization around women’s leadership (reynolds and curry 2016). scholars have noted that the lack of clear organizational positions around gender is often linked with unclear and conflicting views held by leaders on the desirability of women’s leadership (gallagher 2003; cochran 2005). lack of a clear theology, or the presence of conflicting theologies about women, have been connected to broad cultural patterns that are not conducive to women’s leadership. in such uncertain situations, women who are hired are unlikely to stay (ingersoll 2003; creegan and pohl 2005; birmingham and simard 2022). women might be asked to lead but then face resistance when they do lead. in environments without clear commitments to women’s leadership, many women leaders leave after a short time and sign on with organizations that are more supportive of their gifts (ingersoll 2003). like organizations across the nonprofit world, christian development organizations are often influenced by the views and policies of donors and supporters. churches are often key supporters of nonprofits, in terms of both funding and personnel. many involved in the faith-based social and development sector are motivated by faith and may first encounter or learn about the work of a development organization through their church. nonprofits then may often be supported by denominations that vary significantly in their official theological stances towards women in leadership. some are clearly supportive, while others say little about their theologies as they relate to issues of women in leadership. still others see a hierarchy in men’s and women’s roles as being ordained by god, and thus a requirement of faithful obedience. this can naturally complicate things for nonprofit organizations that interact with a variety of churches. among the churches that officially do support women’s leadership in all areas, there are significant differences in their strategies. for example, even among churches or institutions that affirm women’s leadership in all areas, some direct intentional efforts towards developing women as leaders, while others invest very little in challenging longstanding male leadership patterns. gender inequality often persists in evangelical communities even when gender equality is valued, because these communities fail to address systemic issues that marginalize women (swartz 2022). moreover, research on some christian denominations that encourage women in leadership often reveals significant pay and leadership gaps between female and male clergy (schleifer and miller 2017). while christianity can often be a source of formal and informal gender barriers for women, there are also ways in which the christian faith can and does challenge women’s inequality in society. in the united states, many early women’s movements were led by christians and christian organizations (hassey 1989). for marginalized communities, religious institutions have often stepped forward to encourage people’s leadership when it was otherwise limited. to take an example from the black church, research finds christian churches played a key role in developing the leadership skills and providing leadership opportunities for both black women and men (patillo-mccoy 1998). for many black christian female leaders, regardless of whether their church supported them, faith was often a key driver in their persistence despite obstacles around them (dym and hutson 2005; gassman et al. 2011). christian development organizations and available data given these challenges, i would expect christian development organizations to lack gender parity and to lag behind the nonprofit sector more broadly. most of the research on nonprofits, including some of the research referenced here, often relies on qualitative data, making it hard to test this hypothesis. looking at the development sector specifically, a review of research from 1980-2014 finds that only 16% of research employs statistical data (brass et al. 2018), and that which does is often limited in scope. the quantitative data around demographics that are available are often based on self-reported data or responses to optional surveys (clarkin et al. 2024; board source 2021; lenon 2013; laponsky and larkin 2009). beyond the general challenges regarding data on the nonprofit sector, there are more specific challenges for those studying the religious nonprofit or religious development sector. often, religious nonprofits are not considered as a unique subset. while some self-studies exist (such as the 2021 leading edge reports on the gender gap in the jewish nonprofit sector), little macrolevel data exist on religious nonprofits. some of this is due to a lack of recognition of the importance of this subsector, and some may be due to definitions, because scholars disagree on what defines a religious organization (austin et al. 2022). more macro-level research is needed to map the gendered leadership dynamics in the religious nonprofit sector. ma and colleagues highlight some new possibilities for research in the us non-profit sector, and ways to make use of electronic tax data (ma 2021). tax forms have the advantage of not relying on organizations’ own self-reporting, thus avoiding biased samples. in addition, the metrics are similar across nonprofits. although some religious organizations can avoid filing as nonprofits through their classification as churches, most christian nonprofits file these reports annually, christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 reynolds, gendered leadership in accord organizations 48 allowing researchers to track organizations through publicly accessible records as well as over time. 2 methodology the purpose of this study is to assess the gender breakdown of leadership in christian development organizations. specifically, i compare numbers of women and men serving in ceo positions, on executive teams, and on boards of directors. i consider how this has changed over time, drawing on data points from 2015, 2018, and 2021. in investigating the christian development sector, i choose in this paper to focus on organizations that are members of the accord network. formed originally in 1977 as the association of evangelical relief and development organizations (aerdo), the aim of the umbrella group was to help christian development groups collaborate with one another and be in community; such a collaboration also fostered the possibility of small organizations being able collaboratively submit grant requests. accord is the largest network of christ-centered relief and development groups in the united states (offutt and reynolds 2019). other international christian networks include the act alliance (connected with the world council of churches), caritas internationalists (a catholic network), and micah global (an alliance of mostly evangelical organizations engaged in relief, development, advocacy and creation care). 3 i focus on accord organizations in this study for several reasons. there is much debate over what makes an organization “christian.” options include organizations with official denominational ties, those with religious histories, those that clearly express their christian purpose and identity in a mission statement, and those that focus on evangelistic activities (austin et al. 2022). by choosing to study accord organizations, we are selecting organizations that self-affiliate with christian development, which includes organizations across these different categories. second, from a data perspective, because accord is based in the us, it allows the use of the same set of published records—us tax records—for all organizations, creating a consistency in data collection. one challenge is in determining which organizations count as accord members for this study, because every year new organizations join while others 2 some organizations not required to file may make a “pro forma form 990” available to their audiences for transparency purposes—catholic relief services is one example (catholic relief services 2024). 3 the information referenced comes from the websites of these organizations: act alliance (actalliance.org), caritas (caritas.org), micah global (micahglobal.org). 4 the twelve with partial records are mostly organizations that became sizable nonprofits after 2015, as well as two that ceased filing (compassion international and masters touch global ministries) due to reclassification away from relief and development organizations. leave. much of this churn results from established organizations joining and leaving, but some is due also to the formation of new nonprofits and the closure or reclassification of others. for purposes of this study, i employ a broad definition, including both those that were part of accord in the years before the focus of this study (2010 and/or 2014), as well as those that are part of accord at the time of the study in 2024. data collection in terms of tax records, most organizations that claim a tax-exempt status at the federal level are required to file a form 990. exceptions exist for those with budgets under $200,000 (organizations that file an abbreviated form), or religious institutions like churches. some primarily mission-related organizations are exempt from filing, as well as groups that reclassified from nonprofits to churches. this analysis tracks organizations that filed in 2015, 2018, and 2021, for a total of 117 former and current accord organizations. twelve additional organizations have records for partial years within that period but were excluded from the analysis. 4 of these 117 nonprofits, only 44% are both current and past members, 38% are past members, and 18% are new members. in most cases, i pulled tax records from years ending in 2015, 2018, and 2021. there are a few cases for which an alternative filing was considered (2014 instead of 2015; 2017 instead of 2018) due to gaps in filing or the lack of availability in a particular year. tax records are usually available between 2-3 years after filing. for the earlier records (2015 and 2018), and with the assistance of student researchers, most of the data were coded by hand based on pdf filings. for 2021 data, new technologies now exist in accessing tax records, and such records were generally downloaded through the giving tuesday data commons (2024), though they had to be double-checked and cleaned. in a few cases, 2021 pdf files were consulted for information missing from the downloaded database. from the tax forms, i collected information on the organization’s expenses and revenues, the amount of revenue from government funding and in-kind gifts, and the location of headquarters. for 2021 organizations, there is also information on whether they have a whistleblower policy, which as previously mentioned, has been correlated with women serving in christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 reynolds, gendered leadership in accord organizations 49 leadership (ostrower 2007). in addition to this organizational data, i included information on all individuals listed in part vii of the 990, which includes officers, highly paid employees, 5 board members, and other key leaders. the salaries of these individuals— including direct salary, benefits, and salary paid by related organizations—were also collected. data coding while the tax records do require organizations to note who serves as trustees or officers, the hierarchy of individuals is not listed. along with student research assistants, i coded individuals into various categories. first, individuals were coded exclusively for this study as board or paid (even though some might occupy both positions). those noted as trustees and/or directors and who received no salary were coded as board members. in some cases, those receiving a minimal salary (under $30,000) were also coded as board members when it appeared that was their primary task. 6 paid members included those currently working for the organizations and former employees receiving salaries. paid members were categorized in one of four ways—as tier 1 (those serving as presidents or ceos), tier 2 (those serving on executive teams, such as those in vp positions, or presidents/directors of regions or countries), former (not currently serving), and nonexecutive (such as an assistant to the president or controller). in some cases, those listed as presidents and vice-presidents received no salary, and i coded these cases as board members instead of paid executives. in addition to coding titles, i also coded for gender. there is some room for error with coding, although i used different methods to try and minimize that error. people were coded based on pronouns or organizational data available on websites, linkedin profiles, and other web searches. in many cases, names strongly associated with one gender were coded accordingly (e.g. jonathan or adrianna). 7 data and analysis data overview table 1 provides an overview of the sample being considered in this paper. for 2015, 2018, and 2021, i include the 117 organizations with data for each of these three years. the typical (median) organization had expenses of between $2.5-$3 million, even though the average reported is much higher at between $45-52 5 organizations are required to list the five highest paid employees who make over 100,000 a year. 6 two organizations stood out for having numerous board members being paid between $20,000-$30,000: bethesda ministries and convoy of hope. 7 everyone was coded as female or male, as we did not run into cases of those identifying as non-binary in our overview among those in senior leadership positions. million due to the presence of a few very large organizations. the number and percentage of organizations with the smallest budgets (under $1 million) has declined over time, from 31% to 16%, though the number of organizations with budgets under $5 million remains similar over time, decreasing slightly from 65% in 2015 to 59% in 2021. the movement in the median over time is between 13-14%, which corresponds to the rate of inflation during this time (bls 2024). 2015 2018 2021 under $1 million 36 (31%) 28 (24%) 19 (16%) $1-2.5 million 22 (19%) 26 (22%) 37 (32%) $2.5-5 million 18 (15%) 20 (17%) 13 (11%) $5-10 million 6 (5%) 9 (8%) 13 (11%) $10-25 million 15 (13%) 13 (11%) 11 (9%) $25-50 million 7 (6%) 5 (4%) 9 (8%) $50-100million 4 (3%) 6 (5%) 6 (5%) $100-250million 3 (3%) 4 (3%) 3 (3%) $250-500 million 3 (3%) 2 (2%) 1 (1%) $500 million plus 3 (3%) 4 (3%) 5 (4%) mean expenses $44.6 million $46.0 million $50.6 million median expenses $2.51 million $2.83 million $3.13 million total n 117 117 117 table 1: budget size of accord members table 2 presents a breakdown on the people serving within these organizations. two different categories are reported—the first is the board of directors, which vary in size, are usually unpaid, and generally govern the organizations and help set priorities. executive teams, which include the president and ceo and others in senior leadership (sometimes referred to as c-suite) are also included, even though some nonprofits lack paid executive teams. boards were much larger than executive teams, with at least half of the organizations having nine members or more on their board. boards were also the place where women were the best represented, although they were still significantly underrepresented. women have slowly increased their percentages of board positions over time, from 24% in 2015 to 30% in 2021. christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 reynolds, gendered leadership in accord organizations 50 2015 2018 2021 average (mean) board size 10 10 11 median board size 9 9 9 percentage of females on the board 24% 26% 30% average (mean) executive team size 2.4 2.4 3.0 organizations with … no exec team 10 11 11 1 leader 60 52 42 2+ leaders 47 55 65 a female exec 38 (32%) 42 (36%) 50 (43%) only male execs 69 (59%) 64 (55%) 56 (53%) number of female executives 54 out of 276 (20%) 58 out of 285 (20%) 93 out of 374 (25%) organizations with female ceo 8 15 out of 106 (14%) 18 out of 103 (17%) 18 out of 101 (18%) total n 117 117 117 table 2: leadership overview of accord organizations comparatively, the mean number of executive team members was 2.4, with almost half of organizations having two or fewer executive members (in 2015 and 2018, half of the organizations had one or zero executive members). because many teams are so small, i consider which teams had any paid female executives. only 38 out of the 107 organizations that had a paid executive or executive team in 2015 had a female serving—or 36% of teams. by 2021 that number had increased to 47%, though that still means over half of organizations with paid executives lacked any female executives. women’s representation was the lowest for the ceo or top-level position. 14% of the organizations had a female leader in 2015, a number that improves slightly to 17% in 2018 and 18% in 2021. unlike the other measures, this did not change considerably between 2015 and 2021. in the sections that follow, i examine each of these three general categories (board, executive teams, and top leaders) separately, looking more deeply into variation among the accord sample. it is important to highlight that the general lack of women in leadership 8 this number is out of organizations that have a paid individual in a tier 1 role. is not because most of these organizations lack policies that would allow for women in leadership. based on the recent accord survey (offutt and reynolds 2019), over three-quarters of accord member organizations rated gender inequality to be a somewhat or very important issue for their organization to address. the lack of critical levels of female representation on boards the power that boards hold varies across organizations, with some boards having much more decision-making power than others. schietle (2010) has noted the varied authority they have in setting goals, supervising leaders, or hiring. even as their power varies, boards play an important role in shaping how the dollars of nonprofits are spent. as reported in table 2, the average number of board members per organization was between 10-11, and the average percentage of female board members an organization had was between 2430%. in other words, among christian development organizations, there was a ratio of about 1:3 for women to men holding board or trustee level positions. this is half of what is reported in the nonprofit sector generally, where the average board is between 52-53% female (board source 2021; clarkin 2024). 2015 2018 2021 no female board members 19 (16%) 12 (10%) 10 (9%) under 33% female 63 (54%) 66 (56%) 55 (47%) between 33%50% female 25 (21%) 30 (26%) 34 (29%) 50% female 5 (4%) 4 (3%) 4 (3% between 50-67% female 3 (3%) 3 (3%) 9 (8%) over 67% female 2 (2%) 2 (2%) 5(4%) no male board members 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 0 (0%) average % board female 24% 26% 30 % total n 117 117 117 table 3: boards categorized by percentage of female members while women’s overall underrepresentation on boards is important to note, considering only the average can hide the variance among accord organizations. as previously noted, research suggests that having at least 3 or more women on a board, or about one-third of the board in this case, is the critical number needed for women’s voices to be included christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 reynolds, gendered leadership in accord organizations 51 (erkut, krame, and koinrad 2009). otherwise, it is likely that women may serve as tokens or be pitted against each other. in table 3 i use this one-third measure as a benchmark; i categorize organizations in part based on whether one-third of their board is female or male. figure 1 presents a visual of the percentages of organizations in each of these categories. these numbers are alarming for two reasons. perhaps the most striking is that 19 organizations in 2015 had no women serving on their board of directors (a number that decreases to 10 by 2021). this bears further investigating as to why women on boards have been absent. it seems likely that in many of these organizations women were actively excluded or discriminated against, if one accepts that appointing a female to one position among ten or eleven possible positions is unlikely to be a challenging task. table 3 also shows that none of the 117 accord member organizations lacked a male voice on their board in any of the time periods. the second noteworthy finding is that most accord organizations lacked a critical concentration of women serving on their boards, although very few lacked a critical mass of men serving. based on the onethird benchmark, the ideal would normally be to have women and men each represent at least one-third of the board. 9 only 28% (or 33 organizations) met this goal in 2015. by 2021, 40% (or 47 organizations) met this goal, a sizable improvement, but which still means that half of organizations failed to meet this wide target. for logistical regressions including years, expenses, receipt of government funding, and the existence of a whistleblower policy as variables, none is significant in predicting which organizations had no or few women serving. perhaps future analyses could add controls for theological variables and political commitments, as well as peer networks, to consider if these explain some of the variance. 9 i acknowledge there could be situations where an all-female or all-male board might be strategic, but this is not the case for most international development organizations that partner with women and men around the world in their programmatic efforts. christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 reynolds, gendered leadership in accord organizations 52 accord executive teams lack gender parity of the 117 accord organizations in this sample, 106-107 had paid executive teams during the period of 2015-2021. for those with only one paid leader, it was often someone serving at a ceo or presidential level, although in some cases that paid leader was serving at the second tier to an unpaid president. as noted previously in table 2, of the 106-107 accord organizations with paid leadership teams, a significant number had only one paid leader (60 in 2015, 52 in 2018, and 42 in 2021). in this section, i analyze the gender composition of executive teams, and i consider only the 47-64 groups across the years that had executive teams with multiple paid leaders. table 4 provides a categorization of organizations based on the levels of women and men serving on executive teams, similar to the levels reported in table 3 for board members. figure 2 (next page) likewise portrays the percentages of female executive leaders for the 47-64 organizations each year with executive teams. 2015 2018 2021 no female executives 18 (38%) 25 (46%) 24 (38%) under 33% female 12 (26%) 12 (22%) 14 (22%) between 33%50% female 9 (19%) 8 (15%) 11 (17%) 50% female 7 (15%) 9 (17%) 10 (16%) between 50-67% female 1 (2%) 0 4 (6%) over 67% female 0 0 1 (2%) no male executives 0 0 0 n 47 54 64 table 4: executive teams of two or more categorized by percentage of female leaders as noted in table 2, women made up between 20% (2015) to 25% (2021) of those serving on the executive teams for accord organizations. figure 2 (next page) reveals that among the organizations that had executive teams with multiple paid members, women were rarely represented in equitable numbers. in fact, no organizations in the sample had only female executive team members listed on their tax forms (when multiple leaders were listed). yet over a third of accord organizations with paid executive teams had only men serving in such positions. using the one-third target, the data reveal that a minority of organizations have executive teams that are at least one-third female and one-third male. about a third (37%) of organizations in 2015 had teams between 33% and 67% female. this number drops to 30% in 2018, and then rises slightly to 32% in 2021. this number does not seem to improve over time, unlike the board percentages for which positive change had occurred over the six-year period. in 2021, while 98% of organizations with executive teams of two or more were at least one-third male, only 40% of organizations had teams that were at least one-third female. these organizations are thus almost always likely to have men represented in the decision-making (and paid decision making)—but they are more likely to lack women in this decision-making process. another way to compare women’s parity on executive teams is to consider salary and pay equity. figure 3 (next page) presents a visual of the salaries received by women and men executives in accord organizations in 2015, 2018, and 2021. it shows the difference in the average amount received by women and men leading organizations. for example, in 2021, men serving in a vice-presidential or other c-suite role averaged $181 thousand compared to women who averaged $169 thousand. figure 4, on the other hand, shows details of what this represents in terms of the total dollars paid to women and men executives leading organizations in the sample of 117 organizations over the three time points. i ran a regression on salary (not presented here) in which i included the variables of expenses of the organization, year, whether an organization is currently part of accord, the tier the person occupies, and the person’s gender. i found that gender was statistically significant, and these variables together explain 22% of the variation of pay among leaders. with these controls, being female is associated with $20,374 dollars less a year, a statistic that is significant at a .001 level. this is similar to candid’s finding that male ceos received about 27% more on average than their female counterparts (clerkin 2024). when one considers the pay disparity and the underrepresentation of women on leadership teams, the financial reality is staggering, as evidenced by figure 4 (next page). in 2021, for example, $55.4 million dollars in expenses were spent on the salaries of male accord leaders, compared to $19.4 million for female accord leaders—the most equitable of the years being studied. another way to think about this is that for every dollar a person contributes towards leadership teams, $.26 went to women and $.74 went to men. for 2015, that amount was $.19 for women out of a dollar. these are numbers that donor communities should be aware of as they consider how they give resources. christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 reynolds, gendered leadership in accord organizations 53 christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 reynolds, gendered leadership in accord organizations 54 only a few women ceos serve in accord organizations table 2 on p. 14 shows the number of accord organizations with women serving as ceos. this number was 15 (out of 106) organizations in 2015, 18 (out of 103) in 2018, and 18 (out of 101) in 2021. as evidenced in figure 3 on p. 17, those women also received significantly less in terms of salary. female ceos in accord organizations averaged $128 thousand in 2021 compared to $177 thousand for male ceos, or 72% of what their male counterparts earned. some, but not all, of this is likely due to the budget size of organizations. figure 5 below presents the percentage of organizations with female ceos grouped by budget size. accord organizations look drastically different in terms of the percentage of female ceos than the nonprofit sector generally. instead of the 62% figure of women ceos in the nonprofit sector overall (clerkin et al. 2024), women in the accord network made up only 18% of ceos in 2021. even in the organizations with small budgets of between $1-$2.5 million dollars, women accounted for only about a quarter of those holding the ceo positions. these patterns for accord organizations also look different than for other nonprofits in the united states, where women’s representation decreases as budgets increase (lennon 2013; clerkin et al. 2024). in the accord network, women are more likely to serve as ceos in small organizations and large organizations, but not the midrange ones. the reasons for this need to be further investigated, but it may because larger organizations are more likely to engage with secular actors or in networks where women in leadership are more common. of note is the fact that there has been little progress over the past 6 years. this stands in contrast to boards and executive teams, for which, on average, women’s representation is increasing. some accord organizations appear open to women being on leadership teams, but may still be resistant to women serving as the key leader. further inquiry into obstacles that exist around this role would be helpful. past qualitative research on women leading in evangelical settings (ingersoll 2003; creegan and pohl 2005) suggests that those obstacles may be due to conflicting attitudes many christians hold around fully supporting women in leadership, or to a lack of commitment and intentionality toward gender equality by the organizations (reynolds and curry 2016). discussion and conclusion organizations affiliated with the accord network have a significant problem when it comes to the role of women in leadership. not only are women substantially underrepresented when it comes to the ceo position, executive teams and boards, but a significant number of organizations lack female representation entirely on their boards and/or executive teams, a situation that is both startling and concerning. moreover, the low average overall means that few organizations have the critical number of women in leadership necessary for the real inclusion of women’s voices. these low numbers typically make the climate less hospitable for the few women who are currently serving and leading (birmingham and simard 2022). for organizations in accord that seek the flourishing and shalom of women and men around the world, and who deal with issues like gender-based christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 reynolds, gendered leadership in accord organizations 55 violence and discrimination towards women, all of this seems especially problematic. we must ask why so many accord organizations lack female leadership. as suggested earlier, part of the explanation may be because of resistance on the part of some organizations to have women serving, perhaps due to cultural or theological perspectives. while it was previously reported that three-quarters of accord organizations claim gender equity to be a value, this means that almost one-quarter do not. indeed, they may hold the opposite value. other organizations say they value it, but do little to make it happen. it is worth noting here that accord has eight principles of integral mission to which all members subscribe. some of these engage the issue of co-laboring with partners, but none touches upon the importance of women and men serving together. if having women and men thrive in exercising their talents for the kingdom is indeed a value for accord, then it is important for them to say it openly and clearly. currently, a lack of clarity among organizations on their theological commitment is a key factor stunting efforts towards gender equality in christian organizations (reynolds and curry 2016). more clarity by accord on whether all-male leadership is a theologically or practically sound practice would be very helpful. if gender equity is indeed important for accord and its work of integral mission, clarity on this issue would likely drive organizations to be more intentional about it. if gender discrimination is considered appropriate or permissible in only some instances, that should also be clearly stated (as well as identifying which situations). it may be that fully empowering women is a value accord is not willing to strongly embrace, or on which the network is willing to have members agree to disagree. stating this clearly might help some organizational members know whether accord is truly supportive of women in leadership. much research and many resources exist in terms of best practices for organizations that wish to provide more inclusive workplaces, whether around gender or around gender and race/ethnicity. some of this is specifically directed towards christian nonprofits like accord members (reynolds and curry 2016; birmingham and simard 2022). some of these practices include intentionally investing in diversity (in terms of both time and resources), fostering discussion around gender for all members, outspoken support of gender equity among top leaders, both male and female, performing gender audits, and regularly assessing the organization. finally, the research done for this study raises questions about the commitment to transparency and availability of data by members of the accord network. principle eight of accord’s integral mission principles states that “we tell the story with integrity” (accord 2024), meaning that they value truth and transparency in how members talk about their work, and “what (they) choose to say.” the data on gendered and racial demographics are important for organizations to report, and having targets for female representation is tied to greater female representation in organizations (sojo et al. 2016). organizations should report on these demographics publicly. while the european union’s corporate sustainability reporting directive (csrd) requires this of many nonprofits, in the usa to date organizations do not have to reveal this level of information. i recognize the limitations that come with using tax data—while one can reasonably (with some error) code for gender, the same is not true for issues of race and/or disability. only with greater transparency from organizations can we track trends and measure progress in the field. candid (see clerkin et al. 2024) is in the process of self-collecting such data from organizations that choose to report, which is already a good step. but even in these cases, the intersection of race and gender is rarely reported. for example, organizations list people of color serving and women serving on their boards, but do not provide information on women of color serving on these boards. for organizations committed both to transparency and to reporting, it would be useful to report racial/ethnic and gender data in overlapping ways, so that analysis can move beyond considering gender alone (as done in this paper) and consider how it interacts with race and ethnicity. further, as some financial data is reported, donors might also request more transparency related to whom is being paid with their contributions. considering these various data points is vital for assessing and addressing the range of challenges women face in the leadership of accord organizations. references accord. 2024. “integral mission principles.” https://accord-network.org/principles. accessed july 2024. birmingham, beth, and eeva sallinen simard. 2022. creating cultures of belonging: cultivating organizations where women and men thrive. downers grove: intervarsity press. biu, ofronama. 2019. race to lead: women of color in the nonprofit sector. building movement project. https://racetolead.org/womenof-color/ boardsource. 2021. “leading with intent: boardsource index of nonprofit practices.” https://leadingwithintent.org/ https://accord-network.causemachine.com/im-principles https://accord-network.org/principles https://racetolead.org/women-of-color/ https://racetolead.org/women-of-color/ https://leadingwithintent.org/ christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 reynolds, gendered leadership in accord organizations 56 boserup, ester. 1970. women’s role in economic development. oxford: earthscan publications. brass, jennifer n., wesley longhofer, rachel s. robinson, and allison schnable. 2018. “ngos and international development: a review of thirty-five years of scholarship.” world development 112: 136–49. bureau of labor statistics. 2024. “cpi inflation calculator.” available at https://data.bls.gov/cgibin/cpicalc.pl. accessed august 2024. candid. 2024. “about us.” available at https://candid.org/about. accessed august 2024. catholic relief services. “financial reports.” available at https://www.crs.org/about/financialreports/pro-forma-irs-form-990. accessed august 2024. center for global development. 2018 (march). “it's high time we walk the talk on gender equality in global development workplaces. here's how.” https://www.cgdev.org/blog/its-hightime-we-walk-talk-global-development-workplacesheres-how. clerkin, cathleen. 2024 (april 26). “more women work in nonprofits. so why do men end up leading them?” harvard business review. https://hbr.org/2024/04/more-women-work-innonprofits-so-why-do-men-end-up-leading-them? clerkin, cathleen, mantin diomande, anna koob, and guy mika. 2024. the state of diversity in the u.s. nonprofit sector. candid. doi:10.15868/socialsector.43685 cochran, pamela. 2005. evangelical feminism: a history. new york: nyu press. creegan, nicole, and christine pohl. 2005. living on the boundaries: evangelical women, feminism, and the theological academy. downers grove: ivp academic. dym, barry, and harry hutson. 2005. leadership in nonprofit organizations: lessons from the third sector. thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. erkut, sumru, vicki kramer, and alison konrad. 2008. “critical mass; does the number of women on a corporate board make a difference?” in susan vinnicombe, val singh, ronald j. burke, diana bilimoria, and morten huse, eds. women on corporate boards of directors: international research and practice. cheltenham: edward elgar publishing. eyben, rosalind and laura turquet. 2013. feminists in development organizations: change from the margins. warwickshire: practical action publishing. forbes. 2023. “the 100 largest u.s. charities.” forbes magazine. retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/top-charities/list/#. gallagher, sally. 2003. evangelical identity and gendered family life. new brunswick: rutgers university press. gasman, marybeth, noah d. drezner, edward epstein, tyrone freeman, and vida l. avery. 2011. race, gender, and leadership in nonprofit organizations. london: palgrave macmillan. giving tuesday data commons. 2024. contains information from 990 part 7a officers and form 990 basic fields. available at https://990data.givingtuesday.org/datamarts/ under the open database license (odbl). accessed july 2024. hassey, janette. 1989. "a brief history of christian feminism." transformation 6 (2): 1–5. ingersoll, julie. 2003. evangelical christian women: war stories in the gender battles. new york: nyu press. laponsky, lucie, and deborah larkin. 2009. white house project: benchmarking women’s leadership. new york: white house project. leading edge. 2021. the gender gap in jewish nonprofit leadership: an ecosystem view. https://www.leadingedge.org/resource/the-gendergap-in-jewish-nonprofit-leadership/. lennon, tiffani. 2013. benchmarking women’s leadership in the united states. denver: university of denver. ma, ji. 2021. “automated coding using machine learning and remapping the u.s. nonprofit sector: a guide and benchmark.” nonprofit and voluntary sector quarterly 50 (3): 662–87. marshall, katherine. 2010. “development, religion, and women’s roles in contemporary societies.” the review of faith and international affairs 8 (4): 33–40. doi:10.1080/15570274.2010.528970 mcclearly, rachel. 2009. global compassion: private voluntary organizations and u.s. foreign policy since 1939. new york: oxford university press. mckinsey & company 2021. women in the workplace 2021. https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/fea tured%20insights/diversity%20and%20inclusion/w omen%20in%20the%20workplace%202021/wom en-in-the-workplace-2021.pdf. mckinsey & company. 2024. women in the workplace 2024. https://www.mckinsey.com/featuredinsights/diversity-and-inclusion/women-in-theworkplace. offutt, stephen, and amy reynolds. 2019. “christian ideas of development.” christian relief, development, and advocacy journal 1 (1): 1–14. https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl https://candid.org/about https://www.crs.org/about/financial-reports/pro-forma-irs-form-990 https://www.crs.org/about/financial-reports/pro-forma-irs-form-990 https://www.cgdev.org/blog/its-high-time-we-walk-talk-global-development-workplaces-heres-how https://www.cgdev.org/blog/its-high-time-we-walk-talk-global-development-workplaces-heres-how https://www.cgdev.org/blog/its-high-time-we-walk-talk-global-development-workplaces-heres-how https://hbr.org/2024/04/more-women-work-in-nonprofits-so-why-do-men-end-up-leading-them https://hbr.org/2024/04/more-women-work-in-nonprofits-so-why-do-men-end-up-leading-them https://www.forbes.com/top-charities/list/ https://990data.givingtuesday.org/datamarts/ https://www.leadingedge.org/resource/the-gender-gap-in-jewish-nonprofit-leadership/ https://www.leadingedge.org/resource/the-gender-gap-in-jewish-nonprofit-leadership/ https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/featured%20insights/diversity%20and%20inclusion/women%20in%20the%20workplace%202021/women-in-the-workplace-2021.pdf https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/featured%20insights/diversity%20and%20inclusion/women%20in%20the%20workplace%202021/women-in-the-workplace-2021.pdf https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/featured%20insights/diversity%20and%20inclusion/women%20in%20the%20workplace%202021/women-in-the-workplace-2021.pdf https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/mckinsey/featured%20insights/diversity%20and%20inclusion/women%20in%20the%20workplace%202021/women-in-the-workplace-2021.pdf https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/diversity-and-inclusion/women-in-the-workplace https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/diversity-and-inclusion/women-in-the-workplace https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/diversity-and-inclusion/women-in-the-workplace christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 reynolds, gendered leadership in accord organizations 57 ostrower, francie. 2007. nonprofit governance in the united states: findings of performance and accountability from the first national representative study. washington dc: the urban institute. patillo-mccoy, mary. 1998. “church culture as a strategy of action in the black community.” american sociological review 63 (6): 767–784. reynolds, amy, and janel curry. 2016. best practices for recruiting, attracting, and retaining women in leadership in christian nonprofits. report for the women in leadership national study. wenham: gordon college. sojo, victor, robert wood, sally wood, and melissa wheeler. 2016. “reporting requirements, targets, and quotas for women in leadership.” the leadership quarterly 27 (3): 519–536. scheitle, christopher. 2010. beyond the congregation: the world of christian nonprofits. new york: oxford university press. schleifer, cyrus and amy miller. 2017.” occupational gender inequality among american clergy, 1976–2016: revisiting the stained-glass ceiling.” sociology of religion 78 (4): 387–410. swartz, lisa. 2022. stained glass ceilings: how evangelicals do gender and practice power. new brunswick: rutgers university press. wallace, tina. 1998 “institutionalizing gender in uk ngos.” development in practice 8 (2): 159–172. amy reynolds is an associate professor of sociology at wheaton college, where she specializes in economic globalization, religion, and gender. author email: amy.reynolds@wheaton.edu mailto:amy.reynolds@wheaton.edu christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 smith, reading the bible for gender in development 75 reading the bible for gender in development brian albert smith christian relief and development organizations make frequent and overt use of scripture in publicfacing publications, internal documentation, and field-level materials. connections between the bible and gender equality programming within such organizations are less obvious. this is perhaps not surprising, but it is unfortunate. recent developments in the field of biblical studies provide an opportunity for engaging the bible through the lens of gender equality work and vice versa. following an overview of the practice of biblical studies and an exploration of just how scripture has been used in gender in development contexts, readings of three biblical passages illustrate the possibility of a more robust engagement with scripture where christian development and gender meet. introduction a casual glance at any number of christian relief, development, and advocacy (rda) organization websites provides ample evidence that faith plays a prominent role in the field. 1 christian organizations display and describe faith as a foundational and motivating factor of their work. the bible is typically less visible than other indicators of faith, but within a few clicks one can usually find a “values” or “beliefs” statement that will often (but not always) include an organization’s claims about the bible and its importance to the agency’s operations. if the bible itself is not explicitly named, language such as “gospel,” “jesus,” “christ,” “salvation,” “church,” etc., testifies that the organization is rooted in the teachings of christian scriptures. yet explicit connections between the bible and such organizations’ work on gender are less obvious. despite the growth of gender equality awareness and efforts in all sectors of development, it is unclear (at least publicly) how the bible can and does intersect with agencies’ efforts at gender equality. this may be a reflection of the natural and necessary division between the public face of christian rda organizations and the in-house biblical and theological work 2 behind any particular gender equality programming. further, the subject of gender is contentious in society, and equally (if not more so) contentious within the church. christian rda organizations are no doubt aware of this 1 offutt and reynolds (2019) provide a descriptive analysis of christian rda organizations. 2 while there is overlap between biblical studies and theology, i will focus exclusively on the use of scripture and biblical studies in this paper. christian theology is typically grounded, to a greater or lesser degree, in the bible, but i am ultimately most interested in how scripture does and does not function to support gender equality work within christian rda organizations. contention, and therefore may be hesitant to make explicit, public connections between scripture and gender equality programming. a resolution to this situation is far beyond the scope of this brief paper. but given the importance of the bible to the various constituencies of christian rda organizations, it is unfortunate that it does not play a stronger public role in supporting their gender equality efforts. i hope to demonstrate that christian rda organizations can take advantage of recent trends in biblical studies to make better use of scripture to support their gender equality efforts in a way that is both sensitive to the particular constituencies of the christian rda community and reflective of the current field of biblical studies. my suggestions here can find application in programming as well as in the lives of development professionals. part one provides a brief historical overview of the practice of biblical studies to contextualize current scholarly practice and my own recommendations which follow in part three. part two examines the current intersection(s) of the bible, christian development work, and gender. part three offers methodological considerations and then provides three examples of gender-sensitive approaches to reading the bible. methodological context modern biblical interpretation traces its origins to the protestant reformation. in general terms, the christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 smith, reading the bible for gender in development 76 reformation began a shift from “pre-critical” to the “critical” reading of scripture. this was due in part to an interest in non-ecclesial, popular scriptural interpretation among the reformers, though roman catholic hermeneutics was also ultimately affected by this change. pre-critical interpretations were often marked by allegorical and theological methodologies. the reformation brought a renewed commitment to the text, its own history, and the original languages of scripture. this new focus paved the way for enlightenment influences on biblical study. those influences have profoundly shaped the field up to the present day (gonzáles 1994). the past several decades of biblical scholarship have seen an explosion of interpretive methodologies that moved the discipline beyond the western, historical-critical lens that dominated the 20th century. 3 broadly speaking, the central focus of biblical interpretation has moved away from questions of authorship and textual development, redaction, and transmission, to interests in the text as literature and questions central to the interests of interpretive communities and individual readers. 4 at present, one finds a veritable smorgasbord of hermeneutical choices in the scholarship, with the latest in african, queer, and latino/a/e studies taking their places alongside textual criticism, archaeological analysis, and hebrew language work. the locus of significance or meaning is a helpful consideration in illustrating the concerns of the major groups of interpretive methodologies. in the latter half of the nineteenth and well into the twentieth century, christian biblical scholarship held that the meaning of a biblical text was best found in its origins: what it meant to the author and his 5 audience was critical to establishing appropriate meanings for the contemporary reader. one may describe this approach as “behind the text,” 6 the interpreter’s concern is with the author and the historical context that gave rise to their writing/collecting/editing. readers will focus their efforts on establishing why a text was written, for whom, and when, before drawing out contemporary 3 see, for example, mckenzie and hayes (1999) for an exploration of this shift. 4 examples abound; a brief and helpful summary can be found in sharp (2010). yee (2007) provides a text-specific collection of examples. for important new biblical readings in non-western contexts, see sugirtharajah (2016). 5 while some scholars have posited that a few biblical texts may have been written by women, it is most likely the case that the vast majority, if not all, of the authors, compilers, and editors of the scriptures were men, given the patriarchal nature of the ancient societies out of which the hebrew bible and christian scriptures come. 6 i am indebted to william randolph tate (2014) for this framework. tate categorizes biblical study methodologies according to three interpretive “worlds”: author, text, and reader. 7 an excellent discussion (with examples) of this kind of work is powell (1995). a more recent example of an evangelical commentary with a heavy narrative emphasis is strauss (2014). as far back as 1982, robert k. johnston was considering evangelical interpretation in light of this methodological shift. significance and application for themselves and their communities. unsurprisingly, determining such facts about ancient texts is not easy, and one reason scholarship turned its focus away from “behind the text” is that most scholars could not agree on the “when” or the “for whom.” even if some consensus could be found, authorship and authorial intent came under serious fire by the middle of the twentieth century. biblical scholarship followed the lead of literary scholarship more broadly and began to study the text itself in ways that celebrated the bible as literature. in this view, biblical texts establish meaning through rhetorical device, structure, word choice, characterization, dialogue, etc., and they can do so independent of the original setting of the author, the first audiences, or even events described in the text. i refer to this interpretive emphasis as reading “within the text.” while some more conservative readers might be unnerved by a departure from traditional historically grounded hermeneutics, many have found this particular focus on the text to be a helpful addition to the methodological toolkit. 7 in the end, the shift from author to text set the stage for the most recent developments in biblical studies: acknowledging the power of the reader in making meaning. higher-critical methods too often assumed that interpreters operated objectively, sifting evidence and drawing conclusions without bias or prejudice. but assumptions of readerly objectivity waned as the world became more interconnected and as the biblical studies guild acknowledged the hegemony of the white, male, european perspective that had established its rules and determined its conclusions. readers began to openly admit their perspectives, goals, and biases. this newfound openness has allowed for interpretations based on affinity and identity, spanning and intersecting the varying components of self and community. we may refer to this type of reading as “in front of the text,” with the reader becoming an active and essential participant in making and discovering meaning, in conversation with the text and with other readers and communities. this addition to the methodological field consciously christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 smith, reading the bible for gender in development 77 places contemporary readers in the history of interpretations, admitting that our social contexts and experiences play profoundly significant, if not determinative, roles in our understandings of scripture. many scholars have found this to be a hallmark of postmodernism and a slippery slope into relativism; others have discovered here a way through the challenges that the historical critical methodologies of modernism fail to address. 8 currently, biblical studies is something of an eclectic field. scholars work in one area or another, drawing from one, two, or all three of these arenas in their readings of biblical texts. below i will demonstrate the value of an imbricated approach, one that simultaneously values and layers each of the three periods in the recent history of biblical studies: contextual work behind the bible, rhetorical analysis of the text itself, and readerly questioning based on their own interests and the interests of those with whom they are in relationship. i believe this approach will prove beneficial for those working in christian rda organizations—in program development, in the field, and even in donor relations. i hope to demonstrate the need and possibility for a more robust engagement with scripture where christian development and gender meet. first, i will discuss the intersections of christian development, scripture, and gender, before proposing how to read the bible for gender in christian development work. the bible, christian development work, and gender the bible and christian development work: in walking with the poor, bryant myers (2011 [1999]) advocates for a holistic, shalom-centered approach to transformational development. myers’ work is important for this discussion because it functions as a “primary framing device” within the accord network (offutt and reynolds 2019, 12), particularly on the issue of poverty, and is thus likely illustrative of how christian rda organizations make use of the bible. myers makes frequent reference to the bible and the bible’s story, for the goals of transformation are “derived from the biblical story” (2011, 330). myers’ view of the bible is representative of evangelicals, who typically have a “high” view of scripture. 9 he uses the bible primarily in a way that is generally called “proof 8 for something of a classic evangelical critique of post-modern methodologies such as reader-response criticism, see barton (1996, especially 235). sharp (2010), and clark-soles (2010) offer more recent and nuanced perspectives. for an excellent discussion of the intersection of post-modern relativism and christian faith, see downing (2006, 181– 208). 9 this is often described as “biblicism,” in which bible is an object of devotion, is inspired by god, and is the source of all spiritual truth (bebbington 1989, 12–13). for a recent important discussion of the phrase “a high view of scripture,” its implications, and function within the church, see allert (2007). texting,” in which a verse or passage is called upon to support a statement or argument without a deeper analysis of its text or context. for example, a single paragraph about the “kingdom of god” includes eight references to four different biblical books: six are only parenthetic references, and the two quotations are provided without context (88). there is little critical engagement with the bible in which one would consider historical and literary contexts and significant cultural issues (for both author and reader). myers does articulate ways in which the bible can function within christian rda efforts (beyond merely justifying or motivating development work), and he provides resources on “why the bible is important” and “how the bible must be used,” including three examples of community-based bible engagement activities in relief contexts (330–341). two appendices with lists of topics and corresponding biblical passages follow. these are intended to be helpful reference lists, but are also a final example of an engagement with the bible that rarely moves beyond citing and describing the chapter and verse into a deeper analysis of its meaning in its fuller scriptural context (353–355). myers’ goal, of course, is changing relief and development work rather than doing biblical study, and he does engage significant practitioners in both theology and biblical studies. but the book itself manifests a curious irony. while building the case for transformational development, myers uses the bible as a supportive document, as mentioned above, primarily through the method of “proof-texting.” yet when discussing “how the bible must be used” (presumably in the field), myers begins to articulate the sort of questions and emphases that will interest many contemporary biblical scholars. his plea for a “life-tobible” (335) approach to biblical engagement in development resonates well with the third category of biblical scholarship described above: reading “in front of the text.” myers’ desire to see a reader-centered, context-sensitive engagement of the bible within development work is both commendable and christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 smith, reading the bible for gender in development 78 admirable, even if it is not consistently engaged. 10 despite the shortcomings, myers’ desire for a deeper engagement with scripture throughout development can compel us toward stronger intersections of gender, development, and the bible. a more recent illustration of how the bible operates in christian development is selina palm’s survey, “one body, many voices” (2021). this important study demonstrates the nuance and complexity in biblical reading, interpretation, and application found in development contexts in the global south. palm’s findings include “[n]ew ways of reading scriptures [in latin america and the caribbean] to open up biblical mandates for inclusive social engagement with sacred texts by lay people,” and “new contextual african readings” in response to the “colonial misuse of scripture to legitimize slavery and colonization…” (24, 38). palm sees her findings as part of the increase in “attention being given to vernacular, contextual bible interpretations from outside the west” (24). 11 the academy’s recent inclusion of readercentered methodologies can provide important tools to engage audiences within development. indeed, she concludes that “[c]ritical interpretive methodologies place the bible in constructive conversation with ordinary people’s lived experiences, diverse faith traditions, and the ongoing role of the spirit within communities” (48). when considered in light of myers’ instructions on “how the bible must be used,” palm provides evidence of the fruit of such labors. to this point i have not engaged the subject of gender as it relates to biblical study and christian development work. myers discusses gender, advocating for complete inclusion: “transformational development that does not include gender analysis and seek the empowerment of women will fail” (113). but there is essentially no connection between gender and scripture in walking with the poor beyond a sentence about the garden of eden story: “the relationship between men and women became distorted and unequal (gen. 3:16)” (65). but myers does not address gender vis à vis the bible, and gender does not appear among the topics in either appendix of transformationrelevant biblical passages. gender does appear in 10 my critique of myers will likely sound harsh, but he is simply modeling the dichotomy often seen in biblical studies: the academy asks questions of reader, text, and author, while the layperson makes a different use of scripture (something he admits on p. 332). 11 another excellent example appears in the same volume: solano miselis and condori quispe (2021) engage extensively on biblical texts through the lens of ethnicity. 12 pamela cochran (2005) provides an excellent history of the tangled web of biblical, theological, ecclesial, and cultural strands that converge when conservative christians engage the subject of gender. john piper and wayne grudem (2021) reflect contemporary complementarian thinking. 13 crandall’s chapter on christianity (2011, 105-149) provides a helpful historical overview of the role and status of women within christianity. see also barr (2021). palm’s survey in a number of places, but not with significant attention to how the bible and theological reflection can contribute to the work of gender equality as an intersectional component of development. christian development work and gender: just as the biblical scholar is likely to ask different questions of the bible than the lay person, the sociologist and anthropologist may treat gender differently than the theologian or pastor. reproductive rights and cultural expectations within marriage are just two areas in which religion exercises powerful influences on gender issues in development. donor constituencies also bring their own religious and theological perspectives on gender to bear on christian rda organizations, and those are perspectives to which agencies are naturally attentive. as barbara crandall (2011), mariz tadros (2010), and others have noted, gender and religion have a complicated relationship. christianity is no exception. despite the fact that the christian scriptures “leave no doubt that jesus treated all people… as equals” (crandall 2011, 129), the history of christianity is unfortunately characterized by hierarchy, war, conquest, colonialism, racism, and sexism, the latter explored at more length in the jones and odhiambo article (2025) in this issue. from the fifth century onward, women were subjugated within the structure of the church and enjoyed precious little agency. even after the protestant reformation, a dominant hierarchy remained in most of the church. scripture was and is frequently utilized to maintain what is perceived as a god-given hierarchy in the family and the church. 12 the christian church is a large and complex place, however, with much diversity of perspective and practice in gender-related issues. 13 the situation in development contexts reflects a similar complexity. local religious traditions (christian and otherwise) may certainly contribute to gender inequities. but in some quarters religious texts and tradition can be reinterpreted to counter gender biases. for example, josephine para-mallam oluwafunmilayo notes that “nigerian women from faith-based organizations are now employing religious discourse to mobilize against gender discrimination” (2006, 410). christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 smith, reading the bible for gender in development 79 similar work has been observed in thailand (tomalin 2006). tragically, the long history of colonialism’s justification by means of scripture has created ongoing challenges in combating inequality and injustice that arise, in many cases, from a colonialized interpretation of scripture (stegmann and marlyn faure 2015). more recently, nyahunda louis et al. have demonstrated that “barriers to gender equality in nyanga rural district [zimbabwe] are embedded in cultural, religious, and political factors” (2021, 33). clearly, religion often inhibits efforts toward gender equality. despite these challenges, many voices within the christian rda world see faith as an important resource. marshall and van saanen (2007) present an essentially positive and hopeful view of the partnership between the development world and christian rda organizations. they acknowledge the challenges of working across faith and development lines, noting in particular women’s rights and reproductive health. but gender is not a central focus of this work, and the role of the bible in this intersection is typically left unexplored. deryke belshaw et al. (2000) offer a similarly positive perspective, focusing on the relationship between the word bank and churches in africa. this work provides an assessment of the challenges of working in and with churches that bear the image of colonialism and function as organizations that simultaneously empower and marginalize. while the world bank is “necessarily nonconfessional,” it recognizes the need for and value of working with church and other religious organizations (viii). the need for gender equality is strongly articulated throughout the text, particularly the section on gender and aids. but as in other places, the promise of hope and good gender work for the church (and other christian organizations) is not robustly connected to biblical studies. scripture is referenced on several occasions throughout the essays in the collection, but the most thorough engagement resembles the kind of “proof-texting” method we see in myers. 14 the bible, christian development work, and gender: careful students of the bible are aware of the challenges of reading the bible for gender equality. because the communities of ancient israel, second-temple judaism, and early christianity were part of broader patriarchal societal structures, the texts they produced bear the marks of that patriarchy and its concomitant hierarchy. scholarship has long contested the degree to which the 14 see, for example, the list of leadership qualities evinced by the biblical character joseph (37), and a list of passages illustrating that “the whole message of the bible is about hope, love, and the future” (139). 15 the concept of a “biblical teaching” is more complicated than often realized; what the bible teaches is typically a manifestation of a faith community’s interpretation of biblical texts. bible’s teachings on a number of societal issues can and should address our contemporary perspectives and behavior (e.g., slavery, the sabbath, religion-state relationships, the role of women, human sexuality). 15 thus, when we look to the bible, we must be critically aware of the cultural markers borne by the text. and we must be willing to bring those markers into conversation with our own beliefs, which are often developed in conversation with a range of biblical texts in the first place. this is challenging work, as it frequently finds opposition within the hierarchic structures of christian organizations (including the church). an example from one christian rda organization might be helpful. in 1999, linda tripp published her account of gender work within world vision. as world vision canada’s vice president of advocacy, tripp was wellpositioned to give account of world vision’s work in the latter part of the twentieth century, as well as the organization’s biblical and theological reasonings behind it. what tripp calls “gender issues” (64) were incorporated into world vision’s programming in a variety of ways, because “at least half those living in poverty are women and girls” (64). tripp acknowledged that local culture and tradition can justify “the denial of access to resources and services, including education and health-care” (64) to women and girls. she addressed the relationships at the heart of the work: “a concern for gender issues and women’s poverty is therefore a concern about the roles and relationships which regulate women and men in their daily lives and about how these relationships support or subjugate, empower or deny the individual to engage fully in life — physically, socially, and spiritually” (64). tripp recounts that in 1989, “gender issues became a priority for world vision’s council and board,” which appointed a “women’s commission” (65). one task of that commission was to write a theological reflection paper that would provide a biblical foundation for a new policy to address the lack of women in both organizational structure and programming. tripp laments the “slow process” of policy implementation but celebrates the appointment of a first international “director of gender and development” in 1998 (65). tripp’s presentation of the biblical and theological justification for world vision’s work toward gender equality draws attention to jesus’ treatment of women (nearly universally positive), his breaking of societal norms concerning women’s health, inviting women into the public sphere, and addressing the sexual christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 smith, reading the bible for gender in development 80 exploitation of women. she quite generally addresses pauline texts often used to justify unequal treatment (at best) and misogyny (at worst) (67). this is a helpful document that demonstrates that world vision was considering issues of gender, both organizationally and programmatically, in the late 1980s and early 1990s. but tripp does not address the old testament or some of the more challenging new testament texts regarding gender, and the lasting impact of her work is unclear. 16 i hope to demonstrate a different, more useful way to make use of scripture at the nexus of gender and christian development work. 17 as indicated above, recent decades have seen a rich expansion of biblical studies methodologies centered in the interests of contemporary readers and their identities, socio-economic statuses, affinities, etc. 18 these developments are not limited to protestant scholarship; roman catholic readers are engaging the same questions (kelly-zutcowski 2005), as are those in judaism (aschkenasy 1998, freymer-kensky 2004, scholz 2017) and islam (rahemtulla 2018). this flourishing coincides with increasing awareness of nonwestern readings in development contexts and the burgeoning need for gender-sensitive engagement with the bible, despite its challenging history and characteristics. if we do not wish to reject difficult texts out of hand, we must find ways of reading difficult texts that focus on the marginalized, celebrate their perseverance, mourn their mistreatment, and consider their subversions as potentially inspirational. following some methodological considerations, i reflect on a few biblical texts in hopes of modeling how development practitioners might incorporate a gender-sensitive 16 in 2022 i worked with the world vision us gender equality and social inclusion team to develop a gesi and faith reference guide. world vision gesi staff were unaware of tripp’s article, and while wv had developed other internal documentation addressing gender in their development programming, it lacked the biblical connections tripp was intent on making. 17 world vision is not by far, of course, the only christian rda organization incorporating gender in their programming. tearfund’s “transforming masculinities” program makes explicit connections to faith and jesus (deepan 2024 and deepan and blake 2025, in this issue), and their “hand in hand” bible studies demonstrate how the bible can be used to address gender in development contexts (tearfund 2015). 18 for examples of feminist readings, see bellis (2007), gafney (2017), graybill and huber (2021), and melanchthon and whitaker (2021). latina/o examples can be found in lozada jr. and segovia (2014). for an exploration of the role of the bible in the lives of some prominent african american women, see owens (2013). 19 in the examples that follow, i focus on the women in the stories. they are most often the marginalized in both the bible and in contemporary society. but gender-sensitive readings can and should also include men, who are subject to the same societal structures. i should also mention that some biblical interpreters have found in the presence of eunuchs in various biblical passages (particularly the book of esther and acts 8) opportunities to consider the presence of intersex individuals in the bible. a separate paper could address the intersection of the bible, christian development work, and disability/social inclusion. see moss and schipper (2011). 20 section i of graybill and huber (2021) contains eight essays that “engage in rich historical and literary analysis” (15). see also ackerman (1998), bird (1997), and kraemer and d’angelo (1999). approach to reading scripture for both personal spiritual enrichment and professional mission. reading the bible for gender 19 in development contexts a three-fold approach: as i described above, the movements in biblical studies over the last 150 years have provided necessary corrections and openings, allowing for readings that are less dependent upon what texts may have meant in the past, and more centered on speaking to the experience of readers in the present. these shifts in biblical scholarship have paved the way for women to exercise their gifts more fully in the church, as well as within reformed and conservative judaism. reading “before the text” has provided for greater equality within communities of faith, and there is evidence that such readings are providing for fresh opportunities in development contexts. but these changes do not require a rejection of historic interpretive interests (those that are rooted in the author and the text). reading “within” and “behind” the text can also prove beneficial to a gender-supportive hermeneutic. careful historical work on the ancient world can unearth data about the lived realities of women in the ancient world, which can then better inform our readings of biblical texts. 20 similarly, attention to the rhetorical artistry of biblical narratives can help us notice the way texts often work to shape the reader’s understanding of character and plot. these explorations “behind” and “within” the text will not always result in encouraging or hopeful interpretations for some, but they will expand the understanding and visions of others by providing valuable insight, thus christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 smith, reading the bible for gender in development 81 contributing to a reader’s response “before” a text. another important reason for continuing to allow for readings “behind” and “within” the text is strategic. many evangelical readers favor historical interpretations in hopes of arriving at the “original” meaning of a text. 21 this corresponds to the common evangelical belief in the inerrancy and/or infallibility of scripture. readings that purport to find meaning beyond the original authors’ intent or the early audiences’ understanding can appear to run the risk of relativism. incorporating historical inquiry alongside textual and readerly interpretation can encourage those who might be less comfortable reading for the artistry or the activity of the text in relationship with its readers. i therefore advocate for a three-fold approach to reading the bible in which all three areas of engagement—behind, within, and before—function and inform one another simultaneously. in following examples, i attempt 1) to demonstrate that attention to historical information will make a text more accessible to contemporary readers, 2) to illustrate that how a text is written can affect its meaning, and 3) to invite questions that probe the intersection of christian development and gender. i trust that those in the field will find themselves asking more salient questions of their own. achsah’s inheritance: joshua 15:13–19 tells the story of achsah, daughter of the ancient israelite hero caleb. the context is one of conquest. joshua has led the israelites across the jordan river and into the promised land, and they have conquered the territory of the canaanites. at this point in the narrative, joshua is allocating the newly conquered territory to the various tribes. he grants a certain territory and its cities to caleb, who needs to defeat two cities before assuming control. he takes care of the first city by himself, but asks for assistance in defeating the second city (kiriathsepher): caleb said, “whoever attacks kiriath-sepher and takes it, to him i will give my daughter achsah as wife.” othniel son of kenaz, the brother of caleb, took it; and he gave him his daughter achsah as wife (joshua 15:1617 22 ) the gender-sensitive reader will immediately notice that caleb offers his daughter as both incentive and reward. she is the prize for othniel, and the price that caleb is willing to pay for his final victory. all 21 a classic and still popular example of such an approach is fee and stuart (1993). 22 all translations are taken from the new revised standard version updated version. 23 this is an excellent example of hebrew narrative’s use of silence to convey a non-response. we see similar situations in dialogue, in which one conversation participant simply does not respond to the other. the first speaker is then reintroduced by an unnecessary “then [they] said,” which emphasizes the absence of a response. see exodus 33:20–21 for another example. cultures, ancient and modern, have complex rites and customs surrounding marriage, including bride prices and dowries. while we might not understand the precise cultural meanings behind caleb’s offer of his daughter or the relationship between a typical brideprice and the risk that othniel takes in battle, the text raises such questions and asks us to wonder about the use of a daughter as a reward for military achievement (we find a similar situation between saul and david in 1 samuel 18, in which saul offers his daughter merab to david in return for david’s “valiant” battle performance). othniel also bears notice as a relative of caleb. though the precise relationships between men is often difficult to determine in the hebrew bible (a “brother” can have a broader meaning than one who shares a father or mother), the identification of the winning warrior in this passage as a relative of caleb indicates that this marriage is particularly suitable in a culture that practices endogamy. readers in contemporary endogamic societies will find a connection to and understanding of this feature of the story that western readers will not. the next scene in the story changes this situation from a seemingly harmful patriarchal practice in which a woman has little or no agency, into a much more complex episode in which a woman exercises at least limited self-determination. when she came to him, she urged him to ask her father for a field. as she dismounted from her donkey, caleb said to her, “what do you want?” she said to him, “give me a present; since you have set me in the land of the negeb, give me springs of water as well.” so caleb gave her the upper springs and the lower springs. (joshua 15:18-19) this somewhat cryptic passage is rich with complexities that break down societal and readerly expectations and demonstrate achsah’s desire and capacity to advocate for herself—even to the point of claiming property. achsah is not content with the land in which her father has “set” her; the negeb is quite dry, and her portion is apparently unsuitable for her purposes. she initially “urges” her husband to advocate on her behalf, but whether he does or does not is left unsaid. something seems to be missing after the first sentence, and the reader is left to fill in the gap. 23 we might assume that even if othniel did do as she urged, she was not pleased with the result. or we might assume christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 smith, reading the bible for gender in development 82 that othniel did nothing. the story moves immediately from her urging her new husband to her approaching her father directly. caleb’s words to his daughter, “what do you want?” could indicate either concern or annoyance. 24 is he troubled by his daughter, or is he troubled for her? the language invites the reader to make decisions about the story itself. the reader’s choice will be influenced by any number of things, including their assumptions about the daughter-father relationship. achsah then makes her case: the land where he has put her is dry, and she wants access to water as well. the reader is left with several gaps, and our own cultural norms and expectations will want to fill them in. how we fill them will be determined by our own frameworks and interests. because achsah is given as a prize, we might assume that she has no agency or voice. and when she is displeased, her request first goes to her husband. that first request for a field may have been fulfilled by her father (with the dry negeb), but the way the narrative moves immediately to her response shifts our attention away from the men and directly to achsah herself. she thus inverts the patriarchal structure by reversing the sequence of the initial narrative: she is given by caleb to othniel, but when othniel fails her, she goes directly to caleb. and her father does not fail her this time. this is not the only instance in the hebrew bible in which women are permitted to inherit land (see numbers 27), but most careful readers will recognize a certain uniqueness to achsah’s story. here is a woman who does not settle for an unacceptable portion, and she does not settle for a husband who will not adequately advocate on her behalf. she does not resist the violence of a marriage won by military victory, but neither does she accept a marriage that will not meet her needs. she deserves and demands full access. contemporary readers will compare their own agency with achsah’s and might also wonder about how this story would have encouraged women in similar situations across the centuries of the story’s telling. huldah the prophetess: in the latter years of ancient judah, king josiah ordered a restoration of the jerusalem temple. during that process, the high priest reported, “i have found the book of the law 25 in the house of the lord.” (2 kings 22:8) 24 a word-for-word translation of his address is “what to/for you?” 25 while most english version translate the biblical hebrew word torah as “law,” it is best understood as “teaching.” just what the high priest discovered in the temple is thought by most scholars to be some form of the book of deuteronomy. 26 the story is repeated in 2 chronicles 34:22–28. the circumstances around the discovery of the torah are slightly different in the chronicler’s account, but the portion of the story about huldah is essentially the same. the book is taken to the king, who directs the priest to: “inquire of the lord for me, for the people, and for all judah…” so the priest… went to the prophet huldah the wife of shallum son of tikvah…; she resided in jerusalem in the second quarter, where they consulted her. she declared to them, “thus says the lord, the god of israel…” (2 kings 22:13-15). huldah then speaks on behalf of god. this is a relatively rare circumstance of a woman serving as god’s mouthpiece, and this particular situation demonstrates one of the roles of a prophet: speaking truth to power. prophets in the ancient world worked in several spheres. some operated within the palace as counselors to the king. others existed outside the power structures of temple and palace providing check to help balance the powers. huldah’s (god’s!) message to the king is not a happy one, but the divine word instigates significant religious reforms. we hear no more of huldah after this episode, 26 but her brief appearance requires additional comment. the high priest is commanded to “inquire of the lord,” and the priest goes immediately to huldah. the priest does not pray, and he does not visit a male prophet. he goes to huldah, and the king does not balk at the message huldah returns. everyone believes what she says, and they respond with significant, national religious reform. and while the reform that ensues is described purely in religious terms, the prophets were known for articulating the intersection between religion and socio-economics (brueggemann 1978, 17). it is quite possible that this reform movement involved addressing matters of injustice as well as religious infidelity. huldah is described as a prophetess and as the wife of shallum, who may have been the grandson of a government official. so while she may be tangentially connected to the government, she does not live in the temple region or in the palace complex. so why do these officials travel to consult huldah? the lack of an explanation in the text indicates that none is necessary. the officials went to huldah because she was known and trusted. her reputation made her the logical choice, and the reader may well assume that this was not the first time they had visited her. finally, while modern readers might be surprised to find a woman consulted in such serious matters, the biblical text itself treats this as business as usual. there christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 smith, reading the bible for gender in development 83 is no hint in the text that this was a surprising action for the king’s officials to take, which might give the lie to the reality that relatively few women in the hebrew bible are thus represented. huldah is indeed one of several women who speak about or on behalf of god in the hebrew bible (e.g., miriam, hannah, deborah, and abigail), and these occasions are rightly celebrated. but the number of female voices is far, far exceeded by the males who speak for the divine. contemporary readers are thus left with the question of whether the bible accurately reflects the reality of the ancient world, or whether scripture is overly selective in determining which women’s stories are told. today’s readers will also compare the work of huldah to their own experience of women operating within the religious structures of the day and will place this text in conversation with other biblical passages that bear on the roles of women in society more broadly. the syro-phoenician woman: while the story of achsah illustrates the complicated agency of a daughter given as a battle prize and huldah demonstrates the reality of a woman moving among the powerful, other biblical texts show us women in entirely different situations. we find women and children who are much closer to those development practitioners might encounter, people whose stories might resonate with people in today’s global south. the vulnerability of an unnamed immigrant mother is on full display in the gospel of mark, when a woman approaches jesus to seek help for her daughter: [a] woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about [jesus], and she came and bowed down at his feet. now the woman was a gentile, of syrophoenician origin. she begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. he said to her, “let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” but she answered him, “sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” then he said to her, “for saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.” and when she went home, she found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone (mark 7:25–30). ethnicity, gender, and access are at play in this story, and jesus’ initial response will likely offend our modern sensibilities. “dogs” is a derogatory term in many cultures. in this context it likely refers to her nonjewish identity. 27 the description of her as a “gentile, of syrophoenician origin” provides the background for the insult. syro-phoenicia was a territory north of the 27 in matthew’s account of this conversation, the woman is identified as a “canaanite,” a term used of the original inhabitants of the land of israel prior to the conquest in joshua 1–11 (matt. 15:21–28), and thus an anachronistic insult during jesus’ day. in each account she is clearly marked as other, by both the writers and by jesus. sea of galilee. she is both a religious and geographic outsider. jesus attempts to dismiss her, but this mother does not give up. while she does not deny her status as a “dog,” she protests that her status should not determine her access. even dogs get crumbs from the children. jesus agrees. we do not know whether jesus actually intended to dismiss the mother, or whether he is taking the opportunity to critique any social or theological position that would deny the demon-possessed child his assistance. i contend that jesus’ original intention is irretrievable and does not matter, given the text’s ambiguity. if readers change the tone of jesus’ voice, they might hear sarcasm, sorrow, or condemnation. was he performing for those listening standing nearby? did he wink at the woman while he played to the crowd? each possibility will change the status of the woman in jesus’ eyes. in matthew’s version of the story (matthew 15:21-28), jesus twice rejects her plea, which invites for further exploration of how he might really see her. but in each version, the mother’s persistence changes jesus’ mind, and he acts on her behalf. the story thus demonstrates the injustices of human structures that harm women, children, and the ill. and it shows that human resistance to those structures can subvert them—even those structures that are purportedly of divine origin. we should also note that the woman places herself in her own child’s position in her response to jesus. just as her child needs deliverance, so is she a “child” who needs food, willing to pick up scraps from under the table. mothers reading this story will hear it in ways that fathers may not, and mothers will appreciate the wily nature of her protest. finally, the unnamed woman’s agency is found solely in her own strength. no family beyond her ill child are named; we may assume she is a single mother, widowed or unmarried, in a foreign land. in practice: many other stories from both the hebrew bible and christian scriptures could be examined in similar ways. intentionally reading behind, within, and before the text allows for multiple perspectives and retellings that attend to the nuances of the texts. readers can simultaneously celebrate and mourn as they find their own voices and experiences in the text and in community with other readers. as a healthy, white, cisgendered, middle-class american male with an extensive education, i am challenged to acknowledge that my connections to each of these stories lie entirely within the power structures of the day. if i “identify” with any of the characters in these texts, i must identify with the colonizing patriarch caleb, the priestly class christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 smith, reading the bible for gender in development 84 hearing the “word of the lord” from huldah, and those using “dog” to label the immigrant mother with a sick child. i am also married, a parent, and part of an interracial household. these factors increase my interest in reading for women, children, and the marginalized. a three-fold reading in community with others can thus enrich our perspectives, enhance our understanding of the texts, and compel us to discover different and deeper meanings as we are variously centered and de-centered in our interpretations. reading the bible in this way requires time and patience. one cannot simply provide a parenthetic reference as evidence of how the bible supports a program in gender equality. these texts are too complicated for that type of usage, but they are no less our scripture for their complexity or for their resistance to proof-texting. gender and our experiences of it (within and outside christian rda work) are as complicated as these narratives. both our sacred texts and the lives of those we serve deserve the time and nuance of careful reading and listening. whether the stories we read are encouraging or discouraging, whether they empower or frustrate, they provide opportunities to attend to one another through our listening to both the texts and our co-listeners. they can and should be read in community, whether that community is developing gender equality programming, training local staff, or implementing new work. conclusion the bible has played a vital role in christian rda efforts since their proliferation in the aftermath of world war ii. the transformational paradigm articulated by bryant myers relies heavily on a shared belief in the authority and relevance of the bible, but the manner in which the bible is typically used in christian development literature is not adequate for addressing the specific needs of gender work. recent developments in the field of biblical studies provide an opportunity for engaging the bible through the lens of gender in development and vice versa. current development work in the global south demonstrates the possibility of meaningful “life-to-bible” engagement, and christian rda organizations and practitioners would do well to incorporate gendersensitive biblical engagement at all levels: in professional development, program development and implementation, and constituency relationships. references ackerman, susan. 1998. warrior, dancer, seductress, queen: women in judges and biblical israel. new york: doubleday. allert, craig d. 2007. a high view of scripture? the authority of the bible and the formation of the new testament canon. grand rapids: baker academic. aschkenasy, nehama. 1998. woman at the window: biblical tales of oppression and escape. detroit: wayne state university press. barr, beth allison. 2021. the making of biblical womanhood: how the subjugation of women became gospel truth. grand rapids: brazos press. barton, john. 1996. reading the old testament: method in biblical study. revised and enlarged. louisville: westminster john knox. bebbington, david. 1989. evangelicalism in modern britain. london: routledge. bellis, alice ogden. 2007. helpmates, harlots, and heroes: women’s stories in the hebrew bible. louisville: westminster john knox press. belshaw, deryke, robert calderisi, and christopher sugden, eds. 2000. faith in development: partnership between the world bank and the churches of faith in africa. washington: world bank publications. bird, phyllis. 1997. missing persons and mistaken identities: women and gender in ancient israel. minneapolis: fortress press. brueggemann, walter. 1978. the prophetic imagination. minneapolis: fortress press. clark-soles, jaime. 2010. engaging the word: the new testament and the christian believer. louisville: westminster john knox. cochran, pamela d.h. 2005. evangelical feminism: a history. new york: new york university press. crandall, barbara. 2011. gender and religion, 2nd edition: the dark side of scripture. london: continuum. deepan, prabu. 2021. “how jesus is transforming masculinity.” https://www.tearfund.org/stories/2021/11/howjesus-is-transforming-masculinity. deepan, prabu, and ruby blake. 2025. “transforming masculinities: a personal narrative of a continuing journey.” christian relief, development, and advocacy 6 (2): 62–68. downing, crystal. 2006. how postmodernism serves (my) faith: questioning truth in language, philosophy, and art. downers grove: intervarsity press. fee, gordon d. and douglas k. stuart. 1993. how to read the bible for all its worth: a guide to understanding the bible. 2 nd ed. grand rapids: zondervan. freymer-kensky, tikva. 2014. reading the women of the bible: a new interpretation of their stories. new york: schocken books. https://www.tearfund.org/stories/2021/11/how-jesus-is-transforming-masculinity https://www.tearfund.org/stories/2021/11/how-jesus-is-transforming-masculinity christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 smith, reading the bible for gender in development 85 gafney, wilda c. 2017. womanist midrash: a reintroduction to the women of the torah and the throne. louisville: westminster john knox press. gonzáles, justo. 1994. “how the bible has been interpreted in the christian tradition.” in the new interpreter’s bible, edited by leander e. keck, 83–106. nashville: abingdon. graybill, rhiannon, and lynn r. huber, eds. 2021. the bible, gender, and sexuality: critical readings. london: t&t clark. jones, emily, and jacqueline odiahambo. 2025. destigmatizing eve: tackling the underlying culture of patriarchal honor & shame undermining the work of christian relief and development. christian relief, development, and advocacy 6 (2): 23–38. johnston, robert k. 1982. “interpreting scripture: literary criticism and evangelical hermeneutics.” christianity and literature 32 (1): 33–47. kelly-zutcowski, mara. 2005. “the subversiveness of the marginalized women of scripture: models of faith and action for twenty-first century women.” gender issues 22 (4): 29–42. kraemer, ross shephard, and mary rose d’angelo. 1999. women and christian origins. oxford: oxford university press. louis, nyahunda, chibvura shyleen, and happy m. tirivangasi. 2021. “barriers towards sustainable development goal (sdg 5): on achieving gender equality and empowerment of women and girls in nyanga rural district of manicaland province, zimbabwe.” african journal of gender, society and development 10 (3): 33–53. lozada jr., francisco, and fernando f. segovia. 2014. latino/a biblical hermeneutics: problems, objectives, strategies. atlanta: sbl press. marshall, katherine, and marisa van saanen. 2007. development and faith: where mind, heart and soul work together. washington, dc: the international bank for reconstruction and development / world bank. mckenzie, steven, and stephen hayes. 1999. to each its own meaning: an introduction to biblical criticisms and their application. revised and expanded. louisville: westminster john knox press. melanchthon, monica jyotsna, and robyn j. whitaker, eds. 2021. terror in the bible: rhetoric, gender, and violence. international voices in biblical studies 14. atlanta: sbl press. miselis, jocabed reina solano, and juana luiza condori quispe. 2021. “abya yala: ‘a house that sings for all nations.’” in theologies and practices of inclusion, edited by nina kurlberg and madleina daehnhardt, 299–316. london: scm press. moss, candida r., and jeremy schipper, eds. 2011. disability studies and biblical literature. new york: palgrave macmillan. myers, bryant l. 2011. walking with the poor: principles and practices of transformational development. revised and expanded. maryknoll, ny: orbis books. offutt, stephen, and amy reynolds. 2019. “christian ideas of development: understanding the current theories, networks, and priorities of accord organizations.” christian relief, development, and advocacy 1 (1): 1–14. oluwafunmilayo, josephine para-mallam. 2006. “faith, gender and development agendas in nigeria: conflicts, challenges, and opportunities.” gender and development 14 (3): 409–421. owens, robin l. 2013. “scriptures and identity formation: transgressing the boundaries of disciplinary readings.” journal of feminist studies in religion 29 (2): 138–146. palm, selina. 2021. “one body, many voices: theological perspectives on inclusion and diversity in the global south.” in theologies and practices of inclusion, edited by nina kurlberg and madleina daehnhardt, 21–55. london: scm press. piper, john, and wayne grudem, eds. 2021. recovering biblical manhood and womanhood. 2 nd ed. wheaton, ill: crossway. powell, mark allan, 1995. “narrative criticism.” in hearing the new testament: strategies for interpretation, edited by joel b. green, 239–255. grand rapids: eerdmans. sharp, caroline. 2010. wrestling the word: the hebrew scriptures and the christian believer. louisville: westminster john knox press. rahemtulla, shadaab. 2018. qur’an of the oppressed: liberation theology and gender justice in islam. oxford: oxford university press. scholz, susanne. 2017. introducing the women’s hebrew bible: feminism, gender justice, and the study of the old testament. 2 nd ed. london: bloomsbury t&t clark. stegmann, robert n., and marlyn faure. 2015. “reading scripture in a post-apartheid south africa: re-imagining gendered identity hermeneutically.” religion & theology 22: 219– 249. strauss, mark. 2014. mark. grand rapids: zondervan. sugirtharajah, rasiah s. 2016. voices from the margin: interpreting the bible in the third world. 3rd ed. maryknoll: orbis books. christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 smith, reading the bible for gender in development 86 tadros, mariz. 2010. “faith-based organizations and service delivery: some gender conundrums.” gender and development 11. new york: unrisd. tate, william randolph. 2014. biblical interpretation: an integrated approach. 3 rd ed. grand rapids: baker academic press. tearfund. 2015. “hand in hand: bible studies to transform our response to sexual violence.” https://learn.tearfund.org/en/resources/series/cha nging-gender-norms-transformingmasculinities/hand-in-hand-bible-studies-totransform-our-response-to-sexual-violence. tomalin, emma. 2006. “religion and a rights-based approach to development.” progress in development studies 6 (2): 93–108. tripp, linda. 1999. “gender and development from a christian perspective: experience from world vision.” gender and development 7 (1): 62–68. yee, gale a., ed. 2007. judges and method: new approaches in biblical studies. 2 nd ed. minneapolis: fortress press. brian albert smith (phd, hebrew union college— jewish institute of religion) is professor of hebrew bible at messiah university, where he teaches bible and biblical hebrew. he also co-directs thriving together: congregations for racial justice. author email: bsmith@messiah.edu https://learn.tearfund.org/en/resources/series/changing-gender-norms-transforming-masculinities/hand-in-hand-bible-studies-to-transform-our-response-to-sexual-violence https://learn.tearfund.org/en/resources/series/changing-gender-norms-transforming-masculinities/hand-in-hand-bible-studies-to-transform-our-response-to-sexual-violence https://learn.tearfund.org/en/resources/series/changing-gender-norms-transforming-masculinities/hand-in-hand-bible-studies-to-transform-our-response-to-sexual-violence https://learn.tearfund.org/en/resources/series/changing-gender-norms-transforming-masculinities/hand-in-hand-bible-studies-to-transform-our-response-to-sexual-violence mailto:bsmith@messiah.edu christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 barton, from “peaceful” to “peaceable”… 116 t from “peaceful” to “peaceable”: a proposed conceptual shift for interreligious peacemaking john d. barton in the twenty-first century, religious people continue to be both the perpetrators and targeted victims of violence. given such realities, there is an urgent need to think clearly about the relationship between religion, violence, and peace. this article does so by focusing on one theoretical component of peacebuilding. i propose a conceptual shift away from the language of religious “peacefulness” and toward that of “peaceableness.” i contend that peacebuilding efforts are not well served by attempts to assess whether a religion is inherently peaceful or not, but by more modest acknowledgements that, despite mixed historical records, all major religions have peace-able resources that can be mobilized. in other words, beyond mere semantics, the shift from peaceful to peaceable is significant in the quest for theoretical coherence and effective practice of interreligious peacebuilding. i also use scripture to illustrate the specific compatibility of these ideas with the “risk and hope” of christian peacemaking. “peace, right now, feels like a fantasy born of a narcotic smoked in a pipe.” with that, salman rushdie (2023) captures an all-too-common sentiment in the current global environment. when it comes to pursuits of peace, optimism is in short supply. moreover, given the steady stream of bad news and negative trends related to religion, things only seem worse when religion is involved. at the time of this writing, much attention is focused on the war in gaza, in which religious narratives play a central role and feed fears of escalating conflicts across the middle east and world. other relevant scenarios include the historic schisms in orthodox christianity associated with the russiaukraine war as well as the religious elements in conflicts in sudan, the sahel, myanmar, and armeniaazerbaijan, among others. 1 more broadly, the twentyfirst century is witness to alarming increases in religiously motivated and state-sponsored hostilities against religious minorities around the world. more than 90% of countries report harassment, intimidation, and violence against religious communities, which directly affects up to one-third of the world’s population (pew research center 2020). in short, religious 1 for more on these and other conflicts, see the international crisis group’s commentary on “10 conflicts to watch in 2024” (ero and atwood 2024). peopleacross the planet continue to be both the victims and the perpetrators of hostility. in light of such realities, how should we assess, understand, and approach the task of interreligious peacemaking? does it offer realistic opportunities for positive change? such questions need to be addressed from multiple angles, but in this brief article, i limit myself to proposing a conceptual and linguistic shift in the discourse away from the language of religious “peacefulness” and toward that of “peaceableness.” more specifically, i contend that interreligious peacemaking efforts are not well served by attempts to assess whether religions are peaceful in the sense of being inherently peace-oriented. the efforts are better served by more modest acknowledgements that religions have a mixed record with regard to peace, but they nevertheless have distinct peaceable capacities and resources that, if mobilized, can make a major and positive impact on societies. in fact, while the shift from peaceful to peaceable may appear minor or merely semantic, i argue that it is a significant component in the quest for the theoretical coherence and effective practice of peacemaking in interreligious contexts. christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 barton, from “peaceful” to “peaceable”… 117 to make this case, i explore the general relationship between religion, peace, and violence in the section, “poison or gift?”; i address some of the relevant conceptual issues related to interreligious peacemaking in the section, “the problem with peacefulness”; and i elaborate on some key theoretical notions in the sections, “on truth and truthfulness” and “on the meaning of peace.” i conclude by highlighting some implications for christian peacemakers in the section, “the risk and hope of christian peacemaking.” poison or gift? on religion, violence and peace behind all discussions of interreligious peacemaking are issues pertaining to the relationship between religion, peace, and violence. one way to frame these issues is with the following question: is the presence of religion in the world a poison or a gift? as one would expect, responses to such a question vary in both content and scope. starting on the broader and more negative side, some critics deliver sweeping condemnations of human religion in general, as memorably captured in the late christopher hitchens’ (2007) claim that “religion poisons everything.” such broad indictments typically reflect an idealized understanding of secularization that renders religious faith as little more than blind zeal. accordingly, physicist steven weinberg opined that the “influence of religion has been awful” and that religion not only undermines rationality but also morally corrupts otherwise good people. in an address to the american association for the advancement of science (1999), weinberg famously asserts that, in a world without religion, one could expect good people to do good things and evil people to do evil things. but, he adds, “for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.” what is particularly relevant here is the characterization that the phenomenon of religion is inherently a barrier to anything positive, including, then, any prospects for constructive peace. in other words, the less religion, the more peaceful the world would be. other critics narrow the focus and identify religious poison not with religion in general, but with specific traditions or religious clusters. for example, theorists such as regina schwartz, jann assmann, ulrick beck, and jonathan kirsch claim, in different ways, that the monotheistic religions—primarily judaism, christianity, and islam—are inherently violent due to their exclusivism. schwartz (1997, 63) is uncompromising: “monotheism,” she writes, “abhors, reviles, rejects, and ejects whatever it defines as outside its compass.” beck then contrasts monotheistic intolerance with what he sees as the more tolerant and inclusive characteristics of primal religions and polytheistic traditions (as cited in meral 2018, 7–9). the clear implication is that the world would be better off with less monotheism and more polytheism. other critics draw even more targeted and sharp distinctions between religions within the same religious clusters. one example of intramural polemics between abrahamic traditions is captured in the book title, religion of peace? why christianity is and islam isn’t (2007) by the christian apologist and critic of islam, robert spencer. in this case, the implication is that christian/muslim peacemaking is a non-starter because islam is inherently intolerant and thus incompatible with peace. this is just a sampling, but claims like these are made in many different directions and across different traditions. one problem with such claims is that they rely on selective evidence to make universal assumptions about what is inherent to religions or to religion in general. consider, for example, beck’s claim that monotheistic religions are inherently violent while primal and polytheistic traditions are inherently tolerant. one of beck’s celebrated examples of a tolerant and accommodating tradition is indigenous japanese polytheism. ironically, in order to make his case, beck ignores the historical fact that christianity was virtually wiped out in japan in the seventeenth century through massive campaigns of torture and murder perpetrated by indigenous polytheistic communities (meral 2018, 7–9). the point here, of course, is neither to deny legitimate examples of primal tolerance nor claim that primal and polytheistic traditions are themselves inherently violent. rather, the point is that characterizing any religious tradition— whether monotheistic, polytheistic, or non-theistic—as inevitably either violent or peaceful requires biased assumptions and selective evidence. or consider spencer’s indicting portrayal of islam. in light of the challenges of modern muslim extremism, it is common for commentators—whether muslim apologists or critics of islam—to debate whether islam is inherently peaceful or violent. to make his case against islam, spencer selectively homes in on the most difficult and intolerant passages in the original islamic sources (i.e., the qur’an and early biographies of the prophet), links them to examples of hostility in muslim societies as verifying evidence, and then universalizes the conclusion that islam is an inherently violent faith. interestingly, religion scholar karen armstrong uses the same original islamic sources to make the opposite argument. while she does not ignore the difficult passages or histories, she focuses on passages that promote tolerance and peace as her lens through which to establish the inherent peacefulness of islam (as cited christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 barton, from “peaceful” to “peaceable”… 118 in reynolds, 2012). 2 all things considered, armstrong’s approach is preferable to spencer’s. she provides a more balanced and compelling assessment of both the peaceful and violent aspects of islam (and christianity) than what spencer offers in his one-sided polemics. nevertheless, any attempt to universally characterize any tradition as inherently peaceful or violent is problematic and often devolves into circular debates and polemic impasse. in addition to the assessments of presumed “neutral” scholars of religion, religious practitioners and “embedded” scholars also engage in critical discussions about religion, violence, and peace within their own traditions. beyond the work of non-muslims like spencer and armstrong, islam has extensive traditions of discourse in which muslim scholars critically engage the textual and historical challenges of their own religion. many of these scholars seek to disrupt narratives of hostility and promote (or restore) islam’s teachings of peace and freedom, as in mustafa akyol’s recent book, reopening muslim minds: a return to reason, freedom, and tolerance (2021). christians have also long wrestled with the dilemmas created by the juxtaposition of christian teachings on universal love and peace with shameful legacies of violence and injustice perpetrated by christians in history. similar to their muslim counterparts, christians likewise have had to contend with the difficult and violent (even genocidal) passages in the bible and how such passages are to be read in light of jesus’ call to love one’s enemies and be peacemakers (jenkins 2011; boyd 2018). the respective theological, hermeneutical, and historical debates are beyond the scope of this article, but it is relevant to note that parallel processes occur across all major religious traditions. for example, in the volume peacemaking and the challenge of violence in world religions (omar and duffey 2015), these issues are addressed by practitioners of islam, christianity, judaism, buddhism, hinduism, confucianism, and native american spirituality. not only do the authors dialogue with one another on the issues, each one also grapples with both the religious ideals and historical realities of their own tradition. in sum, it is problematic to assume that human religion, or any specific religious tradition, can be universally characterized as either peaceful or poisonous. such either/or assumptions fail to account for the complex historical and hermeneutical realities. 2 this contrast between spencer and armstrong draws on the work of gabriel said reynolds (2012, 3–10). see also how armstrong (2014) herself addresses the challenges of violence in islam. 3 using the contrasting ideas of “thick” and “thin” has been a practice in philosophy and the social sciences at least since gilbert ryle and clifford geertz, although scholars use the contrasts in a variety of ways. volf (2013, 153) provides more detail on the history and the use of the terms. moreover, the research clearly demonstrates that the dynamics between religion, violence, and peace are multidimensional and multidirectional. the same religions used to inspire and justify violence have also inspired and motivated heroic peacemaking, a reality indicative of what scott appleby describes as the “ambivalence of the sacred” (1999). in addition, there are also many non-religious variables that contribute to societal violence and even so-called “religious violence,” as demonstrated in provocatively titled books like william cavanaugh’s the myth of religious violence: secular ideology and the roots of modern conflict (2009) and ziya meral’s how violence shapes religion (2018). religion scholar stephen prothero (2020, 7) concisely summarizes all this while highlighting the relevance of religious studies: “critics who claim that religious people have perpetrated many of the world’s greatest horrors are, in my view, correct. also correct are defenders of religion who claim that religious people have been some of the world’s greatest peacemakers. put these two facts together and what do you get? a world in which religion matters.” beyond acknowledging religion’s difficult sources and complex record, christian theologian miroslav volf (2017, 76–79, 186–190) asserts also that religions offer the world an “indispensable gift” through their visions of human flourishing and moral frameworks for peace. like others, volf (2017, 76) acknowledges that religions often “malfunction” with disastrous consequences. when this happens, he says, “the gift turns into poison.” nevertheless, the most powerful antidotes to religious poison are arguably found in religions themselves. through the gift of their moral frameworks and visions of justice and peace, religions provide adherents unique resources to break their own cycles of violence, pursue inclusive justice, heal wounds, and—if we are to believe the dalai lama and desmond tutu (2016)—unleash joy. volf (2017, 13) summarizes: “religions are a global problem requiring sustained attention. but religions aren’t just a problem. they are also an indispensable part of the solution.” volf also offers another helpful way to articulate these challenges and opportunities by introducing a critical distinction between “thin” and “thick” religion. 3 religions become thin when they are “emptied of their moral visions,” reduced to “vague religiosity,” and especially when their institutions become entangled with political power (2017, 189). as such, thin religion is easily hijacked by political forces or, to borrow christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 barton, from “peaceful” to “peaceable”… 119 language from social psychologist jonathan haidt (2013, 311–312), becomes a handmaiden to in-group agendas and sectarian interests. in fact, the thinning of religion is the single most significant factor that determines whether religions will be implicated in violence (volf 2013, 40; volf 2017, 189). thick religion, on the other hand, leans into a tradition’s moral framework and originating vision, which is independent of any cultural, political, or imperial systems in which it operates. 4 among other things, thick religion provides powerful motivations and resources for intergroup peacemaking, genuine kindness, and altruistic concern for strangers and even enemies. as such, the peacemaking visions of thick religion are often subversive, since they resist becoming mere tools in the hands of the powers that be. we will build on these ideas in the next section, but for now we see that religion can take on both thin and thick characteristics, producing both poison and gift. one way to understand the task of interreligious peacemaking, therefore, is as an attempt to neutralize religious poison and mobilize religion’s thick gifts for peace. from this perspective, what the world needs is not less religion, but more religion—that is to say, more of religion’s thick bridge-building, malfunctiondisrupting, peace-generating gifts. we now turn our attention toward some relevant conceptual issues related to religion’s peace-generating gifts. the problem with peacefulness, and the promise of peaceableness interreligious peacemaking starts with imagination. we must be able to imagine its possibility in order to pursue its actuality. 5 with that in mind, consider a potentially surprising claim: interreligious peacemaking does not require religions to be peaceful. while this statement may sound counterintuitive, it actually points us in some helpful directions with regard to the possibilities of interreligious peacemaking. for one thing, embedded in the statement is a reminder that religious 4 volf (2017, 85, 189) makes this point especially with regard to the originating visions of the major religious traditions: “as i interpret them, world religions are cultural systems distinct from governments” and “all world religions were originally articulated, received, and practiced as just such ‘thick’ religions.” 5 this section draws on barton (2022, 21–36). 6 for the concept of peaceableness, i broadly draw on christian ethicist stanley hauerwas (1983). 7 in the united states, opponents of islam increasingly claim that american muslims do not qualify for the religious protections outlined in the u.s. constitution because, presumably, “islam is not a religion” but a political ideology opposed to american values. similar logic is used to criminalize christian minorities in other parts of the world, such as in some states in india where some authorities promote the idea that “christianity has never been a religion” but only a form of “predatory imperialism.” in both contexts, these ideas and policies have often translated into harassment of muslims and christians, respectively (uddin 2019). peacemaking does not happen between religions, but between religious people. in other words, peacemaking does not depend on peaceful institutions and traditions as much as peace-loving people. as such, rather than needing to establish the essential peacefulness of the represented religions in and of themselves, we only need to demonstrate that religions offer their peaceloving adherents thick resources for the peacemaking task. this more modest focus on resources rather than essences now invites a fuller description of my proposed conceptual shift from “peacefulness” to “peaceableness.” 6 while this shift in terminology is subtle, it reflects the significant difference between trying to assess a religion’s inherent nature with regard to peace (i.e., its peace-full-ness, or lack thereof) and emphasizing a religion’s peace-enabling capacities (i.e., its peace-able-ness or peace-able-izing potential). in short, replacing references to religious peacefulness with those of religious peaceableness avoids essentialism, better aligns with the nuanced understandings of peace and violence in religion outlined above, and opens more theoretical space for a peacemaking imagination. to get more specific, the development of a peacemaking imagination is undermined by essentialist and circular arguments that require a singular answer to questions such as the following: is islam essentially peaceful and tolerant, or merely political and theocratic? is christianity peaceful and loving, or intolerant and imperialistic? is hinduism universally inclusive and unifying, or hierarchical and ethnocentric? is buddhism essentially social and compassionate, or merely individualistic and escapist? 7 other traditions could be listed as well, but the point is that effective peacemaking is not dependent on islam being peaceful, or christianity being loving, or hinduism being inclusive, or buddhism being compassionate. of course, adherents of each of these traditions will inevitably want to advocate for their tradition’s highest ideals, and offer explanations and perspectives on their historical malfunctions; there is certainly much more i could say about my own christian faith in this regard. but for our purposes here, christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 barton, from “peaceful” to “peaceable”… 120 effective interreligious peacemaking does not require religions to establish themselves in essentialist terms. as such, the language of peaceableness avoids the circular debates, and more modestly invites us to identify and mobilize resources that empower peacemakers. while religious peacemaking does not require peaceful religions per se, it does require the dual combination of peace-seeking adherents and peaceable-izing resources. in terms of the latter, therefore, it is significant that peaceable capacities and peaceactivating principles are evident in the ethical visions of all major religious traditions. we can note, for example, the jewish notion of chesed (steadfast love), the muslim call to ta’leef (mutual love), the christian imperative of agape (unconditional love), the buddhist ideal of karuna (compassion), jain commitments to ahimsā (comprehensive nonviolence), the bantu notion of ubuntu (intersubjective concern), and close equivalents in hinduism, daoism, confucianism, sikhism, native american spirituality, and other spiritual pathways. these concepts, as they emerge in different traditions, are not equivalent to one another, nor do they need to be. despite different content and contexts, however, they collectively demonstrate enough ethical overlap to make thick religion and, in turn, reciprocal peacemaking imaginable. similarly, such peace-able-izing ethical overlaps also manifest in what is known as “the golden rule.” karen armstrong (2006) demonstrates that the ethical visions of all major religious traditions feature versions of the golden rule, the principle that one should treat others as one wants to be treated. to make her point, she cites variations of the golden rule in confucianism, daoism, hinduism, jainism, buddhism, zoroastrianism, judaism, christianity, islam, and other traditions. she especially highlights two of its most influential versions, that of confucius from the analects (“never impose on others what you would not choose for yourself”), and from jesus in the gospel of matthew (“in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you”). for the purpose of this article, the claim is that the golden rule provides a common code of conduct across the world’s religions (volf 2017, 117) that makes collaborative and mutually enriching peacemaking imaginable. some critics, however, are not easily convinced. after all, they claim, even if the golden rule can be identified as a broad point of overlap between religions, 8 immanuel kant (1998, n.12) famously critiqued the golden rule for its inability to attend to contextual and personal complexities. it has also been fashionable in recent decades in popular business literature to dismiss the golden rule because of its simplicity—“what if the other person doesn’t want what you would want?”—and replace it with the socalled platinum rule—“do unto others as ‘they’d’ like done unto them” (see, for example, alessandra and o’connor 1998). the philosopher kwame appiah (2006, 60–63, 155–174) also critiques the golden rule along kantian lines, but ultimately ends up endorsing its principles in the form of discerned and contextually appropriate “kindness to strangers,” which aligns with my point in this section. it offers little more than a soft and vague sentimentality that is too flimsy to anchor interreligious peacemaking. as such, the golden rule is mere fool’s gold, a candle flickering in the gale force winds of human hostility. 8 this critique, however, misses the deeper logic and power of the golden rule. when understood properly, there is nothing simple or soft or formulaic about the golden rule. in fact, it is best understood as a principle more than a rule, and a call to adaptive and contextspecific compassion that requires wisdom, empathy, and courage. moreover, when put into practice—which is the real challenge the world faces—the golden rule has the kind of thick capacities that can infuse into every interaction a genuine concern for neighbors, strangers, and even enemies. in this sense, therefore, as a common code of conduct shared across different traditions, the golden rule represents thick peaceable capacities for compassion that make reciprocal interreligious peacemaking imaginable. in sum, interreligious peacemaking does not require grand arguments about the essential peacefulness of religions, but it does require peaceseeking people who are motivated and empowered by peace-able-izing resources. and, in fact, such resources are found in a variety of forms across the ethical visions of the world’s religions. with all this in mind, we now turn to some relevant elaborations on a few key concepts. on truth and truthfulness i have argued that effective interreligious peacemaking does not require religions to be peaceful per se. likewise, there is also a sense in which peacemaking does not require religions to be truthful. like the former, this claim can sound counterintuitive and thus requires some explanation. interreligious interactions reveal both the similarities and differences between religions. while some differences reflect merely superficial variations, others are more substantive, such as conflicting truthclaims about matters of ultimate importance related to divine, human, and cosmic realities. moreover, logically speaking, truth-claims that contradict one another cannot all be true. it stands to reason, therefore, that some religious truth-claims are more true (i.e., more aligned with reality) than others, and some religious worldviews are overall more truthful than others. of christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 barton, from “peaceful” to “peaceable”… 121 course, this immediately raises questions about how religious claims might best be compared and tested for consistency and accuracy. such questions of religious truthfulness are beyond the scope of this article. 9 nevertheless, here is the relevant point for this article: interreligious peacemaking does not require religions to be equally truthful or for religious people to agree about ultimate realities. this is an important point of emphasis because peacemaking efforts have often been held captive by the misguided assumption that conflicting truth-claims inevitably breed intolerance and hostility and thus undermine peace efforts. 10 as a result of such assumptions, peace activists have often felt the need to minimize or neutralize the differences between religions, or locate some foundational belief or underlying purpose on which all religions agree and on which peacemaking efforts can be built. for a notable example, mahatma gandhi (2013, 51) famously suggested that interreligious peacemaking flows from a universal belief in and quest for god, which he described as the “cornerstone of all religions.” and yet, to our broader point, this immediately raises many classic philosophical questions that reveal conflicting and even irreconcilable truth-claims: what do we even mean by “god”? is god to be understood as one or many, as personal or non-personal, as perfect or in process? is god a heavenly parent, divine lawgiver, cosmic energy, ground of being, ultimate emptiness, or all or none of the above? even within gandhi’s own tradition, hindus are all over the map on these issues, with some believing in one god, some in thousands of gods, and others having little interest in god at all. 11 similarly, the world’s buddhists, jains, daoists, and indigenous practitioners represent a wide variety of nontheistic, polytheistic, pantheistic, and cosmotheistic worldviews. even among monotheists, who agree on the mathematics of divinity (“god is one”), there is significant disagreement about how to understand that oneness. should, for example, god’s oneness be understood as a kind of absolute unity, like in the muslim doctrine of tawhid, or as a differentiated unity, like in the christian doctrine of trinity? (see volf 2011, 127–184). 9 theologian harold netland (1999) provides a classic christian account of such matters, and drew collins (2021) explores a recent “refiguring” of the classic issues that seeks better engagement with a religiously diverse world. it is also relevant that unresolvable disagreements between religions do not imply total disagreement. as volf rightly notes, “no world faith, even when it asserts its own exclusive superiority, can claim that all other faiths are entirely false” (2017, 250–51, n. 72). 10 for an extended discussion of this and other correlating myths, see barton (2022, 123–142). 11 while gandhi fluctuates between personal and impersonal expressions of pantheism, he typically favors personal images and shows himself to be especially devoted to the hindu deity rama (see gier 2014; and rambachan 2019, 104–5). 12 see volf 2017, 78. for succinct summaries of internal buddhist debates about the self and related themes, see damien keown (2013, 56–58, 88). conflicting truth-claims are also evident in rival understandings of the human self and subsequent crosspurposes in different religious systems. for example, classic vedantic hinduism envisions humans as caught in cycles of rebirth (samsara) and seeks liberation through the union of the human self (atman) with ultimate reality (brahman). by contrast, many buddhist accounts envision the extinguishing of the self and its desires through enlightenment that leads to nirvana (literally “blowing out”). meanwhile, mainstream abrahamic religions typically reject ideas of reincarnation and offer a positive affirmation of the human self and its desires, seeking its proper fulfillment through submission to the will and design of the creator. 12 again, without getting lost in the theological weeds, the main point for our discussion is that these fundamental disagreements about divine and human realities, and the different religious goals that they spawn, do not necessarily undermine prospects of peacemaking. the importance and subtlety of this point can be emphasized by considering again the role that the golden rule plays across religions. even though, as outlined above, the golden rule represents a “common code of conduct” shared across religions, that should not be understood to negate the different and even irreconcilable goals and truth-claims that also exist. prothero (2011, 2) has been critical of armstrong on this point, claiming that she is often guilty of trying to “erase” or “wish away” the differences between religions by collapsing them into the ethics of the golden rule. this, he notes, risks making theology the “water boy for morality.” but as we have seen, while the world’s traditions do converge when it comes to this ethical mandate, religions are about much more than ethics, and they in fact diverge sharply on doctrine, ritual, cosmology, experience, and law. significantly, sharp religious divergences emerge even when considering motivations for golden rule compassion itself. while a christian may extend golden rule compassion to others to obey the commands of jesus and show gratitude for god’s own compassion, practitioners from other traditions may be christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 barton, from “peaceful” to “peaceable”… 122 motivated for very different reasons. some extend golden rule compassion to avoid or even purge bad karma so that they can escape cycles of rebirth; others “cultivate” golden rule compassion to allow a cosmic energy to flow unobstructed through one’s life and relationships; still others show golden rule compassion as a result of rational calculation and enlightened self-interest. but as dissonant and uneven as these motivations are, they can still generate mutual expressions of compassion and love that can disrupt hostilities and feed an imagination of peacemaking. in the end, this highlights a key theoretical anchor point for interreligious peacemaking: different traditions can agree on peace-activating ethical norms, while disagreeing sharply on why those norms are the right norms. 13 and that can be enough to identify and construct collaborative pathways toward peace, even across the most irreconcilable of differences. on the meaning of peace all this also invites some elaboration on the concept of peace itself. in this article, i have used the term peace and its derivatives (i.e., peaceful, peacemaking, peaceable) without directly addressing its meaning. while a comprehensive exploration is beyond our scope, we can still briefly address the question: what do we mean by peace? 14 when we consider peace in the ultimate sense, we again encounter conflicting truth-claims. the notion of peace is used in divergent and often incommensurable ways by different religious traditions. is peace an egorenouncing internal bliss? a god-given pathway to world order? reconciliation with god and each other? a restored primordial harmony between land and ancestors? or is it a mix of all of these, or something altogether different? these are significant questions that demand more attention. but this article primarily considers peace in the more ordinary and down-toearth sense of social well-being. significantly, all religions incorporate some version of this ordinary sense into their more ultimate and cosmic visions. but peacemaking and social wellbeing—even in the ordinary sense—are not about mere tolerance or simply helping different communities get along better. tolerance is, of course, important and, in some cases, 13 here i draw on charles taylor (2011, 105). 14 this section draws on barton (2022, 49–53). 15 the contrast between negative and positive peace has been common in peace studies since the 1960s. while the concepts are not intended to be pitted against one another, a certain priority is given to positive peace. in other words, while negative peace is important and sometimes even urgent (the containment of open violence sometimes must take precedence), it is embedded within the larger goals of positive peace and human flourishing. when those larger goals are neglected, “peace” ends up being reduced to mere security issues or crisis management or, at best, signed truces and peace agreements. johan galtung (1969; 1985) is especially associated with the classic formulation of these terms and ideas. a critical first step. but the bigger aim of interreligious peacemaking is not cold tolerance as much as active collaboration for mutual flourishing. put differently, interreligious peacemaking is not simply about neutralizing hostilities, but creating equitable opportunities for flourishing. a focus on mutual flourishing also reiterates and expands the earlier point about the relevance of religion in the world today. to illustrate this, it has often been assumed that the big challenges of the twenty-first century—including progressive ecological devastation, aggressive nationalisms, ever-widening discrepancies of power and wealth, the global mental health crisis, and others—can be diagnosed and addressed without significant reference to religion. this is an assumption that scholars call “secular myopia.” appleby (2014) highlights a stark example of secular myopia when he notes that religion is mentioned in passing only once in the 750-page history of the world bank and its work at the forefront of international development and poverty reduction. the clear implication is that religion has little or nothing constructive to offer when addressing the world’s major problems. such short-sighted postures have been standard in development circles for decades. but as we have seen, scholars like appleby (1999), volf (2017), katherine marshall (2013), and a growing chorus of others now demonstrate that secular myopia not only fails to adequately address the challenges that religion presents in the world today, but also overlooks the multiple resources and contributions religions can make toward sustainable solutions. such an acknowledgement also allows us to clarify different aspects of peacemaking and the various terms that describe them. for example, it is increasingly noted that interreligious peacemaking does not simply pursue what peace theorists call “negative peace” (i.e., the absence of violent conflict between religious communities), but also “positive peace” (i.e., the presence of harmony and mutual flourishing). 15 this distinction also highlights the differences between “peacekeeping” (i.e., protecting against the emergence of open hostilities) and “peacemaking” (i.e., working for ecosystems of equitable flourishing), and between “disruptive peacemaking” (i.e., breaking cycles of hostility) and “constructive peacemaking” (i.e., active christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 barton, from “peaceful” to “peaceable”… 123 collaborations for mutual benefit). 16 these distinctions and nuances also demonstrate the fact that peace, in its positive sense, cannot be understood apart from justice, and vice versa. this is captured in susan thistlethwaite’s (2012) description of “interfaith just peacemaking” and by the blended term “justpeace,” which is becoming increasingly common in peace studies (lederach and appleby 2010, 24). in the end, anyone who wishes to understand the world and address issues related to societal wellbeing must take religion seriously both in terms of its challenges and its peaceable contributions. conclusion: the risk and hope of christian peacemaking given the context of this article and journal, i conclude by offering reflections on a few christian anchor points for this discussion. when it comes to interreligious peacemaking, there are two misguided postures that sometimes have currency in christian circles. on the one hand, some equate peacemaking and interreligious cooperation with religious compromise and even spiritual weakness. relatedly, others assume that peacemaking is incompatible with the exclusive claims of the faith or, at least, that peacemaking efforts should take a back seat to mission efforts such as proselytization. both of these postures, i argue, are caricatures of a christian vision of peacemaking. for one thing, the idea that peacemaking reflects spiritual weakness does not square with the overall vision of discipleship and sacrificial love found in the pages of the new testament. take, for example, jesus’ teaching in the sermon on the mount that includes him saying, “blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of god” (matthew 5:9). even a quick perusal of jesus’ teachings in this sermon clearly shows that peacemaking is not understood as something soft and passive, but is part of the radical and demanding call of discipleship. we can also consider the way the apostle paul links “spiritual fervor” and “zeal” with attempts to “live at peace with everyone” (romans 12:11, 18), or how the author of hebrews links holiness with making “every effort to live in peace with everyone” (hebrews 12:14). from these and many other passages, it is clear that the peacemaking envisioned in the new testament is central to discipleship and linked to spiritual vitality and courage, not weakness and compromise. on the other hand, even christians who embrace peacemaking as part of discipleship often resist notions of exclusivity and judgment, assuming they are incompatible with the call to kindness, hospitality, and 16 see barton (2022, 49–52, 139–140). inclusivity. jesus, however, does not seem to resist defining his work and the christian gospel in exclusive terms. the pertinent question, however, has to do with the content and parameters of gospel exclusivism. much could be said here, but the relevant point is demonstrated in a passage from the gospel of luke when jesus sends his followers out into various towns and villages with a mission: “i am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves… whatever house you enter, first say, ‘peace to this house!’ and if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you… but whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go out into its streets and say, ‘even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you’” (luke 10:5–6, 10–11). i can note three things here. first, jesus clearly does not shy away from using exclusive and judgmental language in this passage, but his exclusivism is not based on things typically associated with religious exclusivism today. for example, this exclusivism is not based on people’s religious standing or identity, or agreement on specific theological claims, or commitment to specific political causes of the day. rather, the exclusivism of jesus is specifically based on people’s willingness to embrace his radical mission of peace. in other words, at least in this passage, peacemaking is the gospel litmus test. second, this mission of peace is not for the faint of heart; it involves risk and requires courage. part of this is due to the fact that, in this violent and hostile world, peacemakers often feel like lambs among wolves. as such, peacemaking always carries the potential for rejection and opposition. this is part of the logic of paul’s encouragement in romans: “if it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone” (romans 12:18, emphasis added). in short, while the peaceable call of jesus is unequivocal, there is no guarantee that it will work, at least in the short term. for this reason, peacemaking requires not only courage, but a trusting faith that god will use our work in ways that we may not immediately see. third and finally, while there are no short-term guarantees of success, jesus clearly believes that sending out his small band of galilean peacemakers, like lambs among wolves, opens the possibilities of kingdom hospitality, healing, and the defeat of satan (luke 10:8– 9, 18). in other words, peacemaking is a powerful force in the world. it is not mere wishful thinking but is anchored in faith and hope even when, and maybe especially when, success seems unlikely and optimism christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 barton, from “peaceful” to “peaceable”… 124 is in short supply. 17 and actually, while the task is often daunting, extensive research now demonstrates that small-scale nonviolent peacemaking campaigns by ordinary citizens are more likely to bring about largescale societal changes than armed conflicts or the work of elite political actors. 18 in other words, research shows what jesus knew all along: humble grassroots efforts for peace, against all seeming odds, can change the world. to end where we started, salman rushdie is certainly right that peace feels like a pipedream in today’s world (“a fantasy born of a narcotic smoked in a pipe”) (2023). but faith and hope call christians to extend peace anyway, radically and impartially, and to be ready to collaborate with all peaceable people, trusting god to steer all good efforts toward divine completion (philippians 1:6). references akyol, mustafa. 2021. reopening muslim minds: a return to reason, freedom, and tolerance. new york: st. martin’s press. alessandra, tony, and michael j. o’connor. 1998. the platinum rule: discover the four basic business personalities and how they can lead you to success. new york: grand central publishing. appiah, kwame anthony. 2006. cosmopolitanism: ethics in a world of strangers. new york: norton. appleby, scott. 1999. the ambivalence of the sacred: religion, violence, and reconciliation. lanham: rowman and littlefield. ———. 2014. “religion and peacebuilding: the necessary art of specialization.” university of california television (uctv). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uf51nk2el0i armstrong, karen. 2006. the great transformation: the beginning of our religious traditions. new york: anchor books. ———. 2014. fields of blood: religion and the history of violence. new york: knopf. assmann, jan. 2010. the price of monotheism. translated by robert savage. stanford: stanford university press. barton, john d. 2022. better religion: a primer for interreligious peacebuilding. waco: baylor university press. 17 this implies that hope and optimism are not the same thing. according to christian theologian jürgen moltmann, optimism is what we project onto the future based on our own assessments of facts and how well things are going, while hope draws on forces beyond human sight and the calculation of facts. see moltmann (1991; 1996). 18 based on decades of longitudinal research across multiple contexts and situations, political scientists erica chenoweth and maria stephan demonstrate that a small percentage of a population—around 3.5 percent—active in grassroots peacemaking efforts are twice as likely to bring about large societal changes than are military and government efforts. see barton (2022, 9). boyd, gregory a. 2018. cross vision: how the crucifixion of jesus makes sense of old testament violence. minneapolis: fortress press. cavanaugh, william t. 2009. the myth of religious violence: secular ideology and the roots of modern conflict. new york: oxford university press. collins, drew. 2021. the unique and universal christ: refiguring the theology of religions. waco: baylor university press. dalai lama and desmond tutu (with douglas carlton abrams). 2016. the book of joy: lasting happiness in a changing world. new york: avery. ero, comfort, and richard atwood. 2024. “10 conflicts to watch in 2024.” international crisis group. https://www.crisisgroup.org/global/10conflicts-watch-2024 galtung, johan. 1969. “violence, peace, and peace research.” journal of peace research 6 (3): 167– 91. ———. 1985. “twenty-five years of peace research: ten challenges and some responses.” journal of peace research 22 (2): 141–58. gandhi, mohandas k. 2013. all men are brothers. london: bloomsbury publishing. gier, nicholas f. 2014. “gandhi, deep religious pluralism, and multiculturalism.” philosophy east and west 64 (2): 325–29. haidt, jonathan. 2013. the righteous mind: why good people are divided by politics and religion. new york: vintage books. hauerwas, stanley. 1983. the peaceable kingdom: a primer in christian ethics. notre dame: university of notre dame press. hitchens, christopher. 2007. god is not great: how religion poisons everything. new york: twelve. jenkins, philip. 2011. laying down the sword: why we can’t ignore the bible’s violent verses. new york: harperone. kant, immanuel. 1998. groundwork of the metaphysics of morals. cambridge: cambridge university press. keown, damien. 2013. buddhism: a very short introduction. oxford: oxford university press. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uf51nk2el0i https://www.crisisgroup.org/global/10-conflicts-watch-2024 https://www.crisisgroup.org/global/10-conflicts-watch-2024 christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 barton, from “peaceful” to “peaceable”… 125 lederach, john paul, and r. scott appleby. 2010. “strategic peacebuilding: an overview.” in strategies of peace: transforming conflict in a violent world. edited by daniel philpott and gerard e. powers, 19–44. new york: oxford university press. marshall, katherine. 2013. global institutions of religion: ancient movers, modern shakers. london: routledge. meral, ziya. 2018. how violence shapes religion: belief and conflict in the middle east and africa. cambridge: cambridge university press. moltmann, jürgen. 1991. theology of hope: on the ground and the implications of a christian eschatology. translated by margaret kohl. san francisco: harpersanfrancisco. ———. 1996. the coming of god: on christian eschatology. translated by margaret kohl. minneapolis: fortress press. netland, harold a. 1999. dissonant voices: religious pluralism and the question of truth. vancouver: regent college publishing. omar, irfan a., and michael k. duffey, eds. 2015. peacemaking and the challenge of violence in world religions. hoboken: wiley-blackwell. pew research center. 2020. “harassment of religious groups continues to be reported in more than 90% of countries.” pew research center. https://www.pewforum.org/2020/11/10/harassmentof-religious-groups-continues-to-be-reported-inmore-than-90-of-countries/ prothero, stephen. 2011. god is not one: the eight rival religions that run the world. new york: harperone. ———. 2020. religion matters: an introduction to the world’s religions. new york: norton. rambachan, anantanand. 2019. essays in hindu theology. minneapolis: fortress. reynolds, gabriel said. 2012. the emergence of islam: classical traditions in contemporary perspective. minneapolis: fortress. rushdie, salman. 2023 (october 31). “if peace were a prize: the world of fable teaches us that even our most precious values are contingent, or won at great cost.” the new yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culturalcomment/if-peace-were-a-prize schwartz, regina. 1997. the curse of cain: the violent legacy of monotheism. chicago: university of chicago press. spencer, robert. 2007. religion of peace? why christianity is and islam isn’t. new york: regnery publishing. taylor, charles. 2011. “conditions of an unforced consensus on human rights.” in dilemmas and connections: selected essays, 105–123. cambridge: belknap press of harvard university press. thistlethwaite, susan brooks, ed. 2012. interfaith just peacemaking: jewish, christian, and muslim perspectives on the new paradigm of peace and war. new york: palgrave macmillan. uddin, asma. 2019. when islam is not a religion. new york: london pegasus books. volf, miroslav. 2011. allah: a christian response. new york: harperone. ———. 2013. a public faith: how followers of christ should serve the common good. grand rapids: brazos. ———. 2017. flourishing: why we need religion in a globalized world. new haven: yale university press. weinberg, steven. 1999 (october 21). "a designer universe?" new york review of books 46: 46-48. https://rtraba.com/wpcontent/uploads/2014/09/adesigneruniverseweinberg.pdf john d. barton is director of the center for faith and learning at pepperdine university, where he also teaches in the religion and philosophy division. he is the author of better religion: a primer for interreligious peacebuilding (baylor university press, 2022). author email: john.barton@pepperdine.edu https://www.pewforum.org/2020/11/10/harassment-of-religious-groups-continues-to-be-reported-in-more-than-90-of-countries/ https://www.pewforum.org/2020/11/10/harassment-of-religious-groups-continues-to-be-reported-in-more-than-90-of-countries/ https://www.pewforum.org/2020/11/10/harassment-of-religious-groups-continues-to-be-reported-in-more-than-90-of-countries/ https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/if-peace-were-a-prize https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/if-peace-were-a-prize https://rtraba.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/adesigneruniverse-weinberg.pdf https://rtraba.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/adesigneruniverse-weinberg.pdf https://rtraba.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/adesigneruniverse-weinberg.pdf mailto:john.barton@pepperdine.edu christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 deepan and blake, transforming masculinities… 98 transforming masculinities: a personal narrative of a continuing journey prabu deepan and ruby blake this article presents the personal narrative of prabu deepan, a pioneer of the "transforming masculinities" initiative by tearfund uk. the initiative aims to address and reduce sexual and genderbased violence by challenging harmful gender norms and fostering equitable relationships. through workshops and community dialogues, the program involves men and women as "gender champions" who, alongside faith leaders, promote positive social norms within communities. prabu reflects on his transformative journey from a childhood impacted by violence and displacement to a leadership role that encourages compassion, accountability, and gender justice. his story highlights faith's role in shaping healthier masculinities, drawing inspiration from jesus christ as a model of compassionate leadership. additionally, prabu’s journey emphasizes the importance of supportive relationships, personal accountability, and community engagement in promoting gender equality and breaking cycles of violence. introduction prabu deepan is the architect of tearfund’s evidence-based transforming masculinities intervention (tearfund n.d.b). launched in 2013, transforming masculinities is an initiative of tearfund uk, developed together with survivors of sexual and gender-based violence. it is designed to train and equip men and women as “gender champions” in their home communities, in close partnership with local faith leaders, through training workshops and regular community dialogues (tearfund n.d.a). transforming masculinities is a community level, participatory, inclusive, reflective process which engages men and boys alongside women and girls. its goal is to end sexual and gender-based violence by shifting the harmful social and gender norms which uphold violence against women and girls. it aims to create new positive norms that encourage equality. social norms, as used here, are the unwritten rules of what people expect others to do in their communities, what people think others are doing, whether or not they actually are, and/or what people think others expect them to do. transforming masculinities works with faith communities as the primary agents of positive change. these communities can play a big part in addressing sexual and gender-based violence but are often overlooked or sidelined. all of us may have played a role in perpetuating and observing violence. we all need to be transformed, and in faith communities this starts with faith leaders: those with considerable influence who shape existing social norms. faith leaders are fully trained in the approach, and are supported through their own journey of transformation. in turn, they speak out in their communities, sharing positive messages in sermons and modelling positive ways of being a man or a woman which value men and women equally. these faith leaders also select one man and one woman in their community to become “gender champions” who are trained the same way. they then facilitate small, participatory discussion groups in their communities, called “community dialogues” (tearfund 2016). community dialogues are transformative spaces where men and women can reflect on their communities, families and, most importantly, their own beliefs, attitudes and behaviours. each dialogue runs for six weeks, with one session for two hours each week. the first five weeks are single sex, and the final week brings women and men together to envision their community free from violence and abuse. community dialogue participants often want to share their stories of change, telling others about how their families are stronger, how violence is stopping, and how women and men are thriving together. these members are supported by the gender champions and faith leaders to share their stories and messages in the wider communities. they share testimonies at church, over meals, even at sports events. through sharing, more https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v%3dpv09ls-uacw%26t%3d8s&sa=d&source=docs&ust=1688008669988743&usg=aovvaw3qpxdg-ju7r--2dvu4lv4_ https://learn.tearfund.org/en/resources/series/changing-gender-norms-transforming-masculinities/community-dialogues christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 deepan and blake, transforming masculinities… 99 people can choose to adopt behaviours and attitudes which support equality—leading to a community level change in norms and behaviours. some contexts have specific issues or forms of sexual and gender-based violence that need more indepth discussion. when communities identify specific needs, the approach can be adapted to address the issue raised by the community. for example, in mali and chad there are very high rates of female genital mutilation or cutting. to help end this, tearfund, its partners and survivors adapted the content to include a focus on this issue in the training, as well as in the community dialogues. in other contexts, family planning decision making has been the focus, as well as women’s economic empowerment and girls’ education. tearfund recognises that although everyone is affected by sexual and gender-based violence, it is women and girls who are affected the most. overwhelmingly it is men who are perpetrating violence against women and girls, and it is essential for men to be transformed in order to be a part of the solution. the transforming masculinities programme has been proven to reduce rates of violence and enable communities of women and men to flourish equally and together. there is a solution, and each one of us must be part of it. the programme has been adapted and implemented in fifteen countries, with the tools available in more than ten languages. over 2000 gender champions and faith leaders have been trained and journeyed with, and over 100,000 men and women have participated in the community dialogues over the last nine years. this article outlines such a “journey of transformation” in prabu’s own life, where he reflects on his journey from childhood as an ethnic minority in conflict-ridden sri lanka to his present-day roles as a husband, a father, and a leader in the global development sector, especially in the transforming masculinities program. he offers a vulnerable reflection on the people, experiences, and social realities that have shaped and changed his way of being a man in this world, seeking to embody masculinity and personhood according to the example of jesus christ. prabu’s story is incomplete without the voices of those who are walking this journey with him. here, prabu’s reflections are interspersed with excerpted testimonies from interviews with several others who know prabu and his journey well and who are walking their own journeys of identifying and transforming practices of gender injustice. it is our hope that, taken together, these reflections will offer insights and resonance for christian development practitioners and beyond who are walking their own journeys towards understanding, transformation, and christlikeness. formative childhood experiences during most of my childhood, my father was absent in one way or another, struggling with his own demons and the troubles that came with his identity. as a child, i cannot remember any involvement from him in my life, even a conversation. i knew he was proud of my educational achievements: that was it. he was also abusive and violent towards my mother, and there were many times i remember intervening, even though i was still a child. of course, this resulted in getting me into trouble with him and also affected my perception of who he was. i decided at a young age that i didn’t want to be a man like my father, a father like my father, or a husband like my father. now that i’m older and a bit more aware, i realise that that decision in itself didn’t make me a good person, but it was my starting point. i simply knew that i did not want to be violent. at that time, my understanding of violence was specifically physical, because that was what i saw everywhere around me. and i think that indicates the problem i saw around me: an accepted norm of men being violent. uwezo: his father was violating his mother. prabu decided he couldn’t be like his father, treating other people differently, especially women. and i think this motivated him to think about how to help other men who were treating women the way his father was treating his mother. he was motivated to do this work, and he was passionate about it. and it is easy to see that he values everyone, despite their status. i think this is his strength: he's treating people the same way he wants to be treated. (uwezo is tearfund’s global transforming masculinities advisor, based in goma, dr congo. he has worked closely with prabu since 2015 in various capacities, including as staff of the partner organisation implementing the “what works” project in eastern drc). we were, at that point, displaced because of the war, and by then i had already been sexually abused. we lived with a host family in the city, and i was sexually abused again. my childhood and teenage years were marked by lots of pain, and i didn’t know how to navigate it. there was no one who could talk to me about it. i didn’t know any other displaced kids, and i struggled to understand my identity as a displaced person. on top of all that, i was struggling with my relationship with my father. it was a very difficult time. during that season, however, i met my pastor for the first time, and that relationship was transformational: meeting a person who constantly told me he believed in and saw me. i was not invisible. now that i look back to my formative years, i think about my pastor and other men who came into my life, whose characteristics and attributes were positive models for me. i think, too, about my mom. she was courageous christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 deepan and blake, transforming masculinities… 100 and vulnerable, and i am the man i am because of the woman that my mother was. drawing from the examples of these people, i chose the characteristics that i wanted to build myself around: compassion, courage, seeing people as they are, investing in people like my pastor did, and a deep sense of commitment to social justice. because i did not have any one constant figure in my life shaping who i was as a man, i chose whom i wanted to emulate and made my own identity. in a way, this worked out well, but it only formed me on the interpersonal, individual level, not on the level of the society and systems i was a part of, because i had no framework for that. no one had taught me. over time, this focus on cultivating an identity of righteousness transformed into self-righteousness. mistakenly, i believed that abstaining from physical violence alone made me a good person. it took me a long time to realise that the matter was far more complex. the benchmark was so low that people with whom i was in a relationship would consider me a good person simply because i wasn’t physically violent or didn’t cheat on them. i could be emotionally manipulative, i could be narcissistic and passiveaggressive, and this was accepted as “typical male behaviour.” it was justified because i was still a “good guy,” meaning i wasn’t physically violent or cheating on them. they would go away thinking they did something wrong, and i would let them believe that. there was no accountability, just impunity and justification. only when i was approaching my thirties did i begin to bring that all together, to figure out the core of who i was and to try to call that out. this internal processing that i went through is so critical for deep transformation, and it is reflected in the design of transforming masculinities. in the training sessions of that program, men and women are invited to reflect on their actions and childhood experiences and through trainings and workshops, the “fishbowl” activity, and community dialogues, there is space created for men to reflect and share and reimagine alternative practices. part of this involves reimagining alternative characteristics to those that are harmful and devaluing ones that our society reinforces. they explore characteristics of equitable relationships and ways in which we can resolve conflict through effective communication. men and women are also invited to work towards shaping a culture that promotes accountability to one another. marriage and fatherhood my wife is phenomenal: very strong-minded and strong-willed. our relationship was mostly healthy and there was a lot to unlearn and learn. over the years, our journey as partners has been one of much growth and maturing, providing me with a sense of accountability as i unlearned and learned over and over again what it was to be a man. when we married, i had only just begun to reflect on myself, who i was as a man, and a relationship partner. this was new; i hadn’t been exposed to this kind of self-reflection because i just generally wanted to be good. i wanted to be good for myself and be good, kind, and encouraging to my wife because of her difficult journey. i was still, in many ways, a broken person at that time. s: i think he had a transformation just before we got married, because before that he was always kind of insecure, trying to get his way. i'm also very strongwilled, so i didn't give in, but neither did he. he had this way of making his idea feel more important than what i wanted to do. i didn't even think about it, because his idea sounded better than mine, and i thought, “okay, yes.” gradually i became dependent on him, because he was making all the decisions. but when he started working [in sexual and gender based violence (sbgv)], he realized that it [prabu’s verbal behaviour] was toxic. even though it was not technically verbal abuse, it was toxic because i was losing myself. (s is a software engineer and is prabu’s wife. name is anonymised for safety reasons). to make our relationship work, we never had to sacrifice each other’s journeys, ambitions, and aspirations because we came in as equals. she was doing amazing things, completely different from what i was doing, and the mutual support was enriching. s: we had a massive launch last november in my company, so i was working ten to sixteen hours a day some days. at that time, to be honest, i didn't know what our son took in his school lunchbox, whether it was washed, what happened with his uniform, what he took to school. prabu took over: “you do your work. everything else, i got it covered.” my work requires me to travel at least twice a year, so he will check my schedule first and manage his schedule accordingly. i could easily tell my boss, “i can't go because my husband is traveling,” but prabu ensures that i can't use that excuse. i’m a homebody; i prefer to stay home, but he tells me: “you can use any other excuse you want, but you can't say that it's because of my schedule.” when we were expecting our son, i was experiencing a period of unemployment. my wife was working and pregnant, and we didn’t have enough money to meet our expenses. no matter how much i believed that it was not my sole responsibility to provide, i felt broken. my father would say things like, “how can you help people if you can’t help yourself?” hearing this made it challenging to accept myself in that situation. it was a deeply painful time for me, but it was a formative time for us and our relationship because it caused us to start unpacking some things about christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 deepan and blake, transforming masculinities… 101 ourselves. i realised that i wasn’t feeling small or diminished as a person because i depended on her; i simply felt sad that i couldn’t care for her enough even though she was pregnant and working. i learned that companionship and support were fundamental in relationships, and embracing support became a transformative experience for me. s: in this journey with prabu, i would say the most important thing is i've learned to prioritise myself and also look after myself. i think maybe because of how i grew up, i do not like spending time improving or looking after myself. prabu also points out that women are always going from one task to another. so he has pushed me, throughout the years, to give some priority to myself. this was also because of his journey and what he was learning. people say to me, “it’s great you’re helping your wife.” to that, i respond, “why do you consider it ‘helping’? it’s not her job. it’s our thing. it’s our house.” i cook because i love my family. i love the fact that they enjoy the food i make, and therefore i cook. it’s an expression of love. i clean because we all live in this house, and we all want to live in a clean house. people praise me for “doing good things for your wife, for looking after your son, for helping with your son.” i’m always like, “he’s our son, lol.” s: prabu has always been a good father. he travels a lot, but it doesn't matter whether he's been travelling for like 18 hours or 24 hours at a stretch: as soon as he opens the door, he's back to being the father. he will start washing our son and feeding him, no matter how tired he is. immediately, i know i'm on a break. and there was never a sense of me feeling guilty. he didn't make me feel like that, because i think he really, really enjoys being the father. when our son was born, i thought, “i want him to know my heartbeat like he knows his mother’s, from his time in her womb!” i wanted to always hold him, carry him, and care for him because he was a precious human being, a formation of god’s goodness in life. but i also wanted to have a real relationship with him— a real bond. at that time, i was going through a crisis of not knowing who i was or what i wanted to do. suddenly, my son’s birth catalysed me to try to understand my own experiences and to explore how i could create a space for him that was different from the one i grew up in. i began to realise that i could not only be nonviolent; i could be actively positive in that sense, exploring ways that my actions in my relationship, decision-making, household chores and care, and how i communicate could be affirming, equitable, accountable and more christ-like. i think that was when my wife and i started having the conversation in our relationship about gender norms, gender equality, and the type of man i could be and wanted to be. since then, it’s been an interesting journey for us to be able to talk about gender roles—and to be held accountable as well. she knows what i do and what i talk about; i am accountable to her to practise in real life what i am “preaching” in my work. and with our son, we have been very intentional about talking with him about household work, consent, and respect for women and their bodies. we knew we needed to raise him from a young age in a way that allows him to be all of himself while also being accountable and conscious of his actions—not just intentions. this intentionality, creativity, and accountability became and continues to be fundamental to the transforming masculinities (tm) approach. tm creates a space for men and women to reimagine and work towards an alternative ideal world. while we don't prescribe behaviours, we invite men and women to cocreate practices and behaviours at home (in childcare, chores, and so on) to reflect their commitment to and equal valuing of each other. we also encourage them to create a culture of accountability with one another, between the peers from the community dialogues group, and with the “gender champions” so that they can continue to grow in their journeys. christ as the model for inspiration right after my son was born, i was exposed for the first time to conversations about engaging men in the prevention of sexual and gender-based violence (sgbv). in early training and conversations, people talked to me about fatherhood, gender roles in childcare, and similar topics. yet i was still stuck in this narrative that men should be the good guys who stand up and save the day. as i progressed in my own journey and gained exposure to various programs on male engagement and accountability, i came to realise that any intervention or approach aimed at promoting transformative masculinities and gender equality must extend beyond mere training and workshops. it must permeate our everyday conversations, the messages conveyed in sermons, and the fabric of our societies. a profound shift in norms related to gender roles and attitudes is necessary, and both men and women must exemplify these positive behaviours. i remember when for the first time, i thought, “oh, aha! why are we always talking to women about gender-based violence if it’s an issue that we have actually done to them? you can’t be expected to fix something of which you're a victim.” at that moment, it clicked for me. one of the most significant turning points in the development of transforming masculinities occurred when i heard male participants in a focus group express, "i've never seen a man like this. how can i become something i've never seen?" this prompted me to reflect, "what about jesus christ?" the more i christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 deepan and blake, transforming masculinities… 102 delved into studying jesus and his teachings, the more i found resonance with his character and the transformative potential of faith in him. this experience revitalised my belief in the power of faith. i realised that i couldn't align myself with the christian faith that was often labelled as misogynistic, sexist, and patriarchal. as my understanding of jesus deepened through scripture study and engaging in discussions with pastors and others, my appreciation for christ's essence grew. he became an aspirational figure for me and the ultimate role model for us in our work on transforming masculinities. throughout the training sessions and community dialogues, we reference examples of jesus. for example, in the “jesus as the role model” session, we look at the life, teachings and ministry of jesus, especially as a man, as a leader, and also someone who served those who were vulnerable, discriminated, and marginalized by society. in a time where faith can be so divisive, so alienating, so discriminating towards women, girls, and people of different identities or nationalities or races, i finally began to see how our faith could also bring people together. our faith could be transformative. our faith could be a source of power for good in a world that is so broken. seeing the humblest forms of faith in the communities that i work in and seeing christlikeness in people has been really transformative for me. power, leadership, and intentionality this whole conversation is about power. when you’re talking about gender inequalities, you’re talking about power, status, access, and opportunities: the things our society awards men. (this is all, of course, complicated further as it intersects with race, ethnicity, and so on.) my journey had to start with unlearning old habits and becoming attentive to how i engage with people and negotiate power. whether i like it or not, my presence carries power. how i speak, how i enter a room, how i enter a conversation: i need to be conscious of the impact i make on others. these dynamics are really complex when i’m holding some sort of an organisational responsibility or authority, particularly if i’m leading women or co-facilitating with women or when i am the only male in a femaledominated group or team. francesca: prabu is often given quite a platform as an engaged male ally [editor’s note: “male ally” is a term generally used to refer to any man that is willing to advocate and speak up in support of gender equality.] he tries to balance that with not taking up too much space, in discussions or panels and so on. it's a tension, in that his personality is very talkative with lots of ideas, so he has lots of things to share. but he's also aware that he doesn't want to take up that space and wants to make sure that he's creating space for others. (francesca is tearfund’s consortium and networks manager. she has worked with prabu closely since 2015 in adapting, developing, and managing transforming masculinities intervention and research projects. she is based in the united kingdom). out of my enthusiasm, there has often been a lot of “me” in whatever i was talking about. i felt like i needed to assert myself, like all “good” allies who feel the need to reinsert themselves into the conversation as if the whole thing revolves around them. i didn’t notice this until someone called me out, and then i was like, “what do i do with this? i’m a good guy!” your ego gets affected when someone says something like that, and you get defensive: “do you know what i’m doing, you random person on the internet? if you only knew how many countries i’m doing this work in…” and then you check yourself: “you’ve got a problem, bro! you’re stuck on yourself.” it’s a really humbling thing when you have to tell yourself, “hey, sit this one down.” in the role of ally, i realised, i had co-opted the space and struggle of women in many ways. it shocked me that i, this good guy, could be this insensitive in many ways. from there, i started to see my journey, my relationships, everything kind of converging. i have found that it’s really important to keep telling myself that i’m not doing this for anybody else. i’m grateful for other people in my life who hold me accountable, who say things to me like: “you’re not doing this for me as a favour. you’re doing this because it’s right.” this comes from the experience of being called out and in, learning when to be silent and intentional about allowing the space to exist where others can be heard more clearly, whether this is at home in a discussion, at work in meetings/trainings or even in casual conversations, or at conferences and panels, where i have learned sometimes it’s the best outcome if i can step out of the way and suggest someone else whose voice needs to be amplified. whenever i’m invited to speak, i always reflect on what i can contribute meaningfully, and if there’s someone else who i can recommend whose voice needs a platform. in my work on gender equality, i try to connect these invitations with the amazing women who lead and work on our programmes. all of these elements are central parts of transforming masculinities, in that we promote practices of accountability to god, self, and others through the “accountable practices” session during the training and the community dialogues. this also reinforces the idea on why this conversation is important—to live the way god called us to live by embodying the teachings of jesus christ. we also discuss how to be better allies, and in an accountable way without co-opting. uwezo: i had the chance to spend two weeks with prabu facilitating transforming masculinities training in villages. in terms of practising what he's teaching, i christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 deepan and blake, transforming masculinities… 103 can remember during a lunch break in the villages, he was there to help people get water, serving other people, and they were saying, “wow. this is strange. how can a man serve others?” seeing a man do this was strange according to the custom of the area. i've seen many times that he's ready to help other people. i have started to learn by asking colleagues, “what is a helpful way to come into this conversation? what would be an empowering way to come into this conversation? when do you want me to come in? do you need me to come into this conversation?” these are things that i had to start rebuilding in my practice, recognising that my intention doesn’t always translate into people’s experiences of me. i am learning to emphasise, “what do you want in this space, and what is my role in this space?” i am also learning to recognise that it doesn’t have to revolve around me. francesca: i felt like he gave me space to step into things, but he also backed me up. if there were questions or if things didn't go well, i knew that he had my back. he's very encouraging, always feeding back things that he noticed or things that i was doing well, helping me to think bigger, longer-term, about where i was going and what i was doing. as a line manager, i encountered a situation where i unintentionally made a female colleague feel disempowered when discussing her performance. this was a new experience for me, and initially, i didn't know how to respond. i chose to acknowledge her feelings and requested time to reflect before continuing the conversation. it was crucial for me to validate her experience, regardless of my intentions. this learning process prompted me to explore preventive measures, such as regularly checking in on her well-being and seeking her accountability. additionally, i recognized the importance of discussing her performance in a way that would empower rather than disempower her. this open and honest dialogue was necessary to address the issue at hand. this has led to significant improvement in how we work together through me becoming a better line manager and creating a comfortability around accountability. today, i’m a regional director with a role that comes with a lot of authority and responsibility. in this role, it’s been really important to me to intentionally think about how i create space in which we engage with people as equals of value, irrespective of their role or what they do. i try to constantly think, “how do i use the space that i’m in to create more space for people? how do i spotlight somebody else? how do i actively stand out of the way and create space for other people so that they can shine?” i strive for active demonstration and modelling so that other people in my team can pick it up. madhu: he openly shares his stories and vulnerabilities, inspiring others to join him on his transformative journey. he fearlessly challenges stereotypes and encourages dialogue in training sessions, creating space for women's leadership and promoting intergenerational equity. moreover, he has extended the transforming masculinities program to all staff members, raising awareness and fostering understanding of positive and harmful behaviours. this inclusive initiative within the organisation empowers individuals to embark on this important journey, as awareness and comprehension are crucial for progress. (madhu is tearfund asia’s regional design, monitoring and evaluation advisor, based in nepal. he is also a master trainer for the transforming masculinities model.) this consciousness of power and intentionality about equality comes into play on the organisational level of tearfund and the personal and home levels. it doesn’t matter whether you’re a driver or a line manager, a housekeeper or a country director. we are all created in the image of the triune god, different in the ways that we express god’s characteristics. we are not the same, but we have equal value. and if i see you fundamentally as someone created in god’s image, how does that shape my interaction with you? how does that shape the way i relate to you? how does it shape the way i give feedback to you and work with you? uwezo: i think dominance is not part of him. i think we were in nairobi one day, and we had to take lunch together. we were just two men, prabu and i, and all the other colleagues were women, about six. we were discussing, sharing, laughing, you know, this kind of collaboration, friendship. there was no complex about who you were or not. he is someone you can come close to, and he will be open to you. but the power dynamics don’t disappear because i’m actively working to unlearn and learn. their impact doesn't go away when i walk through the door now as if somehow there’s a magical vacuum that sucks up all the power, and i’m this powerless person. it is an active, intentional effort on a day-to-day basis, the way that i sit, talk, and do things to deconstruct power. i think that’s the only way until we live in a world where these inequalities don’t exist. our actions, words, and behaviour must be consciously oriented towards dismantling unequal systems. our leadership has to promote alternatives like jesus, using our power to flip harmful systems and social norms, oppressiveness, stigma, and shame. we must be intentional about it because the norm is that we fall into the pattern of doing what everyone else is doing: reinforcing inequality and disparity in our world. this is the essence of the transforming masculinities approach, now part of hundreds of communities across more than fifteen countries, available in multiple languages and adaptations. we explore the life and leadership of jesus, creating a christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 deepan and blake, transforming masculinities… 104 learning reflection on how we can embody his example in our leadership. we seek to embrace a form of leadership that is purposeful, caring, loving, affirming, nurturing, committed, without ego and arrogance, not demanding but serving, and ultimately, sacrificial. it’s a journey, and my journey continues. i unlearn and learn every day, i get called out, and i spend time reflecting on my thoughts and actions, because i believe i can be better and must be better. i invite all who read this article to embark on this transformative journey—a journey of questioning and grappling with the narratives we have been taught about masculinities, leadership, power, and gender inequality. let us explore alternatives, seek connection with fellow travellers on similar paths, and willingly accept accountability for our actions. only by doing so can we actively contribute to building a more equitable world, a world free from violence, where individuals of all genders, boys and girls, men and women, can thrive and fulfil their inherent potential bestowed upon them. references tearfund. n.d.a. tools and guides: changing gender norms: transforming masculinities. https://learn.tearfund.org/en/resources/series/cha nging-gender-norms-transforming-masculinities tearfund. n.d.b. transforming masculinities – how can we overcome global sexual and gender based violence? (sgbv). video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pv09lsuacw&t=8s. tearfund. 2016. tools and guides: community dialogues. https://learn.tearfund.org/en/resources/series/cha nging-gender-norms-transformingmasculinities/community-dialogues prabu deepan is tearfund's asia regional director and leads global gbv initiatives. he developed the transforming masculinities program, a widely implemented, evidence-based approach in over 15 countries. he holds an mba from cardiff metropolitan university. author email: prabu.deepan@tearfund.org ruby blake is a student at the johns hopkins university school of nursing. she received a bachelor's degree in anthropology with a certificate in human needs and global resources from wheaton college, illinois. she has interests in community health nursing and equipping long-term caregivers. author email: rubyelise01@gmail.com https://learn.tearfund.org/en/resources/series/changing-gender-norms-transforming-masculinities https://learn.tearfund.org/en/resources/series/changing-gender-norms-transforming-masculinities https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pv09ls-uacw&t=8s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pv09ls-uacw&t=8s https://learn.tearfund.org/en/resources/series/changing-gender-norms-transforming-masculinities/community-dialogues https://learn.tearfund.org/en/resources/series/changing-gender-norms-transforming-masculinities/community-dialogues https://learn.tearfund.org/en/resources/series/changing-gender-norms-transforming-masculinities/community-dialogues mailto:prabu.deepan@tearfund.org mailto:rubyelise01@gmail.com christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 lee, going beyond a simple evangelical salvation narrative in anti-sex trafficking… 87 going beyond a simple evangelical salvation narrative in anti-sex trafficking: the contributions of asian and asian american christian feminist scholars joy lee this article examines the significant involvement of western evangelical christians in anti-sex trafficking efforts in southeast asia, focusing on how theological frameworks influence understanding and responses to sex trafficking. while attention has been given to how christian faith shapes an understanding of trafficking and faith-driven motivations, less focus has been on the limitations imposed by specific theological narratives, particularly the "simple" evangelical salvation narrative (sesn). i argue that this narrative, emphasizing rescue, individualism, and dualism, creates blind spots and underpins challenging practices, potentially undermining the effectiveness of faith-based organizations (fbos) in anti-sex trafficking efforts. i look at how asian/asian american christian feminist scholars can provide contextual frameworks that center sexually exploited asian women and their complex experiences. these perspectives offer a nuanced understanding of god's presence and empowerment, enabling more effective, trauma-informed, and multidimensional insights and practices. prelude as a transnational chinese singaporean north american woman, my grandmother’s experience in singapore during the invasion of the japanese imperial army in world war ii never crossed my mind. advocating with and studying the testimonies of survivors of japanese military sexual slavery (“comfort women”) led me to ask questions about the impact of violence on my ancestors. while trauma has hidden many stories, fragments of my grandmother’s experience helped me understand a bit more about her and trace our family’s experience within this global context as immigrants. i found a place in the work with comfort women survivors and activists that welcomed my voice in advocating with and for unrealized justice, remembrance, and reparations. these voices cry out for the suffering of the 200,000 “comfort women” from korea, china, the philippines, indonesia (formerly the dutch east indies), and surrounding islands in southeast asia. the japanese imperial military’s sexual enslavement of an estimated 200,000 women in 1932– 45 was the largest case of sex trafficking in modern history (dudden 2022). no prosecutions were held for wartime sexual violence because it was not recognized as a crime against humanity until 1998 (united nations n.d.). the number of “comfort women” survivors is dwindling with each passing year (mccarthy 2020; cai 2023; ko 2023). inspired by the “grandma” activists and their faith, the writings of asian/asian american christian feminist theologians and biblical scholars, and my own hopes to contribute to faith-based relief and development education, i began exploring the contemporary complex issues of human trafficking. introduction scholars have noted the strong representation and influence of western evangelical christians in antitrafficking work, (crawford et al. 2017; henriksson 2024; twis and praetorius 2021; gee and smith 2015; lewis et al. 2020; marshall 2012). some of this work examines the ways christian faith impacts conceptualizations of human-trafficking and the motivation to address it (lewis et al. 2020, gee and smith 2015; zimmerman 2011; knight and kagotho 2022; choi-fitzpatrick 2014; frame 2020; henriksson 2024). still, aside from recent publications by matthew christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 lee, going beyond a simple evangelical salvation narrative in anti-sex trafficking… 88 clarke (2022) and andreas henriksson (2024), less research focuses on the different types of theological frames that can shape the ways that christians define, understand, and respond to trafficking. given the significant involvement of evangelical christian efforts in this field, expanding the discourse on christian theological frameworks that have the potential to shape anti-trafficking efforts is important. while this paper is mostly centered on anti-sex trafficking efforts in southeast asia, the theological frameworks explored can shape both anti-sex trafficking and development work more broadly. the paper begins with a brief sociohistorical context of sex trafficking in southeast asia. following this, i discuss how a simple evangelical salvation narrative (sesn) based on western evangelical soteriology, especially its emphasis on rescue, individualism, and dualism, can shape anti-sex trafficking efforts in a way that ignores the agency of the women involved and can lead to harmful responses. lastly, i examine how asian/asian american feminist theological and biblical scholarship—in particular the insights on the importance of presence, empowerment, and complexity—can contribute to transforming the problematic aspects of the sesn dimensions and inform more multidimensional insights and practices. sex trafficking in southeast asia: sociohistorical context of asian women and white america the realities of sexually exploited women in southeast asia are complex; in part, they are driven by white sexual imperialism, but also by local and crosscultural forms of oppression (boonprasat lewis 2007). the term “white sexual imperialism” describes the relationship between asian women and white america and the sociohistorical situations that have perpetuated harmful stereotypes of asian women and caused physical harm (woan 2008). its legacy is still intertwined in media and social discourse, impacting asian women in asia and the diaspora today. tropes of exoticism, hyper-sexualized yet submissive women, and the objectification of asian women in general can be traced back to a “white heterosexual male presence in east asian wars, particularly the philippineamerican war, world war ii, and the vietnam war” (woan 2008, 278). for example, sex industries created in the philippines and thailand for u.s. military men’s “rest and recreation” have persisted because they 1 a good definition of the “western gaze” is the following: “the western gaze is defined as a more privilege (sic) audience (people from the west) gazing/looking at people who are not from the west and projecting their preconceptions, biases and ‘what have you’s’ onto them” (“what is ethical storytelling?” 2021). 2 karen marshall says that in 2003, president george w. bush promised $50 million usd for anti-human trafficking work as “encouragement” (2012). became substantially profitable industries that were reinforced by systemic poverty and local patriarchy/cultural values (woan 2008). furthermore, the western conceptualization of “women of the east” leads them to be seen through a lens of “male powerfantasy” (said in “orientalism,” as cited in woan 2008). in short, [i]n southeast asia both female and male sex workers [including those who are trafficked] are viewed as victims of the global economy; of the tourism industries; of internal warfare; such as the burmese and cambodian situations; of neocolonialism, militarism and imperialism; and of racism, patriarchy, and the institutionalized, traditional values and moral system that privilege the haves and the powerful over the other…the problems are also exacerbated by cultural ideologies, attitudes toward sexuality, gender inequality, and violence against women (boonprasat lewis 2007, 223). this backdrop is important to keep mind while examining the relationship between western evangelical faith-based organizations (fbos) and sexually exploited women in southeast asia, because anti-trafficking efforts do not happen in a vacuum, outside of a sociohistorical context that situates power dynamics. as western evangelical fbos have only recently become more self-aware of how their faithbased practices and values do in fact carry a western cultural perspective, some evangelical christians and organizations may still carry a theological framework that sustains a kind of self-righteous benevolence that inadvertently hides western sexual imperialism within “faith-driven rescue” and reinforces local harmful patriarchal beliefs and practices. anti sex-trafficking work in asia has undoubtably been shaped by a western evangelical christian “gaze” 1 and engagement. according to glenn miles, the 2003 nbc broadcast of the christian ngo international justice mission’s raid in cambodia launched the issue of sex trafficking into global and western consciousness in the early 2000s (marshall 2012). not only did the broadcast bring awareness to trafficking in cambodia, but it also sparked u.s. government interest and funding, motivating many christian fbos to work in southeast asia, and across asia (marshall 2012; henriksson 2024; swartz 2019). 2 scholars like shih christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 lee, going beyond a simple evangelical salvation narrative in anti-sex trafficking… 89 contend that “moral panic around sex work has framed sex trafficking as a more urgent concern than nonsexual-labor” trafficking for evangelical christians (shih 2023; gee and smith 2015). a sketch of the antitrafficking ngo landscape in asia reveals a saturation of western-led christian fbos with local staff (henriksson 2024). while christian fbos have been shifting towards practices like localisation and survivorcentered efforts, historically many have not been respectful of survivor insights and perspectives (kempadoo 2012 and russell 2018 as cited in cordisco tsai et al. 2020). this article examines how a theological narrative like sesn plays a role in undermining christian fbos’ anti-sex trafficking efforts and how asian/asian american feminist biblical scholarship and theologies provide contextual frameworks that center sexually exploited asian women and their complex situations and offer a nuanced understanding of god’s presence and empowerment, which enables better practices. the simple evangelical salvation narrative theological framework (sesn): implications for anti-sex trafficking efforts while making broad assumptions is risky when it comes to evangelical theological frameworks, authors have noted that there appear to be widespread commonalities among most evangelicals and evangelical organizations around what might be called a “simple” evangelical salvation narrative (sesn). the implications of sesn for evangelical anti-sex trafficking work have one positive dimension and three that are problematic. first, sesn is part of the evangelical soteriology that holds the seeds of what has been labeled a theology of “holistic development,” meaning change through personal transformations of various aspects (physical, emotional, mental, social, financial, and spiritual), and this is foundational to evangelical anti-trafficking fbos (henriksson 2024). according to henriksson, holistic development arises from an evangelical understanding of the “doctrines of creation, fall, and redemption” (2024, 97). through christ’s reconciling work, all broken relationships can be restored towards wholeness. for evangelical christians, holistic development in anti-trafficking work often addresses emotional trauma and a “brokenness of the soul” that requires “(re)building self-esteem, trauma healing, and individual morality” (henriksson 2024, 86, 114). the influence of holistic development theology is 3 it is important to note that while this understanding can trace back to anselm of canterbury's theory of substitutionary atonement, long suggests that anslem’s theology has been widely misunderstood as god’s demand for bloodshed (2007). according to anslem, the death of christ on the cross was not willed by god, “but christ himself freely underwent death...on an account of his obedience in maintaining justice, because he so steadfastly persevered in it that he brought death on himself” (anselm as cited in long 2007, 89). seen especially through fbos’ focus on preventative and protective work, commonly implementing posttrauma and self-reforming restorative interventions even though this theology is compatible with addressing structural issues (henriksson 2024). a critique of this salvation narrative, and by extension of this particular kind of holistic development framework as well, is that it has tended to overemphasize the “individual” person and can be closely tied to converting individual souls for “spiritual rescue” against a framework of good vs. evil (bird 2013, 1318), downplaying the ways the gospel speaks to the multidimensional nature of the good news. in such a view, jesus christ was like a superhero sent by god the father to come down to earth to die for peoples’ sins and was resurrected to glory, rescuing souls for heaven; metaphors like “ticket to heaven” and “fire insurance” exemplify this view (bird 2013). one evangelical church leader reflects, “well, like a quick bridge model. you know, that’s like, sin separates humans from god, the cross is the bridge. good. but there’s a lot more to it. i don’t say that’s wrong, but there’s a lot more to it, right?” (knight and kagotho 2022, 17). alternatively, the evangelical doctrine of salvation (soteriology) includes god’s redemptive plan for the world and transformation within individual persons to be more like christ; both creation and humanity will be reunited with god and renewed for eternal peace (bird 2013; treier 2019; nordling 2007). jesus christ, in this understanding, atoned for the sins of the world. 3 amid an array of evangelical perspective on salvation and sin, there is consensus around how a “holistic soteriology addresses past, present and future…removes sin’s penalty and confront sin’s power, it progressively removes sin’s power altogether, and it ultimately removes sin’s presence” (treier 2019, 193). the sesn’s myopic focus on “rescue” in personal salvation through jesus’ death and resurrection inadvertently obscures how the saving grace and power of christ is holistic and multidimensional (beyond the spiritual dimension of individual persons). the language of “rescue” in personal salvation likely grew out of american dispensationalism, drawing on the eschatological belief in christ’s return to reign and separation of the “spiritual church” and “worldly society,” reflecting dualistic thinking (mangum 2011). people experience conversion and disavow the sinful world as they exhibit “moral” behavioral changes. in turn, this dualistic framework of strong opposites perpetuates binary thinking in concepts like christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 lee, going beyond a simple evangelical salvation narrative in anti-sex trafficking… 90 belief/doubt, saved/unsaved, literal/figurative, body/soul, sinful/innocent, and more, which are problematic when it comes to engaging in complex issues of poverty, justice, and reconciliation in the world. as shown below, when applied to christian antisex trafficking efforts in asia, the sesn and ideas associated with it, especially those of rescue, individualism, and dualism, can lead christian communities to understand and engage in their efforts in distorted ways, leading to unproductive and even harmful outcomes. rescue: as outlined above, the sesn centers on how jesus “rescues” individual souls for heaven. it can seem natural for the sesn to carry over into anti-sex trafficking work in evangelical organizations. in fact, a study of christian anti-trafficking ngos found that “rescue for a greater purpose” is one of the four main themes found in evangelical christian anti-sex trafficking narratives (twis and praetorius 2021) moreover, additional research on the work of western fbos in cambodia also found that many of their marketing materials “focused on the individual action that someone can do to help “solve,” ”cure,” and/or ”rescue” people from sex trafficking and exploitation” (miles et al. 2024, 7). the hero-based narratives in western media and sesn are mutually bolstered to perpetuate a stereotypical ‘damsel in distress’ trope in sex-trafficking and have a great ability to compel and resonate with evangelical american christians. as a result, many christian communities in the west resonate strongly with the traditional ideas of rescue in anti-sex trafficking efforts, such as that popularized in the highly successful film the sound of freedom, a 2023 independent film based on a “raid and rescue” operation (coscarelli and tracy 2023). in short, as swartz says, because “stories of rescue appeal to the western mind,” the language and intervention of rescue “sells,” and western fbos feel “constrained by the evangelical markets in the united states” (swartz 2019; choi-fitzpatrick 2014; twis and praetorius 2021; jones et al. 2018). there are three main problems that have come to the fore based on this framework and methods of “rescue.” first, such a narrative excludes the perspectives of women in local contexts as well as those most impacted by trafficking, leading at times to harm and trauma. in other words, asian women are embodied persons who can construct their own experiences but are often left without consent during rescue transitions (kwok 2000). for example, the rescue transitions may deny agency to those being “rescued” by forcing women to go to shelters against their will, turning the shelters into a place of incarceration and confinement as supposed to one of safety and healing. one effect of this is that both the rescue operation itself and then the transition contribute to trauma, as testimony from two “rescued” women makes clear: one woman, seda, who was placed in a shelter following a police raid said: “i did not want to go [to the shelter], but i have been brought, so [it’s] not a choice…” phhoung also described her emotional distress upon being brought to a shelter following a raid, saying ‘they told me they brought us to phnom penh. once i heard like this, i cried until i nearly died” (cordisco tsai et al. 2022). these observations are part of an expanding body of research that prioritize testimonies and lived experiences of sexually exploited women in southeast asia. a growing proportion of testimonies and research corroborate this perspective thus underscoring the importance of centering the voices of sexually exploited women in academic discourse, best practices, and systemic change (shih 2023, parmanand 2021, whitford 2020, jones 2017). second, and related to the problem of agency, asian women can become the racialized and sexualized objects of rescue in a local patriarchal cultural context reinforced by the western imperial gaze (katoppo 2001), especially when it comes to marketing the cause of anti-sex trafficking efforts. in many cases, as fbo staff and donors are the main decision makers and “saved” survivors remain as the passive “objects” for marketing content, the content can impact survivor’s identity and sense of agency (miles et al. 2024; cordisco tsai et al. 2022). this is particularly true when the issue of respect and honor are very important in the local culture. for example, survivors from one western fbo in cambodia expressed how they did not know that they were publicly known as “former sex workers” in the organization’s promotion and marketing materials because it was in english (miles et al. 2024). one survivor explained that she felt “dishonored by the pity sought from foreigners using her life story” in leaflets while at the same time felt exposed and discriminated against by local cambodians coming to the social enterprise restaurant because of the concept of srey kouc (miles et al. 2024). in the context of cambodia, srey kouc, in the khmer language, is a cambodian concept that translates to “broken woman;” it describes a woman who has had sex with men outside of marriage or sells sex and is “despised, disrespected and shunned because they think she is impure and a very bad person” (miles et al. 2024). another survivor expressed how the fbos are “good because they help” but “they do not know how much they hurt” (miles et al. 2024). christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 lee, going beyond a simple evangelical salvation narrative in anti-sex trafficking… 91 this powerlessness goes hand in hand with a sense of obligation and gratitude that can skew their feedback and even choice to consent for their images to be used in promotional materials when they may not actually want to (miles et al. 2024). as a participant in “time to listen: hearing people on the receiving end of international aid” says, “there should be nothing communicated about us, without us” (lentfer et al. 2014). in short, while hero-based narratives are compelling and effective for nonprofit promotion toward a western audience, they cannot take precedence over treating survivors with dignity and respect and should not perpetuate harmful stereotypes like that of the diminutive asian woman. meaningful participation and input from survivors in the development of promotion and marketing approaches, materials, and media is empowering and acknowledges the inherent dignity within them. third, and finally, understanding anti-sex trafficking efforts through the lens of “rescue” can also simplify sex trafficking as an emergency crisis, shifting attention away from advancing long term preventive impact interventions and in some cases, “ease[s] the need for producing programmatic evidence of ‘success’” (molland 2019, 781; shih 2023; jones et al. 2018). what is encouraging is that “rescue operations” have been critiqued in the past decade and this critique has seemingly led to change, especially with wellestablished fbos (carroll 2021). for example, international justice missions (ijm) has publicly stated that it has learned from past mistakes and now works differently and collaboratively with local authorities (swartz 2019). it is still important, however, for all evangelical organizations involved in this work to ask themselves whether they are following best practices and evidence-based policies to help women exit from exploitation in a trauma-informed way (henriksson 2024), 4 and to consider how their theological frameworks, especially those revolving around salvation, may lead them to have blind spots. individualism: the second dimension of the sesn focuses on saving individual souls. again, it is no surprise that this dimension appears to influence the 4 current research points to survivor-centered empowerment-based approaches as best practices rather than moralbased approaches (cordisco tsai 2023; edwards et al. 2023). a moral-based approach to aftercare shelter programming that undermines women’s agency violates the trauma-informed principles: physical and psychological safety, trust, mutual peer support, collaboration, empowerment, and cultural, historical, and gender-responsiveness (huang et al. 2014). based on these principles, survivor-centered empowerment-based approaches could help survivors and exploited persons feel “empowered, respected, informed, connected, and hopeful about their recovery” (edwards et al. 2023). 5 in the field of social science, schema is a “mental structure that individuals use to organize knowledge and guide cognitive processes and behaviours” (britannica n.d.). anti-sex trafficking work of evangelical organizations by focusing their work on rescue and restoration of individuals instead of also addressing the structural dimensions of the sex-trafficking problem. an emphasis on individualism often a paints a reality that is tied to an evangelical christian salvation schema based on biblical imperatives from luke 19:10 and isaiah 1:17 that help frame human trafficking in a way that motivates a “commitment to immediate emancipation that lacks a structural critique” because “individuals are lost and in need of salvation” (choifitzpatrick 2014, 134–135). 5 this emphasis creates a blind spot, obscuring how structural realities shape individual circumstances. research has shown that u.s. christians with an evangelical worldview more frequently recommend a focus on individual deficits (“job skills, life options, family support or police protection”), the work of spiritual forces like “evil, brokenness or sin,” and interventions that deal with the individuals (rescue, police raids, etc.) when it comes to conceptualizing trafficking (choi-fitzpatrick 2014). other research also notes the “racial identity of white evangelicals has been connected with their inability to recognize the importance of systemic issues” (reynolds and offutt 2013). finally, the overwhelming preference for individualistic approaches to trafficking can be connected to emotive decisions laced with a saviour complex to “fight evil.” one former ijm thailand director explains how many middle-aged women “watch a documentary [about trafficking] and then proclaim that “god called me to thailand,” but do so without expertise or informed strategies (swartz 2019, 101). this type of thinking and planning has also led american college students doing missionary work in thailand to see sex-trafficking as a problem of individual deficits and focus on the victimhood of sexually exploited women (swartz 2019). this is not to say that factors related to the individual are not important to understanding trafficking and to tackling emotional trauma and spiritual brokenness (henricksson 2024). but given that systemic poverty is often the most significant preexisting factor that contributes to the sex industry and the vulnerability of trafficked peoples (unodc 2020; parmanand 2021), it is notable that evangelical christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 lee, going beyond a simple evangelical salvation narrative in anti-sex trafficking… 92 organizations rarely focus on that aspect of the problem, and that the sesn may very well play a part in creating and reinforcing that blind spot. dualism: as outlined above, the third main component of the sesn has to do with dualism, a theological framework that organizes ideas in terms of opposites and can reinforce binary thinking, leaving little room for nuance and complexity, especially in the context of having multiple “target” audiences. the dualistic framework raises two main problems when it leads to binary thinking in anti-sex trafficking work. the first, arising from the dualism of good vs. evil, is that this framework has led to binary thinking when applied to understanding a trafficker’s complex positionality because the narrative ‘requires’ a villain (the trafficker) from which the victim is rescued from— good vs. evil. this is particularly notable in the marketing and promotions around anti-sex trafficking work. for example, a study interviewing fbo staff in thailand highlights that western media perpetuate a stereotypical understanding about traffickers as one dimensional “villains,” whereas the fbo staff explains that traffickers should not all be characterized as “monsters,” when they themselves are also victimized by socioeconomic systemic inequalities and exploitations (jones et al. 2018). the second is that the dualism of sesn does not provide groundwork to understand complex realities in sex trafficking, especially when it comes to the agency of the women involved. the dualistic aspect of this salvation narrative reinforces the ignoring of how structural issues like systemic poverty and cultural values like filial piety might be push factors that contribute to a woman’s decision to return to the sex industry and not want to enter a rehabilitation shelter for low wage “racialized redemptive labor programs” (shih 2023; whitford 2020; miles et al. 2024). 6 in doing so, it can often group all women in the sex industry as “trafficked,” and as noted above, “rescued” women may not always see themselves as “survivors” of trafficking and do not want to be “rescued” (shih 2023; parmanand 2021). in short, dualism in sesn makes it difficult to wrestle with the idea that someone would not want to be “saved” from a brothel and they may be exercising “agency” to enter the sex industry (whitford 2020). jo doezema sees this as racialized victimization, 6 “racialized redemptive labor” is a term that shih uses to describe the ways western fbos develop vocational programs (often times the making of jewelry) framed as ethical consumerism targeting customers in the u.s. these “traditional exchanges of wages for labor are replaced with affective commitments between white first world rescuers and their purported victims in asia” (2023, 266). the racialization refers to identifying the “histories of colonial and imperial dispossession” and affirmation of a “racial order of moral righteousness and division of low-wage labor” (2023, 266). shih argues that these programs do not provide authentic opportunities for long-term economic change and self-sufficiency; rather they contribute creating a “new form of dependence on american aid and intervention” (2023, 266). the “refus[ing] to respect the choice of a woman from a developing country” and disregards her story (doezema 1998 as cited in shih 2023, 41; gee and smith 2015). insights from asian/asian american christian feminist scholars: transforming the sesn framework in anti-sex trafficking asian/asian american feminist theologians and biblical scholars have long carried the injustices experienced by their sisters in how they speak of god, understand god, and act as agents of change in god’s work among those who experience exploitation and suffering. indonesian theologian and novelist marianne katoppo is often considered to be the first asian women to do asian feminist theology in the 1970s (katoppo 2001; fabella and park 2015; kwok 2000; orevillo-montenegro 2010; kim 2022). she is part of a legacy of women who have been in solidarity with and encouraged and inspired by majority world scholars and early white american feminist scholars globally since the 70s to theologize and “reclaim the right to speak about god as subject of their own destiny” (kwok 2005, 150). other prominent asian/asian american feminist theologians are sharon a. bong, who has explored questions of the presence of jesus with those who experience suffering and exploitation; naw eh tar gay who has focused hermeneutically on the question of living in harmony through god’s empowerment; and grace ji-sun kim and susan m. shaw’s who have put forth a theological methodology that emphasizes the need to look at and understand the complexity of structural sin and lived experiences within that. in what follows, the insights from these and other asian/asian american feminist theologians are brought to bear on the problematic aspects of the three dimensions of sesn outlined above—rescue, individualism, dualism— in order to transform them and provide a more complete theological grounding to guide the analysis and actions of evangelical organizations involved in anti-sex trafficking work. transforming rescue – the importance of presence: the sesn tends to lead to seeing the physical bodies of women who are sexually exploited as objectified, objects of fear or pity, or invisible, what has christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 lee, going beyond a simple evangelical salvation narrative in anti-sex trafficking… 93 been described as an “individualistic [and] disembodied view of being human” (nordling 2007, 75). as a result, thirty years ago global south theologians gathered in 1994 to call for an alternative “theo/ethical” framework “where embodiment is central and where the objectification of women’s bodies is denounced and renounced” (eatwot as cited in grovijahn 1997, 252). more recently, malaysian feminist theologian sharon a. bong (2010) has addressed this problem by putting forth a theology of christ’s presence among asian women who have suffered, which brings a crucial dimension to transforming the perception of all that is involved in the concept of “rescue.” in bong’s essay, “the suffering christ and the asian body,” she provides insights into an embodied christology that gives space to the process that women’s bodies go through in suffering, in resisting, and in healing. first, she suggests that the “suffering christ literalized in women (and men) who are dehumanized” acknowledges the lived realities of asian women (and men) who are sexually exploited in the context of systemic poverty (2010, 187). considering the cultural patriarchal contexts where female bodies are less than male bodies, the approach of presence associates the suffering christ’s body with female bodies and elevates females wholistically in their humanity, in their imago dei, emphasizing that god laments and is present in their suffering. this focus elevates the dignity of the women who are embodying christ in their suffering, and mitigates the tendency to objectify them simply as victims to be “saved.” second, bong’s focus on the agency of women and their embodied process of resistance similarly brings new and important aspects to bear on “rescue” and “salvation.” for example, bodies that resist can redetermine dignity and “reject the construct of virginity as proof of a woman’s marriageable worth” or worth as a human person made in the image of god (bong 2010, 190). resistance can also consist of destigmatizing exploited bodies, insisting that they are important sources to listen to on trauma healing and resisting disembodiment, and refuse to simplify lived experiences as linear conversions from “rescue to saved/safe.” finally, resistance implies that their bodies are not simply objects to be saved but a reminder of an incarnational god in christ on whose body unjust violence was inflicted and who became a symbol of resistance against cosmic evil, empire, and structural sins. finally, the space given by bong to the importance of the bodily process of healing beckons an “epistemology of the broken body” in which the body becomes a site of sacred wholeness with all the scars 7 psalm 139: 14 (new revised standard version anglicized). and complexities in spite of exploitation (chung 2013 as cited in bong 2010, 338). understanding the “spirit as corporeal and the body as sacred” restores agency of the inherent dignity asian women have as image bearers of god (bong 2010, 190). god listens to their voices and sees the context of their complex realities in which they made challenging decisions, and “[k]nowledge of god as omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent is arbitrated through the agency of the suffering and resistant, and god the signifier thus becomes known, present, and empowering” (bong 2010, 291). this leads to insisting that the exploited and objectified bodies of asian women also call for restoration in the asian church, an ecclesiastical body, and for it to be in solidarity with those who are marginalized and in a process of healing. how is the body of christ living out christ’s teachings when women who are sexually exploited bear the weight of cultural shame and guilt and cannot find authentic belonging and spaces to heal within the body of christ? furthermore, women can come to know a god that suffers, resists, and heals alongside them. the liberation jesus proclaims in luke 4:18-19 is not limited, but rather expressed as wholistic embodied liberation of the whole self. instead of shame and stigma, sexually exploited women can indeed say, “…i am fearfully and wonderfully made.” 7 transforming individualism – the importance of empowering gender parity: as outlined above, the sesn has an individualistic focus that ignores crucial aspects of the structural dimensions of culture and power that are so important to understanding the roots of sex trafficking and challenging evangelical organizations to allocate their attention there as well. asian feminist theologian naw eh tar gay from myanmar provides useful insights to remedy those blind spots, with a specific focus on the unequal cultural and structural valuing of men as opposed to women. the foundation of those insights come from her contextualized gender-egalitarian hermeneutics called maijjima patipada (middle way), which focuses on how “male and female are created in the image of god,” and she “aims for liberation of all genders from patriarchal and structural sin, which enslaves all genders alike” (2023, 212). looking at galatians 3:28, naw eh tar gay sees the maijjima patipada of the baptismal formula’s antithetical gender pair of “no male nor female, for you are all one in christ jesus” as an emphasis on the shared humanness between male and female in the patriarchal context of myanmar. thus, the approach of a christian contextualized gender egalitarian interpretation of “the middle way” could see males and females as both “bestowed with full dignity christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 lee, going beyond a simple evangelical salvation narrative in anti-sex trafficking… 94 and rights” rather than understanding only males as the ones with full glory and dignity because they are more “human” according to myanmar buddhist traditions (gay 2023, 226). both males and females are empowered by god in full dignity and glory as image bearers of god to resist a power dichotomy. “this concept calls for balancing where there is unbalance, for equality where there is inequality, and for justice where there is injustice” (gay 2023, 212). reading galatians 3:28 through maijjima patipada encourages myanmar christians towards co-laborship and a rereading of this biblical text leads to a consideration of how the issues of gender-based violence and sexual exploitation are rooted in a context where males are still preferred over females. from the sesn framework, its individualistic focus on inner healing can be empowering for females but does not address the root causes of the exploitation and trafficking that lie in the structural and religio-cultural values that assumes men are of more value than women. naw eh tar gay’s insights help expand that individualistic dimension to a communal and cultural one, making clear the importance of working towards changing the societal norms, values, and power dynamics that are at the root of sex trafficking. transforming dualism – the importance of complexity: the third dimension of the sesn, that of dualism, has significant limitations when it comes to shaping anti-sex trafficking efforts as outlined above. in particular, its tendency to reinforce binary thinking with a framework of rescuer vs. victim does not provide the groundwork to understand the paradox of being someone who both has agency and is also victimized. it is here that the work of grace ji-sun kim and susan m. shaw on intersectional theology provides a way to amplify the voices of those who paradoxically have agency and are victimized (2018). notably, it helps shed light on how the women’s lived experiences shed light on understanding the complexity of structural sins. intersectional theology has a bias towards justice, recognizes the different aspects of human identities, and is a framework that identifies structures of power while facilitating inclusion and equity (kim and shaw 2018). intersectional theology is not afraid of complexities and paradoxes as “complexities are a reflection of the diverse realities of differently situated lives” (kim 2021, 526). intersectional theology has women’s identities and personal experiences as the starting place of theology and does not try to make experiences fit or align with particular religious beliefs. this is of particular importance as gender-based discrimination compounds with racism and xenophobia in human-trafficking (mullally 2021). in short, asian/asian american feminist theologians and biblical scholars trace the vision of god’s liberative presence. the limitations of binary thinking (pure/unpure, worthy/unworthy) disintegrate because asian/asian american feminist theologies can hold space for process, paradox—and most importantly for god’s spiritual and tangible liberation. through intersectional theology we can still understand god as one who embraces complexity by remembering how god is simultaneously omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, and still mysterious. “by making space for greater complexity in the being of god, we open possibilities for a god who is both/and, whose complexity is wide and deep enough to embrace us all” (kim and shaw 2018). through this lens, the voices and experiences of survivors and those who enter the sex industry, however paradoxical, would be valued, listened to, and understood considering structural sins of systemic poverty and dehumanizing patriarchal cultural contexts. their experiences are not shamefully hidden or simply used for content marketing. intersectional theology aligns with trauma-informed principles and survivors are recognized as knowledgeable beyond just their lived experience; they are empowered towards agency in their own lives, in policy making, and addressing structural issues that harm them as women who have been trafficked or voluntarily entered the sex industry. in other words, the paradox of recognizing the agency of sexually exploited women while understanding the toxic structure of the sex industry can be held within intersectional theology and sets up fbos to see sexually exploited women as partners in responding to the root causes related to systemic poverty. conclusion the insight proffered by asian feminist theologies and biblical scholarship present a deep challenge to the sesn and an opportunity for ecumenical insights to contribute to transformation. these insights center the inherent dignity and agency of sexually exploited asian women and their complex realities while deepening an understanding of who god is to the marginalized and vulnerable without a western gaze that creates an imbalanced power dynamic between “rescuer” and victim. we see how god, in incarnational love, comes alongside those who experience suffering, seeks to empower, and can hold complexities. however wellintentioned, the sesn framework’s characteristics of rescue, individualism, and dualism have led to a tendency to not center sexually exploited women in their contexts for long term flourishing and creates a blind spot when it concerns the wholistic redemption of god. this framework can inadvertently lead to a savior complex and make it challenging to hold space for complexity. in some cases, this has resulted in harmful conceptualization of sexually exploited women in asia, uninformed rescue operations, and fbo antichristian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 lee, going beyond a simple evangelical salvation narrative in anti-sex trafficking… 95 trafficking marketing and promotions that contribute to undignified depictions and further stigma. as christian fbos continue to have a strong influence in anti-trafficking efforts, expanding the discourse on christian theological frameworks that have the potential to shape anti-trafficking work is important, especially along the lines of revealing god’s presence, empowerment, and complexity while centering the inherent dignity and agency of survivors and sexually exploited asian women in their realities from a trauma-informed approach. this article has sought to do just that, and i hope it contributes to helpful transformations of theological frameworks that address the distortions that are present and the liberation that katoppo describes: as a woman, i too have felt bent and distorted. as a matter of fact, i still often feel that way. and it is the power of jesus which liberates woman, in the space of the kingdom of god. so that woman can stretch herself to her full length, and glorify god ( 2001, 63). references bird, michael f. 2013. evangelical theology: a biblical and systematic introduction. grand rapids: zondervan. bong, sharon. 2010 “the suffering christ and the asian body.” in hope abundant: third world and indigenous women's theology edited by pui lan kwok, 186–193. maryknoll, ny: orbis books. boonprasat lewis , nantawan. 2007. “when justice collapses: a religious response to sexual violence and trafficking in women in asia.” in off the menu: asian and asian north american women’s religion and theology edited by ha kim jung, pui lan kwok, rita nakashima brock, and seung ai yang, 217–230. louisville: westminster john knox press. https://archive.org/details/offmenuasianasia0000u nse/page/n5/mode/2up?view=theater cai, derek. 2023 (june 21) “‘comfort women:’ last known taiwanese survivor dies at 92.” bbc news. https://www.bbc.com/news/world65669626 carroll, matthew. 2021 (june 21). “furor erupts over anti-sex trafficker exodus road.” global observer. https://gobserver.net/4806/global diaries/thailand/furor-erupts-over-anti-sextrafficker-exodus-road/ choi-fitzpatrick, austin. 2014. “to seek and save the lost: human trafficking and salvation schemas among american evangelicals.” european journal of cultural and political sociology 1 (2): 119–40. https://doi.org/10.1080/23254823.2014.924421 clarke, matthew c. 2022. "four theological schemas for actively responding to modern slavery." journal of sociology and christianity 12 (1): 10-32. https://www.sociologyandchristianity.org/index.ph p/jsc/article/view/227 cordisco tsai, laura, vanntheary lim, elizabeth hentschel, and channtha nhanh. 2023. “strengthening services for survivors of human trafficking: recommendations from survivors in cambodia.” journal of human trafficking 9 (3): 311–27. https://doi.org/10.1080/23322705.2021.1899526. cordisco tsai, laura, vanntheary lim, and channtha nhanh. 2020. “perspectives of survivors of human trafficking and sexual exploitation on their relationships with shelter staff: findings from a longitudinal study in cambodia.” the british journal of social work 50 (1): 176–94. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjsw/bcz128 cordisco tsai, laura, vanntheary lim, channtha nhanh, and sophie namy. 2022. “‘they did not pay attention or want to listen when we spoke:’ women’s experiences in a traffickingspecific shelter in cambodia.” affilia 37 (1): 151–68. https://doi.org/10.1177/0886109920984839 coscarelli, joe, and marc tracy. 2023 (august 21). “how “rich men north of richmond” reached the top of the charts.” the new york times. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/21/arts/music/r ich-men-north-of-richmond-oliver-anthony.html crawford, christa foster, glenn miles, and gundelina velazco. 2017. finding our way through the traffick: navigating the complexities of a christian response to sexual exploitation and trafficking. oxford: regnum books international. dudden, alexis. 2022 (september 16). “a guide to understanding the history of the ‘comfort women’ issue.” united states institute of peace. https://www.usip.org/publications/2022 /09/guideunderstanding-history-comfort-women-issue edwards, katie m, laura siller, shana cerny, julie klinger, molly broin, lorey a wheeler, and lee baugh. 2023. “call to freedom: a promising approach to supporting recovery among survivors of sex trafficking.” journal of human trafficking 9 (2): 168–80. https://doi.org/10.1080/23322705.2021.1894410 fabella, virginia, and sun ai lee park, eds. 2015. we dare to dream: doing theology as asian women. eugene: wipf and stock publishers. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-65669626 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-65669626 https://gobserver.net/4806/global-%09diaries/thailand/furor-erupts-over-anti-sex-trafficker-exodus-road/ https://gobserver.net/4806/global-%09diaries/thailand/furor-erupts-over-anti-sex-trafficker-exodus-road/ https://gobserver.net/4806/global-%09diaries/thailand/furor-erupts-over-anti-sex-trafficker-exodus-road/ https://doi.org/10.1080/23254823.2014.924421 https://www.sociologyandchristianity.org/index.php/jsc/article/view/227 https://www.sociologyandchristianity.org/index.php/jsc/article/view/227 https://doi.org/10.1080/23322705.2021.1899526 https://doi.org/10.1093/bjsw/bcz128 https://doi.org/10.1177/0886109920984839 https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/21/arts/music/rich-men-north-of-richmond-oliver-anthony.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/21/arts/music/rich-men-north-of-richmond-oliver-anthony.html https://www.usip.org/publications/2022%20/09/guide-understanding-history-comfort-women-issue https://www.usip.org/publications/2022%20/09/guide-understanding-history-comfort-women-issue https://doi.org/10.1080/23322705.2021.1894410 christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 lee, going beyond a simple evangelical salvation narrative in anti-sex trafficking… 96 frame, john. 2020. “sharing our strengths understanding similarities and differences between faith-based and non-faith-based antitrafficking ngos. joint learning initiative on faith & local communities. https://jliflc.com/resources/sharing-our-strengthsunderstanding-similarities-and-differences/ huang, larke n., rebecca flatow, tenly biggs, sara afayee, kelley smith, thomas clark, and mary blake. 2014 (july). “samhsa's concept of trauma and guidance for a trauma-informed approach.” substance abuse and mental health services administration. https://archive.hshsl.umaryland.edu/handle/10713 /18559 gay, naw eh tar. 2023. “human dignity as women’s dignity: reading galatians 3:28 from myanmar gender perspective.” in asian feminist biblical studies: perspectives and methods edited by maggie low, 210–228. divinity school of chung chi college, cuhk. gee, martha bettis, and ryan d smith. 2015. “moral imperatives: faith-based approaches to human trafficking.” in the changing world religion map, edited by stanley d. brunn, 3623–48. dordrecht: springer netherlands. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9376-6_189 grovijahn, jane marie. 1997. “a feminist theology of survival: sexually abused women reclaim their broken bodies as imago dei.” phd thesis, graduate theological union. https://www.proquest.com/dissertationstheses/feminist-theology-survival-sexually-abusedwomen/docview/304375614/se-2 henriksson, andreas. 2024. “a matter of faith? combatting human trafficking in thailand & cambodia.” phd diss., umeå university. https://www.divaportal.org/smash/get/diva2:1849741/fulltext 01.pdf jones, stephanie, julie king, and niki edwards. 2018. “human-trafficking prevention is not ‘sexy’: impact of the rescue industry on thailand ngo programs and the need for a human rights approach.” journal of human trafficking 4 (3): 231–55. https://doi.org/10.1080/23322705.2017.1355161 katoppo, marianne. 2001. compassionate and free: an asian woman’s theology. eugene: wipf and stock publishers. kim, an sung. 2022. “shame, sexual violence, and the imago dei: a practical theological approach to empowering korean christian women suffering shame following sexual assault.” phd diss., university of toronto. https://hdl.handle.net/1807/124509 kim, grace ji-sun. 2021. invisible: theology and the experience of asian american women. minneapolis: fortress press. kim, grace ji-sun, and susan m. shaw. 2018. intersectional theology: an introductory guide. minneapolis: fortress press. knight, logan, and njeri kagotho. 2022. “on earth and as it is in heaven—there is no sex trafficking in heaven: a qualitative study bringing christian church leaders’ antitrafficking viewpoints to trafficking discourse.” religions 13 (1): 65. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13010065 kwok, pui-lan. 2000. introducing asian feminist theology. sheffield: sheffield academic. kwok, pui-lan. 2005. postcolonial imagination and feminist theology (1st ed). louisville: louisville: westminster john knox press. ko, byung chan. 2023 (may 3). “another death leaves only 9 surviving korean ‘comfort women.’” hankyoreh. https://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_ national/1090418 lentfer, jennifer. 2014 (june 30). “the development element.” issuu. https://issuu.com/howmatters/docs/the_developm ent_element lewis, hannah, gwyneth lonergan, rebecca murray, emma tomalin, and louise waite. 2020. “faith responses to modern slavery.” leeds/sheffield: university of sheffield, university of leeds & economic and social research council. https://eurel.info/img/pdf/2020_faith_responses _to_modern_slavery._uni_sheffield_and_leeds.pd f long d., stephen. 2007. "justification and atonement." in the cambridge companion to evangelical theology edited by t. larsen and d.j. treier, 79–92. cambridge: cambridge university press. http://doi.org/10.1017/ccol0521846986.006 mangum, todd. 2011. “the modernistfundamentalist controversy, the inerrancy of scripture, and the development of american dispensationalism.” in interdisciplinary perspectives on the authority of scripture: historical, biblical, and theoretical perspectives edited by carlos r. bovell. eugene: pickwick publications. marshall, katherine, kelly robbins, claudia zambra, ethan carroll, and nathaniel adams. 2012. “faith roles in cambodia’s efforts to counter trafficking in persons.” world faiths development dialogue: berkley center for religion, peace, and world affairs. https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/publications https://jliflc.com/resources/sharing-our-strengths-understanding-similarities-and-differences/ https://jliflc.com/resources/sharing-our-strengths-understanding-similarities-and-differences/ https://archive.hshsl.umaryland.edu/handle/10713/18559 https://archive.hshsl.umaryland.edu/handle/10713/18559 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9376-6_189 https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/feminist-theology-survival-sexually-abused-women/docview/304375614/se-2 https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/feminist-theology-survival-sexually-abused-women/docview/304375614/se-2 https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/feminist-theology-survival-sexually-abused-women/docview/304375614/se-2 https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1849741/fulltext01.pdf https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1849741/fulltext01.pdf https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1849741/fulltext01.pdf https://hdl.handle.net/1807/124509 https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13010065 https://issuu.com/howmatters/docs/the_development_element https://issuu.com/howmatters/docs/the_development_element https://eurel.info/img/pdf/2020_faith_responses_to_modern_slavery._uni_sheffield_and_leeds.pdf https://eurel.info/img/pdf/2020_faith_responses_to_modern_slavery._uni_sheffield_and_leeds.pdf https://eurel.info/img/pdf/2020_faith_responses_to_modern_slavery._uni_sheffield_and_leeds.pdf http://doi.org/10.1017/ccol0521846986.006 https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/publications/faith-roles-in-cambodia-s-efforts-to-counter-trafficking-in-persons christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 lee, going beyond a simple evangelical salvation narrative in anti-sex trafficking… 97 /faith-roles-in-cambodia-s-efforts-to-countertrafficking-in-persons mccarthy, julie. 2020 (november 29). “philippine survivor recounts her struggle as a “comfort woman” for wartime japan. npr. https://www.npr.org/2020/11/29/939811000 /philippine-survivor-recounts-her-struggle-as-acomfort-woman-for-wartime-japan miles, siobhan, glenn miles, jill reimer, anjum umrani, and madeline stenersen. 2024. “‘what we say is what you see:’ portrayal by christian faith-based organizations of female survivors of sexual exploitation and trafficking in cambodia.” journal of human trafficking. (february): 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/23322705.2023.2281871 mullally, siobhán. 2021 (july 30). “racism and xenophobia put human rights of human trafficking victims at risk un expert.” media center. https://www.ohchr.org/en/pressreleases/2021/07/racism-and-xenophobia-puthuman-rights-human-trafficking-victims-risk-un nordling, cherith fee. 2007. “the human person in the christian story.” in the cambridge companion to evangelical theology (1 st ed.) edited by timothy larsen and daniel j. treier, 65–78. cambridge: cambridge university press. https://i-sharewhe.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01car li_whe/u36ljs/alma9955559313405903 orevillo-montenegro, muriel. 2010. the jesus of asian women. new delhi: logos press. parmanand, sharmila. 2021. “salvation as violence: anti-trafficking and the rehabilitation of rescued filipino women into moral subjects.” journal of international women's studies 22 (2): 78–91. https://vc.bridgew.edu/jiws/vol22/iss2/8/ reynolds, amy, and stephen offutt. 2013. “global poverty and evangelical action” in the new evangelical social engagement, edited by brian steensland, and philip goff, 242–262. new york, oxford university press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/978019932953 3.003.0011 “schema.” n.d. britanica. accessed september 23, 2024. https://www.britannica.com/science/schemacognition shih, elena. 2023. manufacturing freedom: sex work, anti-trafficking rehab, and the racial wages of rescue. oakland: university of california press. swartz, david r. 2019. “‘rescue sells:’ narrating human trafficking to evangelical populists.” the review of faith & international affairs 17 (3): 94–104. https://doi.org/10.1080/15570274.2019.1644014 treier, daniel j. 2019. introducing evangelical theology. grand rapids: baker publishing group. twis, mary, and regina praetorius. 2021. “a qualitative interpretive meta-synthesis of evangelical christian sex trafficking narratives.” journal of religion & spirituality in social work 40 (2): 189–215. https://doi.org/10.1080/15426432.2020.1871153 united nations. n.d. “crimes of sexual violence.” accessed september 23, 2024. https://www.icty.org/en/features/crimes-sexualviolence unodc un office on drugs and crime. 2020. “global report on trafficking in persons.” united nations publication. sales no. e.20.iv.3. https://www.unodc.org/unodc/data-andanalysis/glotip.html “what is the western gaze?” 2021 (september 12). no! wahala magazine. https://www.nowahalamag.com/post/what-isethical-storytelling-the-western-gaze whitford, troy. 2020. “development of intelligence collection and analysis on sex trafficking: a challenge for ‘rescue’ ngos.” salus journal 8 (1): 62–74. https://view.salusjournal.com/index.php/salusjour nal/article/view/110 woan, sunny. 2007. "white sexual imperialism: a theory of asian feminist jurisprudence." washington. & lee journal of civil rights & social justice 14 (2): 275–301. https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/cgi/viewco ntent.cgi?article=1243&context=crsj 7 zimmerman, yvonne c. 2011. “christianity and human trafficking.” religion compass 5 (10): 567–78. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.17498171.2011.00309.x joy lee is program administrator m.a. in humanitarian & disaster leadership (hdl) and hdi associate fellow at wheaton college. she has an m.a. in hdl from wheaton college and degrees in semiotics & theatre, and education, both from the university of toronto. author email: joy.m.lee@wheaton.edu https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/publications/faith-roles-in-cambodia-s-efforts-to-counter-trafficking-in-persons https://berkleycenter.georgetown.edu/publications/faith-roles-in-cambodia-s-efforts-to-counter-trafficking-in-persons https://www.npr.org/2020/11/29/939811000/philippine-survivor-recounts-her-struggle-as-a-comfort-woman-for-wartime-japan https://www.npr.org/2020/11/29/939811000/philippine-survivor-recounts-her-struggle-as-a-comfort-woman-for-wartime-japan https://www.npr.org/2020/11/29/939811000/philippine-survivor-recounts-her-struggle-as-a-comfort-woman-for-wartime-japan https://doi.org/10.1080/23322705.2023.2281871 https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2021/07/racism-and-xenophobia-put-human-rights-human-trafficking-victims-risk-un https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2021/07/racism-and-xenophobia-put-human-rights-human-trafficking-victims-risk-un https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2021/07/racism-and-xenophobia-put-human-rights-human-trafficking-victims-risk-un https://i-share-whe.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01carli_whe/u36ljs/alma9955559313405903 https://i-share-whe.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01carli_whe/u36ljs/alma9955559313405903 https://i-share-whe.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01carli_whe/u36ljs/alma9955559313405903 https://vc.bridgew.edu/jiws/vol22/iss2/8/ https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199329533.003.0011 https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199329533.003.0011 https://www.britannica.com/science/schema-cognition https://www.britannica.com/science/schema-cognition https://doi.org/10.1080/15570274.2019.1644014 https://doi.org/10.1080/15426432.2020.1871153 https://www.icty.org/en/features/crimes-sexual-violence https://www.icty.org/en/features/crimes-sexual-violence https://www.unodc/ https://www.nowahalamag.com/post/what-is-ethical-storytelling-the-western-gaze https://www.nowahalamag.com/post/what-is-ethical-storytelling-the-western-gaze https://view.salusjournal.com/index.php/salusjournal/article/view/110 https://view.salusjournal.com/index.php/salusjournal/article/view/110 https://heinonline.org/hol-cgi-bin/get_pdf.cgi?handle=hein.journals/walee14&section=17 https://heinonline.org/hol-cgi-bin/get_pdf.cgi?handle=hein.journals/walee14&section=17 https://heinonline.org/hol-cgi-bin/get_pdf.cgi?handle=hein.journals/walee14&section=17 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-8171.2011.00309.x https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-8171.2011.00309.x mailto:joy.m.lee@wheaton.edu christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 shah, decolonizing data and recovering the person in christian relief and development organizations 65 decolonizing data and recovering the person in christian relief and development organizations1 rebecca supriya shah the purpose of this paper is to prompt western christian organizations—funded and led by people whose histories are intertwined with colonialism—to examine the impact of their “gaze” on people in the majority world. today, because of the vast scale of the christian humanitarian and relief industry, christ-centered development assistance must avoid perpetuating entrenched asymmetries of power and authoritative knowledge production between the global north and global south. to safeguard the rights of those living in poverty requires a conscious effort to decolonize christian development data collection by recognizing the dangerous potential for western christian organizations to impose inequitable measures of data extraction and acquisition on the global south. introduction on the 16 th of april 1917, mahatma gandhi arrived in champaran in north bihar at the foothills of the himalayan mountains. he came to investigate reports by indian sharecroppers who accused the british landlords of extorting large sums of money and forcing them to grow indigo in lieu of other more profitable crops. gandhi decided to gather data to prove that the tenants were being oppressed by the british planters. in a few weeks, gandhi and teams of volunteers visited twenty-eight hundred villages and collected over eight thousand statements from indigent indigo farmers. gandhi was ordered to leave champaran, but he refused and was imprisoned by the british. hearing his friend was in prison, anglican clergyman charles f. andrews offered to help. gandhi kindly refused the offer, saying that it was up to indians to learn to be self-reliant and to fight for their freedom. armed with a crushing mountain of evidence of the abuse of indian tenants by british indigo planters, gandhi was able to force the colonial government of bihar to introduce the champaran agrarian bill into the bihar legislative council on november 29, 1917. the bill abolished the oppressive tenancy system, and the farmers were free to plant whatever crops they 1 the author expresses gratitude to several individuals who provided valuable feedback and assistance. dr. timothy samuel shah and dr. daniel philpott provided helpful comments on the content and structure of the paper. dr. james ponniah of the university of madras offered assistance during the participatory research in chennai, india. special thanks are extended to the editors, dr. roland hoksbergen and dr. nina kurlberg, for their helpful comments and constructive suggestions. deemed most profitable. the bill also protected farmers from any litigation from the powerful colonial planters associations. mahatma gandhi realized that data was an indispensable means of empowering those living in poverty to solve their problems. gandhi also realized that external engagement must take the form of accompaniment of local actors as they take the lead in dealing with their oppression and deprivations. ahead of his time, gandhi recognized the positionality of the indian researchers. while the englishman charles andrews might have enhanced the credibility of the indian team with the british authorities, gandhi wanted the indians to persuade the authorities to abolish the tenancy system through their own efforts and with their own data. the purpose of this essay is to explore whether the methods and modalities of amassing knowledge and personal data employed to serve the growing needs of the rapidly expanding christian relief and development industry in the global north carry the risk of perpetuating asymmetrical power structures and even reinscribing coloniality in the global south (corrigan, mcalister, and schäfer 2022). i suggest that there is a latent risk that some christian relief and development organizations will—borrowing the analysis of catholic christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 shah, decolonizing data and recovering the person in christian relief and development organizations 66 development economist denis goulet—behave like “one-eyed giants,” insofar as they may prescribe “superior” technical, efficient, and even “colonial” methods of data collection that ignore people’s felt needs and perceptions and “act as if man could live by bread alone, as if human destiny could be stripped to its material dimensions alone” (goulet 1980, 481). however, i fully acknowledge that further fine-grained empirical research would be required to test and verify the precise extent to which this latent danger is being realized. finally, i illustrate how participatory action methods might be useful, portable, and accessible tools of representation and analysis that have the potential to counter the risks associated with more traditional research approaches. drawing on some of my research conducted during the covid-19 pandemic (20202022) and utilizing the participatory rural appraisal (pra) methodology, i will explore the value and suitability of participatory methods to inform a genuine conversation about decolonization and data colonialism and, ultimately, to protect the dignity of those individuals and communities being studied. i hope to prompt western christian organizations—funded and led by people whose histories are so intertwined with colonialism—to examine the impact of their “gaze” on people in the majority world. today, because of the vast scale of the christian humanitarian and relief industry, christcentered development assistance must avoid perpetuating entrenched asymmetries of power and authoritative knowledge production between the global north and global south. to safeguard the rights of those living in poverty requires a conscious effort to decolonize christian development data collection by recognizing the dangerous potential for western christian organizations to impose inequitable measures of data extraction and acquisition on the global south. power and structural inequities operate in christian development institutions but are rarely discussed. if we are to decolonize data collection, we need to raise certain questions. first, why do certain individuals and associations become recognized as experts in christian data collection, including designing and implementing christ-centered monitoring and evaluation frameworks? do these differences arise because northern institutions have genuine expertise, or are they due to more complex issues such as the trust of western donors, western notions of “standards of excellence,” or memberships in networks that are based in the west? second, the exercise of power, including the quantification and commodification of data, including very personal data of individuals in the majority world, raises issues about the legitimacy and accountability of western christian institutions. how and on what basis do christian institutions in the north acquire the right to exert this power? is it enough that they are motivated by a christ-centered vision of human well-being? or do we need to develop additional criteria around processes of data collection in the majority world? third, how do we hold those who exert power in data collection processes accountable, particularly if they are the ones who control the sources of funding? a cautionary remark is worth making at this preliminary stage. i adopt a critical point of view about the data collection methods of christian organizations in the majority world primarily because i consider their work to be too important and too valuable—at least in principle — to be jeopardized by a system of data appropriation and utilization that disregards and underestimates the complexity of their task. therefore, to reiterate, my analysis is designed to provoke selfcritical reflection and to encourage christian practitioners in the majority world to examine their work carefully and deliberately and in the light of a rich and robust christian vision of the dignity of the human person, so that christ-centered development and humanitarian efforts can remain viable and successful on their own distinctive terms. the rise of evangelical humanitarianism and data gathering in the 1960s and 1970s, as evangelical humanitarian organizations such as world vision went mainstream and actively expanded their work in hardto-reach areas of the world like ethiopia and somalia, they rapidly professionalized and were able to compete for funds with secular development agencies. by the time the 1980s rolled around, the number of evangelical relief and development agencies not only outnumbered missions but also began to catch up with secular humanitarian agencies in size and reach (king 2012, 936). the success of evangelical relief and development agencies in accessing american government funds and attracting media attention worried some leaders like ron sider who urged evangelicals to live simply and support social issues (sider 1977). while sider encouraged this turn to development, he worried that some evangelicals might not fully understand the dangers of secular development policies and programs. sider warned that “it makes no sense for christian development agencies to take their basic assumption on the nature of development from secular sources like the united nations, secular government in developed or developing nations, or private secular development agencies” (as quoted in king 2012, 940). things came to a head at the consultation on the church in response to human need held in wheaton, illinois in 1983, which was attended by american evangelicals such as ron sider and global south christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 shah, decolonizing data and recovering the person in christian relief and development organizations 67 evangelicals such as vinay samuel, samuel escobar, and rene padilla. the framers of the “wheaton statement” devote an entire section to “christian aid agencies and transformation.” the statement mentions that “the plight of the poor is often exploited to meet donor needs and expectations.” furthermore, the wheaton declaration goes on to state that imposing western management systems on local communities arises because most organizations assume “that western planning and control systems are the only ones that can ensure accountability” (“social transformation” 1984, 27). indeed, as the new generation of large-scale christian relief and development organizations grew in size and popularity, their need for reliable data to measure their results grew alongside an increase in their funding, including a large influx of private donations. 2 to manage and organize the large-scale development programs now in place across the globe, it became necessary to collect reliable and objective data—on the model of western social science—to demonstrate to donors and the relief organizations themselves that their efforts were making an impact (wuthnow 2009). yet certain forms of data risked flattening the complexity of lived christianity in the global south to limited, but measurable, westerncentric categories. for example, in his study of satnami women in india, chad bauman finds that in the mostly agricultural community he researched, women generally worked alongside men in the fields. upon conversion, however, satnami-christian women discarded their traditional fieldwork, confined their activities to within the home, and embraced behaviors consonant with what western missionaries regarded as “respectable” womanhood and pious femininity. furthermore, bauman notes that following missionary ideals of “propriety and restraint,” elaborate satnamichristian weddings were stripped down to short western-style ceremonies in the church (bauman 2008; kent 2004). while this particular example is drawn from historical accounts of western missionaries operating in india in the mid-twentieth century, the challenge for northern christian institutions to understand the complexity of context and culture in their operations remains critically important. western-based nongovernment organizations (ngos) often do the irreplaceable work of nation-states, christian foundations, and communities. their work, as erica bornstein discovered with world vision’s child sponsorship in zimbabwe, is a “liberatory force” that changes lives. but it may also “disrupt relationships of 2 in the late 1990s, world vision’s president robert seiple said that his organization was “the largest privately funded relief-and-development agency in the world” (seiple 1998). belonging,” as well as magnify and reinforce layers of economic disparity between groups of people in the same local context (2005, 171,195). in india and in other parts of the global south, indigenous economic, religious, and social structures were sometimes treated as suspect phenomena to be judged and ultimately transformed in accordance with northern christian standards. these standards became the accepted norms for understanding social, economic, and religious life in the south. women in the global south, who may not exhibit the kind of feminist power, agency, and confidence of northern women, may be regarded as “oppressed” or “subjugated.” (miles 2006, mahmood 2001). the colonial move is evident here as individuals in the north rise to become the subjects and saviors—in part through acquiring authority and mastery through processes of data gathering—while individuals in the south remain helpless and downtrodden as the debilitated objects and the grateful recipients of northern benevolence. coloniality and the growth of a christian relief and development industry technical approaches that were part and parcel of prevailing paradigms of modernity and modernization were increasingly adopted by christian relief and development agencies, and ironically caused them to have a limited and less holistic understanding of development often contrary to their own christian assumptions (bornstein 2005). during the united nations decade of development in the 1960s and even earlier, in the forties and fifties, a group of catholic scholars led by french catholic priest father louis joseph lebret strongly criticized the one-size-fits-all modernization approach being advocated by the un and by its partners. this approach, argued lebret, simply reduces economic development to increasing consumption and production and is insufficient and ineffective (culebro juárez and gasper 2021). development for lebret is more human and more developed when people are called not just to “have more” but to “be more,” both spiritually and materially. inspired by lebret, his student and pioneer development ethicist denis goulet maintained that there can be “authentic development” only when there is a “societal openness to the deepest levels of mystery and transcendence,” and when this yearning for mystery and transcendence is recognized and satisfied (1974, 41). unfortunately, such a broad understanding of authentic development is not shared by most in the christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 shah, decolonizing data and recovering the person in christian relief and development organizations 68 secular and even some in the christian development community. as goulet observes, the issue is the premium frequently placed on the search for technical efficiency and sophistication in the development industry. goulet notes, as mentioned above, that “technical experts are often one-eyed giants because they come convinced that, somehow or other, they know what is good for people, and they have the answers” (goulet 1990). “one-eyed giants” might include highly trained experts, including those from the global north and those who may belong to the global south, but who are trained in institutions dominated by northern ideas, practices, and methods and thus operate as outsiders. the imagery of a one-eyed giant suggests that certain types of “superior” or technical approaches to development may in reality be myopic, limited, and constrained in their understanding of development because they lack an “authentic” and fuller understanding of the economic, social, and spiritual needs and perceptions of the people they profess to help. widespread recognition of “desecularization” and the global resurgence of religion in the late 1990s saw global development institutions such as the world bank, the united nations development program (undp), the us agency for international development (usaid), and the uk’s department for international development (dfid) begin to work more deliberately and closely with large-scale religious institutions (tomalin 2018, 10) the intersection of religion and poverty, particularly in the early 2000s and following the tragedies of 9/11, further increased partnerships between secular global north development donors and institutions and faith-based relief and development agencies across the globe (tomalin 2018). to compete for government funds and to professionalize operations, some large christian development institutions hired evaluation professionals and began developing technically sophisticated datagathering methods and frameworks to measure program effectiveness and sustainable impact (wuthnow, 2009). the secular development industry soon realized that christian institutions often have personnel with deep historical roots in the communities they are seeking to reach and could gather vital granular data at the local level. global north christian development institutions became key partners with global development institutions in the extraction and appropriation of information from a variety of sources, including from vulnerable and marginalized communities on sensitive topics such as condom usage for hiv/aids prevention, contraception, and domestic violence (corrigan, mcalister, and schäfer 2022). in these situations, as in so many others, western christian relief and development agencies, particularly international faith-based organizations (fbos) such as tearfund and world vision, serve as intermediaries between local christian communities, and the secular development industry (bornstein 2005, wuthnow 2009). since western christian institutions have a history and experience of working with local christian communities, they play a key role in collecting and “translating” local data and knowledge, including indigenous customs and values, for the global development industry. these power issues that affect development data collection need to enlist faithful christians to take deliberate action to decolonize data gathering. for example, restoring dignity and ownership to the global south requires donors and leaders to reduce the gap between those who voice their views about the programs they want and the actual decisionmakers. christian relief and development organizations as “value-bearers, valuepromoters, and value-destroyers” data-gathering frameworks and technologies are not value-neutral. by employing certain data-gathering methods, christian institutions convey a powerful bias favoring a certain form of rationality, a conception of “the good life,” and a particular approach to power and authority. for example, birdsall and beaman note that the quantitative approach employed by the pew reports on religious harassment within and between countries obscures the complexity of a variety of religious traditions and does not reflect the lived reality of people of faith. yet the data from pew are often quoted and utilized by religious freedom organizations, including western-based christian institutions advocating for religious freedom in the global south (birdsall and beaman 2020). some data collection methods may also favor particular narratives about individual autonomy, faith, sexuality, and even the role of the market that may be at odds with those living in the majority world. a case in point are the traditional western socialscientific surveys and questionnaires administered to respondents tend to presuppose that those surveyed function and act as—and indeed are—independent and unencumbered individual agents. but this methodological and epistemological premise may be completely out of step with a social reality prevailing in much of the global south, in which individuals are embedded in, and act as part of, larger communitarian wholes, whether of family, clan, tribe, or faith. goulet thus maintains that the very means or the processes by which data are collected, processed, and analyzed are themselves “value bearers, value promoters, and value destroyers” (goulet 1990). by designing certain types of christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 shah, decolonizing data and recovering the person in christian relief and development organizations 69 evaluation approaches or proposing western-centric frameworks of accountability and learning, christian technicians confer values, negative or positive, on various forms of social customs, religious beliefs, and cultural practices in the majority world—for example, in favor of individualism and against familism, tribalism, and communitarianism. while not explicit in their condemnation, it is possible that some northern/western christian agencies may implicitly judge certain cultural, religious, and tribal resources to be inferior, backward, and inimical to development, perhaps because they do not fit with modern western cultural assumptions. behavioral economists have written about the frustrating reality that poor farmers in the global south frequently fail to make certain strategic and profitable investments even when the likely returns are high (tanguy, et al. 2014). there is no denying that certain attitudes and behaviors associated with apathy and helplessness do exist among lower-income communities in the global south (ibid.). the relevant question, however, is how much such attitudes and behaviors reflect “cultural patterns” that need to be reformed, or are a reflection of economic and structural conditions. a further question is whether northern christian relief and development agencies have any criteria or guiding principles to help them critique their own cultural assumptions and value judgments, and how these assumptions and value judgments inform their own approaches to data and knowledge generation in the global south. criteria that might be helpful in guiding christian relief and development organizations may be drawn from natural law theory. thomas aquinas, who lived between 1224 and 1274, is generally regarded as the pre-eminent theorist of natural law. although aquinas lived and wrote in europe, his writings leave no “palpable trace” of the “dealings of his era’s kings, popes, and emperors” (finnis 1998, 3). thomas aquinas, it seems, was “engaged in a vast trans-temporal conversation” and thus was not confined to his time, but instead transcended his time (ibid., 4). his writings on natural law were informed by serious reflection and study of various masters of inquiry including scholars of eleventh-century persia and twelfth-century islamic spain (ibid.). natural law refers to a set of principles or precepts that are derived from eternal or divine law but are accessible to common human reason and are used to order human life and human community (finnis 1998). for aquinas, the first principle that ties together the many principles of natural law is “good is to be done and pursued and bad is to be avoided” (ibid., 80). with natural law as a possible guiding principle in mind, i suggest that practices that aim toward universal goods of human life—which include family, religious practice, community life, protection of the weak and vulnerable, knowledge, and so forth—are the ones to be valued, affirmed, promoted, and sustained in relief and development work as in all domains of human enterprise. the precepts of natural law could help westernbased christian development, relief, and humanitarian agencies not to impose ad hoc, individualistic, or technocratic criteria that are specific to the west, or perhaps point them toward christian approaches that allow for christian beliefs and practices but critique harmful local practices. problematic local practices that indeed deserve legitimate critique may include child marriage, female genital mutilation (fgm), the caste system, witchcraft, and so on. in the same way, christian development agencies may adopt approaches to data collection that meet the criterion of reinforcing the basic goods of human life, human dignity, authenticity and integrity, and rational human agency (or the good of “practical reasonableness”) as outlined in aquinas’s theory of natural law. the following list of questions that each organization should ask itself is in no way exhaustive, but seeks to identify certain aspects and risks of colonizing approaches to data collection, as well as facets of decolonizing approaches that could be adopted by christian relief and development agencies: • how do northern christian development and relief agencies avoid predatory extractive practices of data collection and abstract digitized quantification of data? the goal here is to protect the god-given dignity of the most vulnerable and marginalized members of the human family through the practice of informed consent so that they are treated not as mere objects but as full human persons— i.e., human subjects possessing agency and inherent worth as ends in themselves. in cases of extreme vulnerability and diminished autonomy such as in refugee camps, individuals need to be protected so that data collection is not seen as a transaction through which vital services are provided if and only if consent is obtained. • how do northern-led christian data-gathering practices avoid a paternalist framing of their efforts as the only ones who know best because they happen to have the resources and skills to engage in systematic data collection and analysis? capacity building and strengthening are fraught with colonial overtones where northern institutions are full of ideas about how to “fix” global south problems. while capacity strengthening in the global south is key to greater ownership and christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 shah, decolonizing data and recovering the person in christian relief and development organizations 70 control of data collection, access to western foundations and funding, political influence, and power are structural issues that capacity strengthening alone cannot remedy. consider the onerous accounting and paperwork needed to access a grant from usaid or from foundations like the john templeton foundation. 3 decolonizing data collection needs to consider the structural inequities inherent in grant-making institutions in the west. in doing so, christ-centered data gathering could effectively promote the good of justice when institutions and individuals in the global south have access to a variety of resources they need for their flourishing and the flourishing of their communities. • how does the data collection of northern christian agencies actively protect freedom of religion, including the freedom to convert, even if the individual chooses to practice a religion whose beliefs are contrary to the christian gospel? christian development agencies are called to respect human dignity by giving people the freedom to practice the religion most in accord with their own judgments of conscience. natural law maintains that religion—understood as the attempt to achieve harmony with whatever transcendent source of meaning and reality there might be—is a basic, universal good and should be protected and promoted as such. • how do data generation practices of westernbased christian development agencies address the methodological assumptions and methods that perpetuate unequal power dynamics and may be regarded as domineering, technocratic, and extractive? the section in this paper that could help address these issues is the example provided below of participatory research conducted among dalit communities in india during the covid-19 pandemic. the research illustrates the need to provide individuals with the room to voice their perspectives, their experiences, their commitments, and their culture. the methods of data collection need to be flexible and open-ended. by providing 3 to learn more about the templeton world charity foundation human flourishing project see https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3a__www.templeton.org_&d=dwifaq&c=4rz6npietele5i2kbr4rw&r=v7spit7skrws5onskxknh0rpjlukfo9hay3vmucbxg&m=oafg7a5tjlqvhcpc22bsp8oaadpnzxjabtbd56oelw7usv58bplpcau6xc2khnzb&s=_nzixja2 c583rmvalleito5j4sq4afp-jxm6udenrsu&e= non-textual methods such as the “river of life” (explained below), individuals have accessible and versatile tools to talk about their experiences. methods that provide an enabling environment with the tools and the voice to provide the data that organization needs to monitor programs and at the same time articulate their concerns collectively encourage the inclusive and active participation of those living in poverty. • how can the process of data collection by christian individuals and organizations foster community, build friendships, and appropriately respect and strengthen marriage and family life? data collection methods that seek precise measurement and scientific rigor may categorize individuals as “oppressed,” “victims,” or “backward.” data collection methods may also use terms such as “observed,” “underdeveloped,” or “foreign culture,” which create distance and underlie agendas to justify the domination of one group of people over another. for aquinas, friendship, marital communion, and family life are basic human goods. human beings were created by god to live in community and in fellowship with one another. practices of data generation that enable participants to “trade places” could reduce the distance between the data gatherer and the program participant. this in turn could foster respect and build friendship between very different groups of people. understanding one’s positionality may help forge stronger connections between northern data gatherers and southern program participants. individual-level relationship-building may be a critical step toward long-term structural changes. • how do christian institutions become aware of and come to terms with the power manifested in different aspects of data collection? in some cases, data generation, including the planning and implementation of data collection, in christian relief and development organizations, may be unidirectional from the northern headquarters to the southern program offices. https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3a__www.templeton.org_&d=dwifaq&c=4rz6npiete-le5i2kbr4rw&r=v7spit7skrws5onskxknh0rpjlukfo9ha-y3vmucbxg&m=oafg7a5tjlqvhcpc22bsp8oaadpnzxjabtbd56oelw7usv58bplpcau6xc2khnzb&s=_nzixja2c583rmvalleito5j4sq4afp-jxm6udenrsu&e= https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3a__www.templeton.org_&d=dwifaq&c=4rz6npiete-le5i2kbr4rw&r=v7spit7skrws5onskxknh0rpjlukfo9ha-y3vmucbxg&m=oafg7a5tjlqvhcpc22bsp8oaadpnzxjabtbd56oelw7usv58bplpcau6xc2khnzb&s=_nzixja2c583rmvalleito5j4sq4afp-jxm6udenrsu&e= https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3a__www.templeton.org_&d=dwifaq&c=4rz6npiete-le5i2kbr4rw&r=v7spit7skrws5onskxknh0rpjlukfo9ha-y3vmucbxg&m=oafg7a5tjlqvhcpc22bsp8oaadpnzxjabtbd56oelw7usv58bplpcau6xc2khnzb&s=_nzixja2c583rmvalleito5j4sq4afp-jxm6udenrsu&e= https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3a__www.templeton.org_&d=dwifaq&c=4rz6npiete-le5i2kbr4rw&r=v7spit7skrws5onskxknh0rpjlukfo9ha-y3vmucbxg&m=oafg7a5tjlqvhcpc22bsp8oaadpnzxjabtbd56oelw7usv58bplpcau6xc2khnzb&s=_nzixja2c583rmvalleito5j4sq4afp-jxm6udenrsu&e= christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 shah, decolonizing data and recovering the person in christian relief and development organizations 71 it is important to recognize, for example, that certain forms of data gathering, such as largescale, impersonal digital surveys to measure maternal mortality or randomized controlled trials to measure the impact of cash incentives among poor farmers, entangle the institution in the coloniality of power and impact the kinds of knowledge that is produced. positionality refers to how individuals and institutions are perceived in the setting in which they undertake research. a decolonized data collection infrastructure recognizes the politics of knowledge generation in relation to the voice, credibility, and validity of data. western-based christian development and humanitarian institutions gathering data in the global south need to be mindful of positionality, power dynamics, relations, and perceptions of those living in poverty. combining a comprehensive christian vision of the human person and human dignity and of the goods that truly fulfill the human person with the imperative to collect good, measurable, data for relief and development programs is extremely challenging. the process requires paying close attention to the immense and legitimate cultural diversity inherent in the contexts in which christian relief and development organizations operate, while allowing the process to be guided and shaped by christ-centered values and virtues. decolonizing funding for data collection in christian relief and development one major challenge we face in the majority world is that most of the funding for development programs, including research and capacity building, comes from western governments, western foundations, or private individuals living in the west. thus, the process of translating development data may often occur within the structure of western cultural assumptions and western power dynamics. consider an outcome evaluation from the early twenties for a large christian humanitarian and relief agency headquartered in the united states. 4 i was the lead evaluator for this end-line evaluation that assessed the impact of a biblically based holistic approach to development being implemented across the globe. the approach was designed to overcome apathy and hopelessness, and drew heavily on biblical teachings, particularly from the gospel. 4 note that this is a sensitive internal evaluation that cannot be made public due to the impact it might have on the organisation’s work in some countries of the global south. us-based managers and local staff were keen to harness biblically based principles to eliminate the destructive hold of witchcraft on the lives of program participants. rooted in christian teachings that human beings are made in the image of god, they taught participants that they are determined neither by fate nor by unknown evil forces, but are instead free to flourish—and free to choose available pathways to flourishing—because that is god’s intention for them and their families. but the western-trained program leaders did not stop there. they went on to explain to program participants that certain traditional cultural practices, such as protecting the baobab tree (common in senegal), were evil and should be stopped if they wished to flourish. in the context of the global north and global south balance of power, particularly financial power in the form of grants and aid, discussions that disparage certain aspects of culture risk reinforcing western cultural imperialism and sustaining a false narrative about the superiority of western christian culture. furthermore, once established, these categories of “backward,” “undeveloped,” and “illiterate” may encourage a colonial discourse that defines and perpetuates power imbalances between global north christian institutions and global south individuals. one of the main thrusts of this christian organization’s biblical approach to fighting poverty is to engage and challenge deep-seated cultural constraints on economic development and spiritual uplift. in fact, it is valuable and indeed essential to recognize that certain cultural practices can be harmful to human fulfillment and thereby inhibit authentic development. elsewhere i have written about the developmental constraints imposed by the caste system on the lives of dalit men and women in india (shah 2021). even so, to de-westernize and decolonize research approaches and data gathering, christian organizations should not start from a default posture of hostility or skepticism towards traditional cultures and particular cultural practices. they should recognize that more often than not there is value in protecting and preserving cultural values and traditions, such as those aspects of culture that support marriage and marital stability, family life, and domestic harmony. therefore, to begin a conversation about decolonizing development data collection in the global south, christian organizations should critically inquire whether it is culture that blocks authentic development in a given instance, the effect of prevailing economic systems and structures, the way a particular development scheme may have been designed and implemented, or all of the above. the design and implementation of a development scheme christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 shah, decolonizing data and recovering the person in christian relief and development organizations 72 may fail (or may not fully succeed) precisely insofar as it lacks a proper respect for, and understanding of, human persons within their particular cultural context. data colonialism and christian relief and development organizations in the global north recognizing the gap in per capita income between what were then referred to as “developed” and “less developed nations,” the united nations declared the 1960s as the first united nations development decade (“united nations development decade”). an understanding of the impact of the development decade followed by the technological advances in “big data” capture provides an opportunity to examine the complexity of dealing with technology, data, and efficiency in international non-governmental organizations (ingos), fbos, including christian humanitarian institutions that compete with secular organizations. there is no doubt that what is happening with development data in both christian and secular organizations is inextricably linked to what some have called “datafication” and “the quantification of the social” (couldry and mejias 2018, 16). given western influence on global development trends, the concepts of datafication or “data colonialism” may help challenge western fbos to question the widespread and largescale extraction and wholesale appropriation of personal data from the global south (ibid.). according to couldry and meijas, data colonialism combines the predatory extractive practices of historical colonialism with the abstract quantification of data by computers or other highly technical processes. data are harvested as a natural resource, de-personalized, and dispersed to various entities to be used for profit or gain. the legitimate owners of this data, the people from whom it is collected, are neither informed nor compensated. deploying the concept of data colonialism to christian organizations’ data-gathering is not to suggest that these organizations are as brutal or as violent as historical colonialists. rather, we use the framing of colonialism to understand what couldry and meijas call a “naturalization” of data appropriation that has been adopted by christian institutions that paves the way for the exploitation of the vulnerable, ignores the protection of individual rights, and most importantly blatantly disregards the inherent dignity of the human person made in the image of god. consider an example from a different context: the well-known case of henrietta lacks. according to a recent article in the new york times: 5 for more information, see holpuch 2023. henrietta lacks, a black mother of five, was dying of cervical cancer in 1951, when doctors at johns hopkins hospital in baltimore took a sample of her cells without her knowledge or consent. the invasive procedure led to a revolutionary discovery: her cells were the first to reproduce in a laboratory, which no human cells had done before, allowing researchers to develop vaccines for polio and the coronavirus and treatments for disease including cancer, parkinson’s and the flu. but it would be more than two decades before her family knew that the cells were fueling research in laboratories all over the world, and even in space, creating an unparalleled medical legacy. on tuesday, which would have been ms. lacks’s 103rd birthday, some of her descendants gathered at a news conference after reaching a settlement with a biotechnology company that they had accused in a lawsuit of profiting from the cell line named for her, hela. 5 often, the “person” whose “personal data” are extracted is unaware that she is being subjected to this process. of course, development initiatives may often require the collection of some data, in some form, and by some systematic methods. western-based christian organizations function on a global scale. proving the comparative advantage of fbos over large-scale secular development organizations demands the extraction and appropriation of vast quantities of personal data from poor and vulnerable program beneficiaries. furthermore, on matters such as contraceptive usage and maternal health, attempts to justify the collection of personal data may take different forms. fbos may see personal development data capture as necessary and important to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of program outcomes. on the other hand, and not unlike their secular counterparts, they may be compelled to rely on a conception of the human person that reduces and reconfigures her as a “resource that is just there” (couldry and mejias 2019, 4). although the structure of colonialism is different today, we should understand that the mechanics of colonial power exploiting the vulnerable and exerting control still underlie certain forms of data gathering in the global south. covert and clandestine methods of data extraction and appropriation may be hard to detect, by their very nature, like the extraction of the about:blank christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 shah, decolonizing data and recovering the person in christian relief and development organizations 73 cells of henrietta lacks in the 1950s. but in my extensive firsthand acquaintance with the research approaches and methods employed by global northbased religious and secular development agencies operating in the global south, such methods and approaches continue and often remain unquestioned among the governments and secular and religious actors in the development industry. it simply is a widespread reality that such agencies seldom impose on themselves the kinds of rigorous respect for principles of consent, transparency, and confidentiality that institutional review boards impose on university-based research in both western and non-western countries. secular agencies may justify data appropriation because they may sincerely view the process of extraction and utilization of information as necessary to improve the lives of those in need. these agencies may regard data as a valuable natural resource that is in abundant supply but is not being put to good use. like petroleum, timber, or any other abundant but underused resource, data may have little value until they are repackaged and reconfigured to be used in development programs. 6 but research by christian organizations—organizations that profess to respect the inviolable god-given dignity of every human person—must view the subjects of research as ends in themselves and not as mere means or instruments to some larger goal, however worthy it may be. both a colonial mindset and a form of paternalism may underlie and animate data collection efforts by large development agencies, both christian and secular. while there is little doubt that the motivation of data collection is to improve the economic and spiritual lives of the poor and vulnerable, northern-led data gathering often frames themselves as the only ones who know what is best and who can process, assess, and manage data. in some cases, due to a lack of skilled capacity incountry, there is a significant gap between the skill sets of the staff in the western headquarters and those in local offices. yet colonialism and decolonization of data are not only about the dichotomous power imbalance between christian experts in the north and subjects in the south. solutions are being offered by the christians in the global north in the name of and for the perceived good of people in the global south. yet just as in colonial times, people in the global south are not 6 large-scale humanitarian and relief organizations use digital technology, including various forms of digital data, to manage critical aid particularly to communities in hard-to-reach locations. world vision uses a digital mapping system called “last mile mobile solutions,” or lmms, (https://www.wvi.org/opinion/view/inculcating-culture-innovationdevelopment-sector) to deliver aid to remote rural areas. lmms captures demographic and vulnerability data for all individuals in a household. the system then provides individuals with a digital identity registration card. by the circumstances they find themselves in, beneficiaries are subordinate and unable to question the capture of their personal data including their vulnerability status that might include their religious identity. humanitarian aid technology prompts us to question how care and control are interlinked. in such cases, world vision’s digital registration card may be regarded as a form of power that blurs the line between empowerment and control. full and legitimate participants in charting their own path to progress. putting decolonization into practice could begin with investing in capacity strengthening in global south institutions and decentralization of power to individuals in-country to actively pose their own questions, collect their own data, produce their own authoritative knowledge, and advance and implement their own development agendas. decolonizing and changing the terms of reference for development data gathering: among dalit communities in the slums of bangalore and chennai for scholars, activists, and practitioners, particularly those who have adopted a decolonial turn in their work and practice, the use of participatory methodologies may provide an acceptable and immediately accessible technique of representation and analysis that is in line with audra simpson’s concern that scholars pay attention to “what people say,” instead of “writing away from and to dominant forms of knowing” (simpson 2007, 68). if decolonization of development data means fundamentally changing the relationship between the majority world and western fbos, it seems reasonable to say that the way poverty, deprivation, well-being, freedom, and happiness, to name a few, are conceptualized and on which data are collected among the peoples of the majority world will have to undergo a radical transformation. the following section represents powerfully and forcefully what happens when poor and vulnerable individuals and communities are allowed to say something—in their own words and on their own terms—about their intersecting lived realities of crushing poverty and religious restriction. this project, which was conducted under the auspices of the coalition for religious equality and inclusive development (creid) at the institute of development studies at the university of sussex, illustrates how it might be possible to change the terms of reference and possibly decolonize development data collection among the poor even during an exigent circumstance and urgent crisis such as the covid-19 pandemic (creid 2021). the purpose of the research was to highlight the impact of the covid-19 pandemic on the lives of https://www.wvi.org/opinion/view/inculcating-culture-innovation-development-sector https://www.wvi.org/opinion/view/inculcating-culture-innovation-development-sector christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 shah, decolonizing data and recovering the person in christian relief and development organizations 74 traditionally excluded groups, such as religious minorities, women, and dalits. the relevant impact of the pandemic is not restricted to its economic consequences. if it were, it would be reasonably easy to develop economic measures to ameliorate the adverse outcomes of covid-19. instead, persistent poverty among these pockets of those with low income must be understood as decisively shaped and exacerbated by vulnerabilities that arise because of long-standing constraints on freedom, including the freedom of religion or belief or “forb”—i.e., the freedom to hold, change, express, and practice one’s own authentic, conscientious judgments about spiritual truth and ultimate reality. the methodology this research project drew on interviews conducted at the height of the covid-19 pandemic in two urban-poor slums in chennai and three urban-poor slums in bangalore in india. as mentioned above, the focus of the research was to identify the economic, social, and spiritual impact of the pandemic on the lives of vulnerable individuals living on the margins of society in urban india. in many local and national disasters, ethnic minorities, religious minorities, women, and other vulnerable groups of people are often among the worst affected, and at the same time, enjoy the least access to effective systems of support and resilience (bethel, burke, and britt 2013). the covid-19 pandemic was no exception. the research explored the role of freedom of religion or belief during and after the pandemic. in addition, the research examined the direct and indirect consequences of religious identity— and of the construction and treatment of religious identity—on the ability of the poor to navigate the lockdown. given the constraints of conducting inperson data collection during the pandemic, the team was keen to assess whether and how freedom of religion or belief, where it existed and could be exercised, generated positive consequences during the lockdown. the team considered the ways in which individuals who enjoyed the freedom to exercise and express their religion were able to navigate and, in some cases, overcome the various disruptions and challenges posed by a national lockdown that lasted for more than three months. twelve participatory inquiry groups were conducted with a total of 96 participants. data were collected through drawings, individuals’ reflections, ranking and scoring matrices, and sixteen semistructured interviews. separate groups of men and women from each religious minority were convened, with facilitators of the same religion and gender where possible. discussions were conducted in participants’ preferred language (urdu, tamil, kannada, hindi, english). the data included transcripts from sixteen semistructured interviews and twelve participatory inquiry groups which included a total of 96 participants. data from the groups and interviews were transcribed and analyzed. inquiry groups in each site began with a river or road of life exercise, which enabled participants to each share the stories of their lives over the last eighteen months, from before the pandemic to their experiences of life in the shadow of covid-19. this exercise prompted group discussion of the issues and was followed by a participatory rural appraisal matrix ranking exercise to identify the group’s most pressing issues. following the river of life exercise, researchers led discussions that outlined the challenges stated by each participant through the use of a matrix. using numbered cards or stones, the participants registered the severity of each challenge on a scale of 0 to 3. during the presentation of the rivers/roads, and the ranking exercise, major themes emerged in the discussions, prompted with additional questions from the researchers. these included experiences of targeting of religious minorities/marginalized groups, especially during covid-19, and the impact of the pandemic on their livelihoods, health, security/safety, mobility, education, religion, and general well-being. the methods enabled reflection on whether the intersection of variables such as class, gender, and age heightened such vulnerabilities. participants were also asked to rank the level of help or advantage gained from a variety of enablers on a scale of 0 to 3. enablers included help from the government in the form of food or other rations, friendship, and the role of the transcendent during the trials of the pandemic. table 2 below illustrates the enablers identified by dalit christian men in chennai. demographic characteristics of the sample the target sample for this study included representatives of the dalit community who belonged to the minority and the majority religious communities. these included muslim women and men, christian (protestant and catholic) women and men, and hindu women and men. all the individuals in our sample had lived in their respective slums for more than two years and were daily wage laborers or individuals who were employed in professions (such as drivers or bakers) who could not earn money working from home. most of the individuals in our sample had children or grandchildren in school. recalibrating the methodology to examine freedom of religion or belief during the pandemic most of the individuals in our target sample belonged to the dalit (previously known as “outcaste”) christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 shah, decolonizing data and recovering the person in christian relief and development organizations 75 community. as noted, respondents were daily-wage laborers. to access individuals from hard-to-reach communities, such as muslim women in the slum, we worked closely with local facilitators and our contacts in the slum, who were of the same faith and gender as those they studied. in bangalore, the staff of a local high school served as the major points of connection and facilitation. administrators of the high school introduced us to parents from the slums who welcomed the opportunity to venture out to participate in our inperson focus group discussion after being “sheltered-inplace” for over three months. table 1 illustrates the respondent profiles of the individuals who participated in the focus group discussions in chennai and bangalore. all our meetings were conducted in the local community and with the informed consent of the participants. table 1: profile of research participants in chennai and bengaluru, india. february – april 2021 category number slum name, city dalit christian men chennai 8 korrkupet, chennai dalit muslim men chennai 8 vyarsapadi, chennai dalit hindu men chennai 8 korrukupet, chennai dalit christian women chennai 7 korrukupet, chennai dalit muslim women chennai 7 vyarsarpadi, chennai dalit hindu women chennai 8 korrkupet, chennai dalit christian men bengaluru 10 lingarajapuram, bangalore dalit muslim men bengaluru 6 sait palya, bangalore dalit hindu men bengaluru 6 baglur slum, bangalore dalit christian women bengaluru 11 lingarajapuram dalit muslim women bengaluru 5 sait palya dalit hindu women 12 new lingarjapuram total 96 the river of life and ranking exercises the participatory methods were drawn from a cluster of methods available to social scientists and practitioners designed to foster genuine participant inquiry. 7 we employed these participatory methods to enlarge our shared imagination and concerns about what it means to be human. specifically, what does it mean to be a human who is both deeply diminished socially, politically, and economically and yet also profoundly religious and oriented to the transcendent, during a time of serious upheaval and distress brought upon by the covid-19 pandemic? as such, at least at the outset of the exercise, the participatory method we employed aimed to create a research environment in which dalit muslim, christian, and hindu men and women were empowered to serve as intellectual 7 to learn more about participatory methodology, see https://www.alnap.org/system/files/content/resource/files/main/prmmanual-v1-1.pdf collaborators as well as leaders of inquiry group discussions. unlike the regimented and bounded reach of traditional methods, such as structured and semistructured interviews, the participatory methodological approach of using reasonably flexible and open methods of inquiry—such as the river of life drawing exercise—was designed to encourage local voices to be expressed, with the help of as little external direction as possible. the ranking exercise was designed to give policymakers a quantifiable idea of the extent of various intersecting deprivations facing religious minorities. we acknowledge, however, that the mechanistic process of “translating” the experiences of the very poorest members of the slum community occurs within a power structure. there are significant concerns about how researchers using participatory methods “translate” https://www.alnap.org/system/files/content/resource/files/main/prmmanual-v1-1.pdf christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 shah, decolonizing data and recovering the person in christian relief and development organizations 76 religious experiences, including religious practices and beliefs of individuals in the global south. within the constraints of this project, we were able to identify certain issues that, although particular to the special social context (urban poor slums), were easier to relate to the western context. our interest in adopting participatory methodologies to gather information on the impact of covid-19 on religious minorities in india did not grow out of isolated and limited attention to research methodology. rather, we started with a strong conviction that had grown from seeing how participatory methodologies, particularly the river of life exercise, could highlight the lived experiences of religious communities, including religious minorities and dalit hindus, and build their confidence to speak up and challenge power structures that constrained their ability to thrive before and after the pandemic. the experiences of the project team of indian scholars working with very poor and marginalized communities for decades and a growing conviction that the freedom of the poor to enjoy the right to believe and practice their religion or beliefs prompted the team to identify an inclusive and empowering data gathering approach. 8 the possibility of trading places conducting an intensive research exercise at the height of a global pandemic, and following one of the world’s most stringent national lockdowns, required extreme caution. to overcome some of the understandable reticence and unease our respondents were experiencing, we brought them into focus-group discussions in which small communities of individuals from dalit backgrounds and religious minority communities could speak as much to each other as to us. in so doing, our research built on the social capital and relational depth that one often sees in poor communities, in which individuals have lived beside each other for generations, sharing each other’s sorrows and joys. consider this conversation among the group of dalit christian women we gathered for the focus group discussion. the group realized that one of their neighbors was depressed because she was lonely during the lockdown: lakshmi: but being locked inside reminded me of feeling the same way when my husband died. when he died, i felt that the entire, whole world is gone. being alone inside i thought i have no one, and i felt like an orphan…. i used to talk normally with people, but again, when i go inside, i cry again. 8 to learn more about the “river of life” participatory methodology, see the following article by ziad moussa: https://pubs.iied.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/migrate/g02828.pdf. i drew this rock here again in my river because i don’t know with whom i am going to stand, no one is there for me…. (crying) everyone is scared of corona but i think i should have died during corona (crying). respondent in the group: don’t say that. please don’t talk like that. another respondent in the group: please don’t cry. we are there for you. we understand…. as we sat in the slum talking with the deeply broken men and women during one of the toughest times in their lives, our work of describing and documenting their lives and converting their stories into “data” that would yield “results” in the form of policies, was in some small way less extractive because of the way we approached the exercise. the slum with its tight networks and forced proximity enabled the women and men to understand what the personalist philosopher edmund husserl called “the possibility of trading places” (duranti 2010). by this, we find that our respondents in the slum, because of their shared experiences and struggles, can see the world from the point of view of the other person—i.e., they have the real possibility of exchanging places. this is made clear in the exchange among the women in the focus group in the slum in chennai and was just as evident across other groups in our sample. by allowing respondents the possibility of “trading places,” we had contributed in some small way to healing and restoring the community, even as we gathered our “data” and “documented” our results. furthermore, the river of life methodology, with its inclusive and interactive nature, draws on the genuine empathy and compassion present between group members and between the researcher and the participants. any decolonized development data infrastructure that fosters respect and a sense of dignity between the members of a community and between the staff or facilitators of an organization requires reducing the distance between these individuals. what is meant by this? in traditional data collection exercises such as surveys, fieldworkers or ngo personnel who document the results of a program typically remove themselves from the process of data collection and begin to label individuals ostensibly for efficient and effective data collection. in doing so, fieldworkers place the “observed” in categories that give them the authority https://pubs.iied.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/migrate/g02828.pdf christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 shah, decolonizing data and recovering the person in christian relief and development organizations 77 to construct “objective” and scientifically “rigorous” narratives about the individuals. our approach was qualitatively different in both approach and data generated from some traditional data-gathering exercises undertaken during the pandemic to gather information on religion and covid. for example, a repository of data to provide policymakers and practitioners with data regarding the responses of religious communities was created and housed at a university in washington, dc. much of the data may be extracted from communities, including vulnerable communities, in a purely impersonal process involving neither interaction with, nor the consent of, the populations from whom data is collected. furthermore, the knowledge that was “curated” by western scholars and development practitioners, ostensibly to aid vulnerable communities during the covid-19 pandemic, was generated and utilized from the extracted data without any involvement or input from the rightful owners. the irony here is that efforts to decolonize aid have had little impact on the colonial frameworks that undergird much of the development data gathering from the global south. over the course of our research, the participatory methods that were used to collect data in india sought to empower rather than disempower the poor, even as the main aim of the participant ranking exercise was to describe and document their experiences with a view to converting the key results of our conversations into data-gathering exercises destined to yield results and create quantifiable matrices that would inform policy documents and briefings. this brings us to the core difference between the suite of data-gathering participatory methods and the traditional data collection methods that occur in isolation from the rightful data owners in the countries and communities in the south. in most cases, data collectors who employ traditional extractive data-gathering methods create systems and promote ideologies that justify their appropriation of data in the name of rigor and data quality that, it is claimed, are needed for proper project management and evaluation. however, from our experience, good quality, quantifiable data on the challenges and enablers that most affected vulnerable populations at the height of the pandemic was achievable with deliberate effort and patience on the part of the trained facilitators who spent time explaining how the ranking exercise works and the ways in which the community could benefit from the data that was gathered. another way in which development data confer power to the researcher in traditional data collection exercise is when she documents and relegates, say, an individual in a micro-credit program to another timeframe, often one that is behind the one she occupies in the present (fabian and bunzl 2014). for example, the poor and marginalized are situated in a period that is technologically and economically backward or static, while the fieldworker resides in the active and advanced present. these “distancing devices” serve not only to deny the poor the equality they deserve but also to reinforce a sense of “otherness” (ibid., 31). positionality and the poor the methodology employed in the slums of chennai and bangalore enabled facilitators to intervene by asking questions and seeking responses of their own. the methodology thus enabled them to participate in the process “not [just] attentionally but intentionally” (ingold 2013, 395). truly examining the ravages of the pandemic in the lives of the poor, particularly those who belonged to dalit and minority religious communities, required facilitators to trade places with participants, inviting the participants to lead and drive the conversation. in addition, our research objectives and methods required us, as tim ingold states, to “observe from inside” (ibid., 389). one example of this is the case of laila, who facilitated the conversation (or exercise) among dalit muslim women in bangalore. over years of teaching, she had developed a tacit knowledge of the problems and struggles facing the women sitting before her. although laila might be regarded as an “insider” whose roots were in the local community, she was still in many respected as an “outsider” because of her education and her job as a schoolteacher. to better collaborate with the women and gain their confidence, laila needed to reduce their perception of her as both an outsider and an expert who knows more and is better able to speak on their behalf. in the following excerpt, laila began the river of life exercise by talking about her fears and worries during the covid-19 nationwide lockdown: “my friend has talked. now i will tell you about my river... see, before lockdown, all was good. my husband runs a hotel. but after the lockdown, things changed. we had no business. money was less. think of your life. that was my life.” as a person of deep religious convictions, a woman, a schoolteacher, a wife, and a resident of the local community, laila occupied multiple positions that intersected. as an educated muslim woman who has the freedom to seek employment outside the home, laila might be regarded as an “outsider” who was therefore able to transcend some of the challenges faced by women in her community. yet laila was also very clearly an “insider” who shared the vulnerability christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 shah, decolonizing data and recovering the person in christian relief and development organizations 78 and concerns of the women by virtue of her gender, religious tradition, and geographic proximity to the slum where participants live. identifying and documenting real-life impact a further major advantage of studying the impact of the covid-19 pandemic in slum communities was the opportunity to focus on the realities on the ground and enter the real-life experiences of the poor in their range and depth. this enabled us to zero in on the effects of living conditions and of public policies that directly affect their lives rather than rely on a mechanistic and reductionist understanding that locates the sources of deprivation in supposedly “objective” factors that are external to the lived experiences, perceptions, responses, and choices of the poor. our engagement with those individuals who reside in stubborn pockets of poverty in the slums, precisely because it seeks to illuminate the limits, dangers, and predicaments of their minority and marginalized status at the time of covid-19, must systematically and sympathetically examine the identities, values, and norms of these individuals. such a systematic and sympathetic intellectual effort is especially necessary when the researchers might judge these identities, values, and norms to be “oppressive,” “patriarchal,” or “traditional.” although specific examples are likely to be contentious, it is undoubtedly true that certain religious practices, religious beliefs, and institutions reaffirm and reinforce problematic patterns of patriarchy and gender inequity (tadros 2010). and these constraints on freedom and uplift certainly need our deliberate and careful attention. through social movements, legislation, and the media, much more needs to be done to limit and even eliminate those aspects of culture that constrain and diminish human flourishing, and such aspects undoubtedly include problematic practices and beliefs related to religion. at the same time, our focus group discussions with some of the poorest, most marginalized, and abjectly poor individuals in urban poor slums in bangalore and chennai identified cultural and religious beliefs and participation in religious communities as key factors that empowered and sustained them at times of significant crisis and social and economic upheaval. our methodology’s open-ended and versatile epistemic apertures, particularly involving the use of non-textual strategies of drawing, were designed to capture the profound and often radically interior and subjective impact of deeply held religious beliefs and tight-knit religious networks. this methodological approach invited our respondents to narrate—in their chosen language and symbology—how such beliefs and networks influenced the human spirit and resilience of those who live in pockets of persistent poverty, without directing or dominating the discussion with preconceived ideas about their faith or lack of faith. consider the following participant ranking from our sample of dalit christian men in the korukkupet slum in chennai during the covid-19 pandemic. the men were asked to consider what factors had harmed or enabled them to survive through the draconian national lockdown. the eight men in the group identified five categories of beneficial or enabling factors. the order followed the one in which the men ranked the different categories with the highest-ranking appearing first. these categories were the following: • the role of the church community in their lives, • a personal experience of god during the lockdown, • better relationships with their family, • assistance from their relatives, and • support from the government. based on the men’s ranking of how important the factors were relative to each other, table 2 on the next page illustrates that the most important impacts related to the church and their faith in god. as the table illustrates, government assistance either in the form of cash and in-kind transfers or police protection during riots was ranked lowest compared to help obtained from religious institutions. furthermore, the men in this sample deeply valued their relationship with god. what is interesting is that at the height of one of the harshest lockdowns in the world, religious factors were not ignored or outranked by what some might consider more “objective” financial or health factors. it is likely, of course, that such relative rankings would be dynamic over time. yet we see similar results for poor individuals from muslim, hindu, and christian religious communities. religious institutions and deeply held religious beliefs were consistently ranked as very beneficial for the poor in helping them negotiate the multi-faceted fallout of the pandemic in their communities. listening to those on the margins sounds obvious. yet western agencies often hear what confirms their own assumptions and plans for the program. as erica bornstein notes in her research on zimbabwe, when asked why sponsorship money could not be sent directly to the parents to buy things for their children, local staff from the northern christian agency told her that “the sponsor looked to the needs of the child not to the family” (2005, 93). in doing so, bornstein suggests that the staff member “unconsciously articulated the power relations of transnational classes– of sponsors and the sponsored–in her depiction of the parent and child relationship” (ibid., 93). christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 shah, decolonizing data and recovering the person in christian relief and development organizations 79 table 2: ranking of enabling factors for christian men in korukkupet slum in chennai – march 2021 * names changed to protect survey respondents names* help from relatives/wife church (role of church members/pastor/priest) experiencing god’s presence family bond government and local community support 1. arputhraj 2 3 3 3 1 2. jayakumar 3 3 3 3 0 3. kumar 2 3 3 3 0 4. rajendra 2 3 3 3 2 5. dayalan 1 3 3 3 2 6. james 0 3 3 3 1 7. raja 2 3 3 3 1 8. thomas 1 3 3 1 1 total 13 24 24 22 8 the structure and mechanics of most data gathering for development are designed to move rapidly from instruction by international experts and staff to local staff and then to local program participants. for example, in a healthcare setting, local medical staff are rarely engaged as peer-mentors for international doctors. if they are, they are often labeled as “local” experts, which immediately conveys limited and bounded expertise and experience. decolonizing data gathering not only recognizes but prioritizes the significant technical and practical knowledge and experience of global south experts. additionally, decolonizing the data collection process to include intentionally listening to voices from the margins establishes mutual ownership of data and recognizes the agency of the individuals who consent to share their data for the common good. our methodology and measures thus attempted to capture the voices and lived experiences of those individuals living in persistent poverty and on the margins of society. the effort to capture such individuals' lived experiences and subjective perceptions is especially crucial, for their survival often demands a complex set of factors and dynamics. such factors and dynamics may enable the poor and marginalized not only to subsist, but in some cases to proactively engage and even overcome the economic, social, and spiritual constraints on their well-being. by this, i mean that the process of being able to discuss the challenges individuals face at home or in the community may help them take active steps to overcome these problems rather than simply relate them to a researcher as part of a survey or questionnaire. for example, women who faced increased domestic violence during the pandemic lockdown shared their experiences with other women in the group and were able to get help with resources to handle the abuse. many global north individuals and institutions in the christian relief sector ostensibly work from the protected distance of an office in the west or a local city in the global south. their efforts are carefully framed in the language of effectiveness, outcomes, and impacts. some staff may even know a few program participants by name, but i wonder how many development professionals really want to get involved in the messiness of people’s lives. the highly professionalized development world with its timely reporting, programmatic efficiency, and objective research gives people ample reasons to stay aloof. data gatherers are urged to achieve a certain kind of “distance” and “neutrality” throughout the research process. otherwise, facilitators may introduce elements that risk “contaminating” the dynamics of objective research and the data-gathering exercise. one may nevertheless question whether avoiding all identification with participants is possible or even ethical. decolonizing data collection involves rectifying power imbalances and restoring control of data to the rightful owners, but most importantly decolonization of data gathering compels christians to be among the poor, to befriend them, assist them, and to accompany them. conclusion writing in 1961, the yale political scientist robert dahl provided a classic definition of power: “a has power over b to the extent that he can get b to do something that b would not otherwise do” (dahl 1957, 202). to christian development scholars and practitioners working in rural bihar or mumbai’s slums, christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 shah, decolonizing data and recovering the person in christian relief and development organizations 80 it might seem farfetched to apply dahl’s classic definition of power to their christ-centered services. on the other hand, when we examine the history of development data extraction, appropriation, commodification, and utilization in the west since the end of world war ii, we realize that it might not seem so farfetched to apply dahl’s concept of power to christian relief and development organizations. the structures of power in the development industry have become so entrenched even at the local levels that we may not recognize or identify them. it is important to recognize that most northern christian development organizations do not set out to deliberately impose power inequities, sustain structural barriers, or govern people in the manner of a colonial government. yet, it is entirely plausible that by employing various assumptions, modes of thinking, and practices in the organization and production of data, christian agencies foster forms of willful blindness and perpetuate ignorance. a decolonized data praxis challenges how colonialism may be pervasive but is not dealt with in current operations because those engaged in data collection may have not grasped the extent of the problem. disassociating from the issues and ignoring the problems inherent in some westerncentric forms of data collection foreclose the possibility of much-needed changes in the way individuals and institutions in the global south actively engage in their own future development and progress. a decolonized data collection praxis means constantly and collectively thinking about and working towards reaffirming our commitment to christ-centered service by embracing a vision of authentic development that empowers and uplifts those excluded and on the margins of society, and pursues modes of thinking and action that enable human beings to live dignified and flourishing lives. references bauman, chad, 2008. “redeeming indian “christian” womanhood? missionaries, dalits, and agency in colonial india.” journal of feminist studies in religion 24 (2): 5–27. birdsall, judd and lori beaman. 2020. “faith in numbers: can we trust quantitative data on religious affiliation and religious freedom?” the review of faith & international affairs 18 (3): 60-68. blum dani. 2021. “the other side of languishing is flourishing. here’s how to get there.” new york times. may 4. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/04/well/mind/fl ourishing-languishing.html bornstein erica. 2005. the spirit of development: protestant ngos morality & economics in zimbabwe. california: stanford university press. brydon-miller, mary, michael kral, and alfredo ortiz aragón. 2020. “participatory action research: international perspectives and practices.” international review of qualitative research 13 (2): 103-111. carpenter, joel a. and wilbert r. shenk. 2012. earthen vessels: american evangelicals and foreign missions 1880-1980. eugene: wipf and stock. corrigan, john, melani mcalister, and axel r. schäfer. 2022. global faith and worldly power: evangelical internationalism and u.s. empire. chapel hill: university of north carolina press. couldry, nick and ulises mejias. 2018. data colonialism: rethinking big data’s relation to the contemporary subject. television and new media. sage publications. _____. 2019. “making data colonialism livable: how might data’s social order be regulated?” internet policy review, 8 (2). creid (coalition for religious equality and inclusive development). 2021. understanding intersecting vulnerabilities experienced by religious minorities living in poverty in the shadows of covid-19. institute of development studies, university of sussex. https://en.unesco.org/inclusivepolicylab/system/fil es/teams/discussion/comments/2021/11/creid_ intersections_series_religious_inequalities_and_ covid-19.pdf. culebro juárez, montserrat and des gasper. 2021. “comparing two pioneers of development ethics: louis-joseph lebret and denis goulet.” journal of global ethics 17 (2): 260-278. dahl, robert. 1961. who governs? democracy and power in an american city. new haven, ct: yale university press. debraj, ray. 2006. “aspirations, poverty, and economic change.” in understanding poverty, edited by abhijit vinayak banerjee et al., 409421. oxford: oxford university press. duranti alessandro. 2010. “husserl, intersubjectivity and anthropology.” anthropological theory 10 (1): 16–35. escobar, samuel. 1991. “a movement divided.” transformation 8 (4), 7-13. fabian, johannes and matti bunzl. 2014. time and the other: how anthropology makes its object. new york: columbia university press. fadil nadia. 2020. “on anthropology as translation.” religion and society 11: 12+. finnis, john. 1998. aquinas: moral, political, and legal theory. oxford. oxford university press. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/04/well/mind/flourishing-languishing.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/04/well/mind/flourishing-languishing.html https://en.unesco.org/inclusivepolicylab/system/files/teams/discussion/comments/2021/11/creid_intersections_series_religious_inequalities_and_covid-19.pdf https://en.unesco.org/inclusivepolicylab/system/files/teams/discussion/comments/2021/11/creid_intersections_series_religious_inequalities_and_covid-19.pdf https://en.unesco.org/inclusivepolicylab/system/files/teams/discussion/comments/2021/11/creid_intersections_series_religious_inequalities_and_covid-19.pdf https://en.unesco.org/inclusivepolicylab/system/files/teams/discussion/comments/2021/11/creid_intersections_series_religious_inequalities_and_covid-19.pdf christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 shah, decolonizing data and recovering the person in christian relief and development organizations 81 goulet, denis. 1990. “denis goulet: a new ethics of development.” interview with michael gismondi. https://aurora.icaap.org/index.php/aurora/article/d ownload/51/64?inline=1 goulet, denis. 1974. a new moral order: studies in development ethics and liberation theology. maryknoll ny: orbis books. _____. 1980. “development experts: the one-eyed giants.” world development 8 (7/8), 481–489. henrich, joseph patrick. 2021. the weirdest people in the world: how the west became psychologically peculiar and particularly prosperous. new york: picador: farrar straus and giroux. holpuch. amanda. 2023. “family of henrietta lacks settles with biotech company that used her cells.” new york times, aug. 2, section b, page 4. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/01/science/henrietta -lacks-cells-lawsuit-settlement.html). howard, jo and mariz tadros, eds. 2023. using participatory methods to explore freedom of religion and belief: whose reality counts? bristol: bristol university press. ingold, timothy. 2013. “that's enough about ethnography!” journal of ethnographic theory 4 (1): 383-395. kent, eliza f. 2004. converting women: gender and protestant christianity in colonial south india. new york: oxford university press. king, david. 2012. “the new internationalists: world vision and the revival of american evangelical humanitarianism, 1950–2010.” religions 3 (4): 922-949. mahmood, saba. 2001. “feminist theory, embodiment, and the docile agent: some reflections on the egyptian islamic revival.” cultural anthropology 16 (2): 202-26. miles, margaret r. 2006. “mapping feminist histories of religious traditions.” journal of feminist studies in religion 22 (1): 45-52. culebro juárez, montserrat and des gasper. 2021. “comparing two pioneers of development ethics: louis-joseph lebret and denis goulet.” journal of global ethics 17 (2): 260-278. pope paul vi. 1967. populorum progressio (on the development of peoples). https://www.vatican.va/content/paulvi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_pvi_enc_26031967_populorum.html sen, amartya kumar. 1999. development as freedom. oxford: oxford university press. shah, rebecca supriya. 2021. “the freedom of religious institutions and human flourishing in india: a present and future research agenda.” religions 12(7): 550. tanguy, bernard, stefan dercon, kate orkin, and alemayehu seyoum taffesse. 2014. “the future in mind: aspirations and forward-looking behavior in rural ethiopia.” csae working paper series 2014-2016, center for study of african economies, university of oxford. toft, monica duffy, daniel philpott, and timothy samuel shah. 2011. god's century: resurgent religion and global politics. 1st ed. new york: w.w. norton. tomalin, emma. 2018. “religions, poverty reduction and global development institutions.” palgrave commun 4 (132): 1-12. “social transformation: the church in response to human need: wheaton '83 statement.” 1984. transformation 1 (1): 23-28. padilla, c. rené. 1985. “evangelism and social responsibility: from wheaton ’66 to wheaton ’83.” transformation 2 (3): 27-34. “united nations development decade: a program for international economic cooperation.” resolution a/res/1710 (xvii) https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/204609?ln=en# record-files-collapse-header. willen, sarah. 2021. “flourishing and health in critical perspective: an invitation to interdisciplinary dialogue.” ssm mental health 2 (11): 1-7. wuthnow, robert j. 2009, boundless faith: the global outreach of american churches. oakland: university of california press. rebecca supriya shah is special advisor to the president for global initiatives at the university of dallas, principal investigator for the religion and economic empowerment project (reep), and with timothy shah, co-director of the program for indoamerican understanding and friendship at the gupta college of business at the university of dallas. based in bangalore, india, and washington, dc, shah consults with international organizations, and governments on development policy and practice. author email: rshah2@udallas.edu about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank https://www.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_26031967_populorum.html https://www.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_26031967_populorum.html https://www.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_26031967_populorum.html https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/204609?ln=en#record-files-collapse-header https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/204609?ln=en#record-files-collapse-header mailto:rshah2@udallas.edu christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 azar, christian peacemaking in the context of the recent gaza war: challenges and theological reflections 149 christian peacemaking in the context of the recent gaza war: challenges and theological reflections sally azar as christians, we are called to reflect god's love by standing with all people, especially those who are marginalized, suffering, or oppressed. this sacred duty of compassion and solidarity extends to palestinians. unquestioning political allegiances must never override our commitment to christ-like love, justice, and peace. the ongoing conflict in gaza poses profound challenges, but it also presents christians with a moral responsibility and opportunity to act. we are called to pray for peace and the transformation of hearts, to stand in solidarity with the suffering, to educate ourselves and others about the realities on the ground, to offer humanitarian support, to divest from entities that contribute to injustice, and to challenge interpretations of scripture that are used to justify violence. in all things, our faith demands that we love as christ loves—without exception, without condition. introduction over the past year many things have changed, yet such changes didn’t begin in a vacuum. the mass killing of over 40,000 palestinians in gaza, including at least 16,000 children, represents a turning point for the middle east from more than one perspective. the palestinian people knew very well that the israeli government was not going after hamas only, but that it was going to conduct a campaign reflecting its wellstated positions against the implementation of the inalienable rights of the palestinian people. this has been reflected in unprecedented numbers of casualties and destruction in densely populated areas, leading international observers to call for urgent humanitarian interventions. the israeli bombing of the saint porphyrios church in gaza, one of the five oldest churches worldwide, put the situation of palestinian christians in the spotlight. all christian institutions in gaza have been attacked by the israeli army, including the anglican-run al ahli hospital, the ymca, the gaza branch of dar al kalima university and the orthodox cultural center, among others. this article seeks to explore how palestinian christians are responding to the ongoing situation, from theological, ecclesiastical and national perspectives. christian leaders have faced numerous challenges in peacemaking within this complex landscape. this article also aims to outline both the foundational principles and efforts for peacemaking and the difficulties involved in these efforts. it begins with my own background in order to establish the context for my understanding of the current reality. life growing up growing up in jerusalem, an occupied city under international law, i struggled to grasp much of what was happening in our country as a child. a lot of my memories are about soldiers, checkpoints, and walls as i traveled back and forth to bethlehem or ramallah, only about ten kilometers away from my home. my school, the schmidt girls’ college, represented one of the main landmarks for palestinians in jerusalem. located opposite damascus gate, an often-busy entrance that connects christian and muslim quarters of the old city with what is left of the al-musrara neighborhood and nablus road, the school was built by a german catholic congregation at a time of christian expansion in palestine during the 19th century. yet, it was just a matter of leaving the campus and one would find vivid scenes of oppression, with young palestinians often persecuted by israeli forces. in this context, and despite the fact that successive israeli governments have been trying to prevent palestinian students in jerusalem from learning about our own national narrative, we began to learn more about our people's history, not only through textbooks, christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 azar, christian peacemaking in the context of the recent gaza war: challenges and theological reflections 150 but also from our grandparents who lived through 1948 and 1967, experiencing firsthand the nakba, represented in the exile of the palestinian people, and the naksa, the occupation of what was left of palestine. my grandparents were both from jaffa, but they and their families were kicked out of their homes. many hoped they would be able to come back one day, but they never could. my mom’s family fled to jordan and my dad’s family escaped to jerusalem and nazareth. it is noteworthy that even though israel claims that jerusalem is its “undivided capital,” in reality we never met israelis other than as soldiers and police officers. they attended different schools, took separate buses, and lived in distinct neighborhoods, including illegal settlements built on occupied palestinian land. some may argue that this separation is what has left most israelis unaware of the realities faced by palestinians behind the walls constructed in the name of safety. for others, this may just be an excuse. but what is clear is that such barriers not only isolate us physically but also emotionally and intellectually. as i reflect on my journey and the context of our lives, i recognize that the integration of palestinians and israelis was never truly possible. the walls built around us—both literal and metaphorical—served to deepen our divisions, leaving many israelis oblivious to the struggles endured daily by palestinians. it is a painful reminder of how our different worlds often coexist in silence, lacking the understanding and connection that could pave the way for a more peaceful coexistence. we remained committed to two opposing projects: one that speaks mainly of jewish exclusivity, including with regards to the right to self-determination, and another that speaks of freedom and self-determination for the palestinian people. later, after studying abroad, i was struck by the stark contrast between my experiences in jerusalem and the outside world. i had never fully grasped how deeply entrenched the normalization of occupation and dehumanization had become in my daily life. in my country, on my land, we were always treated as secondclass citizens, facing constant difficulties that were so woven into the fabric of our existence that we often didn’t question them. i found it shocking to discover places where borders didn’t exist, walls were not present, and people did not have to show their identification papers just to move around. the freedom of movement i experienced abroad highlighted the restrictions we live with daily, especially for those of us in palestine. israel controls everything—entry and exit points, permits, and even our basic rights—creating a reality in which leaving the country feels like an insurmountable challenge. the normalization of these conditions is alarming, which makes it easy to overlook the harsh realities faced by palestinians. what should be a basic human right, the ability to travel freely and live without the constant fear of checkpoints and surveillance, has become a distant dream for many. my experience abroad opened my eyes to the realities of my homeland and the pervasive impact of the occupation on our lives. it underscored for me the urgent need for dialogue, understanding, and a collective effort to challenge the status quo. it is through my personal story that i want to make an important point clear: the conflict did not start on october 7, 2023. the dispossession of the palestinian people has been occurring since 1948, and its results can be seen today. this conflict is not just about gaza, but about all palestinian people. in the west bank, including east jerusalem, there is a growing sense of desolation, with dozens of palestinian villages emptied of their residents and more colonial-settlement expansion, including on areas of deep christian importance such as jaffa gate, the armenian quarter, mount of olives and al makhrour in beit jala. all palestinians are affected, all aspects of life are controlled by israel, and there is an urgent need for the world to know this. in an attempt to play my part, my writing focuses on the current responses and the way i, as a palestinian pastor in jerusalem, have experienced this human tragedy. theological foundations for christian responses for many reasons, palestinian christians feel abandoned. pastor and theologian dr. mitri raheb noted in his book politics of persecution (2021) that palestinian christians went through three nakbas, or catastrophes: a geographic one for the loss of land, a demographic one for the exile of our people, and a spiritual one given the support that groups of foreign christians gave to the palestinian dispossession. between october 2023 and october 2024, palestinian christians were killed; religious sites were attacked; palestinians, including christians, were banned from jerusalem; land was expropriated; and family reunifications were banned, to mention just some of the repressive policies during the israeli occupation. even so, palestinians experienced very little solidarity from abroad. while palestinian christians were demanding a strong stance to stop what the international court of justice (icj) is investigating as genocide, many were not willing to do more than “pray for peace” or send limited financial support. palestinian christians, just like christians in jordan, lebanon, syria or egypt, are an integral part of their societies and indigenous to the land and culture, but this seems to be either forgotten or ignored abroad. still, it astonished us to see so many churches, christians, and organizations taking pro-israeli positions so easily, where human life has been christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 azar, christian peacemaking in the context of the recent gaza war: challenges and theological reflections 151 devalued. this made me wonder, how they can do this, when the bible so clearly demonstrates the opposite? scriptures such as micah 6:8 underscore the importance of "doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with god," a central theme in christian ethics. similarly, the prophet isaiah envisions a time when “nations shall beat their swords into plowshares” (isaiah 2:4), highlighting a future hope for peace. these texts form a biblical framework that many christian peacemakers draw upon when advocating for nonviolence and justice in conflict zones. in the sermon on the mount, jesus pronounces, "blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of god" (matthew 5:9). this call to peacemaking lies at the heart of the christian response, pushing believers to actively pursue peace even amidst violence. the challenge for christian leaders is applying these biblical principles in a context where both sides claim historical and theological justifications for their actions. another critical theological foundation for christian engagement in the israel-palestine conflict is the belief in the inherent dignity of all people, as expressed in genesis 1:27: “so god created humankind in his own image.” this concept of imago dei implies that every person, israeli and palestinian alike, bears the image of god and thus has inherent worth and dignity. this belief compels christians to advocate for the protection of all civilians, regardless of nationality or political affiliation, and pushes against narratives that dehumanize or demonize either side. this is particularly relevant as both sides have experienced immense suffering. for christian peacemakers, the recognition of the shared humanity of all people presents a theological mandate to resist all forms of violence and injustice that violate human dignity. it also encourages a more balanced and compassionate approach to addressing the conflict. at the heart of christian peacemaking is the example set by jesus christ, particularly in his teachings on reconciliation and non-violence. the sermon on the mount offers guidance on how christians are to act in times of conflict: loving enemies, praying for those who persecute them, and resisting the temptation to respond to violence with violence (matthew 5:44). these teachings challenge the cycle of retaliation that often perpetuates violence in conflicts like the one in israelpalestine. historical christian involvement in the question of palestine the christian mission is deeply intertwined with the pursuit of justice, particularly for the oppressed. scriptural references such as luke 4:18, where jesus proclaims the good news to the poor and freedom for the oppressed, and amos 5:24, which calls for justice to roll down like waters, serve as ethical foundations for understanding christian responses to the conflict. many christians view their engagement in the palestinian-israeli conflict as a moral imperative, advocating for justice as an essential component of their faith (marteijn 2020). the christian presence in the holy land has a rich and complex history that dates back to the early church. following the crucifixion and resurrection of jesus christ, christianity spread rapidly in palestine, where the first christian communities were established. throughout the centuries, christian communities— particularly the greek orthodox, latin catholic, and armenian apostolic—have maintained a continuous presence in the region. the protestant presence was officially established in 1841. up until 1948, palestinian christians represented around 10% of palestine’s population, a number that fell to 3% within one year (marteijn 2020) due to what israeli historian dr. illan pappe refers to as “the ethnic cleansing of palestine” (pappé 2007). today, approximately 1.5% of the population in israel and palestine identifies as christian, with significant communities in bethlehem, jerusalem, and nazareth. the church's involvement has not only been spiritual but also social and political, engaging in education, healthcare, and social justice initiatives within palestinian society (scholz 2018). for christians, leaders have faced significant challenges, as their very existence has been threatened. from the control over holy sites to restrictions on movement and access, to the burdens of taxes, the fragmentation of the land, and scattered communities— all of these point to a harsh reality. christian leaders also often have to rely on israeli-issued permits for much of their work. despite these difficulties, christian leaders and organizations should not remain silent about the situation in the country. historical archives show that many of them, even before 1948, were actively lobbying for justice in palestine (eid and abdelhady 2022). an important element over the past decades has been the development of the palestinian liberation theology, which properly emerged during the intifada of 1987, and emphasizes the experiences of palestinians, focusing on their plight and the call for liberation from oppression. this theological perspective argues that faith must be intertwined with the struggle for justice, aligning with the broader christian mission to care for the marginalized. this movement has allowed for networking with other churches abroad, as well as with ecumenical groups, prominently the world council of churches, which has also played a crucial role in promoting a just and lasting peace. they have engaged in dialogues and advocacy efforts, seeking to address injustices faced by palestinians while also calling for a peaceful resolution. pope francis has consistently emphasized the need for christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 azar, christian peacemaking in the context of the recent gaza war: challenges and theological reflections 152 dialogue and reconciliation, urging leaders from both sides to work towards peace and justice in the region. his visits to the holy land and calls for a palestinian state highlight the holy see’s commitment to supporting peace efforts (wooden 2018). ecumenical and christian responses since october 7, 2023, christian responses to the genocide in gaza and the broader reality of palestine and the middle east have varied widely, reflecting a spectrum of theological and political perspectives. some christian leaders have expressed support for israel’s “right to defend itself,” citing biblical covenants regarding the land of israel. they reference scriptures such as genesis and romans, emphasizing israel’s enduring spiritual significance. these voices, especially from evangelical and pro-israel circles, have viewed the conflict in light of eschatological beliefs, framing israel’s struggle as part of a divine narrative (patrick 2023). in response to the ongoing conflict in the middle east, the evangelical church in germany (ekd) has affirmed israel's right to defend itself. the ekd emphasized that, while advocating for peace and the protection of civilian lives, israel, like any sovereign nation, has the right to safeguard its citizens from external threats and aggression. this stance is rooted in both political and theological considerations, underscoring israel’s right to protect its borders and ensure security for its people in the face of continued attacks (ekd 2023). some christians refer to the concept of “just war,” arguing that israel has the right to protect its citizens under biblical principles of justice, and that military action may be justified in response to terrorism (patrick 2023). other christian voices, however, particularly from palestinian and middle eastern christian communities, have condemned the violence in general, while also criticizing western christian leaders who offer uncritical support for israel. these groups point out that the long-standing occupation of palestinian territories and systemic injustices against palestinians must be addressed to achieve any meaningful peace. organizations like kairos palestine, bethlehem bible college, and other palestinian christian institutions have called for a balanced approach, condemning violence from hamas but also decrying what they see as the disproportionate military response from israel and the suffering it causes for innocent palestinians (kumar 2023). additionally, there have been calls from christian leaders, such as those in the christian reformed church, for peace and restraint. these leaders emphasize the need for prayer, diplomacy, and nonviolence, urging their congregations to pray for the cessation of hostilities, the protection of civilians, and the pursuit of justice and reconciliation between israelis and palestinians (crc 2023). christian relief organizations have actively responded to the humanitarian crises resulting from the conflict, providing essential aid, shelter, and medical care in war-torn gaza. organizations like lutheran world federation, caritas, act alliance, mennonite central committee, and world vision work tirelessly to support affected communities, by delivering food, clean water, and healthcare to those in need. these efforts reflect the christian calling to care for the most vulnerable and to respond compassionately to human suffering. christian teachings emphasize solidarity with the marginalized, prompting believers to stand alongside those who suffer. the experiences of palestinians living under occupation resonate with the christian call to advocate for justice and compassion. many christians view their responsibility as supporting those facing oppression, embodying the principles of love and care that are central to their faith. this solidarity is not merely theoretical; it is manifested through advocacy, humanitarian efforts, and support for palestinian rights (alkassim 2018). christian zionism represents a significant perspective within evangelical circles, rooted in specific theological beliefs regarding the state of israel. proponents of this ideology interpret biblical prophecy as foretelling the establishment of israel and see contemporary events as fulfilling god's plan. this belief often leads to strong political and financial support for israel among evangelical christians. theological frameworks within christian zionism emphasize the importance of israel as a key player in eschatological events, shaping a complex relationship between faith and political ideology (kuttab 2018). while christian zionism advocates for unconditional support of israel, it has sparked significant debate within the broader christian community regarding its implications for peace and justice in the region. many christians, particularly those persuaded by liberation theology, challenge this perspective, arguing that it often overlooks the rights and suffering of palestinians. the varied christian responses to the conflict reflect a broader theological and ethical diversity, highlighting the complexity of the issue (febriantoro et al. 2024). the kairos palestine document titled “a moment of truth” serves as a significant theological and political manifesto by palestinian christians. initially released in 2009 and updated in 2020, it calls for global christian solidarity with palestinians and highlights the injustices of the israeli occupation (kairos palestine 2009). the document frames the struggle for justice in theological terms, emphasizing non-violence and the need for a just peace rooted in mutual recognition and respect. the kairos document has gained international attention and support from various christian denominations, urging christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 azar, christian peacemaking in the context of the recent gaza war: challenges and theological reflections 153 action against the occupation while promoting peace and reconciliation. the kairos palestine document has also garnered substantial international support from christian denominations around the world, who have echoed its call for justice and peace in palestine. for instance, the world council of churches (wcc) has strongly endorsed the kairos document, emphasizing the need for solidarity with palestinian christians and supporting the non-violent resistance to the israeli occupation. the wcc has been vocal in advocating for palestinian rights, including their endorsement of the kairos palestine call for action. in their statement, the wcc declared that christians have a moral obligation to “speak truth to power” and resist the unjust occupation (wcc 2015). another ecumenical group that has been outspoken is sabeel, a liberation theology movement based in jerusalem, founded by palestinian christians in the late 1990s. sabeel emphasizes justice, peace, and non-violence and seeks to educate both local and international communities about the palestinian struggle. the center regularly organizes conferences, workshops, and events to advocate for peace, highlighting the voices of palestinian christians who desire an end to the occupation. the palestinian christian alliance for peace is yet another collective that seeks to advocate for justice and peace in the holy land. their platform calls for an end to the occupation and emphasizes the importance of christian values in promoting peace and reconciliation. the alliance comprises various christian leaders who actively engage in dialogue and advocacy efforts to raise awareness about the plight of palestinians. the arab baptist theological seminary in lebanon actively engages with the palestinian christian context and advocates for justice through theological education. their programs often address the occupation's impact on communities and the role of christian witness in promoting peace and reconciliation. these voices collectively represent a diverse and passionate commitment among palestinian christians to advocate for peace, justice, and an end to the occupation, drawing on their faith and the historical context of their struggles. this dynamism is a consequence of several elements, prominently the sense that palestinian christians have justice on their side as they fight what is truly battle for survival. since october 7, 2023, christian organizations around the world have responded with calls for peace, protection of civilians, and adherence to international humanitarian laws in relation to the renewed violence between the israeli occupation and the palestinian people. the lutheran world federation (lwf), in its statement on october 11, 2023, condemned attacks on civilians by all parties, particularly the brutal actions by hamas, and called for the immediate release of hostages. the lwf also urged israeli forces to follow international humanitarian law, stressing that violations of the law by one side do not justify violations by the other. their statement expressed deep concern over deteriorating humanitarian situation in gaza, where civilians have been displaced, and crucial infrastructure like hospitals and schools destroyed. they demanded safe passage for civilians and the opening of humanitarian corridors to ensure aid reaches those in need (lwf 2023). the evangelical lutheran church in jordan and the holy land (elcjhl), which operates within the middle east, has emphasized the need for both immediate humanitarian assistance and long-term political solutions. they highlight the ongoing financial crisis of institutions like the augusta victoria hospital, which is directly linked to the instability and violence in the region. the elcjhl has consistently called for the international community to support such life-saving services and to uphold the dignity of all people affected by the conflict. the wcc has also issued statements echoing the need for peace and justice in the region. they condemn the loss of civilian life and the continuous occupation of palestinian territories, reaffirming their commitment to human dignity and the protection of all civilians in conflict. the wcc has long advocated for a two-state solution and an end to the occupation as part of a lasting solution to the conflict (wcc 2024). these christian bodies are unified in their message and commitment to peace, justice, and the protection of civilians, while also calling for deeper engagement from the international community to bring about a sustainable and peaceful resolution to the conflict. what is being done? christian peacemaking faces significant challenges in the present situation between the israeli occupation and the palestinian people, particularly due to the background of the situation, entrenched narratives, and polarized global responses. this section explores these challenges and how they impact efforts by christian groups to advocate for peace. it has always been difficult to have interreligious dialogues because of the political situation, as religion is often misused in terms of the war. one of the foremost challenges in christian peacemaking is the deep theological and political polarization among christian communities themselves. many evangelical groups, especially in the west, have historically supported an alleged israeli right to all the land of palestine, seeing it through a biblical lens of god's covenant with the jewish people. this eschatological view can sometimes lead to christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 azar, christian peacemaking in the context of the recent gaza war: challenges and theological reflections 154 unconditional support for israel’s actions, limiting calls for mutual justice and reconciliation (lwf 2022). on the other hand, palestinian christians, represented by organizations like kairos palestine, advocate for an end to the israeli occupation and call for global christian solidarity with palestinians, emphasizing justice, peace, and human rights. this divide complicates efforts to present a united christian voice (patrick 2023) as the concepts end up being radically opposed, with groups of western christians calling for the annexation of palestinian territory and opposing palestinian christians who demand their right to selfdetermination. another challenge is the control of the narrative around the conflict, both in global media and among local populations. the media's portrayal of the conflict often focuses on the violent aspects and political blame rather than grassroots peacemaking efforts, including those led by christian organizations. this skewed representation affects how the global christian community perceives the conflict, often simplifying it into pro-israel or pro-palestine binaries, which limits the space for nuanced, balanced dialogue that peacemaking requires. the wcc and other christian bodies have struggled to amplify their messages of justice and reconciliation in a media landscape dominated by more immediate and sensationalized reports of violence ((lwf 2022). but for many in palestine, such movements are too little, too late, and the fact that no concrete measures to impose sanctions on israel have been taken raises more questions about the real will of western christians with regards to justice and peace in palestine. the declining number of christians in the holy land further weakens the influence of christian peacemaking efforts. palestinian christians, who once played a vital role in local politics and society, have increasingly emigrated, mainly due to the israeli occupation, whether through the ongoing instability, economic hardship, land theft, separation of families, and diminishing prospects for life and peace. this dwindling population makes it harder for local christian voices to be heard in the broader conflict, while external christian groups often lack the intimate understanding of the local context necessary for effective intervention. the evangelical lutheran church in jordan and the holy land continues to advocate for peace and justice, but the decreasing christian presence complicates their mission. what can christians do now? in the face of the ongoing conflict, christians are called to respond with compassion, prayer, and active engagement. first and foremost, prayer and advocacy are crucial. christians around the world are encouraged to come together in prayer, calling for peace, wisdom, and justice. this is not simply a passive act; it is a means of fostering a deep sense of empathy and solidarity. alongside prayer, christians are urged to engage in advocacy, raising their voices in defense of human rights and justice, advocating for non-violence, and seeking an end to oppression. in this particular case, they can push to end the genocide in gaza and achieve a comprehensive ceasefire, thus ending the israeli occupation of palestine and promoting freedom, security, and equality for everyone. beyond prayer, support for humanitarian efforts is an essential expression of christian compassion. this can take the form of donations or volunteer efforts with christian organizations working on the ground in gaza and the west bank. many of these groups provide critical services, such as medical supplies, food, shelter, and psychological support to those affected by the ongoing violence. through these tangible acts of love, christians can serve as beacons of hope, contributing to the alleviation of suffering and demonstrating the power of faith in action. another crucial response is the need for education and awareness. it is important for christians to take the time to understand the history and complexity of the israel-palestine conflict. misunderstanding and ignorance can perpetuate harmful narratives, but by learning about the deeper issues at play, christians can foster more informed, compassionate discussions within their communities. churches can play a vital role by hosting events, inviting speakers, and providing educational resources that promote empathy, a balanced perspective, and a commitment to peace. churches worldwide have a relevant role to play in their various contexts. it is important for them to divest from companies involved in human rights violations and other crimes, such as the israeli occupation of palestine. they must also take care to promote only ethical pilgrimages. church leaders must also issue an unequivocal statement against the use of the bible as a tool to justify the commission of war crimes. it is paradoxical, to say the least, that the bible continues to be used in order to justify the erasure of the oldest christian community, as well as to spread injustice. for example, “slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey christ” (eph. 6:5-8 niv) was historically misinterpreted and distorted by proponents of slavery and apartheid as a divine justification for the subjugation of black people. we already have a prominent example of religious fundamentalists using the bible to promote injustice in the apartheid movement in south africa, and this didn’t end well for them. finally, christians should actively work toward promoting non-violence and reconciliation. before undertaking peacebuilding initiatives on both sides, christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 azar, christian peacemaking in the context of the recent gaza war: challenges and theological reflections 155 there must be healing on both sides, as it is too soon to talk about coming together. in order to reach that point, there should first be an end to the occupation, to the war, and to all of the illegal settlements. as churches, we need to continue spreading the bible’s message, which is all about love and peace. jesus himself spoke up against injustices during the roman empire, and now it is our turn. through these actions—prayer, humanitarian support, education, and peacebuilding—christians have an opportunity to be agents of healing and transformation, offering a hopeful and tangible response to a conflict that has torn communities apart for generations. conclusion the historical involvement of christian communities in the question of palestine reflects a rich tapestry of faith, advocacy, and social justice. from the early church to the present, christians have grappled with their identity in a region steeped in complexity and turmoil. as voices advocating for peace, justice, and reconciliation, christian organizations and leaders have sought to respond to the plight of palestinians, emphasizing non-violence and solidarity with the oppressed. the ethical frameworks that guide christian responses highlight a commitment to justice and humanitarian concern. scripture calls believers to prioritize the welfare of the marginalized, echoing through centuries of theological reflection and social activism. the varied perspectives within the christian community from christian zionism to liberation theology illustrate a dynamic discourse on faith, politics, and morality. in navigating this multifaceted war, christians are called to embody the principles of compassion and justice that lie at the heart of their faith. the path forward requires continued dialogue, understanding, and a commitment to advocate for the dignity and rights of all individuals, regardless of their background. as the church seeks to fulfill its mission in the holy land, the imperative remains clear: to work towards peace, foster reconciliation, and promote justice for all who inhabit this space. the journey is fraught with challenges, but it is also one filled with hope for a future where faith can be a force for healing and unity. as complexities continue to unfold, there is a profound call to action for christians around the world. in the face of violence and suffering, believers are urged to reaffirm their commitment to peacemaking, justice, and compassion. the teachings of jesus emphasize the importance of loving one’s neighbor, standing in solidarity with the oppressed, and actively working towards reconciliation. christians are called to be agents of peace, fostering understanding and promoting dialogue in their communities and beyond. the vision for the future is one of hope—a future in which a peaceful, just, and equitable solution to the israeli-palestinian conflict is realized. this vision is rooted in the christian principles of love, compassion, and reconciliation. by embracing these values, christians can contribute to a narrative of healing rather than division, advocating for the rights and dignity of all individuals involved in the conflict. together, may we strive to cultivate an environment where justice prevails, where all people can live in peace, and where the light of faith shines as a beacon of hope in the midst of darkness. references alkassim, samirah. 2018 (may 24). “the role of palestinian liberation theology: a conversation with reverend naim ateek.” the jerusalem fund. https://thejerusalemfund.org/2018/05/therole-of-palestinian-liberation-theology-aconversation-with-reverend-naim-ateek-3/ crc. 2023 (november 10). “statement on israelpalestine conflict.” christian reformed church. https://www.crcna.org/news-andevents/news/statement-israel-palestine-conflict eid, xavier abu, and feda abdelhady. 2022. rooted in palestine: palestinian christians and the struggle for national liberation 1917-2004. bethlehem: dar al-kalima university press. ekd. 2023 (october 19). “aufstehen gegen terror, hass und antisemitismus—in solidarität und mitgefühl mit israel.” https://www.ekd.de/aufstehen-gegen-terror-hassund-antisemitismus-in-solidaritaet-81088.htm febriantoro, valentinus fio milinio, thomas lasmono wibowo, and jb heru prakosa. 2024 (june 1). “naim stifan ateek’s palestinian liberation theology for the israel-palestine conflict.” proceedings of the international conference on theology, religion, culture, and humanities 1 : 45–58. https://doi.org/10.24071/tic.v1i1.8466 kairos palestine. 2009. “kairos document: a moment of truth a word of faith, hope and love from the heart of palestinian suffering.” https://kairospalestine.ps/index.php/aboutkairos/kairos-palestine-document kumar, anugrah. 2023 (october 23). “palestinian christians accuse western church leaders of complicity in gaza airstrikes.” https://www.christianpost.com/news/palestiniansaccuse-western-church-of-complicity-in-gazadeaths.html https://thejerusalemfund.org/2018/05/the-role-of-palestinian-liberation-theology-a-conversation-with-reverend-naim-ateek-3/ https://thejerusalemfund.org/2018/05/the-role-of-palestinian-liberation-theology-a-conversation-with-reverend-naim-ateek-3/ https://thejerusalemfund.org/2018/05/the-role-of-palestinian-liberation-theology-a-conversation-with-reverend-naim-ateek-3/ https://www.crcna.org/news-and-events/news/statement-israel-palestine-conflict https://www.crcna.org/news-and-events/news/statement-israel-palestine-conflict https://www.ekd.de/aufstehen-gegen-terror-hass-und-antisemitismus-in-solidaritaet-81088.htm https://www.ekd.de/aufstehen-gegen-terror-hass-und-antisemitismus-in-solidaritaet-81088.htm https://doi.org/10.24071/tic.v1i1.8466 https://kairospalestine.ps/index.php/about-kairos/kairos-palestine-document https://kairospalestine.ps/index.php/about-kairos/kairos-palestine-document https://www.christianpost.com/news/palestinians-accuse-western-church-of-complicity-in-gaza-deaths.html https://www.christianpost.com/news/palestinians-accuse-western-church-of-complicity-in-gaza-deaths.html https://www.christianpost.com/news/palestinians-accuse-western-church-of-complicity-in-gaza-deaths.html christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 azar, christian peacemaking in the context of the recent gaza war: challenges and theological reflections 156 kuttab, jonathan. 2018. “palestinian evangelicals and christian zionism.” https://jonathankuttab.org/2019/01/19/palestinianevangelicals-and-christian-zionism/ lwf. 2022 (june 16). “israel-palestine conflict: a lasting solution must include ending the occupation | the lutheran world federation.” https://lutheranworld.org/news/israel-palestineconflict-lasting-solution-must-include-endingoccupation lwf. 2023 (november 10). “israel and palestine: civilians must be protected, and hostages released.” the lutheran world federation.” https://lutheranworld.org/news/israel-andpalestine-civilians-must-be-protected-and-hostagesreleased marteijn, elizabeth s. 2020. “the revival of palestinian christianity: developments in palestinian theology.” exchange 49 (3–4): 257– 77. https://doi.org/10.1163/1572543x-12341569 pappé, ilan. 2007. the ethnic cleansing of palestine. oxford: oneworld publications. patrick, james 2023 (november 30). “israel-gaza war: don’t ignore what the bible actually says.” premier christianity. https://www.premierchristianity.com/opinion/israe l-gaza-war-dont-ignore-what-the-bible-actuallysays/16802.article raheb, mitri. 2021. the politics of persecution: middle eastern christians in an age of empire. waco: baylor university press. scholz, norbert. 2018. “bibliography of periodical literature 16 may–15 august 2018.” journal of palestine studies 48 (1): 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1525/jps.2018.48.1.s2 wcc (world council of churches). 2015 (april 2). “kairos palestine’s document ‘a moment of truth’: hopes, aspirations, impact.” https://www.oikoumene.org/news/kairospalestines-document-a-moment-of-truth-hopesaspirations-impact wcc (world council of churches). 2024 (october 19). “statement on the escalating violence in the middle east.” https://www.oikoumene.org/resources/documents /statement-on-the-escalating-violence-in-themiddle-east wooden, cindy. 2018. “true believers want peace for jerusalem, pope tells imam.” national catholic reporter, january 18. https://www.ncronline.org/vatican/francis-comicstrip/francis-chronicles/true-believers-want-peacejerusalem-pope-tells-imam rev. sally azar is a jerusalem-based pastor fluent in arabic, german, and english. she studied theology in beirut and göttingen. she was ordained as a first female pastor in 2023 in the holy land. author email: sazar@elcjhl.org https://jonathankuttab.org/2019/01/19/palestinian-evangelicals-and-christian-zionism/ https://jonathankuttab.org/2019/01/19/palestinian-evangelicals-and-christian-zionism/ https://lutheranworld.org/news/israel-palestine-conflict-lasting-solution-must-include-ending-occupation https://lutheranworld.org/news/israel-palestine-conflict-lasting-solution-must-include-ending-occupation https://lutheranworld.org/news/israel-palestine-conflict-lasting-solution-must-include-ending-occupation https://lutheranworld.org/news/israel-and-palestine-civilians-must-be-protected-and-hostages-released https://lutheranworld.org/news/israel-and-palestine-civilians-must-be-protected-and-hostages-released https://lutheranworld.org/news/israel-and-palestine-civilians-must-be-protected-and-hostages-released https://doi.org/10.1163/1572543x-12341569 https://www.premierchristianity.com/opinion/israel-gaza-war-dont-ignore-what-the-bible-actually-says/16802.article https://www.premierchristianity.com/opinion/israel-gaza-war-dont-ignore-what-the-bible-actually-says/16802.article https://www.premierchristianity.com/opinion/israel-gaza-war-dont-ignore-what-the-bible-actually-says/16802.article https://doi.org/10.1525/jps.2018.48.1.s2 https://www.oikoumene.org/news/kairos-palestines-document-a-moment-of-truth-hopes-aspirations-impact https://www.oikoumene.org/news/kairos-palestines-document-a-moment-of-truth-hopes-aspirations-impact https://www.oikoumene.org/news/kairos-palestines-document-a-moment-of-truth-hopes-aspirations-impact https://www.oikoumene.org/resources/documents/statement-on-the-escalating-violence-in-the-middle-east https://www.oikoumene.org/resources/documents/statement-on-the-escalating-violence-in-the-middle-east https://www.oikoumene.org/resources/documents/statement-on-the-escalating-violence-in-the-middle-east https://www.ncronline.org/vatican/francis-comic-strip/francis-chronicles/true-believers-want-peace-jerusalem-pope-tells-imam https://www.ncronline.org/vatican/francis-comic-strip/francis-chronicles/true-believers-want-peace-jerusalem-pope-tells-imam https://www.ncronline.org/vatican/francis-comic-strip/francis-chronicles/true-believers-want-peace-jerusalem-pope-tells-imam mailto:sazar@elcjhl.org christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 jaiyebo-okoro, critical enabling factors for decolonisation in christian development organisations 82 critical enabling factors for decolonisation in christian development organisations toluwanimi jaiyebo-okoro the rise of the “black lives matter” movement in 2020 brought to the fore issues such as racism, oppression, and colonisation within international development practice. in spite of organisations citing commitments to decolonisation, day-to-day tools and ways of working are arguably not always fit for such purposes. against this backdrop, this article outlines four critical enabling factors (cefs) for decolonisation relevant for christian development organisations (cdos): lament, epistemic justice, diverse and inclusive representation, and the embrace of non-neutrality. this list is not intended to be exhaustive, but represents a starting point for organisations that want to embark on the journey towards decolonising their practice. introduction the rise of the “black lives matter” movement in 2020 brought to the fore pre-existing issues of racism, oppression, and colonisation within international development practice (see, for example, khan, dickson and sondarjee 2023). still, in spite of organisations citing commitments to such goals as localisation, collaboration, and shifting the power, 1 dayto-day tools and ways of working are not always fit for such purposes. funding is concentrated in the global north, and concepts and theoretical frameworks developed in the global north typically evidence a limited understanding of social norms and local realities on the ground. the widely used practice of “capacity building,” for example, fosters the idea that the global south is undeveloped, primitive, and lacking in skills and abilities. meanwhile, the global north is positioned as the possessor of knowledge, solutions, and expertise, and thus the capacity builder, reinforcing the idea that one group of people know something that the other does not know. this article aims to outline critical and practical enabling factors for decolonisation relevant for christian development organisations (cdos). i will begin with a brief overview of my social and cultural location in order to clarify my own positionality. my professional career has been spent working in international development; four years in the global south and four years in the global north, which is where i am currently based. these experiences have 1 see, for example, https://www.bond.org.uk/news/2021/10/mapping-for-the-shifting-of-power-a-system-changeapproach/. given me insights into different sides of the power dynamics divide. i know what it is like to be powerless and dependent on instructions and funding from headquarters in the global north, and, while working in the global north, i have made decisions about who should be funded to do what, for how long, and on what conditions. i have had my capacities “built” when i was in the global south, and i have provided “capacity building” to partners in the global south from my position in the global north. on a personal note, i am from nigeria, a country in the global south, educated largely in the global north, and currently undertaking phd research on decolonisation within international development with an institution in the global north. i am therefore acutely aware that, though a “southerner” and a staunch advocate for decolonisation, i am, as moosavei puts it, “privileged by coloniality and even implicated in its enduring structures of inequality” (2020, 333). lastly, as a christian studying colonisation, its ongoing effects, and how christianity is intertwined with this history, i have been led on a journey of deconstructing my faith. for me, this involves questioning and examining the role (both past and ongoing) of christianity in slavery, oppression, racism, and injustice. these experiences have caused me to struggle with tensions around whether i have any right to decry the systems from which i have benefitted and continue to benefit. i have found some respite in the distinction that grosfoguel (2007) makes between social location and https://www.bond.org.uk/news/2021/10/mapping-for-the-shifting-of-power-a-system-change-approach/ https://www.bond.org.uk/news/2021/10/mapping-for-the-shifting-of-power-a-system-change-approach/ christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 jaiyebo-okoro, critical enabling factors for decolonisation in christian development organisations 83 epistemic location in relation to decolonisation, which simply means that it is not about “where you reside but where you dwell” (mignolo 2011, xiii). dunford (2017, 388) explains this clearly, saying that thinking through a decolonial lens, or indeed a colonial lens …relates not to where you happen to be, or where you are from, but to the perspective from which you think. as much as it is possible for someone residing in a marginalised community to adopt the worldview of the coloniser, it is possible for someone in a distant location to attempt to think from the geo-epistemic perspective of those threatened by global coloniality. to be able to think through a decolonial lens, regardless of our social or cultural location, we must first address the role the institutions we are affiliated with played in relation to colonisation and coloniality, including the harm they caused, and then work actively to bring about redress, redistribution, and reconciliation. ultimately, we need to be intentional about working together to realise our decolonial quest for justice and healing, and to dismantle systems of oppression. while we are not to blame for the past, the future is our responsibility. i begin this discussion with a brief attempt to define decolonisation, before making a case for decolonising international development. this leads to arguments for four critical enabling factors (cefs) that must be present in cdos for them to experience meaningful decolonisation. the first cef is lament, because acknowledging and lamenting the harm christianity has brought through colonisation and christianity’s ongoing role in coloniality is an integral first step towards decolonisation. lament provides a redemptive framework that allows people not only to express their suffering, confront privilege, and mourn the pain of others, but ultimately to affirm their hope in god to bring justice. the second cef is a focus on epistemic justice, which calls for cdos to reflect on how they are replicating colonial legacies of epistemic injustice within their practice by considering questions such as “whose knowledge counts?” and “who is creating knowledge?” diverse and ethical representation is the third cef and includes not only diverse and inclusive representation within cdos, but also ethical representation in how stories are told, including, for example, confronting the vocabulary of “rescue” that is rife among christian organisations, especially anti-slavery cdos. last is the embrace of non-neutrality. clinging to the idea of a perceived neutrality dissociates cdos from the colonial legacy that they need to acknowledge through lament. the cefs discussed in this paper were drawn from existing literature and include examples of organisations putting them into practice. these cefs are not intended to be exhaustive; they simply provide a starting point for cdos that want to embark on a journey of decolonisation. what is decolonisation? there is a lack of consensus on the definition of decolonisation despite its increasing use and popularity. stein and de andreotti (2016, 978) define decolonisation as “an umbrella term for diverse efforts to resist the distinct but intertwined process of colonisation and racialization.” this includes “... finding out how you benefit from the history of colonisation and activating strategies that allow you to use your privilege to dismantle that…” (sanchez 2019, referenced in linh 2020). it also includes “unlearning and undoing the harms of colonization” (asadullah 2021, 28), such as systematic racism (mignolo 2017), appropriation of land and resources (frankema 2010), enslavement (chibuike anyanwu and johnmary ani 2020), economic instability (ocheni and nwankwo 2012), and within international development specifically, the system of white saviourism that measures former colonised people “against a standard of northern whiteness and finds them incomplete, wanting, inferior or regressive” (peace direct 2021, 16). regardless of the lack of consensus on a common definition, what all approaches agree on is that decolonisation involves dismantling the monopoly in knowledge production, decentring power from the hegemony of the global north, and undoing colonial ideologies that position western thought and approaches as superior. it is about building “a participatory system where power and resources are redistributed, and a plurality of voices and interests are respected” (lazzarino 2019, 2). it is essential that these principles become “embedded within every aspect of the organisation, as opposed to something that is considered a nice-to-have” (linh 2020). the case for decolonising international development manji and o’coill (2002, 568) argue that the field of international development has moved “from missionaries of empire to missionaries of development,” from the civilising mission to the developing mission. colonial labels such as “barbarians” or “animals” have been replaced by less overtly degrading phrases like “underdeveloped” or “third world.” yet are nonetheless “imbued with narratives of othering, backwardness or exoticization” (kagal and latchford 2020, 22; khan et al. 2023, 15). the rhetoric around "development” suggests that progress is linear and that "developing" nations in the christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 jaiyebo-okoro, critical enabling factors for decolonisation in christian development organisations 84 global south should strive for and achieve the "developed" status of many countries and cultures in the global north (shallwani and dossa 2023, 67). international development has been considered akin to the “white saviour industrial complex” (cole 2012a; hanchey 2016; khan et al. 2023). this occurs when “historically colonized countries and people are considered as having fewer capabilities, coupled with the impression of benevolence and altruism of western agents” (khan et al. 2023, 16). this colonial power matrix “elevates people of white european descent despite their role in exploiting and dispossessing people from the global south” (khan et al. 2023). their “sense of obligation” (heron 2007, 26) to save the global south (considered as lacking the determination and intellect to do so on their own), is guided by a perception that they, development professionals from the global north, are more capable, more intelligent, and thus more “developed” than people from the global south, which of course maintains a “paradigm of coloniality” (benhadjoudja 2023, 85). this white man’s burden, a term coined by british poet rudyard kipling in 1899 to encourage the colonisation of the philippine islands to save the global south typically accompanies a failure to acknowledge the role of the colonisers in creating and maintaining the inequalities that have led to the “lack of development” (khan et al. 2023). indeed, international development has not been framed “in the language of emancipation or justice, but with the vocabulary of charity, technical expertise, neutrality, and a deep paternalism” (manji and o’coill 2002, 570). hanchey affirms these ideas when she posits that whether provided by governments or nonprofits, aid perpetuates paternalistic relationships between providers and recipients by assuming a lack of agency on the part of those served and enabling a superiority complex in its purveyors. structurally, developmental aid further reinforces the systems it purports to change (2020, 262). this purported shift from colonialism to neocolonialism through international development is nevertheless nuanced. uma kothari, in a radical history of development studies, provides perceptive insights on the link between colonisation and development, arguing that there are both points of continuity and divergence between colonialism and development. using personal narratives of former colonial officers who went on to work within international development, kothari aims to understand the varied articulations of the transition from ‘colonialism’ to ‘development cooperation’ and the ongoing relationship between colonial forms of rule and governance and the purpose and practice of development (2019, 118). continuities highlighted include the career movement of former colonial administration officers to international development consultants and teachers (kothari 2006). such movement may well blur the lines between the values and identities of the colonial legacy and those in the international development community (pieterse and parekh 1995). other continuities include governmental and regulatory structures that control and limit distribution of resources and replicate colonial discourses of knowledge and power. goldsmith argues that these are ultimately for the benefit of the global north and come at the expense of the global south, with the latter playing the primary role of supplying lowcost labour and raw materials (1997). while most of the literature around colonisation and international development focuses on points of continuity, kothari argues that there are also points of divergence that cannot be ignored. she argues that throughout the 1950s there was already a shift towards international development, with the colonial administration introducing and offering more development related activities (2006), such as health, education, and other social programmes (midgley 2003). another point of divergence between colonialism and international development is demonstrated in the increased diversity of actors involved in international development in relation to gender, ethnicity, and class (kothari 2006) compared to those involved in the white male-dominated colonial administration. despite this diversity, however, such workers continue to work within structures that were established during colonialism. though there are no doubt additional points of divergence, i will continue to focus on the continuities in the discussion that follows. where is the response? among the strongest of continuities are decisions about development funding. in the earliest stages of deciding how funding is distributed, the legacy of colonialism is clearly present. becker (2020) finds that britain and france provide almost 10% more in aid to former colonies than they do to other countries. the proposal development stage of securing funding tends to be led by organisations in the global north, with practitioners from the global south invited to “participate.” this is a consultative collaboration in which southern practitioners act in the role of consultant to northern practitioners, with the latter retaining authority (biggs 1989). when funding is secured, control of the funds is retained in the hands of organisations in the north to “administer” for the developing world subjects. the southern organisations christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 jaiyebo-okoro, critical enabling factors for decolonisation in christian development organisations 85 invited to participate in the response are those that fit into the hegemonic culture and speak the lingo. who leads the response? as stated above, among the key questions raised around decolonization are “whose knowledge counts?” and “who is creating knowledge?,” because whoever is producing knowledge becomes the “expert” and shapes the way the world is seen and known (narayanaswamy 2019). in my experience in the world of international development, the global north produces the knowledge and attempts to pass it down to the global south through “capacity building.” this widespread term within the sector reinforces the idea that one group of people knows something that the other does not know (de bruin and james 2020). the associated wage difference between expat and local personnel further entrenches this inequality, resulting in the devaluation of the skills and expertise of global south practitioners (peace direct 2021). indeed, my colleagues in the global south saw terms like “expatriate” as colonial adjacent/lite. one consequence of white saviourism is that development workers are placed in positions of authority because of their race and/or proximity to whiteness, not due to their actual skills and knowledge. furthermore, as khan et al. note, “these narratives promote an alterity process between us and them and reinforce the idea that we can solve their problems” (khan et al. 2023, 23). this applies equally to people from the global south who due to their proximity to whiteness, either through speaking the lingo, their education, or language have aligned “themselves with white norms, worldviews and approaches and have, therefore, often been complicit in reinforcing white supremacy and reproducing white saviourism” (shallwani and dossa 2023, 59). how is the response documented? it must also be acknowledged that the tools and ways of working within international development are determined by the global north. log frames, implementation plans, and reporting systems are often imposed by organizations from the global north on those in the global south, and typically without addressing local historical and cultural perspectives. authorship of data is maintained by northern partners who extract stories, publish them, and essentially speak for the south (pinet and leon-himmelstine 2020). in addition to authorship, the access and management of data remains with northern partners, with information rarely returning to participants and partners in the south. 2 all scripture citations come from the new international version (niv) of the bible. shallwani and dossa (2023) argue that the monitoring and evaluation of international development projects by the global north focuses on the white subject as the agent of change, the saviour, and the objective authority. as a result, the "feel good" aspect of white saviourism is reinforced (ibid., 58). in the process, it promotes whiteness as the standard, highlights weaknesses and issues in the lives of people in the global south, and shows how solutions created and sponsored by the global north are required and helpful. critical enabling factors and good practices given how the institutions of international development have been influenced by the power of the global north, it has become essential for the international development community to decolonise. though not all international development organisations and actors may have direct linear connections with colonialism, those involved in international development must “consider how they benefit from global north power and privilege, including benefits derived from the legacies of colonialism” (gadnetwork 2022, 12). to do that well, international development organisations, and especially christian development organisations, must cultivate cefs if there is to be any reasonable hope of development that does not cause harm by perpetuating this system of power. as a reminder, the four cefs i highlight here are lament, epistemic justice, diverse and ethical representation, and non-neutrality. lament theologian amanda kaminski sees lament as engaging the divine in an honest struggle that demands justice and brings the praying person’s brokenness to the redeeming god without sanitising the suffering that might have been engendered by one’s confusion or anger about god’s complicity or inaction. further, prayer in this tradition goes beyond the spiritual and emotional dimension of praxis by redressing grievances, naming offences, and seeking to re-establish new social connections in the wake of the total wreckage experienced in trauma (kaminski 2013, 4). kristin hamilton, a theologian with a research interest in systems of lament, describes lament as “an expression of sorrow” that can take different forms including “confession, despair, and protest” (2019, 89). biblical scripture is intertwined with such instances of lament, both corporately and individually (muthiah 2021). 2 examples include the corporate lament of confession in daniel 9:5—“we have sinned and done wrong. we have been wicked and have rebelled; we christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 jaiyebo-okoro, critical enabling factors for decolonisation in christian development organisations 86 have turned away from your commands and laws'' (the holy bible, daniel 9:5). an individual lament of repentance is seen in psalm 25:11—“for the sake of your name, lord, forgive my iniquity, though it is great'' (the holy bible). psalm 10:1 shows a lament of protest where the author cries out—“why, lord, do you stand far off? why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?” (the holy bible). according to hamilton, as cdos and their staff identify their privilege and place within oppressive systems…, lament provides space and language to imagine and cling to god’s faithfulness in the face of tragedy, suffering, and sin, whether it is one’s own or someone else’s (2019, 93). for those who benefit from global north privilege and power, “lament teaches us to place ourselves in the path of pain that is not our own.” it allows for the mourning and protesting of the pain of others (ibid., 94). for those on the receiving end of the colonial matrix of power, lament offers a redemptive framework as people are led to turn, complain, ask, and trust” (vroegop 2020). lament encourages those who have been wounded by injustice to turn to god for healing. through complaint, they can express their suffering honestly, and can demand the justice they yearn for. through trust, they “can reaffirm their hope in the one [god] who judges justly (ibid.). for christian and christian-affiliated development organisations, the practice of lament as a first step before taking practical steps to decolonise, calls for sitting “with the discomfort and the pain that [they] have contributed to, not always necessarily as individuals, but part of a system” (blair 2020). corporate lament can help to bring to light areas of injustice that might otherwise remain hidden and allows for the community to “embrace the pain of the excluded” (dickie 2021, 9) and stand in solidarity with those who have suffered and continue to suffer from ongoing legacies of coloniality. as johnson-barrett (2005, 335) says, the ability to sit with suffering, to recognize how painful it is, and simply to be there…is an enormous gift. the simple attention-filled presence of a listener is itself a form of comfort (quoted in dickie 2021, 11). good practice for lament: the church of england report, from lament to action: lament is a developing concept, often used in connection with racial justice (vroegop 2020; hamilton 2019; muthiah 2021). although not from the development sector, one good example is the report of the church of england’s archbishops’ anti-racism taskforce published in 2021 which provided recommendations to the church of england for combating racism and promoting racial justice (church of england 2021) in this report, which provides 47 recommendations and an implementation action timetable, the taskforce acknowledges the harms that the church has been complicit in committing: the christian narrative of reconciliation offers us an invitation to confess the sin of racism, and to acknowledge our past and present complicity in various forms of ethnic discrimination and racial prejudice, so that we may truthfully and honestly work together to build the kingdom of god here and now (church of england 2021, 8). the taskforce acknowledges the regret and grief expressed by the church about racial sin, but recognises that true repentance calls for more than just regret and is intentional in moving towards the next steps of commitment and action. epistemic justice the impact of colonisation on knowledge production has been the creation of an epistemic hierarchy and intellectual imperialism that “privileges western knowledge and cosmology over non-western knowledge and cosmologies…” (grosfoguel 2007, 217). this has led to epistemic injustice through global epistemicide, which, as meghji says, is the erasure of non-eurocentric ways and forms of knowing and knowledge (meghji 2020). epistemic injustice occurs when the concepts and categories through which a people understand themselves and their world are either replaced or negatively affected by the categories and concepts of the colonisers (bhargava 2013). thus, the second cef, epistemic justice, calls for cdos to consider questions such as: what resources or books are influencing our theology? what voices are dominant in our practice? whose knowledge counts? who is creating knowledge? as mentioned above, intellectual imperialism has resulted in northern development workers being regarded as experts in places located in the global south, because whoever is producing knowledge becomes the “expert” and shapes the way the world is seen and known (narayanaswamy 2019). the parallel wage difference between “expat” and “local” personnel further entrenches this division, resulting in the devaluation of the skills and expertise of global south practitioners (peace direct 2021). as stated above, in the international development sector, knowledge is typically produced in the global north or informed by patterns of thinking that originate in the global north, and then passed to the global south through activities such as “capacity building.” christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 jaiyebo-okoro, critical enabling factors for decolonisation in christian development organisations 87 this widespread term within the sector reinforces the idea that one group of people knows something the other does not know (de bruin and james 2020). indeed, when northern thinkers “go south,” as hountondji points out, they tend to be in search not of knowledge but only of materials that lead to knowledge and, if need be, to a testing ground for their findings. they do not go searching for paradigms or methodological and theoretical models; rather, they go hunting for information and new facts that are likely to enrich their paradigms (1997, 11). this is made explicit in the common terms used in international development, like “fieldwork.” northern researchers, akin to laboratory technicians, go to the “field” for “samples,” not to gain knowledge; after all, they are at the top in the epistemic hierarchy. epistemic justice calls for all organisations, especially those from the global north, to reflect on how their practices enable and sustain intellectual imperialism and how they can work to dismantle the epistemic hierarchy and together construct a fairer and more just system of knowledge creation and management. good practice for epistemic justice: christian aid, decolonising evaluation: the global monitoring, evaluation and learning (mel) team at christian aid has been in the process of decolonising their evaluation practice, recognising that colonial history, systems, and conceptions of knowledge and power have had a significant impact on how they carry out evaluations. in conversations with colleagues and peers across fifteen countries, they discovered that rather than being locally planned and led, evaluations were largely externallydriven and created in response to donor needs or external criteria. they found that evaluations ended up undervaluing the knowledge of local practitioners. additionally, they observed that eurocentric ways of generating knowledge were given priority over indigenous methods of knowledge creation and dissemination (backhouse 2022). in response to these findings, christian aid put together some recommendations towards a decolonial approach to evaluation practice that any organisation looking to decentre power and bring about epistemic justice could use. importantly, these include learning from global south practitioners and organisations who have already developed decolonial approaches to the issues being addressed. among some of these innovative decolonial methodologies are oral, pictorial, and video reporting, thus expanding our “understanding of expertise, proactively seeking evaluators with lived experience of the intervention context” (backhouse 2022). diverse and ethical representation decolonisation cannot happen without a third cef, visible diversity, inclusivity, and ethical representation. at present, there is a serious diversity deficit in international development organisations headquartered in the global north. in a 2018 study of charities in the uk, inclusive boards found that 62% of top charities in the uk by income (including cdos) had all white boards and out of 2,000 senior leadership teams, only 5.3% of their members were non-white (inclusive boards 2018, 4). roxane gay famously stated that “we assume whiteness is the default because whiteness, historically, has been the default. this is one of the many reasons diverse representation matters so much. we need to change the default” (quoted in bereola 2017). organisations within the international development space need to consider “what is needed and who is best placed to meet that need?” (morris and gomez de la torre 2020). this representation extends to the way stories are told. the international development sector is rife with controversy around the portrayal of the global south; examples include #kony2012, band aid, msf, and comic relief to name a few (whitehead 2023; cole 2012; drury 2017; faloyin 2022; bbc news 2019; new african 2015). there is an extra layer when it concerns christian organisations and their vocabulary of rescue, which involves telling emotive and extreme stories that appeal to white western christians as ultimate saviours who must rise up to save global innocents abroad. as swartz writes: “theological language of sin, evil, goodness, and redemption proliferates. metaphors of light and darkness abound. promotional materials draw sharp dichotomies between rescuer and trafficker” (2019, 99). this can lead to more harm than good as context, culture, and collaboration are often disregarded. good practice for representation: ethical storytelling by freedom story: rachel goble, co-founder of the freedom story, a child trafficking and exploitation prevention organisation, describes a wakeup call conversation with a young girl-turned-lady, cat, who was featured in a documentary that inspired the founding of the organisation. they learnt that despite the fact that the story was powerful, helped people understand the issues, and raised money, cat did not want to be remembered by the world in the light she had been cast, and felt that her story had not been stewarded well (goble 2017). this led to the founding of ethical storytelling (www.ethicalstorytelling.com), a collaborative project offering resources such as templates, workshops, webinars, podcasts, and other platforms for christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 jaiyebo-okoro, critical enabling factors for decolonisation in christian development organisations 88 exchanging ideas and best practices for storytelling work in the international development sector. these include, but are not limited to, obtaining deep consent, using sunset clauses, acknowledging power dynamics, being trauma-informed, and telling stories that balance the need to raise much-needed funds with the need to humanise and respect those at the centre of the stories. the ethos of this ethical storytelling movement is to be an “open sourced, nuanced, constituent first, donor second collective seeking to change the way we tell and consume stories” (goble 2017). non-neutrality the final cef is non-neutrality. archbishop desmond tutu famously said: “if you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. if an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality” (quoted in younge 2009). notwithstanding, international development actors and indeed cdos typically operate with the principle of neutrality, which is taken to mean not favouring any sides. by portraying themselves as neutral they disassociate themselves from the colonial legacy, embracing an “apolitical stance, whereby [they strive] to meet community needs without addressing underlying political causes, [mirroring] the colonial powers’ relief efforts” (peace direct 2021, 20). the implication here is that local practitioners are unable to assist those in need of help in their communities since they are not objective and lack the competencies required for project leadership. as the authors of peace direct point out, the perceived neutrality and expertise of white westerners positions them as benevolent humanitarians instrumental to the ‘advancement’ of the contexts they are operating in, reinforcing the ‘white saviour’ mentality that is pervasive across the sector (ibid., 17). for christian organizations, neutrality is not an option, because scripture calls upon us at all times and places to stand up for justice in support of the poor and oppressed. though doing this wisely and well is never easy, and though it can take a lot of courage, it is clear that neutrality is not in line with biblical principles. consider the following well-known passages: “i know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. i wish you were either one or the other! so, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—i am about to spit you out of my mouth” (the holy bible, revelation 3:15-16) 3 the age of consent is the age at which young people can legally consent to participation in sexual activity. “but if serving the lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve…” (the holy bible, joshua 24:15) good practice for non-neutrality: throughout history, there have been examples of churches, christians, and christian communities embracing non-neutrality; from support of the catholic church for labour movements in south america (daudelin and hewitt 1995; mészáros 1991), to the salvation army advocating to raise the “age of consent” 3 in the uk (davis 2009; hazzard 1998), to the church opposing apartheid in south africa (burns 1977; cowell 1985). in the same vein, cdos should refrain from remaining silent in the midst of difficult conversations, including those around coloniality, racism, and other forms of oppression and exploitation that arise when working within a sector that aims to do “good” for others. conclusion the critical enabling factors suggested in this paper are by no means exhaustive, but nevertheless a good starting point for christian organisations and communities working within development looking to decolonise their practice. there is no order as to which should be more of a priority, but i consider lament to be the most important first step from which other cefs will flow. the practice of lament gives agency to those who suffer from ongoing effects of coloniality. through having the opportunity to share their story, their pain can be acknowledged, and they can begin the process of healing (dickie 2019, 3). from lament flows nonneutrality, as it causes the community to weep alongside those who are hurting, “resist injustice and stand in the gap for the abused and afflicted” (dickie 2021, 9). from non-neutrality, the need for ethical representation and epistemic justice becomes clearer. as i noted at the outset, thinking through a decolonial lens starts with acknowledging (and lamenting) the role that the institutions we are affiliated with have played and continue to play in replicating legacies of colonisation. through this process, we can work together to realise our decolonial quest for justice and healing, and to dismantle systems of oppression. as stated above, while we are not to blame for the past, the future is our responsibility. christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 jaiyebo-okoro, critical enabling factors for decolonisation in christian development organisations 89 references asadullah, muhammad. 2021. “decolonization and restorative justice: a proposed theoretical framework.” decolonization of criminology and justice 3 (1): 27-62. backhouse, jennifer. 2022. “decolonising evaluation: whose value counts?” christianaid.org.uk. december 19, 2022. bbc news. 2019. “stacey dooley hits back at mp lammy’s comic relief ‘white saviour’ criticism.” bbc news. february 28, 2019. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts47400300. becker, bastian. 2020. “colonial legacies in international aid: policy priorities and actor constellations.” in from colonialism to international aid, edited by schmitt, carina. 161185. palgrave macmillan: switzerland. benhadjoudja, leila. 2023. “the warrior logic of the white savior.” in white saviorism in international development, edited by themrise khan, kanakulya dickson, and maika sondarjee. 82-98. quebec: daraja press. bereola, abigail. 2017. “the rumpus interview with roxane gay.” the rumpus.net. january 4, 2017. https://therumpus.net/2017/01/04/the-rumpusinterview-with-roxane-gay/. bhargava, rajeev. 2013. “overcoming the epistemic injustice of colonialism.” global policy 4 (4): 413-17. biggs s d. 1989. “resource-poor farmer participation in research: a synthesis of experiences from nine national agricultural research systems.” ofcor comparative study (países bajos). blair, michael. 2020. “decolonizing the church.” vancouver school of theology. https://vst.edu/perspectives/decolonizing-thechurch/. burns, john f. 1977. “catholic defiance of apartheid is stirring south africa.” the new york times. february 6, 1977. https://www.nytimes.com/1977/02/06/archives/cat holic-defiance-of-apartheid-is-stirring-southafrica.html. chibuike anyanwu, timothy and kelechi johnmary ani. 2020. “slavery and colonialism.” world affairs: the journal of international issues 24 (1): 132-41. church of england. 2021. “from lament to action.” https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files /2021-04/fromlamenttoaction-report.pdf. cole, teju. 2012. “the white-savior industrial complex.” the atlantic. march 21. cowell, alan. 1985. “churches on cutting edge of the apartheid battle.” the new york times. march 15. https://www.nytimes.com/1985/03/15/world/churches -on-cutting-edge-of-the-apartheid-battle.html. daudelin, jean, and william e. hewitt. 1995. “churches and politics in latin america: catholicism at the crossroads.” third world quarterly 16 (2): 221-226. davis, jennifer. 2009. the age of consent: a warning from history: the work of josephine butler. newcastle upon tyne: the christian institute. de bruin, willemijn, and rick james. 2020. “global perspectives on decolonising capacity strengthening.” intrac. https://www.intrac.org/wpcms/wpcontent/uploads/2020/11/decolonising-capacitystrengthening-final.pdf. dickie, june f. 2019. “the importance of lament in pastoral ministry: biblical basis and some applications.” verbum et ecclesia 40 (1): 1-11. dickie, june f. 2021. “practising healthy theology in the local church: lamenting with those in pain and restoring hope.” stellenbosch theological journal 7 (1). dunford, robin. 2017. “toward a decolonial global ethics.” journal of global ethics 13 (3): 380-97. https://doi.org/10.1080/17449626.2017.1373140. drury, flora. 2017. “did ed sheeran commit ‘poverty tourism’ in charity film?” bbc news. december 7. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/worldafrica-42268637. faloyin, dipo. 2022. “remember #kony2012? we’re still living in its offensive, outdated view of africa.” the guardian. april 27. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/202 2/apr/27/kony-2012-10-years-africa-problem. frankema, ewout. 2010. “the colonial roots of land inequality: geography, factor endowments, or institutions?” economic history review 63 (may): 418-451. https://about.jstor.org/terms. gadnetwork. 2022. “what is the role of northern organisations in global justice advocacy?” www.gadnetwork.org. goble, rachel. 2017. “introducing ethical storytelling.” thefreedomstory.org. september 21. https://thefreedomstory.org/introducingethical-storytelling/. goldsmith, edward. 1997. “development as colonialism.” the ecologist 27 (2): 69-77. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/a19619466/aon e?u=anon~5b3a50b5&sid=googlescholar&xid=4 bbd26fb. grosfoguel, ramón. 2007. “the epistemic decolonial turn: beyond political-economy paradigms.” cultural studies 21 (2-3): 211-23. https://therumpus.net/2017/01/04/the-rumpus-interview-with-roxane-gay/ https://therumpus.net/2017/01/04/the-rumpus-interview-with-roxane-gay/ https://www.nytimes.com/1977/02/06/archives/catholic-defiance-of-apartheid-is-stirring-south-africa.html https://www.nytimes.com/1977/02/06/archives/catholic-defiance-of-apartheid-is-stirring-south-africa.html https://www.nytimes.com/1977/02/06/archives/catholic-defiance-of-apartheid-is-stirring-south-africa.html https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2021-04/fromlamenttoaction-report.pdf https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2021-04/fromlamenttoaction-report.pdf https://www.nytimes.com/1985/03/15/world/churches-on-cutting-edge-of-the-apartheid-battle.html https://www.nytimes.com/1985/03/15/world/churches-on-cutting-edge-of-the-apartheid-battle.html https://www.intrac.org/wpcms/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/decolonising-capacity-strengthening-final.pdf https://www.intrac.org/wpcms/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/decolonising-capacity-strengthening-final.pdf https://www.intrac.org/wpcms/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/decolonising-capacity-strengthening-final.pdf https://doi.org/10.1080/17449626.2017.1373140 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-42268637 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-42268637 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/apr/27/kony-2012-10-years-africa-problem https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/apr/27/kony-2012-10-years-africa-problem http://www.gadnetwork.org/ https://thefreedomstory.org/introducing-ethical-storytelling/ https://thefreedomstory.org/introducing-ethical-storytelling/ https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/a19619466/aone?u=anon~5b3a50b5&sid=googlescholar&xid=4bbd26fb https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/a19619466/aone?u=anon~5b3a50b5&sid=googlescholar&xid=4bbd26fb https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/a19619466/aone?u=anon~5b3a50b5&sid=googlescholar&xid=4bbd26fb christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 jaiyebo-okoro, critical enabling factors for decolonisation in christian development organisations 90 hamilton, kristin. 2019. “the church’s lament: moving the white church from grief of complicity to lament.” https://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/dmin/361. hanchey, jenna n. 2016. “agency beyond agents: aid campaigns in sub-saharan africa and collective representations of agency.” communication, culture and critique 9 (1): 1129. ———. 2020. “decolonizing aid in black panther.” review of communication 20 (3): 260-68. hazzard, john w. 1998. “marching on the margins: an analysis of the salvation army in the united states.” review of religious research 40 (2): 12141. heron, barbara. 2007. desire for development: whiteness, gender, and the helping imperative. waterloo: wilfrid laurier university press. hountondji, paulin. 1997. endogenous knowledge: research trails. dakar: codesria. inclusive boards. 2018. “charities: inclusive governance.” london. https://www.inclusiveboards.co.uk/wpcontent/uploads/2019/10/charities-inclusivegovernance.pdf. kagal, neha and lia latchford. 2020. “towards an intersectional praxis in international development: what can the sector learn from black feminists located in the global north?” gender and development 28 (1): 11-30. kaminski, amanda. 2013. “scandalous prayer: lament as protest in an intertextual reading of lamentations 1 and 2 and pray the devil back to hell.” http://www.womenwarpeace.org/. khan, themrise, kanakulya dickson, and maika sondarjee (eds). 2023.white saviorism in international development. quebec: daraja press. kothari, uma. 2006. “an agenda for thinking about ‘race’ in development.” progress in development studies 6 (1): 9-23. ———. 2019. “from colonial administration to development studies: a post-colonial critique of the history of development studies.” in a radical history of development studies: individuals, institutions and ideologies, edited by uma kothari. 47-66. london: zed books. lazzarino, runa. 2019. “fixing the disjuncture, inverting the drift: decolonizing human trafficking and modern slavery.” journal of modern slavery: a multidisciplinary exploration of human trafficking solutions 5 (1): 1-31. http://slavefreetoday.org. linh, aurum. 2020. “what decolonising digital rights looks like.” digital freedom fund. april 6, 2020. https://digitalfreedomfund.org/whatdecolonising-digital-rights-looks-like/. manji, firoze and carl o’coill. 2002. “the missionary position: ngos and development in africa.” international affairs 78 (3): 567-83. meghji, ali. 2020. decolonizing sociology: an introduction. hoboken, nj: wiley & sons ltd. mészáros, george. 1991. “the catholic church and trade unions in brazil: a case study of the relationship between the dioceses of sao paulo and santo andre and the metalworkers of greater sao paulo, 1970-1986.” phd thesis, london school of economics and political science. midgley, james. 2003. “social development: the intellectual heritage.” journal of international development 15 (7): 831-44. mignolo, walter d. 2011. the darker side of western modernity. durham: duke university press. mignolo, walter d. 2017. “racism and coloniality: the invention of ‘human(ity)’ and the three pillars of the colonial matrix of power (racism, sexism, and nature).” in the routledge companion to philosophy of race, edited by taylor, paul, linda alcoff, and luvell anderson. 461-74. new york; abingdon: routledge. moosavi, leon. 2020. “the decolonial bandwagon and the dangers of intellectual decolonisation.” international review of sociology 30 (2): 332-54. https://doi.org/10.1080/03906701.2020.1776919. morris, lucy and andres gomez de la torre. 2020. “how to decolonise international development: some practical suggestions.” from poverty to power. december 18, 2020. https://frompoverty.oxfam.org.uk/how-todecolonise-international-development-somepractical-suggestions/. muthiah, rob. 2021. “the theological work of antiracism needs to include lament.” the christian century, january 27, 2021. https://www.christiancentury.org/article/criticalessay/theological-work-antiracism-needs-includelament. narayanaswamy, lata. 2019. “[how do we ‘know’ the world series] part i: how can we ‘know’ the world—and reflect on it academically?” convival thinking. https://convivialthinking.org/index.php/2019/01/1 2/how-can-we-know-the-world-and-reflect-on-itacademically/ new african. 2015. “inside the white saviour industrial complex.” new african. january 6. https://newafricanmagazine.com/9586/. ocheni, stephen and basil c nwankwo. 2012. “analysis of colonialism and its impact in https://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/dmin/361 https://www.inclusiveboards.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/charities-inclusive-governance.pdf https://www.inclusiveboards.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/charities-inclusive-governance.pdf https://www.inclusiveboards.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/charities-inclusive-governance.pdf http://www.womenwarpeace.org/ http://slavefreetoday.org/ https://digitalfreedomfund.org/what-decolonising-digital-rights-looks-like/ https://digitalfreedomfund.org/what-decolonising-digital-rights-looks-like/ https://doi.org/10.1080/03906701.2020.1776919 https://frompoverty.oxfam.org.uk/how-to-decolonise-international-development-some-practical-suggestions/ https://frompoverty.oxfam.org.uk/how-to-decolonise-international-development-some-practical-suggestions/ https://frompoverty.oxfam.org.uk/how-to-decolonise-international-development-some-practical-suggestions/ https://www.christiancentury.org/article/critical-essay/theological-work-antiracism-needs-include-lament https://www.christiancentury.org/article/critical-essay/theological-work-antiracism-needs-include-lament https://www.christiancentury.org/article/critical-essay/theological-work-antiracism-needs-include-lament https://convivialthinking.org/index.php/2019/01/12/how-can-we-know-the-world-and-reflect-on-it-academically/ https://convivialthinking.org/index.php/2019/01/12/how-can-we-know-the-world-and-reflect-on-it-academically/ https://convivialthinking.org/index.php/2019/01/12/how-can-we-know-the-world-and-reflect-on-it-academically/ https://newafricanmagazine.com/9586/ christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 jaiyebo-okoro, critical enabling factors for decolonisation in christian development organisations 91 africa.” cross-cultural communication 8 (3): 4654. peace direct. 2021. time to decolonise aid: insights and lessons from a global consultation. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5db70e83fc 0a966cf4cc42ea/t/609d44600b38626868dadff7/1 620919397499/pddecolonising+aid+report_second+edition.pdf. pieterse, jan nederveen and bhikhu c. parekh. 1995. the decolonization of imagination: culture knowledge and power. london: zed books. pinet, melanie and carmen leon-himmelstine. 2020. “how can covid-19 be the catalyst to decolonise development research?” fp2p. june 4, 2020. https://oxfamapps.org/fp2p/how-cancovid-19-be-the-catalyst-to-decolonisedevelopment-research/. sanchez, nikki. 2019. “decolonization is for everyone.” tedxsfu. march 12. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp9x1nncw ny. shallwani, sadaf and shama dossa. 2023. “evaluation and the white gaze in international development.” in white saviorism in international development, edited by themrise khan, kanakulya dickson, and maika sondarjee. 42-62. quebec: daraja press. stein, sharon, and vanessa oliveira de andreotti. 2016. “decolonization and higher education.” in encyclopedia of educational philosophy and theory, edited by michael a. peters. 1-6. singapore: springer. swartz, david r. 2019. “‘rescue sells’: narrating human trafficking to evangelical populists.” review of faith and international affairs 17 (3): 94-104. vroegop, mark. 2020. “how to grieve racial violence through lament.” crossway. may 28, 2020. https://www.crossway.org/articles/how-togrieve-racial-violence-through-lament/. whitehead, harriet. 2023. “msf international pledges photography overhaul following ‘widespread criticism.’” civil society. july 25. https://www.civilsociety.co.uk/news/msfinternational-pledges-photography-overhaulfollowing-widespread-criticism.html. younge, gary. 2009. “archbishop desmond tutu: the secrets of a peacemaker.” the guardian. may 23. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/may/23 /interview-desmond-tutu. toluwanimi jaiyebo-okoro is a phd student at the university of nottingham researching decolonisation within christian development organisations. she has worked within the field of international development for over eight years, in nigeria and england, and her current role focuses on supporting churches across the world to respond to modern slavery and human trafficking in their communities. author email: toluwanimi.jaiyebo@nottingham.ac.uk https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5db70e83fc0a966cf4cc42ea/t/609d44600b38626868dadff7/1620919397499/pd-decolonising+aid+report_second+edition.pdf https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5db70e83fc0a966cf4cc42ea/t/609d44600b38626868dadff7/1620919397499/pd-decolonising+aid+report_second+edition.pdf https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5db70e83fc0a966cf4cc42ea/t/609d44600b38626868dadff7/1620919397499/pd-decolonising+aid+report_second+edition.pdf https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5db70e83fc0a966cf4cc42ea/t/609d44600b38626868dadff7/1620919397499/pd-decolonising+aid+report_second+edition.pdf https://oxfamapps.org/fp2p/how-can-covid-19-be-the-catalyst-to-decolonise-development-research/ https://oxfamapps.org/fp2p/how-can-covid-19-be-the-catalyst-to-decolonise-development-research/ https://oxfamapps.org/fp2p/how-can-covid-19-be-the-catalyst-to-decolonise-development-research/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp9x1nncwny https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp9x1nncwny https://www.crossway.org/articles/how-to-grieve-racial-violence-through-lament/ https://www.crossway.org/articles/how-to-grieve-racial-violence-through-lament/ https://www.civilsociety.co.uk/news/msf-international-pledges-photography-overhaul-following-widespread-criticism.html https://www.civilsociety.co.uk/news/msf-international-pledges-photography-overhaul-following-widespread-criticism.html https://www.civilsociety.co.uk/news/msf-international-pledges-photography-overhaul-following-widespread-criticism.html https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/may/23/interview-desmond-tutu https://www.theguardian.com/books/2009/may/23/interview-desmond-tutu mailto:toluwanimi.jaiyebo@nottingham.ac.uk christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 castañeda and hunter-bowman, immigrant-led social movements confront global violence and build peace… 174 immigrant-led social movements confront global violence and build peace: dialogue as action research method and collaborative praxis for transformation carlos castañeda and janna l. hunter-bowman immigrant-led social movements in the united states contribute to peacebuilding, catalyzing new christian approaches to contest global violence and increase relational justice. this article is a reflective exchange on dialogue as method and praxis between two research collaborators pursuing this argument: a leader of the latin american immigrant-led movement movimiento cosecha and an engaged scholar of peace studies and christian ethics. their conversation highlights challenges and opportunities in centering immigrant-led social change efforts in church ministries, vulnerability and power in intercultural research partnership relationships, and reshaping accountability. key themes include the significance of long-term relationship-building, indigenous knowledge systems, and negotiating the complexity of representation in writing rooted in collaboration. by foregrounding lived experience, the dialogue emphasizes the need for sustained, reciprocal engagement, and the codevelopment of ethical practices. the format itself—dialogue—shares a latin american and latineinspired model for such engaged peacebuilding research and praxis. introduction: locating social movements in relation to transformative approaches to peacebuilding and the western christian political tradition some responses to conflict around the world reduce violence and increase justice through efforts that address root causes, promote structural changes that shift power in society, support healing, and foster collaborative processes coordinating a range of actors. these are features of a transformative approach to peacebuilding (tpb), which maintains that conflict is normal and can be productive (lederach 2003; lederach and appleby 2010). immigrant-led social movements in the united states (us) are a kind of peacebuilding. social movements led by brown and black communities emphasize historical inequalities rooted in longitudinal effects of extractive colonialism, racialized expropriation of various kinds, the commodification of human life within slavery, us imperialism, and the “financialization of life as ‘human capital’ in neoliberalism” (lowe 2015, 197). such prophetic truthtelling supports efforts to build social power (or specifically “poder popular”), impact public decision making, and create new political possibilities in the shell of the old. movimiento cosecha, a nonviolent immigrant-led social movement, and the movement for black lives do not consider themselves peacebuilding groups, but neither did key nonviolent social movements in colombia, guatemala, the philippines, and south africa that created conditions and momentum for peace processes that altered the political landscape. furthermore, these brownand black-led us social movements promoting justice bear the above-mentioned features of tpb. meanwhile, in the united states today, “peacebuilding” often refers to bridge-building and dialogue efforts carried out by white groups amidst political polarization (schirch 2021). given increased awareness about the relationship between the arrival of european refugees and immigrants and the genocide of indigenous groups within the united states, the north atlantic slave trade, the civil war, and the legacy of these events in social movements led by black, indigenous, and people of color (bipoc) communities today, peacebuilders in christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 castañeda and hunter-bowman, immigrant-led social movements confront global violence and build peace… 175 the united states need to recognize brownand blackled social movements as important contemporary peacebuilding strategies. 1 meanwhile, in the adjacent field of political theology, voices from the global south and communities of color in the west likewise have identified the dominated, the marginalized, and decentralized social movements as the genuine subjects of history—at least of change that claims to be christian in inspiration—and are rethinking politics and social change along these lines. 2 these theological voices converge with the tpb currents above to raise awareness about structural realities that were in plain sight, but were nevertheless invisible to many white christian peacebuilding communities based in the united states. additionally, some us christian churches, affiliated institutions, and theologians are beginning to reckon with our entanglements in the horror and destruction of worlds in latin america that fuel migration to the united states. 3 a critical theological approach to transformative peacebuilding includes reckoning with legacies of violence that coexist with our approaches to social change and therefore pays special attention to questions of power. it appreciates immigrant-led movements for justice as collective peacebuilding agents with a prophetic call. this essay contributes towards christian responses to global violence that honor decentralized social movements emerging from the political margins of society. such christian responses—sometimes referred to as decolonial and postcolonial—also reckon with the limitations and problems of christian peace categories shaped by a western christian inheritance. this too contributes to a more just peace. this collaborative initiative, based in participant action research (par) and intercultural dialogue, asks how people can relate to immigrants in ways that center immigrant lives and immigrant-led processes for justice. how can we move beyond helper/helped relationships that make one group hosts/insiders and the other group outsiders/guests? we think as and with members of latin american immigrant-led processes about the 1 schirch (2021) indicates that peacebuilders are beginning to recognize blackand brown-led movements as important for peacebuilding. publications in the field of peace studies tend to focus on peacemaking/building in nonwestern countries. a review of three journals in the field, the journal of peacebuilding and development, the journal of peace research, and peace and change, include no publications between 2021-2025 that specifically examine blackand brown-led civil resistance or social movements in the united states. nevertheless, three articles indicate a shift. renown civil resistance scholar erica chenoweth and kathleen gallagher cunningham (2023, 3) characterize “the united states as an increasingly salient site of conflict and contention.” ashley bohrer (2023) includes a case study of the 2020 racial justice uprisings to diagnose state-backed epistemic violence. 2 key texts include gutierrez (2004), cone (1970), mosala (1989), katongole (2017), and pui-lan (2005). 3 see rajendra (2014), de la torre (2010), campese (2008), steck (2004), heyer (2010), and peace theology’s third wave, “reckoning,” outlined in hunter-bowman, “what is peace theology? reinhold niebuhr’s realism in waves of peace theology,” in the journal of moral theology (forthcoming, july 2025). troubling assumptions embedded in the helper/helped relational pattern that is at the center of traditional models for serving immigrants, from the church sanctuary movement to nongovernmental organization advocacy efforts. we think about what it means for people from outside such processes and movements— such as christians from dominant white cultures, among others—to join movements of protest that underscore the generative aspects of social conflict, transformation, and healing. we are thinking together about peacebuilding. i, carlos casteñeda, am from movimiento cosecha, which means harvest movement in spanish. i, janna hunter-bowman, am an engaged scholar of peace and theology working with cosecha. movimiento cosecha is a national network of organizers in the united states. we are a decentralized movement fighting for dignity, respect, and permanent protection for the well over eleven million undocumented persons in the united states. each state has its own dynamics, issues, challenges, and struggles. the cosecha groups, called circles, in each state organize to improve the quality of life of their community in their context. we are a diverse, multi-generational movement that converges around fourteen principles, including reciprocity; nonviolence; movement linking for racial, gender, and economic justice; and the idea that we have all that we need in community. the “we” here does not mean exclusively our community of undocumented workers, though many of us are undocumented. our main goal is to center the voices of undocumented immigrants. we include those who inspire and aspire to the creation of new worlds. we seek alternatives for creating worlds and systems different from what we live in now. in this back and forth, we, carlos first and then janna, describe the circumstances that led us to movimiento cosecha, how the collaborative research initiative unfolded and is structured, and how the notion of “helping” misconstrues collaborative relationships in which knowledge is created through exchange. this essay does not proceed in a traditional academic christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 castañeda and hunter-bowman, immigrant-led social movements confront global violence and build peace… 176 format. we developed this piece in dialogue and choose to structure the essay accordingly with the hope that a conversational format will help convey how insight, challenge, and innovation emerge in our work with a kind of par, which we discuss in relation to interculturality and the “mujerista” concept of dialogue as method and praxis. the following is a condensed and edited version of a series of conversations. how we, carlos and janna, arrived at movimiento cosecha and how we met carlos: when i left my mom in peru and arrived in the us in 1994, i was living with my dad, stepmom, brothers, and one sister. it was a difficult, dysfunctional situation. my siblings and i stayed outside of the house as much as we could. that is to say, when i arrived in the us i didn’t feel like i came into any kind of community. i got involved in various youth groups, ending up as director of an evangelical church’s youth group. i started organizing with them. it was enriching for me, and yet i felt like the potential of this community was caged in those four walls. i started studying the work of martin luther king jr. and thinking about how this church and many others in the united states were not doing what the gospel tells us to do—namely, side with the powerless and not the powerful. after quite a few years as youth director, i started to feel the need to leave the congregation in order to join the bigger church, the broader body of christ. as i make this type of transition, i ask myself, “am i betraying my faith by leaving this place so that i can go out to a bigger space that is the community?” i want to make this clear—by leaving a congregation, i was never leaving the church—neither the body of christ, nor my faith, nor interest in christianity as a force in the world. i ended up organizing with a nonprofit in new jersey. all the tools and skills i picked up in the church helped me a lot in organizing. a lot of the things i did outside of the congregation are things i learned within it, especially building community and drawing on faith and hope as elements that bring people together amidst despair, duress, and oppression. that helped me a lot. but things were not as beautiful as they seemed in the social justice nonprofit world. the way the nonprofit was organized tokenized brown, spanishspeaking immigrants like me. the director of my organization—serving and organizing mostly spanishspeaking undocumented workers—always instructed me to give the opening welcome at our thursday 7 p.m. community meetings. i was to employ my natural charisma and public speaking skills to say, “we are a community-centered and community-led organization,” but i saw that the community was not pulling the strings; instead, the direction and ideology came from the top. the few times initiatives were received from the bottom, they got stuck on the way up and didn’t materialize. my supervisor, the executive directors, and others behind the desks, were disconnected from people on the ground. janna: i recall that another cosecha leader described feeling like an “organizing puppet” of the latino immigrant community when working with a national faith-based organizing group. carlos: i resonate with that. also, the nonprofit organization was very close to the establishment. we worked with democratic elected officials to draft bills, but always on their terms. we dared not disturb or deviate very much from the establishment. that shaped power dynamics in the organization and with the community. nevertheless, i learned a lot there too. when i needed to transition out of the nonprofit organizing space for those reasons, i moved to movimiento cosecha, a decentralized movement that fights for dignity, respect, and permanent protection, where roles are flexible. for example, i didn’t have an executive director who was telling me to read the script or not to read the script, metaphorically or literally. in cosecha, i was able to push forward a broader agenda with the community i grew up with. i joined cosecha in 2017 at the beginning of a campaign in new jersey that would grant all undocumented workers the minimum needed to drive vehicles. it took us about two years to win the campaign to pass the law. i want to point out, however, that this campaign had been going on for about 16 years prior to cosecha’s participation. in those two years, all of us in the community learned so much. we also went through processes of unlearning many things. we do not have legal immigration status. we had to unlearn the idea that we are undeserving of full humanity, of dignity. this movement was led by women. the majority of cosecha’s organizers are women of color taking control of their own lives, and their own campaigns. they had lived their own process of transformation. in a space like cosecha we do have more flexibility than when working for an ngo (non-governmental organization), but we have challenges, like few financial resources. we are not connected to an establishment, so we have to be creative to secure resources. we also have to create alternatives to what other people are doing that has not worked to reach goals like the driver license issue and we have to struggle in ways that are transformative for participants. my mission has continued to expand and unfold. there is so much to do. that’s when we met janna, in the context of working to amplify the fight and struggle of our communities, communities of color, migrants, christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 castañeda and hunter-bowman, immigrant-led social movements confront global violence and build peace… 177 and workers. that support is very welcome and comforting. janna: i first met you on a zoom organizing call in preparation for the caminata (walk) across indiana. you spoke about organizing in terms of drawing on memories of the ancestors to become a messianic force, in terms of an interruption in history, with reference to the german philosopher walter benjamin. i direct messaged dara marquez and asked—who is that? that was early summer 2021. five years prior, in 2016, i met dara marquez at a meeting at the seminary in which a room full of church people, mostly white mennonite, was organizing to protect and stand with immigrants through a new sanctuary movement, as churches and other groups were doing elsewhere in the country. dara was among the dozen or maybe twenty members of the latino/a immigrant community participating in the consultation. she interrupted the momentum of the conversation when she asked “excuse me, what if what we want and need is not to go into your churches but for you to join us in the streets, would you do that?” at the time, i was writing about how rural colombian war victims—what liberation theology calls “nonpersons”—become political agents that extend life and contribute to transformation. in what became the book witnessing peace: becoming agents under duress in colombia (hunter-bowman 2022), i was arguing that much that is significant for peacebuilding flies under the radar of larger ngos, state entities, and academics because it is accomplished through a form of agency that they don’t recognize. based in life and work in peacebuilding and human rights in colombia (20012004; 2006-2010, followed by research), i was arguing that peacebuilders need to pay attention to the forms of power, knowledge, and processes developed by those most affected by the forms of violence we wish to resist and in which we are entangled. so often, human rights protection and peace plans are developed by whitecollar workers at desks in bogotá, washington dc, new york, or brussels, far from the violence-affected areas and disconnected from the communities on the ground that develop their own context-specific but fragile responses. organizations often impose preformulated models of protection and transformation rather than attending to the critical and constructive voices on the ground. the driving question is evident in the book’s title, witnessing peace: becoming agents under duress in colombia. how do those under duress—what liberation theology calls “nonpersons”—become agents, and not just agents but constructive political agents? my notion of “constructive” is linked to the term “duress” and its place in legal scholarship and catholic moral theology, where it refers to constraints on autonomy that might lead someone to cooperate with illegal or evil acts that she would have extricated herself from, were it not for forced choices. it is an analogical extension, but i am not talking about how people have been forced into entanglements with evil but rather about what people have been able to accomplish under duress through positive freedom (freedom to, a risk to take that opens possibilities) that is distinct from liberal notions of negative freedom (freedom from, or negative immunities). the present situation of duress that agents negotiate is related to a bundle of factors including histories of colonialism, economic exploitation, and racism. that is, duress is deeply embedded in histories of injustice. the array of dominant discourses—common language and thought from a shared knowledge collection, institutions, laws, decisions to enforce or not enforce laws, and moral concepts that together bolster and perpetuate the exertion of power within society—can be traced back to these histories but are not overdetermined by them. it is within these interconnections that the organization of power relations takes shape, is reshaped, and even reconfigured. the significance of violence-affected communities’ efforts comes into focus through understanding the intersecting and interlocking constraints that place them under duress. dara’s question “would you join us?” confronted me as the meeting facilitator because i realized some of the same dynamics might be playing out. mostly white church people were offering church sanctuary to immigrants from latin america. church sanctuary is largely part of the white progressive church memory and moral imagination from the sanctuary movement of the 1980s. it has not led to robust structural and political change. might it reproduce paternalistic power and reinforce racialized host/guest dynamics of power? that would be very awkward, given our stated wishes for radical solidarity. dara’s voice was interrupting the logic of sanctuary with an invitation, ending with a question that hung in the air: would you do that? as i stood from my chair to respond, as the meeting facilitator, i visualized the significance of dara’s question in terms of the directional flow of people: will brown bodies enter predominantly white churches (sanctuary), or will white communities move into a predominantly brown collective social movement in the streets? how the project unfolded janna (continued): after that meeting, i followed up with dara with the support of our mutual friend, organizer jason shenk, and from there we developed relationships. dara, her father don alvaro marquez, and others from indiana-based immigrant groups (who later developed cosecha) generously collaborated with my engaged pedagogies classes at the seminary where i christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 castañeda and hunter-bowman, immigrant-led social movements confront global violence and build peace… 178 am on faculty, the anabaptist mennonite biblical seminary (ambs), and i began participating in cosecha activities. over the years, we supported each other in various ways. cosecha continued working with ambs students, and ambs sought to provide a space and community of support for cosecha indiana. for example, don alvaro marquez’s tragic death due to covid in november of 2020—as result of exposure as an essential worker and reluctance to go to the hospital because he did not have documentation—sent the immigrant community and wider elkhart community into shock and deep grief. the seminary was deeply honored to host a widely attended lantern release memorial service. then in january 2021 we drew up a formal engaged research agreement. (see text box.) as i look back on the 2021 research agreement, i see that we have developed our praxis and understanding since then, even as the initiative’s north star remains the same. by north star, i mean the commitment to articulate an alternative to models of solidarity with immigrants rooted in the helper/help logic through answering the question, what does it mean to say yes to the invitation to join us. for example, we later identified and agreed upon final products, namely an academic book for use in places of formation, like divinity schools and seminaries, and accessible resources for church communities. audience shapes the theory-building and writing process. second, the movement/church framing lends itself to confusion that a caller on the community radio cosecha program identified. when you facilitated a series on the relationship of churches and social movements descriptively and aspirationally, the caller right away said: “don’t get confused—we are the church!” she was speaking as a movement and popular process participant. i became clearer on the conceptual distinction between el pueblo as church and institutional church. but getting back to how things unfolded… carlos: right, after you all drew up the agreement in 2021, we met when you tagged along for the caminata january 2021 collaborative research agreement a number of cosecha leaders in indiana have noted that much of cosecha’s base, as well as allies, are people of faith. in this context, they have identified a problem and a number of goals: problem and goals: problem: churches tend to ignore immigrants’ agency, including with movements like cosecha. this propensity has contributed to various forms of disconnection, including between people and their nourishing communities. goals: 1. develop resources to help churches. 2. recognize limitations of common approaches to immigrant communities and the troubling assumptions that often accompany them and explore approaches that center immigrant agency (e.g., immigrant-led movements). process: engaged pedagogy and research with cosecha and jhb this initiative aims to address the problem and contribute toward the goal that cosecha defined. in so doing, it touches on conversations in universities, seminaries, and churches including the sanctuary model, organizing, theories of change, and decolonization. it will reflect on what cosecha members (and other mobilizing immigrants) are doing and teaching from perspectives of peace studies, theology, and biblical studies and rereads these perspectives in light of perspectives from cosecha. cosecha evaluates the success of the project, as will those who read what comes of it in the academy. therefore, the initiative speaks into conversations at universities, seminaries (and other academic spaces) where leaders are taught how to think about immigrants. it recognizes the limitations of common approaches to immigrant communities, exposes troubling assumptions that often accompany them (e.g., tendency to depict immigrants one dimensionally, as vulnerable, broken, needy, or objects of “our” white host church care; and uplifts approaches that center immigrant agency (e.g., immigrant-led movements). christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 castañeda and hunter-bowman, immigrant-led social movements confront global violence and build peace… 179 (the walk across indiana) that summer. my clear recollection is dara saying, “this person would like to meet with you.” dara explained to me about the seminary, peace studies, and peacebuilding. at that time, we were just going to have a conversation, maybe a one-time conversation. when we met in person, you asked me—is it okay to record? and you started asking me questions and listened. when you spoke, i noticed that you were able to understand the ideas i wanted to share. that helped me to feel comfortable enough to continue. after a second or third conversation, i said: “anything that uplifts our struggle, whatever can be a platform for our struggle is fine.” by this time, we had talked about this project you were cooking, and i agreed—if i speak with you and share with you, if this will help get the message, if people might read a book and with this project do some things differently—well, may it be so. i hope they read it, think about it, and do something with it, instead of going about their regular business and refusing to listen to the voices and attending to the agency of the people they think they are “helping.” the structure of our collaboration: dialogue carlos (continued): as the process unfolded, i found that working together was cathartic. for example, in spring 2023 we developed questions for the structured conversations (with the cosecha circles in different states). after two years of janna’s participant learning, we moved into a phase of semi-structured conversations that explored participants’ backgrounds, reasons for joining immigrant-led processes, experiences with the processes, moral/spiritual vision, relationship with church spaces, and hope for the future. going back and forth about different questions that we then asked in the conversations was cathartic, because i was able to express what i have been able to capture in my years of experience with our community. it’s not just me that i offer, but what my organizing has brought to me. it’s the significance of our traditions and the knowledge of our ancestors. faith and traditions play a big role in our communities’ lives. making the questions together and creating those spaces of conversation for our community members felt like we were being heard on a small scale. it felt liberatory; we were creating spaces of liberation. janna: i’m curious what you mean by “the spaces of structured conversation were liberatory.” carlos: a part of it is that i didn't feel like i was under conditioning supremacy that i must submit to or have to comply with as a minority, as people of color are usually told to do [or feel we have to do, and so we code switch], right? we are told to behave a certain way; we are told to fit into a certain model. we are told to live life in a specific way based on the force of racialized supremacy in social systems. you know, i remember not only the executive director telling me when to read the script but my dad telling us “you have to be like this. you have to behave like that. otherwise, you're going to be called out.” i'm assuming he did this bona fide, trying to protect us from any harm or any public shaming, but, in reality, what he was doing was forming us to internalize the exceptionalism of whiteness, of that system. he was telling his kids that the way you are now is less than others, so you need to behave in this way to fit in. when i say liberating, i am thinking back to my dad and saying, no i don't have to fit that way because we're humans, and we're free too, or at least that's what we want to think, how we want it to be. in our conversations, being able to move around without having to be in compliance or submit to something that negates who i am or my identity but rather contributing from it is liberating. it's the feeling, “oh, i don't have to justify my existence.” that's what i mean by liberating. janna: and this whole project would not exist without your collaboration, dara's collaboration, the participation of any others. what you are talking about with the creation of the questions happens through what we call “checking-in” and “talking regularly.” recently we have talked about how it approximates what ada maria isasi-díaz calls dialogue, as decolonial praxis and method (isasi-díaz 2010). carlos: yes, that’s right. summary statement of the initiative’s unfolding and methods: meetings with organizer and quaker minister jason shenk to support early relationship and initiative development; immersion through participation (jhb) and engaged pedagogies (29 class sessions from 2017-present); developing questions and carrying out structured conversations (147 in 2022-2023); transcribing structured conversations and coding fieldnotes in maxqda to avoid confirmation bias; ongoing dialogue with collaborators dara marquez and carlos castañeda to come to agreements about processes, how we are fulfilling our agreements, to negotiate various kinds of developments, and reflect together (2021-present), and member checking conversations about theory building with interlocutors and in focus groups (2023present). christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 castañeda and hunter-bowman, immigrant-led social movements confront global violence and build peace… 180 janna: what do you think makes our dialogue possible, if we are indeed having one? carlos: i think one of the reasons why we have a dialogue is because of our mutual interests. we both come from the church and are part of the church, and we care about processes led by affected groups. we both want to see greater understanding and convergence. and there is mutual interest on the level of method. this project has been enriching because we live in a world in which immigrant workers are always rushing, always working. we work ourselves to death. pausing to think and reflect feels like a privilege. the project gives me and others in cosecha and other immigrant-led processes moments to think, not only about struggle and resistance, but about our own lives through time in relationship to the organizing that we are doing. that has been rewarding. it is rewarding to think together about the challenges we confront. movements are made of people, of human beings, who think differently and feel differently. one of the challenges is to not think about the movement as a monolith. we have really fun times thinking together and working together to create theory. janna organizes and codes the fieldnotes and interviews in maxqda [qualitative data analysis software, to work against confirmation bias]. this provides another source for reflecting and theorizing on various topics, including internal pluralism. second, there's some trust being built around mutual interests and over time. with my own agency, i choose trust. we or i do not do that lightly. it is through conversation, back and forth, and then thinking on my own through the different issues, as i described when we first met. third, there’s the fourth characteristic of isasidíaz’s dialogue: you are a part of the community. isasidíaz writes, “participants understand that in this process they must consider themselves and act, not as individuals, but as members of a community” (2010, 48). you might not look like the community that is brown, but what brings us together and builds trust links us into a community. janna: wow, thank you, carlos. a few things here. first, when you say that you choose to trust, you also acknowledge that there is some risk involved, right? it’s serendipitous that you are saying this right now because i am just finishing an essay about how each encounter, effort to dialogue, and exchange carries the risk of injustice and misunderstanding. yet i trust that we are going to go back and forth, that we are going to keep showing up, and that we are figuring it out as we go. carlos: right! janna: since our agreement of 2021, we have located our collaboration in relation to par. colombian sociologist fals borda has said that the attempt in colombia to create a “science of the proletariat” through action research was no definitive success. he said that action researchers were usually impatient and imposed principles of historical materialism to the local context. the guiding frames were not ideas emerging from the people's own experiences or conditions or grounded in their own lives. his self-critique led him to argue for a form of action research that empowers affected individuals to establish horizontal “subject/subject” relationships between researchers and community members that nurture transformation from the margins. for the self-critical fals-borda writing later, par becomes a part of social activism to promote people’s (collective) praxis (fals-borda 1992, 15). enrique dussel takes this subject/subject relationship further by naming the possibility of ethical knowledge creation through exchange as an alternative to the conquering ego, the european “i” as the universal standard. we pick up this challenge of intercultural dialogue as we invest in the risky possibility of a dialogue of knowledges that foregrounds voices of struggle, including the need to be heard/to listen, to foster alternatives for shared future (dussel 2013). and this is where we come back to the risky or fraught part. there are questions about the possibilities of voices in or from the global north having a dialogue with voices from the global south, across differences, because of the colonial enterprise that continues to reproduce asymmetries of power (dussel 2021). we are trying to do this. we, i, participate imperfectly. but i also don’t think we are delusional when we say we are having a dialogue… carlos: i don’t know what to say to those who question the possibility. i think we are having a dialogue! (laughs) i will say that our conversations have reinforced and deepened ideas i have about how each person is their own world. it helps me to be mindful that we come from really different backgrounds. when i engage in dialogues and conversations, i am not looking for others to reflect my world. i try to be aware that it could be very enriching and for me to continue figuratively climbing, through back-and-forths with others, with you, into a bigger, more expansive understanding of the world itself. this is a kind of liberation—to grow, explore, expand paradigms. when i speak with you, sometimes you come across as sounding like you know what you want to say, because of everything that makes you, you. i may agree with you or disagree initially, but i take things in, and process later. there are times that you overlook something that is important. i think back on those christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 castañeda and hunter-bowman, immigrant-led social movements confront global violence and build peace… 181 instances and about how that might be because of who you are. this happens with everyone of course, not just with you. i bring those things into my processing moments. and i think to myself, okay, well, this is why she said this, this is why she didn't say that. then i bring my reflections about what you missed to the ongoing conversation we are having. this has much to do with trust. if i didn’t trust you, i would be less flexible and less fluid. but i know you and trust you, so i’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt and want to work to understand where you’re coming from instead of jumping to conclusions. for example, in a recent text message, you reminded me about how you parked at the church while staying at the cosecha house in new jersey last summer. one of the first nights you were in town i asked you, where are you parking? i asked because it is often difficult to find parking around the house and walking alone, especially at night, is risky. and you said, “at the church” and i was thinking, “what church?,” because we never park at that catholic church across the freeway. we do not feel welcome there. you explained that you couldn’t find street parking, so you asked permission, they considered the request, and then said yes, go ahead if necessary. i was like, okay, i guess that's how things are different when you look different, white, and when you sound different. i bet you were very articulate in asking if you could park there and explaining why you should be able to in ways that made sense to them. the point is how that happened to you, or for you, versus how it has not happened for us. janna: hmm. carlos: when you came back, and you asked me, “should i not have parked there?,” there was the internal stirring up that occurs when having to explain why we are not welcome at a given place, this time in our neighborhood church. having to explain why we're not welcome in that place forces me to face a contradiction of my own humanity because i was having to explain this contradiction of my own humanity to you! (laughs) at first, i felt frustrated and then as the night progressed, i thought to myself—as compañeros and comrades, even though it hurts, we must go beyond emotional reaction and dig deep. if you were just a onetime person, someone who was just passing through, then i would not have to use my emotional and mental capacity to try to let you in on things, but since you are not just anybody glancing at us one time, because we are becoming a community that sees each other, because we are embracing your person, we're bringing you in, we are letting you know not only how we live but how we feel and think—thinking-feeling. that to me requires the extra step of moving beyond an emotional reaction. the dynamic changes when i see that you are willing to become community with me, with us. i best explain my perspective and hear your feedback so that we can get on the same page. this is what i was saying about climbing together. in this way, we minimize those situations where we are going to feel frustrated about things that have to do with our humanity in the way we are seen in the world and by the world. janna: wow, that’s a clear illustration of my gap in understanding in the shape of myself, the limits of my reflexivity (das 2022, 28), critical self-reflection throughout research, and the possibilities of dialogue. (pause) i wonder what you think about this—in that scenario, i felt vulnerable and afraid walking around the neighborhood at night in part because you told me it was dangerous for me and not to. the ways i carried forward a sense of my embodied self that was afraid, the way that i moved in the world that day, prioritized protecting my sense of self rather than interrogating or refusing the systems that made safe parking accessible for me and inaccessible for those who live in the neighborhood. i connect what you are saying to what we talk about in [the cosecha member] rutilio’s terms of “phantoms,” here phantoms of whiteness that make white people self-centered while persistently dismembering, negating, and killing the existence and full life of brown immigrants, particularly those who do not have legal status. in these terms, i leaned into all the phantom had to offer my white woman sense of self rather than accept the opportunity to cross over into the reality of those with whom i am in solidarity, with the explicit purpose of collaboration towards dismantling what i had embodied and so reproduced. does that make sense? carlos: yes. what’s more, those phantoms are dealt with in the community, literally meaning a “unity,” becoming one. in this figure, we come from different places, but we are coming together here, now. we create reciprocal relationships through practices of attention, care, and trust. so how are we going to deal with those phantoms that you bring and that i bring— because your phantom of whiteness is not the only one that needs to be dealt with. it is not the only one we do deal with. so how are we going to deal with those phantoms that keep us from coming together? that keep us from developing relationships of reciprocity, from becoming one, from becoming a community? as “one,” i don't mean uniform or locked in. i do not want to convey the message that we want to program robots who think the same or become the same. when i say “one,” i mean build communities of people who look at each other as people with the same worth, [sighs christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 castañeda and hunter-bowman, immigrant-led social movements confront global violence and build peace… 182 and switches to spanish] who struggle towards the same rights that we do not currently enjoy, the right to be treated equally, the same chances to flourish in life… janna: i hear you saying people who are equal, of equal worth, even though right now our rights and possibilities as political subjects are unequal. carlos: exacto, exacto. if any positive phantoms help us to come together and to be stronger as one, then we bring those too. and figure out how to work with them also. janna: i think about the second phantom that rutilio mentioned, the phantom of organizing. as rutilio [from el salvador] stated in a 2022 conversation, “given my understanding of the gospel and my formation in the base communities, there is something like a phantom of organizing that we have known since we were very young, that we don’t want to leave behind, that we want to keep alive, that we have to hold on to, that i want to carry with me and pass on.” and what it means to be collaborating as people from different kinds of backgrounds. carlos: you parking in the church parking lot hit home for me more than it would have for others. others in the cosecha house would have been much faster to dismiss it, saying that the church people are bad people in the neighborhood, because they have personally experienced the church as an oppressive institution that rejected, excluded, and betrayed them. but for me, who still identifies with and as the church, it created cognitive dissonance to have to explain that the church that once embraced me—the church that once took me in, that i once believed was altogether true and good in everything it touches—was not that now to this community. janna: right, “churches” are not one thing: there’s variety and diversity, among them and internally as well. i understood that cognitively, yet when it came to an embodied felt need, i just went ahead and did it, anyway. my solidarity failure pushed to the surface my inability to live fully into my commitments and provided ground to stand on when we say that dialogue as praxis moves beyond reflexivity. your posture pluralizes the instance; what might have been only a failure on my part becomes a part of our praxis that enables me to see both of us more fully. this supports mutual recognition and exchange as knowledge production. carlos: yes! yeah, it's good, this exercise that we are doing right now, this dialogue in which we are exchanging feelings and information. janna: i want to acknowledge that earlier when we were talking about risks of encounter in the course of developing subject-subject research relationships and knowledge production through dialogue, i relied on theorists to make the point rather than name concrete instances in which i deviated from my script of how i engage. maybe i was subconsciously concealing my own mistakes or my messy humanity, which is one way of exercising control, which is of course in tension with shared power in a dialogue. i apologize for that! this back-and-forth shows how we work with the core issue of accountability in long-term action research relationships. without accountability, we do not have dialogue or ethical relationships. a core premise of our work is that all identities and people are complex. that starting point supports intercultural listening and dialogue, for we recognize that even in our intimate relationships we are coming into contact with complex identities while never arriving at transparency. we can say to each other, “i know you and trust,” fully aware that the effort of dialogue and exchange needs to be ongoing. on a related point, this back-and-forth has impressed upon me the need to write as a participant of the community in a way that acknowledges my positionality and moral imperfection in this dialogue and exchange. efforts to engage nonviolently will be ongoing and full of mistakes. looping back to what you said about point four of isasi-díaz’s dialogue (2010), i would specify that a given person in the community speaks from her own standpoint to make it clear that she is offering one interpretation. a modified statement might be something like, “the person is speaking from their own standpoint as a participant or member of a community with which one shares experiences, understandings, and to which one is accountable.” that provides me with a really clear sense of voice for writing the book that i’m working on now on this project. examples might include naming but not dwelling on key mistakes and recognizing how interpretation unfolds through dialogue. does that specification on voice make sense to you, given that the book is my effort to understand what it would mean to accept the invitation to “join us”? carlos: yes, my answer to that will be, “yes that is right.” as we continue going forward, as we continue doing this kind of exchange exercise, it’s going to continue to bring us together and strengthen the project. also, beyond this project, it makes us better human beings, people, comrades, compañeros. may we continue to feel that it is so. this is good, it’s a good way to start my day. janna: i hear you; it is for me too. christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 castañeda and hunter-bowman, immigrant-led social movements confront global violence and build peace… 183 conclusion: collaborative research moves us beyond helper/helped relationships and toward transformation carlos’ reference to well-intentioned people who think they are “helping,” his description of his experience with organizing nonprofit organizations, and this dialogue about dialogue signal that collaborative research moves us beyond helper/helped relationships in which asymmetries of power are reified and towards transformation. the term “helping” reveals problems in how the relationship is construed. first, the logic of helping often focuses on immediate needs or problems, whereas our collaborative research (positioned in relation to par) engages with underlying causes and long-term social change. second, the relations of power to which our collaboration aspires clash with the notion of helping. one dimension of our work together involves highlighting how traditional helper/helped relationships are often structured by an implicit power imbalance between the helper (who presumably has resources, knowledge, or skills) and the helped (who is in need). in relation to immigrant populations, this helper/helped relationship is generally racialized and is imbued with host/guest dynamics. collaboration and dialogue seek to move beyond “help” to seek alternatives to it in support of transformation. this dialogue is part of a larger project that provides an alternative to the helper/helped model. the alternative centers immigrant-led movements of protest and transformation as key to peacebuilding. theological interpretation, the model, and specific recommendations are included in a forthcoming book by hunter-bowman tentatively titled “would you join us?”: latin american migrant-led social movements & re-membering the crucified body.” references bohrer, ashley. 2023. “disturbing the peace.” peace and change 48 (3): 205–222. https://doi.org/10.1111/pech.12620 campese, gioacchino. 2008. “cuantos más?: the crucified peoples at the u.s. mexico border.” in a promised land, a perilous journey: theological perspectives on migration, edited by daniel groody and giochhino campese, 271– 298. notre dame: university of notre dame press. chenoweth, erica, and kathleen gallagher cunningham. 2023. “guest editors’ introduction: nonviolent resistance and its discontents.” the journal of peace research 60 (1): 3–8. https://doi.org/10.1177/00223433221145542 cone, james h. 1970. a black theology of liberation. philadelphia: lippincott. das, kavita. 2022. craft and conscience: how to write about social issues. boston: beacon press. de la torre, miguel. 2010. “moving beyond hospitality.” journal of lutheran ethics 10 (4). dorff, cassy, grace adcox, and amanda konet. 2023. “data innovations on protests in the united states.” the journal of peace research 60 (1): 172–89. https://doi.org/10.1177/00223433221143808 dubois, heather, and janna l. hunter-bowman. 2015. “the intersection of christian theology and peacebuilding.” in the oxford handbook of religion, conflict, and peacebuilding, edited by atalia omer, scott appleby, and david little, 569-596. oxford: oxford university press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199731640 .013.0022 dussel, enrique. 2021. 1492—el encubrimiento del otro. independently published. ———. 2013 “agenda for south-south philosophical dialogue.” budhi: a journal of ideas and culture 17 (1): 1–27. https://archium.ateneo.edu/budhi/vol17/iss1/1 escobar, arturo. 2018. designs for the pluriverse: radical interdependence, autonomy, and the making of worlds. durham: duke university press. fals-borda, orlando. 1992. “evolution and convergence in participatory action-research.” in a world of communities: participatory research perspectives, edited by james s. frideres, 14-19. north york: captus university publications. galtung, johan. 1969. “violence, peace, and peace research.” journal of peace research 6 (3): 167191. https://www.jstor.org/stable/422690 ———. 1990. “cultural violence.” journal of peace research 27 (3): 291–305. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022343390027003005. gutierrez, gustavo. 2004. power of poor in history. translated by robert r. barr. eugene: wipf & stock publishers. heyer, kristin e. 2010. “social sin and immigration: good fences make bad neighbors.” theological studies 71 (2): 410-36. https://doi.org/10.1177/004056391007100207 hunter-bowman, janna. 2022. witnessing peace: becoming agents under duress in colombia. london: routledge. ———. forthcoming 2025 (july). “what is peace theology? reinhold niebuhr’s realism in waves of peace theology.” the journal of moral theology. isasi-díaz, ada maría. 2010. “justice as reconciliatory praxis: a decolonial mujerista move.” https://doi.org/10.1111/pech.12620 https://doi.org/10.1177/00223433221145542 https://doi.org/10.1177/00223433221143808 https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199731640.013.0022 https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199731640.013.0022 https://archium.ateneo.edu/budhi/vol17/iss1/1 https://www.jstor.org/stable/422690 https://doi.org/10.1177/0022343390027003005 https://doi.org/10.1177/004056391007100207 christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 castañeda and hunter-bowman, immigrant-led social movements confront global violence and build peace… 184 international journal of public theology 4: 37-50. https://doi.org/10.1163/187251710x1257833889 7827 katongole, emmanuel. 2017. born from lament: the theology and politics of hope in africa. grand rapids: eerdmans. lederach, angela jill. 2023. feel the grass grow: ecologies of slow peace in colombia. redwood city: stanford university press. lederach, john paul. 1995. preparing for peace: conflict transformation across cultures. syracuse: syracuse university press. ———. 1998. building peace: sustainable reconciliation in divided societies. washington, dc: united states institute of peace. ———. 2003. the little book of conflict transformation: clear articulation of the guiding principles by a pioneer in the field. intercourse: good books. ———. 2010. the moral imagination: the art and soul of building peace. reprint edition. oxford; new york: oxford university press. ———. 2011. when blood and bones cry out: journeys through the soundscape of healing and reconciliation. oxford; new york: oxford university press. lederach, john paul, and scott appleby. 2010. “strategic peacebuilding: an overview.” in strategies of peace, edited by daniel philpott and jerry powers, 19-44. oxford: oxford university press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/978019539591 4.003.0001 lowe, lisa. 2015. the intimacies of four continents. durham: duke university press. marcantonio, richard a., john paul lederach, and agustín fuentes, eds. 2024. exploring environmental violence: perspectives, experience, expression, and engagement. 1st edition. new york: cambridge university press. mosala, itumeleng. 1989. biblical hermeneutics and black theology in south africa. grand rapids: eerdmans publishing. omer, atalia. 2023. decolonizing religion and peacebuilding. new york: oxford university press. pui-lan, kwok. 2005 postcolonial imagination and feminist theology. louisville: westminster john knox press. rajendra, tisha m. 2014. “justice not benevolence: catholic social thought, migration theory, and the rights of migrants.” political theology 15 (4): 290-306. https://doi.org/10.1179/1462317x13z.000000000 7 schirch, lisa. 2021. “transforming the colour of us peacebuiding: types of dialogue to protect and advance multi-racial democracy.” toda peace institute, policy brief no. 114: 1-7. scott, james c. 1999. seeing like a state: how certain schemes to improve the human condition have failed. new haven: yale university press. steck, christopher. 2004. “solidarity, citizenship, and globalization: developing a new framework for theological reflection on u.s. mexico immigration.” journal of justice and peace studies 14 (2): 153-178. carlos castañeda, born in peru, is a volunteer community organizer with movimiento cosecha. he has also organized in churches and workplaces. castañeda currently focuses on intersectionality to build people power in new jersey using the tool of prophetic dialogue. author email: carloscastaneda1124@gmail.com janna hunter-bowman, born in the united states, is associate professor of peace studies and christian ethics, and director of peace studies at anabaptist mennonite biblical seminary. she is the author of witnessing peace: becoming agents under duress in colombia (routledge 2022). author email: jhunterbowman@ambs.edu https://doi.org/10.1163/187251710x12578338897827 https://doi.org/10.1163/187251710x12578338897827 https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195395914.003.0001 https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195395914.003.0001 https://doi.org/10.1179/1462317x13z.0000000007 https://doi.org/10.1179/1462317x13z.0000000007 mailto:carloscastaneda1124@gmail.com mailto:jhunterbowman@ambs.edu christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 epp weaver and smith cain, “outside agencies do not bring development:” mennonite central committee and the decades-long challenge of decolonizing aid 7 “outside agencies do not bring development:” mennonite central committee and the decades-long challenge of decolonizing aid alain epp weaver and emma smith cain1 contemporary calls to “decolonize aid” have historical roots. in this article, the authors focus on mennonite central committee (mcc) as a case study of how one christian humanitarian, development, and peacebuilding agency has grappled for at least five decades with how to carry out its mission in a way that abdicates colonial power and fosters mutually transformative partnerships with churches and other organizations in the global south. exploring how mcc has thought about the power it wields offers insights and lessons for other international aid agencies, both christian and non-christian, about the complexities and opportunities involved in attempts to decolonize aid. external and internal pressures to show impact, demonstrate relevance, and ensure compliance with standardized policies and procedures have all generated tensions within mcc’s efforts to decolonize its work: other international aid agencies, the authors suggest, will encounter similar tensions as they work at decolonizing aid. in 1975, edgar stoesz, an administrator with mennonite central committee (mcc), wrote that “outside agencies do not bring development” (stoesz 1975, 12). this claim reflected a growing understanding within mcc in the 1970s that mcc needed to strip itself of the illusion that, as an outside agency, it “brought development” and to look instead to the communities in which mcc operated for visions and solutions for addressing community challenges and for the knowledge and resources to realize those visions. stoesz’s assertion anticipated contemporary discussions and debates within the international aid world today. a moral quandary faces international humanitarian relief, development, and peacebuilding agencies: how can they adequately respond to the 1 alain epp weaver is a citizen of the united states, racialized as white, whose swiss-german and german-russian ancestors migrated to the us from what is now ukraine in the 1870s, settling in south dakota and nebraska. he previously worked with mcc for over a decade in the occupied palestinian territories and has directed mcc’s planning and learning department since 2009. emma smith cain is a citizen of new zealand, the united states, and the wahzhazhe (osage) nation, a resilient native american tribe based in northeastern oklahoma. emma grew up between the ancestral lands of the wahzhazhe along the border of missouri-kansas and new zealand, where her maternal anglo-dutch family lives on land stolen from the māori. she has previously worked with world vision international and samaritan’s purse in the democratic republic of congo. they are both currently based in mcc us’s akron, pennsylvania headquarters. 2 for a collection of resources about decolonizing aid, see “decolonising aid: a reading and resource list” (2022). see especially the report from peace direct, african development solutions (adeso), alliance for peacebuilding, and women of color advancing peace, security, and conflict transformation (wcaps) (peace direct 2021). pressing needs generated by armed conflict, climate change, mass displacement, extreme poverty, and acute food insecurity, responses that require marshalling immense financial and human resources, while also disentangling themselves from the legacies of colonialism in which they find both their origins and their current financing? decolonization has rightly become a call to action, including among christian organizations working globally at humanitarian assistance, community development, and peacebuilding, as aid organizations confront ways in which they have too often replicated colonial patterns of action. 2 the issues that the current call to decolonize aid raises are not new for international humanitarian christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 epp weaver and smith cain, “outside agencies do not bring development:” mennonite central committee and the decades-long challenge of decolonizing aid 8 organizations. in this article, we focus on mcc as a case study for how one christian aid agency has grappled for at least five decades with how to carry out its mission in post-colonial contexts. 3 exploring how mcc has thought about the power it wields and about how to strive towards mutually transformative partnerships may offer insights and lessons for other international aid agencies, both christian and non-christian, about the complexities and opportunities involved in contemporary attempts to decolonize aid. for mcc as a christian organization, this grappling with its power and its striving towards authentic partnerships marked by mutuality have foregrounded vital missiological questions, questions about how international christian aid organizations like mcc with roots and primary funding sources in the global north might be de-centered, so that we do not 3 for a more extended examination of mcc’s one-hundred-year-plus history, see epp weaver (2020). this book is reviewed by parsons (2023). cling to the idolatrous illusion that we are at the center of god’s mission, but instead become open to encountering jesus within communities marginalized by colonialism’s violent legacies, to recognizing how god’s spirit is at work within those communities, and to coming alongside those communities in true partnership, relinquishing the need for control. in practice, these missiological questions routinely run up against and generate multiple operational tensions. after a brief summary of contemporary discussions of decolonizing aid and the push for localization within the international aid sector, this article turns towards an examination of historical shifts over decades in how mcc understood its call to service, with understandings of service transformed from primarily unidirectional understandings of service as a movement from the global north to the global mcc as an organization organizational structure, governance, and funding all shape the challenges humanitarian organizations from the global north like mcc face when seeking to decolonize their work. mcc describes itself as a “worldwide ministry of anabaptist churches,” yet in terms of governance it is a canada-us organization (mcc 2011). structurally, the mcc system for the past decade has consisted of eleven mcc entities in canada and the united states: four regional mcc entities in the us, bound in a covenantal relationship with mcc us; five provincial mcc entities in canada connected through an agreement with mcc canada; and mcc canada and mcc us jointly owning and administering mcc’s program in 45 countries outside canada and the us. for most of its history, mcc’s headquarters for its international program work was akron, pennsylvania; today, both akron and winnipeg, manitoba, serve as these headquarters (even as “headquarters” staff have become increasingly geographically dispersed, a reality made possible by technological advancements and accelerated during the covid-19 pandemic). at a governance level, mcc is accountable to boards with strong representation from anabaptist churches in canada and the us and with participation in board meetings by representatives from mennonite world conference (mwc), a global fellowship of anabaptist churches. during an organizational restructuring process from 2009-2011, mcc had discussions with mwc and the service agencies of national anabaptist churches worldwide about the possibility of these agencies coming together in a truly global agency. the strong voice from those consultations was that mcc should remain a relief, development, and peacebuilding agency of anabaptist churches in the us and canada in its governance. in different ways and with varying degrees of success, mcc boards in canada and the us have sought to become less white and more representative of the racial and ethnic diversity of anabaptist churches in the us and canada. mcc’s primary source of funding is from anabaptist communities in the us and canada—donations from individuals and congregations, income from thrift stores and relief sales, and contributions of material resources such as school kits, relief buckets, comforters, and canned meat. the second largest source of revenue comes from the canadian foodgrains bank (cfgb), of which mcc canada is a founding member. individual donors contribute to mcc’s cfgb account, with cfgb food aid and food security initiatives matched by global affairs canada. last year, mcc supported almost us$13m in food security and food aid projects via its cfgb account. while mcc has programmed and continues to program projects funded by governmental and intergovernmental donors such as europeaid and the world food program, mcc’s global programs have not depended on such grants to stay operational, giving it more flexibility to follow the vision and plans of its local partners globally. christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 epp weaver and smith cain, “outside agencies do not bring development:” mennonite central committee and the decades-long challenge of decolonizing aid 9 south into service as a posture of presence and solidarity, with the hope of mutually-transformative partnerships. we conclude with reflections on enduring tensions mcc faces as it seeks to decolonize its work and to be led by the visions of its partners in 45 countries around the world, tensions that we suggest point to conundrums that international aid actors face if they attempt to take the call to decolonize aid seriously. decolonizing aid, localizing action colonization, as an historical process, violently imposed external political, cultural, economic, social values, and practices on communities in order to facilitate the transfer of vast resources from those communities to the colonizing powers. these often centuries-long systematic practices altered forever communities’ sense of identity, knowledge, and cultural practices. today, these imposed values and practices form the foundations of contemporary global power structures. the process of colonization rendered many affected communities more vulnerable to disasters and humanitarian emergencies through the extraction of resources and the external imposition of political and social systems. moreover, contemporary community conflicts are often rooted in the legacies of colonialism and the trauma of the erasure of indigenous cultural norms and practices. yet, the former colonizing powers are the primary funders of most aid responses (spanning the humanitarian relief, development, and peacebuilding spectrum), giving them disproportionate power over the design and prioritization of programming. today, a growing movement led by global south-based organizations calls for the decolonization of the aid industry. colonialism also communicated an order of value, in which the colonizing power’s knowledge, practices, and beliefs were coded as good and forwardlooking while indigenous knowledge, practices, and beliefs were coded as bad and backward. even after anticolonial movements in the global south drove out most colonial powers in the mid-twentieth century and gained national independence, the racialized, white supremacist value systems introduced by colonial systems have proven more challenging to uproot, with ideas and approaches introduced by actors from the global north often embraced as progressive and innovative. international humanitarian relief, development, and peacebuilding actors operate within these colonial legacies. these legacies place obstacles in front of efforts to ensure that humanitarian assistance, development, and peacebuilding initiatives are truly generated within and owned by local communities instead of being imposed upon them. decolonizing aid is about who the primary actors are in humanitarian action, but also about how humanitarian action is undertaken, and what sources of knowledge are drawn upon to shape humanitarian action. efforts to localize humanitarian action— commonly referred to simply as localization—have sought to address the question of who undertakes humanitarian action by calling on governmental, intergovernmental and international non-governmental donors to direct more assistance directly to local actors (even as the localization agenda has been unevenly translated from rhetoric into reality). the organization for economic cooperation and development (oecd) defines localization as the process of international humanitarian actors recognizing, respecting, and strengthening the leadership of local authorities and the capacity of local civil society in humanitarian action, in order to better address the needs of affected populations and to prepare national actors for future humanitarian responses. a step in this direction was taken in 2016, when the world’s largest humanitarian donor governments, multi-lateral organizations, and international aid agencies convened at the world humanitarian summit. their discussions, which were sparsely attended by local and national actors, resulted in the so-called “grand bargain,” an agreement which sought to make humanitarian action more efficient and “level the playing field where all meet as equals” (interagency standing committee). the grand bargain had nine thematic workstreams, two of which were exclusively focused on localizing humanitarian action. workstream 2, for example, called for more support and tools for local and national responders and set a target of channeling 25% of aid directly to those local and national actors by 2020. workstream 6 called for a “participation revolution” to include people receiving aid in making the decisions that affect their lives. yet in the years following 2016, little progress has been made towards localization. the 2020 global humanitarian assistance report shows that more than four years after the grand bargain, donor agencies allocated only 2.1% of their funding to local and national responders, a far cry from the targeted 25%. now, a 2.0 version of the grand bargain agreement has been signed with an even greater focus on localization—yet progress is still stalled. if part of decolonizing aid involves redirecting funding to support locally-owned and -led initiatives, scant progress has been made. for mcc, the shift away from direct implementation of humanitarian relief, development and peacebuilding initiatives towards localized partnerships began already in the 1970s. today, mcc’s primary global programming model involves partnerships with churches, church-related agencies, community-based organizations, and national nonchristian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 epp weaver and smith cain, “outside agencies do not bring development:” mennonite central committee and the decades-long challenge of decolonizing aid 10 governmental organizations (ngos). to say that mcc began to localize its efforts decades before the global call for localization emerged is not hyperbole. this article’s ensuing sections trace the history of those efforts, while also examining how mcc’s long history of localizing its work does not free it either from the imperative to decolonize aid or the tensions involved in that ongoing work. from service as alternative to war to service as listening and presence mcc began in 1920 as an inter-church response by diverse mennonite groups in the united states and canada to a call from mennonites in southern russia (ukraine today) to provide food assistance in the face of revolution and famine. established only a couple years after the conclusion of a global war, mcc galvanized the idealism of young mennonites who viewed christian relief efforts as a positive form of christian service, both as an alternative to the selfsacrifice of military service and as a positive witness to christ’s way of peace. 4 mcc’s role as a mechanism through which young mennonites undertook humanitarian service as an alternative to military service intensified during and then in the decades after the second world war. throughout world war ii, mcc administered scores of civilian public service (cps) camps in the united states, through which thousands of mennonite, amish, church of the brethren, quaker, and other conscientious objectors carried out state-sanctioned alternatives to military service, including staffing mental hospitals, fighting fires, and volunteering for medical experiments. many young mennonite women also served at or near cps camps. after the war, mcc oversaw the mennonite voluntary service program in the united states, through which young mennonite men engaged in alternative service assignments as the mandatory draft continued. mcc also launched its pax program (19511976), another alternative service program, but global. while many “pax men” and other mcc workers in the war’s immediate aftermath worked on a variety of reconstruction and refugee response projects in postwar europe, the 1950s were a time of rapid expansion for mcc globally, with the organization opening up mcc programs across latin america, africa, and asia in the 1950s. in the early 1960s, mcc initiated its teachers abroad program (tap, inaugurated in 1962 and closed in 1985), through which mcc placed 768 teachers in christian and government schools in 27 4 throughout this article, we use “mennonites” as a generic category encompassing a wide variety of christian groups, including mennonite, mennonite brethren, conservative mennonite, brethren in christ, multiple amish groups, and more. countries around the world, with most tap participants serving in newly independent countries. both pax and tap were established during a period of anticolonial ferment and successful national independence movements. over the course of their service terms (typically two to three years), pax and tap participants inevitably confronted questions about what global christian service looked like within post-colonial contexts. the 1970s saw the start of a multi-decade creative ferment and rethinking within mcc about the nature of service, with questions raised about who benefits from christian service. in 1976, for example, urbane peachey, then mcc’s peace section executive secretary and middle east director, penned a provocative article for mcc’s internal publication, intercom, titled “service—who needs it?” “we’ve really done our best to send skilled personnel who could make a needed contribution,” peachey wrote, “but now there are a number of countries which are interested in our aid but not our personnel.” peachey urged mcc to ask itself: “who is asking for the relationship? with whose needs are we primarily concerned?” was mcc concerned with the need of mennonites from canada and the us to serve, or with the self-identified priorities of churches and communities in the countries where mcc operated (which might not include the placement of workers from the us and canada) (peachey 1976, 56)? such questions about what role, if any, service workers from canada and the us might fruitfully play internationally became more pressing as countries around the world gained greater independence from former colonial powers, which included the rise of a professional class and the growth and development of local civil society organizations. as we discuss in the next section, the intensity of such questions grew as mcc moved from direct program implementation to partnership with and accompaniment of local churches and civil society organizations. beginning in the mid-1970s, mcc began redefining service as learning. responding to peachey’s 1976 intercom article, atlee beechy, a member of mcc’s executive committee, wondered whether “perhaps it is time to redefine the meaning of service, to recognize more fully the two-way dimension of service, including the notion that learning from others is an act of service” (beechy 1976, 3). such pondering was accompanied by active debates within mcc during the following decades about colonial and racialized assumptions about who is serving whom and where, with some visions of service critiqued for their implicit understanding of service as a unidirectional initiative of christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 epp weaver and smith cain, “outside agencies do not bring development:” mennonite central committee and the decades-long challenge of decolonizing aid 11 white mennonites of european heritage to the rest of the world. reflecting on these debates in the late 1990s, judy zimmerman herr summarized the concerns about service in the form of questions: “does being in a giving posture demean those we send our help to? . . . is our service really an expression of power? how do we prevent our service from becoming an attitude of selfrighteousness?” (zimmerman herr 1998, 3). moreover, in service assignments in places like atlanta, new orleans, and gulfport, mississippi, mcc workers encountered the stark reality of racism in the united states. beyond the u.s., mcc workers also began to highlight mcc’s organizational whiteness and the racialized character of mcc’s global service, with predominantly white mennonites from canada and the us going out to the primarily black and brown countries of the global south. probing questions about service and power in the seventies and eighties led to a redefinition within mcc of service as learning and presence. so, for example, bertha beachy, a long-time mennonite worker in somalia, wrote in 1978 that christian service workers needed to adopt the stance of being “eternal learners” and to participate in “the rhythm of people’s lives” (beechy 1978). the redefinition of service as learning was crystallized in a 1986 review of mcc africa’s work led by tim lind. “africans have suffered under centuries of words and theories of change/development coming from the north,” lind observed. “it is in this context that servanthood for us today means abandoning all of the good and useful things we have to say in africa in favor of a listening stance.” mcc workers from canada and the us, lind argued, needed to take a “back seat” and adopt a “waiting” posture. revisioning service as listening and learning, lind recognized, may seem to some less than exciting and creative, particularly as it involves a shift in our thinking about ourselves as initiators and planners of activities and responses to need. however,” he continued, “we feel that this posture is in fact highly creative as it allows space and visibility to approaches to service and development which are different from our western approaches, and which can mix with our own approaches in new and exciting ways (lind 1986, 1-2). this reconceptualization in the seventies and eighties of service as a multidirectional movement of listening, learning, and sharing has shaped mcc service programs up to the present. this new understanding of service was reflected in the name adopted by mcc when it inaugurated an eleven-month service program in the early 1980s for young adults from canada and the us to the rest of the world: serving and learning together (salt). in later years, the serving with appalachian peoples (swap) program, operated by mcc in kentucky and west virginia, changed its name to sharing with appalachian peoples. jean snyder, an mcc worker in jamaica in the mid-1980s, emphasized that without a learning stance, service work threatened to devolve into pointless activity: “unless we learn from the people themselves . . . who they are and why they see themselves, the world, us and god as they do, we have little to offer them but our busyness,” she explained. “and our busyness may, in the long run, have more relevance to our monthly reports than to the lives we touch” (snyder 1986, 2). the mcc understanding of service as presence took on additional nuances from the seventies into the nineties, with presence described as a form of solidarity as well as a site of mutual transformation. a 1976 mcc board statement underscored the expectation of mcc workers “being in solidarity and identifying with the weak and oppressed” (mcc statement… 1976). indigenous leaders in canada called on mcc workers placed in first nations communities to become “partners in the cause,” with the “being there” of presence understood as a political act (mcc ontario consultation on native ministries 1982). mcc workers in latin america stood in solidarity with indigenous and economically marginalized communities facing violence and repression from right-wing governments and corporate interests, while in the occupied palestinian territories mcc workers forged bonds of solidarity with palestinian and israeli peace activists who mobilized against israeli military occupation and settlercolonialism. describing service as presence or even solidarity could still arguably be interpreted as foregrounding the agency of mcc workers, implicitly placing them at the center of god’s mission. as a counter to such an implicit understanding of presence, mcc began in the 1990s to describe service in terms of mutuality, mutual transformation, and gift giving, reflecting how approaches of presence and solidarity sought to underscore the agency, talents, and resources of the communities in which mcc operated. in its 1993 statement outlining “a commitment to christ’s way of peace,” mcc articulated this understanding of service as mutual gift-sharing thus: “we recognize our own spiritual and moral poverty and seek to receive the gifts that others, some of whom may be materially poorer than we are, have to share with us” (“a commitment to christ’s way of peace” 1993). in a 1999 brochure summarizing the principles that guide our mission, mcc described itself as serving “as a channel of interchange by building relationships that are mutually transformative” and as facilitating “interchange and christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 epp weaver and smith cain, “outside agencies do not bring development:” mennonite central committee and the decades-long challenge of decolonizing aid 12 mutual learning between its supporting constituency and those with whom we work around the world, so that all may give and receive” (principles that guide our mission 1999). multiple mcc service programs over the decades have also sought to transform the face of who engages in service, an ongoing commitment that can be viewed as an effort to decolonize service. for much of mcc’s history, “service” was associated with images of predominantly white people from canada and the united states being “sent” to the global south. yet relatively early on in mcc’s history, mcc took tentative steps to disrupt such a colonial understanding of service. the international volunteer exchange program (ivep) established in 1950, for example, introduced elements of mutuality and exchange in service, at first providing european mennonites with one-year service opportunities in the united states and canada as a complement to the pax alternative service program. over the ensuing years, the program expanded to welcome participants from scores of countries, primarily from the global south. beginning in 2004 and continuing up to the present, the young anabaptist mennonite exchange network (yamen) has operated in partnership with mennonite world conference, offering eleven-month service opportunities for young adults outside of canada and the us to other parts of the majority world, opportunities through which the global church shares gifts of service with one another. meanwhile, an increasing percentage of mcc’s multi-year workers, including program administrators, come from outside canada and the united states. service within mcc has (albeit slowly and incompletely) shifted from a unidirectional movement from the global north to the global south to a multidirectional movement of global sending and receiving. at the same time, mcc program teams have become increasingly multicultural, with expanded and more prominent attention to the staff roles of in-country nationals and with greater globalization of program leadership. from direct implementation to local partnerships the transformed understanding of service within mcc as listening, presence, solidarity, and mutual transformation went hand-in-hand with another 5 even as snyder envisioned movement beyond a paternalistic, colonial paradigm, his reference to “underdeveloped” countries reflected the paternalism built into modernist understandings of development as a linear, progressive movement towards a western ideal. 6 stoesz’s statement begged the question of what the markers were of mcc feeling “compatible” with local organizations. did these local partnerships simply consist of mcc seeking out its own reflection, or did they have room for potentially disruptive difference? transformation, a shift from mcc directly implementing projects to supporting projects planned and implemented by local churches and communitybased organizations. the seeds of this shift were planted in the 1960s, as mcc leaders rethought mission patterns in light of post-colonial realities. “some overseas efforts in missions and relief have been characterized by a paternalism similar to the attitude of western nations in the so-called colonial period,” observed mcc executive director william snyder in 1963. “the winds of change toward political independence have likewise affected the churches and mission programs in the underdeveloped countries. missionaries and relief workers today must adopt a true servant relationship to these younger churches…” snyder concluded (1963, 3). 5 painting with very broad strokes, mcc program director edgar stoesz wrote in 1976 in mcc’s internal publication intercom that north american agencies used to go around running their own programs, using their own personnel and doing pretty well as they pleased. eventually the error of that approach became obvious and we began to have a great deal of respect for the indigenous process. now, we much prefer to identify an existing agency with which we feel compatible and support it with personnel or money, permitting it to enlarge its effort (stoesz 1976, 1-2). 6 also in 1976, mcc’s board affirmed the importance of learning from and supporting local organizations. “our involvements will take place in a spirit of mutual respect, realizing that we must put as much effort into learning as we do into teaching,” the board declared (“mcc statement on program assumptions, objectives and priorities” 1976, 181-82). instead of viewing development as a unilateral process in which knowledge and skills are transferred from agencies like mcc to communities in so-called underdeveloped countries, this mcc board statement instead presented development as “based on local capacity and self-reliance” (ibid., b.3). from the late seventies into the nineties, these emerging understandings of development within mcc steadily gained traction. alongside descriptions of christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 epp weaver and smith cain, “outside agencies do not bring development:” mennonite central committee and the decades-long challenge of decolonizing aid 13 service with the vocabulary of presence and solidarity, mcc leaders increasingly began talking about its programmatic operations as partnership and accompaniment. several interconnected and mutually reinforcing factors contributed to this shift. first, mcc’s experiences in the 1960s in post-colonial contexts in which nationalist movements in newly independent countries charted new visions for national liberation and development pushed mcc to begin revisioning how it positioned itself in these contexts, stepping back from viewing itself as a lead agent for change to instead recognize that the primary energies and leadership for change came from within communities themselves. second, the rise in the seventies and eighties of civil society organizations such as farmers’ associations, women’s cooperatives, and social service agencies of national churches in many parts of the global south pressed mcc to consider how it could support and accompany these organizations as they worked to make change in their communities. many mcc programs began to shift in this period away from directly implementing program towards partnership with local churches, church agencies, and community-based organizations, partnerships in which mcc looked to local actors to set the vision, bring the needed knowledge of the community and context, and establish and implement plans for humanitarian action. in the 2000s, mcc began using the language of accompaniment to name this partnership stance. third, within broader missiological circles, a rethinking of christian mission was gaining steam, with a shift in emphasis away from sending missionaries from the global north to the global south toward a focus on how churches in both the global north and the global south might together join in the missio dei, god’s reconciling mission in the world. this transformation of mission thinking meant a disruption of paternalistic relationships between european and north american mission agencies, on the one hand, and churches in the global south, on the other, and the beginning of halting efforts to develop mutual mission partnerships between the churches of the global north and the global south, with mission moving in crisscrossing directions globally. 7 finally, the failure of modernization theory to live up to its promises led mcc and other international development actors in the seventies and eighties to reassess their development models and search for alternatives. while modernization theory had held that countries of the global south would accrue steadily 7 see, for example, bosch 1991. 8 for discussions and analysis of mcc’s community development efforts within the broader context of shifting development discourses, see davis (2010) guenther and reimer (2010, 353-74). expanding benefits and improved livelihoods through the adoption of western-style institutions in the realms of education, health, and economic systems, reality did not live up to the heralded vision. 8 development initiatives informed by modernization theory depended on centralized interventions by the state or external agencies, such as the united nations or international non-governmental organizations like mcc. as a counter to such top-down development, mcc program leaders began in the 1970s to champion visions of development as emerging from community-led and community-owned processes. in a series of “development monographs” and in several occasional papers released in the seventies and eighties, mcc leaders like stoesz, heisey, and lind advanced this bottom-up model of development while critiquing the optimism that drove modernization theory. for example, in surveying the development programs promoted across africa from the 1950s into the 1970s, mcc africa director lind highlighted the “continuing failure of planning to accurately predict consequences of specific actions or to foresee new problems created by new technology.” these ongoing failures, lind underscored, should “temper” any residual optimism about the efficacy of such centralized development measures (lind 1977-78, 19). countering models that equated development with industrialization, modernization, and westernization, mcc program leaders in the seventies and eighties drew upon the work of the brazilian educator, paulo freire, and his notion of conscientization, a pedagogy of popular consciousness-raising in which students, not teachers, are viewed as the primary actors in the learning process (freire 1970). reflecting on what she described as the failure of school systems set up by missionary and colonial authorities in africa to deliver western-style development, mcc africa program leader heisey turned to freire’s idea of conscientization as well as to the notion of de-schooling advanced by the austriancroatian priest and educator, ivan illich, to promote an understanding of education and development as community-led processes, rather than primarily as interventions organized by the state or by international actors (heisey 1977 and illich 1971). stoesz also built on freire’s work in defining development as “a people’s struggle in which the poor and oppressed are the active participants and beneficiaries,” a “conscientization process by which people are awakened to opportunities within their reach.” instead of requiring external intervention, christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 epp weaver and smith cain, “outside agencies do not bring development:” mennonite central committee and the decades-long challenge of decolonizing aid 14 development emerging from conscientization, stoesz argued, “begins as an attitude in the hearts and minds of people,” building on their existing knowledge and driven by their own initiative (stoesz 1977, 3-4). merrill ewert, who served as project coordinator for mcc in the mid-seventies in what was then zaire, also drew from freire’s pedagogy of critical consciousness-raising in order to articulate a model of development education that did not “contribute to domination.” such a freirean model of development, ewert explained, reconceptualized the role of mcc workers to be “facilitators instead of manipulators,” people who did “not control decisions or the flow of information,” but rather helped “create optimal conditions in which the local people can determine their own direction.” in this development model, ewert continued, “there are no teachers and learners, advisors and advisees, or experts and laypeople—all work together to solve problems” (ewert 1975, 25). for mcc, adopting a model of development as conscientization meant reconfiguring its own place in the development process, taking a step back from seeing itself as leading or controlling the development process and instead viewing itself as supporting and accompanying locally led efforts. “outside agencies do not bring development,” stoesz emphasized. rather, he continued, development “is an indigenous process going on before [agencies like mcc] arrive. at best they accelerate its pace; at worst they frustrate it” (stoesz 1977, 12). agencies like mcc, lind cautioned, “must from the very beginning abdicate the executive power inherent in its position as implementor or planner” (lind 1977-78, 28). rather than building up their own profile or controlling development processes, stoesz argued, the “highest goal” for mcc and other international development organizations should be “to strengthen institutions which are locally owned” (stoesz 1977, 11). mcc programs in africa took the lead in adopting accompaniment and partnership models of development. beginning in lesotho in 1980, mcc programs in africa started shifting away from direct implementation of relief and development initiatives towards what mcc africa director lind called “relational programming,” or a “community worker movement.” spurred by what lind and others within mcc viewed as the “failure of development activity” and by a “disillusionment with development institutions,” mcc programming in africa transitioned towards a model of “presence,” involving the long-term placement of mcc workers within local communities, outside of institutional contexts, and “with an emphasis on learning about and developing relationships with specific communities and their needs.” these “community worker” placements, lind stressed, were not primarily focused on technical implementation of projects, but were rather shaped by a “learning stance vis-à-vis africans.” this missiology of presence started from the assumption that “program creativity and renewal” came not from mcc but rather from african communities themselves. mcc’s organizational stance within this vision of relational programming was a servanthood posture towards african churches. adopting such a posture, lind stressed, was a “better way for us to participate in and respond to problems faced by africans” (lind 1989, 19). if this shift away from implementation toward presence and partnership began within mcc’s programs in africa, it quickly expanded to other parts of the mcc world. so, for example, the 1980s witnessed the establishment of an mcc rural development program in the artibonite valley in haiti. this program wedded a freirean pedagogy of conscientization with the haitian tradition of communal work days (konbits). members of mcc’s haitian animation team took on facilitating rather than teaching roles as they engaged isolated rural communities in haiti’s rolling mountains and valleys in agricultural development initiatives. in a 1989 paper describing the mcc haiti team’s approach, barry bartel explained that animation entailed a facilitative process in which community members themselves identified their gifts, resources, and needs and took the lead in developing and implementing responses to those needs, with mcc playing a supportive role. “with their own planning, work, and sacrifice,” bartel contended, “[haitian communities] will own the solution, begin to feel like they can solve their own problems, and work to ensure that the solution lasts,” with positive impacts continuing long after mcc animators had left the community (bartel 1989, 1-2). by the end of the 1980s, this missiology of presence and partnership had taken root in mcc orientations of new workers and in most mcc programs. in his report to the governing board in 1987, mcc executive secretary john a. lapp explained that “a ministry of presence suggests that need is best defined from the stance of being present rather than by strategies inspired by well-developed ideology, media headlines or grandiose projects” (lapp 1987, 2). while in modernization models of development the state and international aid organizations led the design and implementation of large-scale initiatives to improve education, health, and livelihoods, in the accompaniment and presence models of development, mcc took a step back, seeking to support and follow the lead of local churches and community-based organizations. a desire not to overwhelm and usurp local leadership, reg toews observed, in turn led to a “preference for the small scale. if you make mistakes, let them be little mistakes” (toews 1989). christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 epp weaver and smith cain, “outside agencies do not bring development:” mennonite central committee and the decades-long challenge of decolonizing aid 15 enduring tensions in efforts to decolonize aid embedded within these evolving mcc understandings of service and shifting modes of mcc programming over the past five decades have been questions of power: who holds and exercises power in relief, development, and peacebuilding work and how can power be shared between an international actor such as mcc and the churches and other local and national actors it seeks to partner with? similarly, contemporary calls to decolonize aid also involve questions of power, including how international ngos (ingos) might relinquish power and follow the lead of local actors. as our historical overview has shown, mcc has moved over the past decades, at least in principle, to being partner-led. yet in practice, visions of mutually transformative partnerships often take a messier form. mcc administrator lind may have called on mcc to “abdicate” leadership of development efforts, but efforts to abdicate that power run into practical complications and generate multiple tensions. over the past two decades, mcc has maintained this emphasis on following the lead of local churches and community-based organizations in envisioning and implementing relief, development, and peacebuilding initiatives. yet following the lead of local partners has been complicated by mcc’s adoption of a standardized outcomes-based project planning, monitoring, evaluation, and reporting (pme) system for the purposes of demonstrating the impact of mccsupported work and of exercising accountability for the use of mcc resources. in this final section, we examine some of the tensions that external and internal pressures to show impact, demonstrate relevance, and ensure compliance with standardized policies and procedures have generated within mcc’s efforts to follow its partners’ leads. at their root, these tensions and complications all arise from the inherent power mcc holds by virtue of the financial and other resources it controls and to which it has access. these complications and tensions, we suggest, have relevance beyond mcc—other international actors that seek to take the call to decolonize aid seriously will run into variations of these challenges. pressure to demonstrate impact abdicating the executive responsibility for implementing development programs, as envisioned by lind in the mid-1970s, meant following the lead of communities and local organizations embedded within communities in relief, development, and peacebuilding 9 this standardization requires project plans and reports based on a standard logframe structure. that said, mcc looks to partners to identify desired outcomes, indicators, and other elements of the project logframe. work, with mcc then accompanying those efforts. how would such a partner-led approach fit with results-based management (rbm)? in the late 1990s and early 2000s, external and internal pressures mounted on mcc to adopt an rbm system. externally, the canadian international development agency (cida) pushed its grantees, like mcc and the canadian foodgrains bank (cfgb, an inter-agency body of which mcc canada was a founding member), to plan and report using an outcomes-based framework. internally, mcc’s governance boards, along with its donors, increasingly wanted more quantifiable information about the impact of mcc’s work. as mcc rolled out an rbm system for its global relief, development, and peacebuilding work in 2004, internal critics worried that that such a system would undermine the mutual partnerships mcc had sought to cultivate, with rbm viewed as an external (perhaps even colonial) imposition on partners. “to whom did mcc seek to demonstrate impact?,” these critics wondered. “to its boards in canada and the united states? to mennonite churches and individual donors in the global north? to institutional donors, such as the canadian government? what about accountability to partners and to project participants?,” some in mcc asked. the answers were not obvious. mcc program leaders sought to quell anxieties about the introduction of rbm by underscoring that the development of project plans would be partner-led, with local partners identifying the problems they wanted to address, developing the plans for initiatives to address those problems, identifying the outcomes they hoped would materialize through those initiatives and setting the indicators they would use to measure progress towards those outcomes. accountability fostered by rbm, its defenders argued, was not only or even primarily to boards and donors, but to local partners and project participants. while outcomes-based planning can be (and, at its best, is) used in this partner-led way, the inescapable fact remains that mcc exercises the power it holds as a funder to require that its partners use a standardized planning, monitoring, and reporting system they might not otherwise choose. 9 at a minimum, this dynamic complicates efforts to decolonize aid. stated more boldly, one could argue that mcc has not found a way beyond the tensions (or perhaps contradiction?) between standardized outcomes-based planning and the effort to decolonize its work. while that fact does not completely undercut efforts to decolonize aid, at a minimum it complicates those efforts. an even greater tension arises in the pressures mcc faces to show global impact by aggregating christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 epp weaver and smith cain, “outside agencies do not bring development:” mennonite central committee and the decades-long challenge of decolonizing aid 16 outputs and outcomes data across its global programs. mcc, like other international ngos, struggles with an industry-wide push for agency-level measurement, with charity ratings agencies and institutional and individual donors wanting to know not only about the impact of specific projects, but of the agency as a whole. such agency-level measurement presses organizations to standardize outputs and outcomes, which in turn stands, at best, in uneasy tension with a commitment to partners identifying outcomes and indicators. agencies that program governmental and intergovernmental funding in turn must often use outcomes and indicators predetermined by those funders, which can clearly undermine partner-led planning. despite these pressures to demonstrate impact, mcc has resisted the push to standardize ways of measuring impact across all partners, programs, and projects. instead, partners are encouraged to name ways of monitoring project progress and measuring the impact of their work that is meaningful both to them and to the participants in their communities. pressure to demonstrate relevance within an international aid landscape in which at least a rhetorical commitment is given to localization, ingos seek to demonstrate their relevance, making the case to governmental and inter-governmental donors as to why grants and contracts should continue to be channeled through them instead of local actors. mcc is funded primarily through donations from individuals and anabaptist churches in north america, and mcc has historically chosen not to work with many bilateral and multilateral funding agencies in large part due to their colonial legacies. mcc leadership, for example, chose not to apply for usaid funding in latin america due to the long history of violent imperialism in the region by the government of the united states. still, mcc does, on a case-by-case basis, apply for external grants from other agencies in consortium with local partners and in support of local partners’ vision for a project. in such cases, mcc is still under pressure to demonstrate relevance, especially when local partners are implementing the project interventions. one way to show such relevance is to highlight how ingos build the capacities of local partners; indeed. partner capacity building is one of mcc’s current strategic priorities. 10 yet when mcc first began discussing partner capacity building, many staff viewed 10 mcc also recognizes that the term “capacity building” has paternalistic connotations. capacity strengthening and capacity bridging are two terms suggested as alternatives by peace direct in their 2021 “time to decolonise aid” report. in practice, mcc’s efforts to support and strengthen the capacity of partners is prioritized through discussion with the local partner. mcc supports exchanges of ideas, practices, and capacity between and among local partners through regional and global partner exchanges, which also build mcc’s own capacities. it as undermining mcc’s understandings of service as presence and partnership. in the late 1990s, the canadian international development agency (cida) critiqued mcc for paying insufficient attention to building the capacities of the local organizations it worked with. with cida providing significant resources to mcc’s global program, addressing this critique became a pressing concern. mcc canada responded by commissioning an external evaluator, lawrence cummings, to assess mcc’s capacity building work and to make recommendations for improving it. cummings’ study uncovered significant tensions within mcc about using the language of partner capacity building. he noted that the language of “capacity building” had in some mcc and broader circles come to be viewed as different from “development,” with the latter carrying neocolonial connotations that the former supposedly avoided. still, for some mcc staff interviewed by cummings, the discourse of capacity building rankled—these staff warned of the danger of “imperialistic capacity building.” was mcc supporting partners in building capacities that they themselves prioritized? “who determines the capacity?” cummings asked. “what kind of capacity is being imposed?” some worried. meanwhile, cummings observed that in some parts of mcc an emphasis on “presence” meant “giving up rights to establishing” direction. a focus on partner capacity building, in contrast, seemed to represent an attempt by mcc to set direction (epp weaver 2021). if the shifts within mcc towards presence and partnership represented an attempt to avoid replicating colonial patterns of operation, a focus on building partner capacity, internal mcc critics feared, threatened to revive those colonial patterns. pressure to ensure partner compliance mcc’s status as a funding organization for local partner initiatives places legal and moral responsibilities upon mcc, responsibilities that in turn complicate the vision of mutual partnerships. whether for preventing fraud, promoting safeguards against sexual exploitation and abuse, or addressing other vitally important matters, mcc must hold partners accountable on multiple fronts, taking steps to ensure partner compliance. these types of accountability and compliance mechanisms are essential for many reasons, yet for an ingo like mcc to monitor and hold local partners accountable for compliance with christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 epp weaver and smith cain, “outside agencies do not bring development:” mennonite central committee and the decades-long challenge of decolonizing aid 17 such fundamental measures as fraud prevention and safeguarding underscores the power imbalance between mcc and its partners and threatens to foster a transactional or even paternalistic relationship between mcc and its partners, rather than the desired mutuality. mcc seeks to counteract that inevitable power imbalance by trying to foster ways in which its partners can hold mcc accountable in formal and informal ways, yet the power imbalance can prove difficult to erase, especially in partnerships for which mcc is the sole or primary funder. conclusion as this case study of mcc’s historical shifts over the past half-century has shown, reflections on how ingos can avoid colonial patterns of programming, abdicate or share power, and take the lead of local actors in relief, development, and peacebuilding work are not new, even as explicit calls for decolonizing and localizing aid efforts have recently become more explicit and pronounced. yet the vision of the grand bargain of “a level playing field” within the international aid sphere “where all meet as equals” is far from being realized. a robust commitment to truly decolonize and localize aid work would present ingos with an existential crisis: what role would exist in the future for organizations that have grown accustomed to wielding power over the design and implementation of relief, development, and peacebuilding work? while mcc has sought over the past decades to take the lead from local actors and to foster partnerships marked by mutuality, these efforts to decolonize its practice have always been complicated by multiple factors, most fundamentally by the power mcc holds as a funding agency. the global call to decolonize the aid industry is an urgent and crucial demand—yet, if mcc’s experience is in any way indicative, truly living into a vision of decolonized partnerships is a long-term, challenging process. this long-term work of decolonization requires patient persistence sustained by god’s grace and the recognition that international christian aid organizations are not at the center of god’s mission, but instead are invited to join alongside and follow the lead of god’s spirit at work in communities around the world devastated by colonial legacies. references “a commitment to christ’s way of peace.” 1994. #3, ix-40-04, box 11, folder 11/3, folder title: brochures. mcc u.s. archives, akron, pennsylvania. bartel, barry c. 1989. animation in haiti: mcc haiti’s experience with rural community development. mcc occasional paper no. 8. akron, pa: mcc. beachy, bertha. 1978. “culture shock in an islamic society,” ix-12-7, mcc tap orientation, akron, pa. (august 19) mcc archives, akron, pennsylvania. beechy, atlee. 1976. “who needs service?” intercom 16 (5), may. bosch, david. 1991. transforming mission: paradigm shifts in theology of mission. maryknoll, ny: orbis books. davis, robb. 2010. “mcc’s development paradigm(s).” in a table of sharing: mennonite central committee and the expanding networks of mennonite identity , edited by alain epp weaver, 339-352. telford, pa: cascadia. “decolonising aid: a reading and resource list.” the new humanitarian, april 22, 2022. https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/feature/2022 /08/12/decolonising-aid-a-reading-and-resourcelist. epp weaver, alain. 2021. “capacity building, presence, and partnership.” intersections: mcc theory and practice quarterly 9 (3): 2-3. _____. 2020. service and the ministry of reconciliation: a missiological history of mennonite central committee. north newton, ks: bethel college. ewert, merrill. 1975. humanization and development. development monograph series no. 2. akron, pa: mcc. freire, paulo. 1970. pedagogy of the oppressed, trans. myra ramos. new york: continuum. guenther, bruce and william reimer. 2010. in a table of sharing: mennonite central committee and the expanding networks of mennonite identity, edited by alain epp weaver, 353-374. telford, pa: cascadia. heisey, nancy. 1977. integrating education and development. development monograph series no. 5. akron, pa: mcc. illich, ivan. 1971. deschooling society. new york: harper and row. inter-agency standing committee. “frequently asked questions on the grand bargain.” https://interagencystandingcommittee.org/frequen tly-asked-questions-faqs-on-the-grand-bargain. lapp, john a. 1987. “report of the executive secretary.” mcc workbook report. in folder docuware/workbook 1944 to 2011/1987. workbook, mcc u.s. archives, akron, pennsylvania. lind, tim. 1977-78. biblical obedience and development. development monograph series no. 6. akron, pa: mcc. about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(1), summer 2023 epp weaver and smith cain, “outside agencies do not bring development:” mennonite central committee and the decades-long challenge of decolonizing aid 18 _____. 1986. “inquiry into mcc africa purpose and presence.” paper for the mcc board of directors meeting, september: 1-2. in folder docuware/africa 1960-ongoing/1986 roll #77/02 africa data through africa peace tour-peace committee (af), mcc u.s. archives, akron, pennsylvania. _____. 1989. mcc africa program: historical background. mcc occasional paper no. 10. akron, pa: mcc. marr, lucille. 2003. the transforming power of a century: mennonite central committee and its evolution in ontario. kitchener, on: pandora press. mcc ontario consultation on native ministries. 1982. november. mcc. 2011. principles and practices. https://mcc.org/media/document/127481. “mcc statement on program assumptions, objectives and priorities.” 1976. b.4, in folder docuware/binational (bn) minutes & meeting packets 1920 to 2012, mennonite central committee annual meeting minutes #382, january 22-24, 1976. mcc u.s. archives, akron, pennsylvania. parsons, katerina. 2023. “book review of alain epp weaver. service and the ministry of reconciliation: a missiological history of mennonite central committee.” christian relief, development, and advocacy 4 (2) winter: 77-78. https://crdajournal.org/index.php/crda/article/view /557/483. peace direct. 2021. time to decolonise aid: insights and lessons from a global consultation (may 10, 2021). https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5db70e83fc 0a966cf4cc42ea/t/609d44600b38626868dadff7/1 620919397499/pddecolonising+aid+report_second+edition.pdf. peachey, urbane. 1976. “service—who needs it?” intercom 16 (4), april. principles that guide our mission. 1999. akron, pa: mcc. snyder, jean. 1986. “learning about culture in jamaica,” intercom 30 (6), july-august: 2. snyder, william t. 1963. “reflections on christian social service.” mcc news service, july 23. mcc u.s. archives, akron, pennsylvania. stoesz, edgar. 1976. “an improvement, yet a dilemma” intercom 16 (7), july: 1-2. _____. 1977. thoughts on development, development monograph series no. 1, revised edition. akron, pa: mcc. toews, reg with robert kreider. 1989. “unwritten tenets of mcc operations. #15, in folder docuware/history & research requests. mcc u.s. archives, akron, pennsylvania. zimmerman herr, judy. 1998. “service as incarnation.” ix-60, box 14 folder title: pi service as incarnation. mcc u.s. archives, akron, pennsylvania. alain epp weaver is director of planning, learning, and disaster response department at mennonite central committee in akron, pennsylvania, united states. emma smith cain is learning & evaluation coordinator at mennonite central committee in akron, pennsylvania, united states. smith cain is also a 2023-2024 accord fellow. author emails: alaineppweaver@mcc.org and emmasmithcain@mcc.org https://mcc.org/media/document/127481 about:blank about:blank https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5db70e83fc0a966cf4cc42ea/t/609d44600b38626868dadff7/1620919397499/pd-decolonising+aid+report_second+edition.pdf https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5db70e83fc0a966cf4cc42ea/t/609d44600b38626868dadff7/1620919397499/pd-decolonising+aid+report_second+edition.pdf https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5db70e83fc0a966cf4cc42ea/t/609d44600b38626868dadff7/1620919397499/pd-decolonising+aid+report_second+edition.pdf https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5db70e83fc0a966cf4cc42ea/t/609d44600b38626868dadff7/1620919397499/pd-decolonising+aid+report_second+edition.pdf mailto:alaineppweaver@mcc.org mailto:emmasmithcain@mcc.org christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(1), summer 2024 bronkema, spiritual metrics as a bulwark against secularization: reflections… 1 spiritual metrics as a bulwark against secularization david bronkema one of the problems that christian relief, development, and advocacy organizations wrestle with is how to ensure that their programs are holistic in terms of integrating the spiritual with the material. this article explores how and why being intentional about including spiritual metrics into our planning, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation processes holds great promise to enable that integration to be done well, and to guard against the “secularization” of those efforts. introduction the integration of faith with development efforts is an age-old challenge among christian relief, development, and advocacy organizations in terms of how exactly to go about doing so. one of the recurring problems is that there is a tendency to separate out the spiritual into its own category in such efforts, even as organizations remain committed to integration. with the increasing interest in spiritual metrics, defined as measuring the spiritual impact of programs, this issue continues to come to the fore. at the accord research alliance (ara) pre-conference intensive (ara) in october of last year (2022), jayakumar christian brought up this issue head-on, stating several times in his keynote presentation that we should not “slice off” the spiritual from everything else and try to measure it, because in so doing we would be buying into and propagating the perspective that you can and should separate the spiritual from the non-spiritual. “all economics is spiritual, all politics is spiritual,” jayakumar said, going on to insist that we need to approach and deal with all things as such. to many who are deeply interested in and committed to ensuring a holistic approach to their relief, development, and advocacy efforts, and who thus take spiritual dimensions seriously, including planning for and measuring the spiritual impact of their programs, this statement created uncertainty, confusion, discomfort, and concern among listeners, and for several reasons. at the very least, this statement seems to throw into question the means and methods they were and are currently undertaking to bolster and fortify these integrative efforts; at the most, it seemed to posit that these efforts in and of themselves were sorely misguided and even potentially harmful. given these concerns, it seems wise to explore in more depth exactly what jayakumar christian was saying, especially its programmatic implications around spiritual metrics. this brief reflection seeks to begin to do that and set the stage for a follow up conversation with jayakumar and others in the symposium that occurred on may 4, 2023. the root argument in this reflection is that it seems to me that what jayakumar was warning against was succumbing to or even perhaps unwittingly nourishing the danger of a “spiritual/secular” dualism in our attempts to measure the spiritual, a warning that is always timely and important because the danger is constantly present. let me explain why, if done well, spiritual metrics actually create a bulwark against the threat of the spiritual/secular division. definitions and foundational observations let’s start with definitions of the “spiritual” and the “secular” to ensure we are all on the same page in terms of our language and terms. one dictionary definition of the “spiritual” is “relating to or affecting the human spirit or soul as opposed to material or physical things,” or “relating to religion or religious belief,” whereas a dictionary definition for “secular” is “denoting attitudes, activities, or other things that have no religious or spiritual basis” (both taken from oxford languages english dictionary through google). it is important to make two foundational observations here. first, both of these definitions point to the importance of understanding the spiritual and the secular as concepts that fundamentally revolve around a relationship with the divine: the first embraces it and the latter rejects it, denying that such a relationship exists, either because there are aspects of life where the divine is not relevant christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(1), summer 2024 bronkema, spiritual metrics as a bulwark against secularization: reflections… 2 or present, or because the divine simply does not exist. for christians, on the other hand, we believe all things are under the lordship of christ, that he relates to, is present in, and governs all things, at all times (colossians 1:15-20), whether we are aware of it or not, or, as jayakumar said, not only are economics and politics spiritual, all things are! underpinning theological foundations now consider what it means for us, as we carry out our lives and work, that christ relates to, is present in, and governs all things. a good place to start is with the theological insistence that there are four main relationships we should pay attention to: our relationship(s) with god (father, son, and holy spirit), with ourselves, with each other, and with creation. if we look at these through the lens of the spiritual and the sacred, two things jump out. first, there is no question that in the first of these relationships, our relationship with god, the “spiritual” element is constantly present. as we seek to know god better and draw closer to god, we are inherently engaging “the spiritual,” and there is no danger of losing that from view. second, this is not the case with the other three relationships. rather, when we engage in relationships with ourselves, each other, and/or with creation, whether it be through economics, politics, or the environment, there is a strong tendency for us, especially in the west, to push god out of the picture, to “secularize” things, to relate to each other and to creation without relating to god in the process, or without having god present. many of the forces pushing in this direction have found their greatest strength in the enlightenment and its legacies, a theme that can be explored later. suffice it to say that this secularization, this “despiritualization,” is exactly what satan constantly strives to bring about, and against which we must always be on guard, as jayakumar so helpfully challenged us to be. two related questions immediately arise: first, how do we prevent such a secularization in our programs from happening? second, how do we intentionally strive to deepen the spiritual dimensions and spiritual impacts of our programs? the role of spiritual metrics to my mind, spiritual metrics provides answers to both of these questions, because the planning, implementation, and evaluation efforts geared towards measuring the spiritual dimensions do three things; (1) they help bring the spiritual dimension back in where it has been lost; (2) they strengthen it where it is weak; and (3) they create a bulwark against efforts to downplay it, because as it is integrated with the other dimensions. in other words, rather than slicing off the spiritual and putting it into its own category, spiritual metrics help graft spiritual dimensions back into situations where they are absent and nurture and deepen those spiritual dimensions where they are already present. spiritual metrics do this, or can do this, in two ways. first, intentionally including spiritual metrics forces everyone involved in planning, implementing, monitoring, and evaluating to wrestle with exactly how what they are doing is spiritual, thereby deepening the awareness and understanding of the presence of god in all they do. second, it requires us to think and pray about what increasing levels of spiritual maturity might look like, and how best to pursue those outcomes as part and parcel of our programs and projects. it is important to remember that spiritual maturity has to do, as we saw above, with the deepening of relationships of people with god, with themselves, with each other, and with creation in the context of god’s lordship and will for all of these; therefore spiritual metrics will consider what people understand and believe and how they act and feel, in terms of their thoughts, words, deeds, and emotions towards god, each other, and creation as they engage with the economic, the political, and all the other important areas of life. the key question then becomes how to integrate planning for and evaluation of the spiritual side of things into our programs and projects. let me offer a few thoughts. making it concrete: some examples first, i suspect we have all seen what “secularized” development programs look like, both in secular development organizations, but truth be told, also in christian ones. to wit, agricultural projects become solely about increasing crop yields; health projects become solely about increasing physical and psychosocial wellbeing; education projects become solely about increasing educational attainment; microfinance programs become solely about increasing income; wash projects become solely about how many wells are drilled, water projects established, latrines built; advocacy and empowerment projects become solely about increasing the power and leverage of the oppressed and the opportunities and rights they can obtain. in all of these, the spiritual dimension disappears, or at the very least is severely truncated, sliced off from the planning, implementation, and evaluation of these projects. what would it look like to use spiritual metrics to encourage spirituality to be reincorporated and nurtured into these programs and projects? as i have said elsewhere (bronkema 2024), the best way starts with discussions around planning rather than with discussions about measurement, because planning for spiritual impact forces us to be intentional about incorporating the spiritual in our activities. i am skeptical of using universal spiritual outcome indicators christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(1), summer 2024 bronkema, spiritual metrics as a bulwark against secularization: reflections… 3 precisely for that reason: not only do they generally not fit the particular contextual needs, but also truncate the collective organizational and participatory process of discussing how the spiritual is and should be manifested in all that is done, which in and of itself creates that bulwark against secularization that i mentioned above. as a result, i recommend a three-step process for spiritual metrics: first, organizations and the people they work with should think and pray about what spiritual outcomes they hope to achieve along with the material ones; second, they must ensure that activities are actually geared toward bringing these about; and third, only after engaging in steps one and two, they should decide what the appropriate measurement indicators should be. of course, this can and should be an iterative process, incorporating insights from the implementation experience in a cycle of action/prayerful reflection/action. in my experience, this approach seems to bear the best fruit. also, it is always good to start on a small scale. concluding thoughts jayakumar’s warning against slicing off the spiritual to measure it is a good reminder of the overall dangers of secularization. but this assumes the spiritual dimension is already front and center in people’s minds, thoughts, and plans as they carry out their projects. unfortunately, this is not always the case. in fact, most reports seem to indicate the despiritualizing presence and process is extremely powerful in our programs. as a result, it is absolutely essential to tackle this head on. being intentional about integrating spiritual metrics into our planning, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation processes holds great promise to enable us to do that well. references bronkema, david. 2024 (january 18). measuring social and spiritual impact: three simple questions to ask to set yourself up for success. ardent mentoring. https://www.ardentmentoring.org/post/measuringsocial-and-spiritual-impact-three-simple-questionsto-ask-to-set-yourself-up-for-success. david bronkema is a professor at eastern university in the phd in organizational leadership program and an editor of this journal. before coming to eastern in 2006, he worked in the field of international development for 13 years, and enjoys the continuing process of working with and learning from colleagues directly involved in that work. https://www.ardentmentoring.org/post/measuring-social-and-spiritual-impact-three-simple-questions-to-ask-to-set-yourself-up-for-success https://www.ardentmentoring.org/post/measuring-social-and-spiritual-impact-three-simple-questions-to-ask-to-set-yourself-up-for-success https://www.ardentmentoring.org/post/measuring-social-and-spiritual-impact-three-simple-questions-to-ask-to-set-yourself-up-for-success christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 jones and odhiambo, destigmatizing eve… 59 destigmatizing eve: tackling the underlying culture of patriarchal honor and shame undermining the work of christian relief and development “fall” die bibel in bildern [picture bible], julius schnorr von carolsfeld,1860. emily nielsen jones and jackline a. odhiambo christian relief and development (crd) organizations work in patriarchal societies and cultures that devalue women and girls and limit the opportunities and rights they have. through a theology of the “curse of eve,” christianity has extended this view of women as inferior, unclean, meant for subjugation, shameful, side-lined, and to blame for evil in the world. we explore how the theological and sociological drivers behind the “curse of eve,” continue to have a shaming and blaming effect on females throughout the whole life cycle, with a vivid example of the experiences of widows in kenya. the crd sector has a strategic role in addressing theological and mythical roots of genderbased oppression. we explore ways in which the crd sector can transform the deep roots of this historic and global stigma and suggest some tools for tackling structural stigmatization of women and girls. christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 jones and odhiambo, destigmatizing eve… 60 from a woman sin had its beginning, and because of her we all die. (sirach 25:16-26, one of the oldest attributions of sin with eve, and by extension, all women (early 2022, 11)) introduction christian relief and development (crd) organizations work in patriarchal societies and cultures that present a number of challenges, not least of which are the ways that females are devalued and the opportunities for women and girls to develop and use their gifts and skills to flourish are lacking. unfortunately, this is a problem that affects crd organizations as well as the societies they work in, and the sector has a mixed history when it comes to an understanding of, focus on, and commitment to the role of women in its organizations and programs. on the one hand, a significant number of crd actors have made gender balance, mainstreaming, and empowerment a significant focus of their efforts starting as early as the late 1970s and early 1980s (bridget 1999; tripp 1999). many others, however, have lagged significantly behind, as shown by the analysis conducted by amy reynolds in this volume. this article explores a long and enduring theological legacy—with mythic roots dating back to the advent of patriarchal societal norms in the third millennium bce, continuing through early mesopotamian and hebrew culture into the early centuries of the church and then through all the significant epochs of christendom—which viewed women as inferior and not made in the image of god. indeed, women are considered inheritors of a shameful, inferior nature associated with evil and deception. this legacy lives on as an inherited psychic wound in our world today and underpins the societal, cultural, and organizational tendencies to limit the role that women play and the opportunities and rights that they have. this article posits that the christian relief and development (crd) sector has a strategic and high impact role to play in addressing not only the humanitarian symptoms of this ancient and systemic myth of female inferiority that lives on in our collective human subconsciousness, but also the theological and mythic roots that underlie gender-based sidelining and oppression. only then can crd live up to a unique role as “active restorers of shalom”—as described in the principles for gender equality for development organizations (wheaton network initiative n.d.)—in the larger global effort to create a more gender-balanced world in which all human beings can live together in a state of shared honor, mutuality, and shalom. in making this case, we present three main points. first, we argue that it is important to better understand, with love and humility, how our own tradition has participated, along with all of our world’s religions, in the oldest global stigmatization in human history: the denigration of the female half of the human family as inferior, unclean, meant for subjugation, shameful, side-lined, and to blame for evil in the world. at the core of this ancient yet enduring stigma lies a very old story—the “curse of eve”—which has been passed down and reinterpreted through the ages and popularized into modern secular and christian consciousness that came to associate evil, shame, and low moral character with eve/women and likewise all things honorable and godlike with men. as tova bernbaum describes in the curse of eve: a jewish perspective on women in society, “there is a primordial aspect to the struggle for [women’s] equality” deeply embedded in the mythic layers of modern society that defies logic and so much progress that has been made to shift to a more gender equal society” (2005, 1). this article traces how this harmful, hierarchical, ontological dualism (and related tendency to blame women for bad things that happen) was a thread present in the cultural fabric in which the bible was written and interpreted over many centuries. second, we consider how the legacies of this story of eve/women as members of a stigmatized second class continue to loom large over gender norms in our world and, by extension, how it lives on in the global humanitarian realities that christian relief and development (crd) organizations address. we briefly examine the meaning and impact of stigma and how it applies to women and girls in particular. we then explore how the theological and sociological drivers behind the “curse of eve,” continue to have a shaming and blaming effect on females throughout the whole life cycle. we argue the deep gender dimensions of honorshame acculturation live within our own faith tradition and in our collective consciousness as a global family. finally, we turn to a case study of widows in kenya and the work of nyanam widows rising to illustrate this problem. and third, we explore ways in which the crd sector can work harder to transform the deep roots of this historic and global stigma that is still so laced with tradition and religion, and that is still alive and well in and around crd. in so doing, we suggest how crd organizations can more proactively use their platforms of change and connection with christian faith communities and the ngo sector around the world to do the needed work of deep healing and repair to restore “shalom” to our world’s gender norms. we must “destigmatize eve” as the archetypal female who represents the female half of the human family. the crd sector is uniquely positioned to do this deeper work beneath the surface of our world’s gender-based humanitarian scourge and to shine a light on the curse and stigma itself. such work can loosen the grip of stigma’s stain on the invisible norms that are at play in christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 jones and odhiambo, destigmatizing eve… 61 the particular religious and cultural context(s) where they are engaged. five concrete practices are recommended. these include (1) naming and reversing the shaming of eve, (2) cultivating a posture of curiosity around how this harmful eve mythology became steeped within christianity today and how we can read scripture differently, (3) deep listening to women who have been stigmatized, (4) formal lamenting for the part the church has played in this stigmatization, and lastly, (5) engaging in contemplative practices around this issue. origins: the ancient stigmatization of eve and inferiority of women i wondered how such a situation came about, whereby half — in fact just over half — of the world’s population was created inferior to the other half? whether this occurred at eve’s birth, because a higher power decided to make something less than perfect or after a long process of evolution, this appeared nonsensical: the first seemed out of character, and by the second process, the number of females in the world would be decreasing through selection. so why and how did these myths about women’s inferiority arise and why did they persist so long? (crandall 2012, 1) as people working within the christian relief and development sector today who care about the uplift and dignity of women, we need to be curious and ask this question. we should be humble and mindful of the mixed history of christianity on our world’s gender norms. christianity remains the world’s largest religion, accounting for roughly a third of the global population (zurlo et al. 2024, 50) and, over the course of its history, has left an indelible mark on our world, for good and for ill. implicit in the work of crd is the belief that there is something about christianity that has been and continues to be a force behind human uplift, justice, and shared liberation. we rightly point to the example of jesus and how he challenged the norms of the day to treat all human beings, including women, with dignity. his respect stood in contrast to the exclusion or inferior treatment of women that was the norm in the middle eastern culture of his day. in a world where patriarchal norms so stubbornly persist and are resurgent in virtually all cultures on this planet, we can proudly hold onto this example of jesus and the earliest days of the church as our north star. if we truly want to make strides in creating a better world and work with cultures that honor women and turn the page on the historic and global pandemic of systemic violence towards and devaluation of women and girls, we need to take the time to be curious, and to understand the particular way that christianity has used its theological platform and social capital over the centuries. theology has been used to sanction and perpetuate a harmful “honor gap” (jones and misolo 2018) across the gender line, which elevated the masculine as honorable and godlike, and stigmatized females as inferior, shameful, and to blame for bad things that happen in the world. as joseph e. early explains in because of eve: historical and theological survey of the subjugation of women in the christian tradition, this inquiry rightly begins with the story of eve. as early points out, “the history of how men in the bible define women begins with eve. because she was the first woman, and because of her role in the fall, men have presented her as the archetype of all women” (2022, 2). this is not an easy story to tell as there are many historical, cultural, and theological threads that have evolved over time to create the popularized story of eve that we have received from the past. in every generation, how eve is interpreted is a window into the gender norms of the day. to understand how eve, and by extension all women, became stigmatized as an inferior, subjugated class of human beings, it is necessary to turn back the page and spotlight the ancient roots of this stigma, beginning within the early israelite tradition and the early christian fathers of the faith, who formulated the theological containers that we now understand as orthodox christianity. the first point is that in the original hebrew context, eve actually had a high and exalted status as chavah (חוה), the “mother of all living” who had a close connection with creation and reflected the image and likeness of the creator. “eve” (/iːv/) is an english given name for a female derived from the latin name eva. it originates from the hebrew ַחוָּה (chavah/havah – chavah), to breathe, and chayah, to live, or to give life. the traditional meaning of “eve” is “life” or “living.” it can also mean “full of life” and “mother of life” (meyers 2021; crispe 2006). yet over the centuries of christendom, the church fathers created a “theology christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 jones and odhiambo, destigmatizing eve… 62 of eve” that became justification for the low, servile place women were expected to occupy in maledominated family and society that treated them like property. customs emerged like polygamy, concubinage, wife beating, male inheritance, and particular dress codes that symbolized her shame and subjection. purity codes treated normal bodily functions as unclean, and myriad forms of exclusion restricted women from the full sovereignty of adulthood. don’t be such an eve… know your place… eve didn’t complain, so why should you… and other variations of admonitions have been heard over many centuries in sermons, bible studies, and marriage seminars the world over. these come directly from the theology developed by these church fathers centuries ago. in fact, it is quite shocking to read passages today from these church fathers on the subject of eve, and in what follows is a sampling of those passages. the church fathers made three main points in their stigmatization of eve and hence of all women; first, eve was the pathway for evil to enter the world and therefore bears the blame and shame; second, women inherently have that of eve in them, insofar a tendency towards evil and duplicity; and third, eve (and all women) are inferior to, and defective in comparison with, adam in all dimensions. eve and women as the source of evil and shame first, eve is seen as the pathway through which evil entered the world, and as a result, all women are tainted in the same way. tertullian, one of the earliest and most prominent of the church fathers born in 160 ad, is particularly graphic in his depiction: and do you not know that you are (each) an eve? the sentence of god on this sex of yours lives in this age: the guilt must of necessity live too. you are the devil’s gateway: you are the unsealer of that (forbidden) tree: you are the first deserter of the divine law: you are she who persuaded him whom the devil was not valiant enough to attack. you destroyed so easily god’s image, man. on account of your desert—that is, death—even the son of god had to die. and do you think about adorning yourself over and above your tunics of skins? (de cultu feminarium (on the apparel of women), chapter 1, as cited by mowczko 2013). clement of alexandria, a contemporary of tertullian in the 2 nd century, theologized that given this inherently culpable nature of women, “[women’s] very consciousness of their own nature must evoke feelings of shame” (pedagogues ii 33, 2, as cited in tarico 2013). the second main point of this theology is that women are inherently duplicitous temptresses. “watch out that she does not twist and turn you for the worse. what is the difference whether it is in a wife or a mother, it is still eve the temptress that we must beware of in any woman,” cautions augustine a few hundred years later (letter to laetus, letter 243.10, as cited in mowczko 2013). the third way that eve, and by extension all women, were stigmatized from the early stages in the theology of the church fathers is by declaring that she was inferior and defective in all aspects as compared to adam. the first line of argument along these lines is that she was not made fully in the image of god, as was adam, a point expressed clearly by augustine: . . . the woman together with her own husband is the image of god, so that that whole substance may be one image; but when she is referred separately to her quality of help-meet, which regards the woman herself alone, then she is not the image of god; but as regards the man alone, he is the image of god as fully and completely as when the woman too is joined with him in one” (on the trinity 12.7.10, as cited in mowczko 2013). as a result, theologized origen in the 2 nd -3 rd century, god regards women as inferior as well, in that “what is seen with the eyes of the creator is masculine, and not feminine, for god does not stoop to look upon what is feminine and of the flesh” (selecta in exodum (fragments on exodus), patrologia graeca 12, column 296–297, as cited in mowczko 2013). this argument that women are not made fully in the image of god was joined with the argument that women are inherently inferior intellectually, morally, and spiritually, as augustine also details: i don’t see what sort of help woman was created to provide man with, if one excludes procreation. if woman is not given to man for christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 jones and odhiambo, destigmatizing eve… 63 help in bearing children, for what help could she be? to till the earth together? if help were needed for that, man would have been a better help for man. the same goes for comfort in solitude. how much more pleasure is it for life and conversation when two friends live together than when a man and a woman cohabitate?” “. . . woman was given to man, woman who was of small intelligence and who perhaps still lives more in accordance with the promptings of the inferior flesh than by superior reason. is this why the apostle paul does not attribute the image of god to her? (de genesi ad literam (the literal meaning of genesis) 9.5.9, 11.42, as cited in mowczko 2013) by the 13 th century, this misogynistic theology was well established, as seen in the words of aquinas: but woman is naturally of less strength and dignity than man . . . as regards the individual nature, woman is defective and misbegotten, for the active force in the male seed tends to the production of a perfect likeness in the masculine sex; while the production of woman comes from a defect in the active force or from some material indisposition, or even from some external influence. such as that of a south wind, which is moist, as the philosopher observes… one is servile, by virtue of which a superior makes use of a subject for his own benefit; and this kind of subjection began after sin. there is another kind of subjection which is called economic or civil, whereby the superior makes use of his subjects for their own benefit and good; and this kind of subjection existed even before sin. for good order would have been wanting in the human family if some were not governed by others wiser than themselves. so by such a kind of subjection woman is naturally subject to man, because in man the discretion of reason predominates” (summa theologica, vol. i, q. 92, art. 1, objection 2, reply to objection 1, as cited in mowczko 2013) moreover, many leading figures of the reformation, such as martin luther, john calvin, and john knox, draw on and propagate these arguments. according to knox, nature i say, paints [women] further to be weak, frail, impatient, feeble and foolish: and experience has declared them to be inconstant, variable, cruel and lacking the spirit of counsel and regiment [or, leadership]…woman in her greatest perfection was made to serve and obey man . . . (the first blast of the trumpet against the monstrous regiment of women, as cited in mowczko 2013). thankfully, there are other theological currents within church history that affirm that women too possess the image of god, such as the reformation concepts like the priesthood of all believers and the right of all people to read the bible, the quaker notion of “inner light” and mysticism, and minority viewpoints within the dominantly patriarchal heritage of the church that have sought to reclaim the spiritual equality we see in the gospels. yet the negative male stereotypes of women as morally deficient and more prone to sin persisted into the modern era of the church and still to this day. justifications to exclude women from leadership in the family, church, and society continue to center around the same appeals to eve as the originator of sin in the world and the need for women to “know their place” in the created, biblical order. it is to these legacies that we now turn. the legacies of interpreting eve: a mirror of larger cultural and theological shifts we are living inside the dreams of dead people. all these kings, priests and poets from hundreds of years ago created powerful stories that still shape how we behave and think today. it’s as if these dead people are still controlling us from beyond the grave (harari and ruiz 2022, as cited in mckenzie 2022) how the story of eve was and is interpreted has shaped how generations of humans over the millennia have come to think about what it means to be a female human being. one cannot ignore how the dominant christianized retelling of the story of eve has shaped gender norms over many centuries and made women scapegoats for evil done by men to them (milne 1989). as christians, most of us have inherited the negative, shaming and blaming theology of eve that continues to persist in our churches, ministries, non-profits and, most of all, within our collective imaginations. as crd practitioners, we need to guard against the tendency to focus on what we know to be the positive, liberating message of the gospel and be willing to look at the underbelly of the dominant trajectory of christianity and its complicity in the global stigma that, from cradle to grave, still looms large over the female half of the human family. anyone engaged in some aspect of crd related to the multifaceted conditions that surround women’s and girls’ lives knows well the continued pervasive cultural devaluation of females that christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 jones and odhiambo, destigmatizing eve… 64 persists in our world, and which exposes them to much emotional, psychological, and physical harm, and continually sidelines them from full participation in society. it is chilling how the human penchant for scapegoating a group deemed inferior continues to be manifest in the sexual double standard that we see around the world where victims of sexual violence are all too often blamed and shamed for not wearing the right clothes and “causing a man to stumble.” delving into this topic can be uncomfortable but can open a doorway of understanding to better understand the negative impact that christianity has played in the evolution of gender norms in our world. we do not need to beat ourselves up, but learn how we can address root causes and be part of positive change in creating the safer and more mutually respectful world we seek for all human beings. three issues will help us understand these legacies better; (1) the meaning and impact of stigma, (2) the lingering effect of the patriarchal culture of honor and shame, and (3) the way the latter is upheld through systems justification. the meaning, operation, and impact of stigma we all know on some level what stigma is, but unpacking it and explaining how it functions helps us in two main ways; first, to better isolate and illuminate humanity’s oldest stigma of gender-based oppression, and second, to understand how it continues to be shrouded in the collective human imagination through cherished traditions, symbols, and religious mythology that give it a type of fixed idea of “just the way things are.” we look briefly at several definitions of stigma and how it tends to operate, and then consider how the stigmatization of women and girls functions today. first, the term “stigma” derives from the latin word stigmat which referred to a brand or mark burned into the skin of enslaved people, criminals, and those deemed traitors. these marks were used to identify certain groups of people as “blemished” and impure and worthy of being shunned (swaim 2023). dictionary definitions of stigma are “a mark of shame or discredit: stain” (merriam webster dictionary n.d.), “a mark of disgrace associated with a particular circumstance, quality, or person” (oxford languages dictionary n.d.), and “a mark of disgrace or infamy; a stain or reproach, as on one’s reputation” (dictionary.com). second, the study of how stigma operates began most prominently in the 1960s, when sociologist erving goffman defined it as an “attribute that is deeply discrediting” and that disqualifies a person from full social acceptance (goffman 1963, as cited in clair 2018, 1). goffman’s study of stigma makes four important points for the purposes of this article. first, stigmas can be hard to detect because they are so embedded in the cultural/religious fabric and reflect a subconscious valuing that cannot be addressed by humanitarian interventions alone. second, and related to the first, the real challenge with stigma is that it can persist for many generations as we see across many racial and ethnic stratifications globally. third, stigma operates at both micro and macro levels, “restricting the well-being of stigmatized individuals” (micro) and operating on a structural level (macro) with “population-level consequences, and collective responses… reproduc[ing] social inequality through the maintenance of group hierarchies” (clair 2018, abstract). and fourth, the relevance of the study of stigma has been not only to understand how it functions, but most importantly, as clair states, to “identify the conditions that foster destigmatization” (clair 2018, abstract). goffman’s broad definition of stigma touches on many contemporary “discredited attributes,” including what he defines as “tribal stigmas” (e.g., race, ethnicity, and religion), “physical deformities” (e.g., deafness, blindness, and leprosy), and “blemishes of character” (e.g., homosexuality, addiction, mental illness), but it does not specifically address gender (clair 2018, 1). in fact, it is notable that in most places where different categories of stigma are mentioned in the studies above, there is little to no addressing of the first and the oldest form of stigma that lives on within other stigmas and cuts across most cultures: the patriarchal denigration of the female. this is in part because the stigmatization of females goes back to pre-history, making it hard to trace, even though it is embedded in all the world’s venerable traditions that have shaped our collective imaginations and mental models upon which civilization was built. because gender-based beliefs, practices, and norms are so laced with venerable tradition and religious narrative that live on in our collective imagination and give patriarchy a holy sounding sanction and immovability, we tend not to see gender stratification in the same vein as racial and ethnic forms of stigma that led to horrific incidents of genocide and/or slavery. because biological females make up half of the human family and because this form of oppression is so ancient and laden with venerable tradition that has shaped our collective imagination, it is hard to name and see the stigmatization of females in the same vein as more well-recognized stigmatized minority groups, which leads to an examination of the second aspect of the legacies of the theologies of stigmatization developed by the church fathers around women; the way that they were and are a part of the structures of patriarchy that continue to operate today. christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 jones and odhiambo, destigmatizing eve… 65 the lingering hold of the patriarchal culture of honor with shamed & blamed females as inferior & evil … for even though the feminine voice is gaining prominence in our society, her essence remains mostly in the shadows. that essence is part of a truth that patriarchal culture buried thousands of years ago and confined to the darkest corners of our memory. yet its truth also remains in everything, and is within reach. (warden 2022) we first briefly consider the definition of patriarchy, then explore how patriarchy operates to stigmatize women based on social stratification and the code of honor and shame. we conclude with an analysis of how the justification of patriarchy allows it to persist. first, the word “patriarchy” has a host of definitions, some more comprehensive than others. a basic definition, drawn from the oxford english dictionary is that patriarchy is “a system of society or government in which men hold the power and women are largely excluded from it” (oxford english dictionary 2023). most definitions of patriarchy define it in terms of male power/dominance over women, but there is a set of factors at play that illuminate what and how this social structure arose and functions (christ 2022). second, the range of definitions and multifaceted nature of how patriarchy operates points to how it is, at its core, a structure of social stratification, rooted in stigma. as with all stratification, the superior group is deemed to be inherently made of a higher, more godlike substance and thus is deemed as a “master” worthy of ruling and owning others; and the inferior, stigmatized group is seen as inherently made of a lower, defective substance meant for subjugation and often associated with evil. when applied to women and girls today, we tend not to use the language of women being “unclean” as a reason for excluding women from leadership and participation in church life, even though this has been a consistent belief throughout humankind’s patriarchal heritage. the legacies of the theology of the church fathers in this regard are clear: prohibitions based on the presumed “ritual uncleanness” of women have remained in official church law for the last 700 years (wijngaards institute n.d.), and a stain of disgrace and lack of credibility still hangs over women and girls around the world. right from the womb, girls around the world are devalued and less wanted than boys, which translates into a host of deprivations, shaming, and maltreatment at each stage of their development: infancy, childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, mid-life, and as seniors (world bank 2022). third, a key underpinning to this social stratification of patriarchy is the underlying belief of male honor and shame which persist in the traditional layer of society and continue to elevate men as the rightful godlike rulers and owners of society. females are inferior, unclean, meant for subjugation, and to blame for evil in the world. this leaves a spiritual wound that needs deep healing from the roots up. “honor” is a word that harkens back to ancient patriarchal codes of honor and shame that shaped the cultural and religious presuppositions that to this day live on in our collective heritage of symbols, stories, and our consciousness as a human society (brown 2016). honor has a proud ring to it, but it has an underbelly of shame and stigmatization that operate on many levels of society: intrapersonal, interpersonal, and structural (uskul et al. 2023). artifacts of this patriarchal honor and shame culture live on in our religious narratives and cultural practices, creating a long, enduring global legacy of structural stigmatization of females from cradle to grave. civilization itself and all of our world’s great religious traditions were formed within the soil of patriarchal honor cultures so this is a big macro topic with so many layers that lie buried within many of our cherished traditions, taken-for-granted paradigms, and likewise within our own hearts and minds. it is this honor gap (jones and misolo 2018) that we cannot ignore if we truly seek to advance the work of mainstreaming gender balanced organizations and societies. there has been some effort within christian missiology to address the deeply rooted nature of honor-shame culturation around the world (georges 2017), but not much focus has been given to the gender dimension of its presence within our own tradition. the persistence of this pervasive and overarching honor gap between men and women also appears to be systemically undermining the good intentions and work toward gender equality mainstreaming within crd and other sectors as well. although more research needs to be done on this subject, anecdotally many women within crd also report a similar experience of something “in the airwaves” undermining gender mainstreaming efforts even within organizations supportive of women in leadership. finally, along with inherent social stratification rooted in the concepts of honor and shame, patriarchy is also underpinned and perpetuated by what has been called “system justification,” a social psychological propensity to defend and bolster the status quo, that is, to see it as good, fair, legitimate, and desirable. a consequence of this tendency is that existing social, economic, christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 jones and odhiambo, destigmatizing eve… 66 and political arrangements tend to be preferred, and alternatives to the status quo are disparaged. system justification refers, therefore, to an inherently conservative tendency to defend and justify the status quo simply because it exists, sometimes even at the expense of individual and collective self-interest” (system justification n.d.). much can be written on this concept of systems justification, but for our purpose here it can be drawn on to provide additional insight into the forces in our collective psychology as a human species that resist change and thus maintain hierarchical caste-like social systems. as applied to patriarchy, because the historic stigmatization of females as inferior, unclean, and to blame for evil is so ancient and wrapped with venerable tradition, patriarchy is particularly stubborn and in many places around the globe still has the appearance of being “honorable” and rooted in some fixed, immovable reality established by god. in summary, patriarchy continues to persist across the globe despite many waves of movements over many centuries to reclaim a more mutual rapport of shared honor and dominion across the gender line. in fact, by many measures, the needle has gone backwards for women and girls’ basic security, dignity, and human rights over the course of the pandemic and as authoritarian movements and patriarchal forms of religion have been ascendant around the world over the past few decades (cooper 2023). the work of gender equality mainstreaming will continue to hit regressive forces of resistance unless the underlying patriarchal myths and worldview are dislodged in our collective consciousness. as colleen samuel, founder of the diva shanti christian association and trust in india, describes in marriage and life after in india: addressing myths that enslave girls “a girl will continue to be exploited as long as the myths that oppress her are permitted to remain unchallenged and unchanged" (1998, 72). this is particularly applicable to the many today who work within christian relief and development efforts to stem the harsh humanitarian effects of patriarchal oppression around the world. they often find themselves doing very sensitive work within their own religious traditions to establish a clear framework for working to mainstream gender balance, equality, and shared honor and dignity. this stigmatization that persists around the world continues to draw strength from christianity as well as from the world’s other great patriarchal religious traditions. consider the following example from western kenya that analyzes the manifestations and repercussions of the structural stigmatization of widows, and how christian religious traditions and actors both alleviate and perpetuate stigma against widows. case study: the stigmatization and suffering of widows in rural kenya in kenya, much as in africa and asia, female widowhood is a young, gendered and a highly stigmatized social identity (the loomba foundation 2015). nearly half of widows in kenya are younger than 60 years old. for every one widower, there are at least eight widows in the country (kenphia 2018). stigma, expressed through patriarchal norms, beliefs and practices coded in religious traditions, local culture and statutory laws favor and honor men over women during widowhood (the loomba foundation 2015; federation of women lawyers kenya n.d.). when a husband dies, widows lose more than their husband. they lose their social status and become inferior, they lose relationships they had when their husband lived, and they also lose economic resources they enjoyed in their marriage. a threat of losing their children looms too should they make counter-cultural decisions like remarrying outside their deceased husband’s home (potash 1986). at a challenging time in a woman's life when she can use as much support as can be offered, such support is often withdrawn. just as “eve” is blamed for sin, and hence death entering the world, widows in rural kenya endure similar blame, shame, and stereotypes that devalue their humanity. when a husband dies, it is common for the widow to be blamed for his death, regardless of the cause of death. labeled “husband killer,” the widow is also believed to acquire a spiritual impurity (the shadow of death) that threatens the survival of her children and the wellbeing of her community. she becomes a “witch” and a “bad omen.” she is held responsible for all misfortunes that befall her family and community, and is excluded from all forms of social events to keep “bad luck” and death at bay. the only recourse is to become purified through a sexual cleansing ritual. sexual cleansing is a form of sexual exploitation that assumes women are unclean after the death of a husband, and that they can only be cleansed through sex with another man. sexual cleansing is often forced upon widows, and performed without protection against sexually transmitted diseases. it is important to note that men who lose their spouses are neither accused of killing their wives nor carry a bad omen that needs cleansing (ogweno 2010). luo culture in western kenya also restricts a widow’s right and freedom to remarry should she desire. in the traditional practice of ter in luo, (presently referred to as widow inheritance), a husband’s brother or cousin, called jater, is required to “marry” a willing widow to keep the children and property of the deceased within the family (perry et al. christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 jones and odhiambo, destigmatizing eve… 67 2014). this practice preceded the advent of christianity in kenya in the colonial periods, but it is difficult to assess the directionality of the influences during colonialism. a similar practice is seen in the biblical stories of widows like tamar (genesis 38) and ruth (ruth 2) and has been called levirate marriage, levir referring to husband’s brother in latin. in kenya, ter has eroded to further objectify widows. the combination of hiv/aids epidemic and clan-based sexual networking in the era prior to condoms and antiretroviral therapy led to massive family deaths and the fear of widows as hiv carriers. despite deceased husband’s brothers opting out of this practice due to fear of hiv, ter is still justified for women. presently, non-relative joter (plural), demand payment for levirate services, require sex in levirate arrangements, and exploit resources at the widows’ disposal. these commercial joter have sexual relationships with multiple widows concurrently, increasing the risk of sexually transmitted illnesses during widowhood (perry et al. 2014). in short, levirate and patrilineal custom have contributed to the current climate in kenya in which widows are socially undesirable for marriage in kenya. widowers, on the other hand, know no such restrictions on their sexuality and remarriage desires. despite progress in laws that promote gender equality in kenya, statutory laws applicable during widowhood mimic patriarchal and religious norms that uphold male dominance, including economic dominance, and plunge widows into more poverty (ogweno 2010; federation of women lawyers, kenya n.d.). often, widowhood means the loss of a breadwinner and the expansion of a widow’s financial responsibilities. this situation is most desperate for women whose husbands prohibited their participation in the labor force, insisting they remain housewives. the desperation deepens when the same widows suffer property disinheritance, with their land, animals, and household effects grabbed by their in-laws who cling to patrilineal customs of inheritance and see the widows as responsible for the death of their son, and thus undeserving of their son’s or family’s wealth. although kenya’s constitution protects women’s rights to inheritance, the law does not guarantee a widow’s inheritance rights. widows have user and not ownership rights of their matrimonial property. if widows remarry outside their deceased husband’s home, they lose all rights to the matrimonial property she had with the deceased husband. on the other hand, widowers have full ownership rights over matrimonial property (ogweno 2010). such “feminization of poverty” in widowhood contributes to the negative view of widows as “social burdens” and “beggars” to be avoided in the community. 1 these figures are taking from nyanam’s 2023 baseline survey for all widows newly enrolling in their programs. nyanam, a local non-profit in western kenya, was created to address this stigmatization of widows and its negative impact on their spiritual, health, social, and economic well-being. it was established by a widow’s daughter, jackie odhiambo, who found her childhood experience of her widowed mother, grandmother and aunt as resilient, hardworking, and caring family leaders, to be irreconcilable with the social stigmatization of widows she witnessed as an adult. during a community borehole project that she and her team inspired, jackie observed how widows who spoke their ideas were ignored or plagiarized; when they succeeded, someone else claimed the credit; and when something went wrong in the borehole project, widows were blamed. these negative patriarchal attitudes challenged her to secure a platform for women’s leadership in the community. because widows were the least respected women in the community, jackie and her team chose to center widows as leaders, hence founding nyanam with a mission to prepare widows as leaders of community transformation. while many widows lean on their local churches for spiritual encouragement and social connection, the churches are a mixed blessing. the widows at nyanam come from over 50 villages and in various church denominations, and 60% of 512 widows who completed nyanam’s baseline survey noted a change in their relationship to faith and religion since widowhood, with 87% of those noting a change saying they became more spiritual or religious during widowhood. 1 sometimes, this is a result of removed restrictions a husband may have imposed on his wife’s religious practices. other times, this is a result of acute isolation and suffering that leave widows feeling they have only god to lean on. and still, only 1.5% of nyanam widows mention receiving support beyond preaching and selfsought individual counseling in the church. from nyanam’s discussions with widows on these statistics, most churches either lack or neglect tailored programming for widows. moreover, some churches still embrace and perpetuate the harmful norms, traditions, and narratives surrounding widowhood, with congregants alienating widows who do not conform to traditional rituals such as sexual cleansing, as they would be seen as defiling the house of god. others seek to repress these traditions and cultural norms, but do so not by speaking out against them but by punishing widows who engage in them. in these churches, traditions such as levirate marriage are banned, and widows are denied holy communion if they enter into levirate relationship. some churches also exploit religious texts like isaiah 54:5 (“for your maker is your husband”) and 1 timothy 5:6 (“but the widow who lives for pleasure is dead even while she lives”) to christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 jones and odhiambo, destigmatizing eve… 68 induce guilt among young widows who may still desire a husband. broadly-speaking, the churches have discarded the biblical responsibility of caring for widows, with the majority not offering practical support, whether material or counseling to help widows overcome trauma from societal stigma. nyanam’s ongoing research on stigmatization of widows (soon to be published) also shows how the stigmatization of widows extends to their children. in the extended family setup, the children of widows are either overworked or assigned jobs that other parents would not want their own children to do, like buying alcohol or cigarettes for adults. whenever a group of children is involved in mischief, the widow’s child among them is scapegoated and blamed for the bad behavior in the group, whether or not they had a role in it. when gifts are distributed, those of lowest value are given to the children of widows. widows’ children born out of ter (levirate arrangements) face even more stigmatization. culturally, they are children of the deceased husbands, but legally they are children of jater. they face discrimination in both families and struggle with belonging, especially male children whose identity is linked to establishing a home and need an inheritance of land to do so. stigma reduces social support for widows, encourages hostility toward and humiliation of them and their children, and entrenches loneliness that started with the loss of a husband, creating a significant toll on widows’ mental, physical, social, and economic health. many widows internalize the stigma and develop feelings of inferiority, viewing themselves as “unable,” “empty,” “helpless,” “hopeless,” “outcasts,” “unworthy,” and “social burdens” (the loomba foundation 2015). they remain silent or comply with oppressive social impositions due to fear of further disdain or violence. in addition, this kind of stigma for female widowhood is a root cause of health and wealth inequalities, as well as social and sexual vulnerabilities women experience in widowhood. for example, practices of sexual cleansing and diminished opportunity to be in stable and healthy sexual relationships might explain why widows of reproductive age in kenya have a hiv prevalence of 32%, the highest in any social group in the country, with no government program tailored to address hiv/aids in widowhood (ministry of health 2018). widowed women also experience twice as much gender-based violence as married women (kenya national bureau of statistics 2023). some avoid seeking healthcare especially for reproductive health issues due to fear of stigmatization. kenya still has no social protection programs for widows, with the government assuming that if help is provided to the poor and the elderly, then it will reach widows too. this situation of widows in contexts such as rural kenya contributed to the united nation’s (un) first resolution on addressing the situation of widows that passed in 2022 and now needs concerted action (addressing the situation of widows 2022). tools for tackling the structural stigmatization of women and girls if i had an hour to solve a problem i’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions. (popular saying, often attributed erroneously to albert einstein (quoteresearch 2014)) the stigmatization of widows in kenya is just one manifestation of the persistence of the legacies of the ancient curse of eve in our world today and shows the compounding nature of gender-based stigmatization that contains other “deeply discrediting attributes” that create multi-faceted “stains” on the person’s perceived character. as briefly mentioned above, this due to a combination of local society’s historical traditions and the influence of christianity-informed culture. these stigmas lead to compounding vulnerabilities and social alienation. efforts within the christian relief and development sector that seek to address the particular challenges widows and other women and girls face cannot make much progress without addressing the more deeply rooted and pervasive stigmatization of femaleness. the global dominance of christianity around the world and its influence on the evolution of civilization in general and patriarchal gender norms in particular, suggest that there are deeper layers of work needed within the crd sector. the persistent “honor gap” needs to be “let out of the vents,” as it continues to stall and undermine efforts toward gender equality mainstreaming both within crd organizations and the communities where they serve. christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 jones and odhiambo, destigmatizing eve… 69 these deeper layers can be conveyed through the image of the iceberg, a simple and frequently used visual in the work of systems change to depict the forces and patterns that are less visible but need to be addressed to keep a problem from repeating over and over again (leverage points and the iceberg model, n.d.). in this case, the work of systems change—to shift from a patriarchal to a gender equal social structure— must involve addressing this deep, historic, persistent subconscious stigmatization. this builds on the legacies of the continual work of (re)interpretation of scripture which many women (and men) over the centuries have engaged in as a source of liberation and equality for women in the context of misogyny. many working within crd have been formed within the very narratives, beliefs, and theological frameworks surrounding the negative characterization of eve. as contemporary people of faith whose religious imaginations in particular have been so shaped by symbols, thought patterns, beliefs, and narratives developed within the soil of our ancient patriarchal faith traditions, we live within the logic and mythology of the patriarchal stigma. it is often easier to work on the humanitarian level to mitigate the symptoms of the patriarchal stigma than to work to address the ways our own faith traditions create such problems. often our traditions have been and continue to be complicit in creating and reproducing this root patriarchal stigmatization that creates such a harmful honor gap between men and women. the following five specific tools may help christian relief and development organizations tackle this problem as they progress in becoming “active restorers of shalom” as described in the principles for gender equality for development organizations (wheaton network initiative n.d.). naming and reversing the shaming: the first tool for addressing the ongoing stigmatization of women is to bring that stigmatization to the forefront and tackle it head-on in order to reverse it. the mythology of the “curse of eve” is a reality in the water that christian relief and development organizations swim in (ritenbaugh 1997a). there are three ways to name and then engage in reversing this shaming. the first way of tackling this misguided mythology is to use the quotes mentioned previously from the church fathers and present-day theologians such as ritenbaugh (1997a) to facilitate reflections on how the “curse of eve” is still playing out in and around the work of crd in terms of the culture of patriarchal honor and shame that persists. two key questions can be asked as prompts along with a facilitated exercise that follows them: 1. in your work and personal life, where have you encountered this very ancient stigmatization of females (“curse of eve”) described above and its myriad ugly contemporary consequences? start with the beginning of the life cycle and move through each stage of female human development and have people reflect on where they see remnants of this culture of patriarchal honor that has devalued and shamed the female body and personhood. where do they see any remnants of the double standard of male honor and female shame/blame alive and well in various traditional practices, beliefs, and norms? what are some examples still happening today where women are easily blamed and scapegoated for bad things that happen? don’t take too long to discuss each example, just create a list and carry this forward into a subsequent conversation where you will delve in more deeply to explore the role of religion in both perpetuating this ancient “curse of eve” and also its potential to dispel and transform this. if you need some “inspiration,” have people read “son preference” (n.d.) and “what is period stigma” (resnick 2021) to see how stigmatization starts right from birth and surrounds a girl’s passage through puberty. 2. where, in subtle and blatant ways, do you see an “honor gap” between women and men in your own place of worship and/or in your own crd organization? is there something in the air that feels like it needs to be let out of the vents? second, this stigmatization can also be named and reversed by encouraging the reinterpretation of the ancient creation story. drawing on curiosity and lament https://www.academyforchange.org/2019/12/07/leverage-points-iceberg-model-economic-development/ christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 jones and odhiambo, destigmatizing eve… 70 (two additional tools detailed below) at how our origin story has been used over the centuries to shame, blame, and degrade the humanity of women, should lead to a posture of intentional care in how to tell stories from the bible. as thoughtful christians who know the harm that misuse of the bible has done over the course of church history, we should be open to rethinking our own taken-for-granted presumptions about the meaning and details of this ancient story. part of this process is embracing the story of adam and eve for what it is: an ancient hebrew “origin story” that leads us to ponder the divine mysteries of our origins as a human species. a helpful resource in rereading and reinterpreting eve is to draw from jewish ways of interpreting the hebrew text that involve four levels of approaching the text to make room for the symbolic and esoteric meaning. these are: 1) peshat (ט שָׁ meaning plain or simple. it :(פְּ is used for the most obvious and simple meaning of a text; 2) remez (ֶרֶמז): meaning hints. it is used for the allegoric (hidden or symbolic) meaning beyond the literal sense; 3) derash ( ׁ ַרשדְְּּ ): meaning inquire or seek. it is used for the comparative (midrashic) meaning, looking at similar occurrences of a word. 4) sod (ֹודס): meaning secret or mystery. it is used for the esoteric and mystical meaning, as often used in the kabbalah (jonathan33m4 2012). the third way to engage in reversing the shaming that comes from the stigmatization of eve and its legacies is to honor eve as the “mother of all living,” a title that eve bore before she was shamed, framed, and blamed. as crispe (2006) describes in “chavah: mother of all life,” “chavah” is a derivative of the hebrew word chayah, meaning “living one.” chavah embodies both the essence of life itself and the creative ability to grant that life to others. the idea of “mother of all living” expresses not only the ability to physically give birth, but also to create, nourish, and enhance all facets of life. this is the ability of a mother—to take something from the state of potential, develop it, and bring it to actualization through her creative abilities. eve, then, among many other things, represents the feminine creative spirit which is ever birthing all of life into being. she embodies the female face of god, past, present, and future in all the daughters of eve who have been mothering life in all its forms. like all stigmas, this man-made stigma reflects more about the group who created the stigma than the stigmatized group. thankfully, this man-made curse has never been able to take away eve’s intrinsic glory and dominion. it shines from within each baby girl born each day and reminds us of who we truly are. eve’s intrinsic glory as the “mother of all living” shines within all of the ways that women mother one another and ourselves to be and become who we truly are. and though we have largely made god into the image of men and forgotten the womb who bore us, as it says in isaiah 49:14, thankfully the mothering side of god has not forgotten us: “can a mother forget her infant, and be without tenderness for the child of her womb? even should she forget, i will never forget you.” the best way to lift a stigma is to bow in honor to the stigmatized group and see the divinity she has always possessed as an imagebearer of god. curiosity: the second tool for tackling stigmatization is that of encouraging curiosity. there is so much about the version of this ancient creation narrative of adam and eve that should prompt a basic sense of curiosity. because of the deep stigma that this story has been complicit in sanctioning and reinforcing, christians should be open to a posture of looking again at all the inherited presumptions of what this story means. the first step in enlisting curiosity as a tool in one’s toolbox within crd is to create spaces for open and safe dialogue around underlying religious and cultural presumptions that operate within and around the work of the organization or community, in particular related to gender norms and conventions. it is not easy to criticize sacred stories and traditions, but to move forward as a human family we must be willing to look at the stories and interpretations we receive from the past and continue to pass down. every culture and religion has patriarchal sacred cows that function very similarly to the framing, shaming, and scapegoating of eve. this is hard but necessary work if we truly want to lift the heavy intergenerational stigma that women and girls still experience around the world. cultivating a posture of curiosity around holy texts like the bible and such an ancient, foundational story as the genesis creation account might seem intimidating or too academic for the work of crd, but finding ways to achieve this is important. deep listening: the third tool for tackling the stigmatization of eve and of women in general is deep listening, especially through the approach of storytelling. destigmatizing eve requires that we listen to unvarnished stories of stigmatized women who are brave enough to share the horrors they have endured at the risk of being restigmatized. by valuing and centering personal stories, we use our presence to create sacred spaces where women can be who they truly are. nyanam widows rising, for example, has made oral storytelling an integral part of its activities, creating times and moments throughout its work when widows can share their personal stories as part of a healing process. crd organizations can likewise incorporate storytelling. sometimes deep listening requires that we ask no questions, but instead simply receive and carry the story along with the sharer. our attentive and compassionate presence is its own intervention, and deep listening is love. christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 jones and odhiambo, destigmatizing eve… 71 lament: the fourth key tool for tackling the stigmatization of women is that of encouraging openness to and the practice of lament. in the sacred space of listening, our hearts open into a posture of lament and we find a deeper spiritual unity that is stronger than any stain or curse we humans have inflicted on one another. lament not only connects our hearts with an individual girl or woman who has been stigmatized, it connects us with the past and the future. our hearts are wiser and more powerful than we know. crd organizations can embrace lament, especially in moments of tragedy, to encourage full expression of not only grief but also anger at subjugation of women. in a moment of shared lament, there is deep healing beyond words that can liberate both the hearer and the sharer of a story. insights on how to respond to the injustice can emerge. contemplation: the fifth and final tool for tackling the stigmatization of women is related to the practice of lament – contemplation which refers to the wordless prayer of the heart. this knowing of the heart unites us with our shared humanity and the timeless river of life which is ever healing and renewing all things. centering our faith traditions in this stream of consciousness—the real ground of faith deeper than all of the creeds and tomes of theology which have attributed this curse of eve to god—is a pathway of restorative prayer to participate in the deep healing of our world’s gender wounds and connect in silence with what the spirit of true liberation which is our shared birthright as a human family. crd organizations interested in tapping more into this contemplative stream of knowing can first of all acknowledge that this domain of consciousness exists, is part of our native endowment as human beings, and is a lost current we can seek to reclaim within our own faith traditions. as a crd organization, there are many ways you can weave in moments of contemplation into the rhythm of your organization, including: periodic guided, silent prayer which invite a shift into the love that exists at the center of one’s being; guided seasonal retreats in the more contemplative seasons of the church calendar (advent and lent) including time to get outside to commune with the presence of the divine in the beauty of creation; and reading books together to support people to dig a little bit deeper into the rich contemplative tradition of wisdom found within the bible and many branches within christianity. it can be very hard to become more aware of how our own cherished faith tradition has for so many centuries created and used its theology and storytelling platform to sanction patriarchal social structures in this shaming and stigmatizing way. finding a deeper, liberating current of faith within oneself and within one’s own tradition can be incredibly grounding as one continues the journey of awareness to shed so many of the layers that continue to oppress and stigmatize women and girls. if you are interested in reclaiming this contemplative current of faith as an individual or within your organization, there are so many resources to draw from too numerous to list here, some of which are the following: • the center for action and contemplation, • the transforming center, • leaderships transformations, inc., • pax center for christian spiritual formation, • lastly, please listen to this short animated video understanding our history of patriarchy: what’s faith got to do with it? created by girl child long walk, which has been translated into 13 languages to invite people of faith to go on this journey to reclaim the emancipatory current of faith from within our patriarchal religious traditions. conclusion as a human family, our well-being on this planet is tied to reclaiming the wisdom and honor of the female half of the human family. naming this oldest curse/stigma for what it truly is—the oldest fake news in history books—is a needed step towards restoring balance between the masculine and feminine in our world and liberating ourselves from the ancient roots of this oldest oppression. naming it will not, once and for all, let the stigma out of the windows and vents; but by calling it a stigma, not just a humanitarian problem, it will disarm it of some of the intergenerational holding power it still has on our collective psyche. together in so many different types of work, christian relief and development organizations can do what no other sector working for gender equality can do: bravely and sensitively use its platform to name and reverse the curse that patriarchy (not god) inflicted on the female half of the human family. this is not easy work because there are so many patriarchal sacred cows we need to be willing to look at and let go of to transform into something else. we like to think of our beliefs and doctrines as set and fixed but, like everything in life, these two were created by humans (in many iterations over the course of history) and so can be recreated by humans to live up to our highest and best timeless values. with one foot in the pond of patriarchal theology and the other in justice, relief, and development work, crd is well-situated for this work of deep listening and healing to reclaim something precious that has been lost and find tangible and practical ways to honor what has been stigmatized. may it be so. https://cac.org/ https://transformingcenter.org/ https://www.leadershiptransformations.org/ https://www.paxcenter.org/ https://youtu.be/32_esnvr89g https://youtu.be/32_esnvr89g https://girlchildlongwalk.org/ https://girlchildlongwalk.org/ christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 jones and odhiambo, destigmatizing eve… 72 references “addressing the situation of widows: resolution/adopted by the general assembly.” 2022. united nations general assembly. https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/3965710?ln=en. bernbaum, tova. 2005. “the curse of eve: a jewish perspective on women in society.” thejewishwoman.org. https://www.chabad.org/thejewishwoman/article_ cdo/aid/90765/jewish/the-curse-of-eve.htm bridget, walker. 1999. "christianity, development, and women's liberation." gender and development 7 (1): 15–22. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4030366 brown, ryan. 2016 (september 16). “12 proven facts about honor cultures.” honor shame: resources for global ministry. https://honorshame.com/12-proven-facts-abouthonor-cultures/ christ, carol. 2022 (january 17). “carol christ’s legacy: patriarchy as a system of male dominance created at the intersection of the control of women, private property, and war, part 1.” feminism & religion. https://feminismandreligion.com/2022/01/17/caro l-p-christs-legacy-patriarchy-as-a-system-of-maledominance-created-at-the-intersection-of-thecontrol-of-women-private-property-and-war-part-1by-carol-p-christ/ clair, matthew. 2018. “stigma.” in core concepts in sociology, edited by j. michael ryan, 318–321. hoboken: john wiley & sons. https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/matthewclair/files /stigma_finaldraft.pdf cooper, cynthia. 2023 (december 1). “advocates decry the rise of authoritarians, the demise of women’s rights.” american bar association.. https://www.americanbar.org/groups/diversity/wo men/publications/perspectives/2023/november/ad vocates-decry-rise-authoritarians-demise-womensrights/ crandall, barbara. 2012. gender and religion: the dark side of scripture. 2 nd ed. london: continuum international publishing group. crispe, sara esther. 2006. “chavah: mother of all life.” thejewishwoman.org. https://www.chabad.org/thejewishwoman/article_ cdo/aid/335943/jewish/chavah-mother-of-alllife.htm dictionary.com. 2024. “stigma.” retrieved september 8, 2024 from https://www.dictionary.com/browse/stigma early, joseph e., jr. 2022. because of eve: historical and theological survey of the subjugation of women in the christian tradition. irvine: universal publishers, inc. https://universalpublishers.com/m/book.php?method=isbn&bo ok=1627344098 federation of women’s lawyers, kenya. n.d.. women’s land and property rights in kenya: training handbook. nairobi: fida-kenya. https://land.igad.int/index.php/documents1/countries/kenya/gender-3/625-women-s-landand-property-rights-in-kenya/file georges, jayson. 2017. “the good news for honorshame cultures: uncovering a core aspect of god’s mission.” lausanne movement. https://lausanne.org/content/lga/2017-03/thegood-news-for-honor-shame-cultures. goffman, erving. 1963. stigma: notes on the management of spoiled identity. englewood cliffs: prentice hall. harari, yuval noah and zaplana ruiz, ricard (illustrator). 2022. unstoppable us, volume 1: how humans took over the world. new york: bright matter books. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60690713 -unstoppable-us-volume-1 jonathan33m4. 2012 (december 5). “the four levels of biblical interpretation.” https://www.dabrittain.com/wp/wpcontent/uploads/2016/10/4%20levels%20of%20 biblical%20interpretation.pdf. jones, emily nielsen and dominic misolo. 2018. the girl child & her long walk to freedom: putting faith to work through love to break ancient chains. boston: imago dei fund. https://girlchildlongwalk.org/author/emily-nielsenjones-and-domnic-misolo/ kenya national bureau of statistics. 2023. “kenya demographic and health survey 2022: key indicators report.” nairobi. https://dhsprogram.com/pubs/pdf/pr143/pr143. pdf “leverage points and the iceberg model in economic development.” n.d. academy for systems change. https://www.academyforchange.org/2019/12/07/le verage-points-iceberg-model-economicdevelopment/ mackenzie, steven. 2022 (december 8). "yuval noah harari: 'we are living inside the dreams of dead people.'" big issue. https://www.bigissue.com/culture/books/yuvalnoah-harari-we-are-living-inside-the-dreams-ofdead-people/ https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/3965710?ln=en https://www.chabad.org/thejewishwoman/article_cdo/aid/90765/jewish/the-curse-of-eve.htm https://www.chabad.org/thejewishwoman/article_cdo/aid/90765/jewish/the-curse-of-eve.htm https://www.jstor.org/stable/4030366 https://honorshame.com/12-proven-facts-about-honor-cultures/ https://honorshame.com/12-proven-facts-about-honor-cultures/ https://feminismandreligion.com/2022/01/17/carol-p-christs-legacy-patriarchy-as-a-system-of-male-dominance-created-at-the-intersection-of-the-control-of-women-private-property-and-war-part-1-by-carol-p-christ/ https://feminismandreligion.com/2022/01/17/carol-p-christs-legacy-patriarchy-as-a-system-of-male-dominance-created-at-the-intersection-of-the-control-of-women-private-property-and-war-part-1-by-carol-p-christ/ https://feminismandreligion.com/2022/01/17/carol-p-christs-legacy-patriarchy-as-a-system-of-male-dominance-created-at-the-intersection-of-the-control-of-women-private-property-and-war-part-1-by-carol-p-christ/ https://feminismandreligion.com/2022/01/17/carol-p-christs-legacy-patriarchy-as-a-system-of-male-dominance-created-at-the-intersection-of-the-control-of-women-private-property-and-war-part-1-by-carol-p-christ/ https://feminismandreligion.com/2022/01/17/carol-p-christs-legacy-patriarchy-as-a-system-of-male-dominance-created-at-the-intersection-of-the-control-of-women-private-property-and-war-part-1-by-carol-p-christ/ https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/matthewclair/files/stigma_finaldraft.pdf https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/matthewclair/files/stigma_finaldraft.pdf https://www.americanbar.org/groups/diversity/women/publications/perspectives/2023/november/advocates-decry-rise-authoritarians-demise-womens-rights/ https://www.americanbar.org/groups/diversity/women/publications/perspectives/2023/november/advocates-decry-rise-authoritarians-demise-womens-rights/ https://www.americanbar.org/groups/diversity/women/publications/perspectives/2023/november/advocates-decry-rise-authoritarians-demise-womens-rights/ https://www.americanbar.org/groups/diversity/women/publications/perspectives/2023/november/advocates-decry-rise-authoritarians-demise-womens-rights/ https://www.chabad.org/thejewishwoman/article_cdo/aid/335943/jewish/chavah-mother-of-all-life.htm https://www.chabad.org/thejewishwoman/article_cdo/aid/335943/jewish/chavah-mother-of-all-life.htm https://www.chabad.org/thejewishwoman/article_cdo/aid/335943/jewish/chavah-mother-of-all-life.htm https://www.dictionary.com/browse/stigma https://universal-publishers.com/m/book.php?method=isbn&book=1627344098 https://universal-publishers.com/m/book.php?method=isbn&book=1627344098 https://universal-publishers.com/m/book.php?method=isbn&book=1627344098 https://land.igad.int/index.php/documents-1/countries/kenya/gender-3/625-women-s-land-and-property-rights-in-kenya/file https://land.igad.int/index.php/documents-1/countries/kenya/gender-3/625-women-s-land-and-property-rights-in-kenya/file https://land.igad.int/index.php/documents-1/countries/kenya/gender-3/625-women-s-land-and-property-rights-in-kenya/file https://lausanne.org/content/lga/2017-03/the-good-news-for-honor-shame-cultures https://lausanne.org/content/lga/2017-03/the-good-news-for-honor-shame-cultures https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60690713-unstoppable-us-volume-1 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60690713-unstoppable-us-volume-1 https://www.dabrittain.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/4%20levels%20of%20biblical%20interpretation.pdf https://www.dabrittain.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/4%20levels%20of%20biblical%20interpretation.pdf https://www.dabrittain.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/4%20levels%20of%20biblical%20interpretation.pdf https://girlchildlongwalk.org/author/emily-nielsen-jones-and-domnic-misolo/ https://girlchildlongwalk.org/author/emily-nielsen-jones-and-domnic-misolo/ https://dhsprogram.com/pubs/pdf/pr143/pr143.pdf https://dhsprogram.com/pubs/pdf/pr143/pr143.pdf https://www.academyforchange.org/2019/12/07/leverage-points-iceberg-model-economic-development/ https://www.academyforchange.org/2019/12/07/leverage-points-iceberg-model-economic-development/ https://www.academyforchange.org/2019/12/07/leverage-points-iceberg-model-economic-development/ https://www.bigissue.com/culture/books/yuval-noah-harari-we-are-living-inside-the-dreams-of-dead-people/ https://www.bigissue.com/culture/books/yuval-noah-harari-we-are-living-inside-the-dreams-of-dead-people/ https://www.bigissue.com/culture/books/yuval-noah-harari-we-are-living-inside-the-dreams-of-dead-people/ christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 jones and odhiambo, destigmatizing eve… 73 merriam-webster online dictionary. n.d. “stigma.” retrieved september 8, 2024 from https://www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/stigma meyers, carol. 2021 (june 3). “eve: bible.” the shalvi/hyman encyclopedia of jewish women. https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/eve-bible# milne, pamela. 1989 (march 25). “genesis from eve’s point of view.” the washington post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions /1989/03/26/genesis-from-eves-point-ofview/dc371184-1f4c-4142-ac2d-d5efee72a0da/ ministry of health, kenya. 2022 (august). “kenya population-based hiv impact assessment (kenphia) 2018: final report.” nairobi. https://phia.icap.columbia.edu/wpcontent/uploads/2022/08/kenphia_ago25digital.pdf mowcszko, marg. 2013 (january 24). “misogynistic quotations from church fathers and reformers.” https://margmowczko.com/misogynist-quotesfrom-church-fathers/ ogweno, catherine a. 2010 (november). “widows and widowers experiences and their coping mechanisms in a deprived community: a case study of kibera slums.” master’s thesis, university of nairobi. http://erepository.uonbi.ac.ke/bitstream/handle/1 1295/4779/ogweno%20_widows%20and%20w idowers%20experiences%20and%20their%20c oping%20mechanisms%20in%20a%20deprived %20community.%20a%20case%20study%20of %20kibera%20slum.pdf?sequence=1 oxford english dictionary. 2023. “patriarchy.” new york: oxford university press. oxford languages english dictionary. n.d. “stigma.” retrieved september 8, 2024 from https://www.google.com/search?q=define%3a+stig ma&rlz=1c1gcea_enus1076us1076&oq=defi ne%3a+stigma&gs_lcrp=egzjahjvbwuybggae euyotigcaeqrrg60geimja3nwowajsoag cwage&sourceid=chrome&ie=utf-8 perry, brian, lenna oluoch, kawango agot, jamilah taylor, jacob onyango, lilian ouma, caroline otieno, christina wong, and amy corneli. 2014. “widow cleansing and inheritance among the luo in kenya: the need for additional womencentred hiv prevention options.” journal of the international aids society, 17 (1), 19010. https://doi.org/10.7448/ias.17.1.19010 potash, betty, ed. 1986. widows in african societies: choices and constraints. stanford: stanford university press. quoteresearch. 2014 (may 22). “i would spend 55 minutes defining the problem and then five minutes solving it.” quote investigator. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/05/22/solve/ resnick, ariane. 2021. “what is period stigma?” verywell mind. https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-periodstigma-5116231 ritenbaugh, richard t. 1997a. “a woman’s world.” bible tools. https://www.bibletools.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/l ibrary.sr/ct/pw/k/347/a-womans-world.htm samuel, colleen. 1998. "marriage and life after in india: addressing myths that enslave girls." in the girl child & her long walk to freedom: putting faith to work through love to break ancient chains, emily nielsen jones and domnic masolo, eds. boston: imago dei fund. https://girlchildlongwalk.org/. schnorr von carolsfeld, julius. 1860. die bibel in bildern [picture bible]. leipzig: georg wigands. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/die_bibel_i n_bildern#/media/file:schnorr_von_carolsfeld_ bibel_in_bildern_1860_008.png “son preference.” n.d. united nations population fund. https://www.unfpa.org/son-preference “system justification.” n.d. psychology iresearchnet. https://psychology.iresearchnet.com/socialpsychology/group/system-justification/ swaim, emily. 2023 (july 25). “types of stigma and steps to stamping it out.” healthline. https://www.healthline.com/health/what-is-stigma the loomba foundation. 2015. the global widows report 2015: a global overview of deprivation faced by widows and their children. https://www.euromedwomen.foundation/pg/en/do cuments/view/8065/the-global-widows-report2015-a-global-overview-of-deprivation-faced-bywidows-and-their-children tarico, valerie. 2013 (july 1). “twenty vile quotes against women by church leaders from st. augustine to pat robertson.” https://valerietarico.com/2013/07/01/mysogynistq uoteschurchfathers/ tripp, linda. 1999. “gender and development from a christian perspective: experience from world vision.” gender and development 7 (1): 62–68. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4030372 uskul, ayse, susan cross, and ceren gunsoy. 2023. “the role of honour in interpersonal, intrapersonal and intergroup processes.” social and personality psychological compass 17 (1): e12719. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmc1 0078545/ walker, bridget. 1999. “christianity, development, and women's liberation.” gender and https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/eve-bible https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1989/03/26/genesis-from-eves-point-of-view/dc371184-1f4c-4142-ac2d-d5efee72a0da/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1989/03/26/genesis-from-eves-point-of-view/dc371184-1f4c-4142-ac2d-d5efee72a0da/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1989/03/26/genesis-from-eves-point-of-view/dc371184-1f4c-4142-ac2d-d5efee72a0da/ https://phia.icap.columbia.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/kenphia_ago25-digital.pdf https://phia.icap.columbia.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/kenphia_ago25-digital.pdf https://phia.icap.columbia.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/kenphia_ago25-digital.pdf https://margmowczko.com/misogynist-quotes-from-church-fathers/ https://margmowczko.com/misogynist-quotes-from-church-fathers/ http://erepository.uonbi.ac.ke/bitstream/handle/11295/4779/ogweno%20_widows%20and%20widowers%20experiences%20and%20their%20coping%20mechanisms%20in%20a%20deprived%20community.%20a%20case%20study%20of%20kibera%20slum.pdf?sequence=1 http://erepository.uonbi.ac.ke/bitstream/handle/11295/4779/ogweno%20_widows%20and%20widowers%20experiences%20and%20their%20coping%20mechanisms%20in%20a%20deprived%20community.%20a%20case%20study%20of%20kibera%20slum.pdf?sequence=1 http://erepository.uonbi.ac.ke/bitstream/handle/11295/4779/ogweno%20_widows%20and%20widowers%20experiences%20and%20their%20coping%20mechanisms%20in%20a%20deprived%20community.%20a%20case%20study%20of%20kibera%20slum.pdf?sequence=1 http://erepository.uonbi.ac.ke/bitstream/handle/11295/4779/ogweno%20_widows%20and%20widowers%20experiences%20and%20their%20coping%20mechanisms%20in%20a%20deprived%20community.%20a%20case%20study%20of%20kibera%20slum.pdf?sequence=1 http://erepository.uonbi.ac.ke/bitstream/handle/11295/4779/ogweno%20_widows%20and%20widowers%20experiences%20and%20their%20coping%20mechanisms%20in%20a%20deprived%20community.%20a%20case%20study%20of%20kibera%20slum.pdf?sequence=1 http://erepository.uonbi.ac.ke/bitstream/handle/11295/4779/ogweno%20_widows%20and%20widowers%20experiences%20and%20their%20coping%20mechanisms%20in%20a%20deprived%20community.%20a%20case%20study%20of%20kibera%20slum.pdf?sequence=1 https://www.google.com/search?q=define%3a+stigma&rlz=1c1gcea_enus1076us1076&oq=define%3a+stigma&gs_lcrp=egzjahjvbwuybggaeeuyotigcaeqrrg60geimja3nwowajsoagcwage&sourceid=chrome&ie=utf-8 https://www.google.com/search?q=define%3a+stigma&rlz=1c1gcea_enus1076us1076&oq=define%3a+stigma&gs_lcrp=egzjahjvbwuybggaeeuyotigcaeqrrg60geimja3nwowajsoagcwage&sourceid=chrome&ie=utf-8 https://www.google.com/search?q=define%3a+stigma&rlz=1c1gcea_enus1076us1076&oq=define%3a+stigma&gs_lcrp=egzjahjvbwuybggaeeuyotigcaeqrrg60geimja3nwowajsoagcwage&sourceid=chrome&ie=utf-8 https://www.google.com/search?q=define%3a+stigma&rlz=1c1gcea_enus1076us1076&oq=define%3a+stigma&gs_lcrp=egzjahjvbwuybggaeeuyotigcaeqrrg60geimja3nwowajsoagcwage&sourceid=chrome&ie=utf-8 https://www.google.com/search?q=define%3a+stigma&rlz=1c1gcea_enus1076us1076&oq=define%3a+stigma&gs_lcrp=egzjahjvbwuybggaeeuyotigcaeqrrg60geimja3nwowajsoagcwage&sourceid=chrome&ie=utf-8 https://doi.org/10.7448/ias.17.1.19010 https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/05/22/solve/ https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-period-stigma-5116231 https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-period-stigma-5116231 https://www.bibletools.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/library.sr/ct/pw/k/347/a-womans-world.htm https://www.bibletools.org/index.cfm/fuseaction/library.sr/ct/pw/k/347/a-womans-world.htm https://girlchildlongwalk.org/ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/die_bibel_in_bildern#/media/file:schnorr_von_carolsfeld_bibel_in_bildern_1860_008.png https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/die_bibel_in_bildern#/media/file:schnorr_von_carolsfeld_bibel_in_bildern_1860_008.png https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/die_bibel_in_bildern#/media/file:schnorr_von_carolsfeld_bibel_in_bildern_1860_008.png https://www.unfpa.org/son-preference https://psychology.iresearchnet.com/social-psychology/group/system-justification/ https://psychology.iresearchnet.com/social-psychology/group/system-justification/ https://www.healthline.com/health/what-is-stigma https://www.euromedwomen.foundation/pg/en/documents/view/8065/the-global-widows-report-2015-a-global-overview-of-deprivation-faced-by-widows-and-their-children https://www.euromedwomen.foundation/pg/en/documents/view/8065/the-global-widows-report-2015-a-global-overview-of-deprivation-faced-by-widows-and-their-children https://www.euromedwomen.foundation/pg/en/documents/view/8065/the-global-widows-report-2015-a-global-overview-of-deprivation-faced-by-widows-and-their-children https://www.euromedwomen.foundation/pg/en/documents/view/8065/the-global-widows-report-2015-a-global-overview-of-deprivation-faced-by-widows-and-their-children https://valerietarico.com/2013/07/01/mysogynistquoteschurchfathers/ https://valerietarico.com/2013/07/01/mysogynistquoteschurchfathers/ http://www.jstor.org/stable/4030372 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmc10078545/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmc10078545/ christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 jones and odhiambo, destigmatizing eve… 74 development 7 (1): 15–22. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4030366 warden, alejandra. 2022. remembrance: a vision of the sacred feminine and the renewal of the earth. boulder: albion-andalus books. wheaton network initiative on gender, development and christianity. n.d. “principles for gender equality for development organizations.” christian relief, development, and advocacy 6 (2): 1-3. wijngaards institute for catholic research. n.d. “women were considered ritually unclean.” www.womenpriests.org. https://womenpriests.org/tradition/uncleanwomen-were-considered-ritually-unclean/ world bank. 2022 (october 1). violence against women and girls – what the data tell us. https://genderdata.worldbank.org/datastories/overview-of-gender-based-violence/ zurlo, gina a., todd m. johnson, and peter f. crossing. 2024. "world christianity 2024: fragmentation and unity." international bulletin of mission research 48 (1): 43–54. doi: 10.1177/23969393231201817. emily nielsen jones is founding partner/ trustee, imago dei fund & girl child long walk author email: emilynj@imagodeifund.org jackline a. odhiambo is the founder & executive director at nyanam widows rising in kenya. she has an msc in public health and is a ph.d. fellow in sustainable development for health at university of california san francisco and maseno university. author email: jackline.odhiambo@nyanam.org http://www.jstor.org/stable/4030366 https://womenpriests.org/tradition/unclean-women-were-considered-ritually-unclean/ https://womenpriests.org/tradition/unclean-women-were-considered-ritually-unclean/ https://genderdata.worldbank.org/data-stories/overview-of-gender-based-violence/ https://genderdata.worldbank.org/data-stories/overview-of-gender-based-violence/ https://imagodeifund.org/ https://girlchildlongwalk.org/ mailto:emilynj@imagodeifund.org https://www.nyanam.org/ mailto:jackline.odhiambo@nyanam.org christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 anonymous, a conversation with a christian woman from manipur, india 162 a conversation with a christian woman from manipur, india anonymous interview conducted and edited by karie riddle how do ordinary christians respond when their neighbors are under attack? in this interview, a christian woman from manipur, india, shares stories of friends and family who have housed conflict refugees, prayed with them, cooked for them, and generally maintained community despite the constant threat of violence. these stories illustrate the important difference that ordinary people can make in an armed conflict, and they reveal the importance of maintaining belief in christ as the prince of peace. when resources are scarce and patience wears thin, christ can inspire us to a renewed commitment to love and care for even our enemies. the interviewee in this conversation wishes to remain anonymous due to potential danger that might come to herself and her family, if certain groups identify her as speaking out. while she herself does not currently live in manipur, she is sharing the experiences of close relatives who have lived there throughout the recent violence that sparked in may of 2023. the interviewee also has decades of experience working as a peacebuilder in the long-simmering, low-intensity armed conflict that has troubled the state since the late 1950s, including violence among different ethnic groups and between the state of india and some of the people of manipur. her remarks are therefore grounded in both the contemporary conflict and her lifetime of trying to pursue peace as a follower of christ. the violence that currently troubles the state began on may 3, 2023, when kuki and naga people (two tribal groups, both minorities) held a peaceful rally against the meitei majority group’s recent demand to receive official scheduled tribe (st) status under the indian constitution. st status entails new access to land and special reserved seats in government, jobs, schools, and more. while the meiteis are indeed a marginalized indigenous group when compared to mainland indians, they are the majority group that drives and therefore benefits the most from the mainstream economy, the political institutions, and the culture of the small state of manipur. tribal groups like the kukis and nagas thus argue that st status for meiteis would benefit a majority group which is already dominant in the state, undermining its original goal of lifting up marginalized tribal groups (hussain 2023; piang 2023). violence has sparked primarily between kukis and meiteis, with human rights abuses occurring at the hands of militant groups on both sides. tribal groups and meiteis alike have called for more intervention from both the state and national levels of government, to little avail (viswanath 2023; rajkumar 2024). human rights actors and peacebuilders have been attacked by militant groups, and there appears to be no relief in sight for over 70,000 displaced people (nepram, taha, and inman 2023; “manipur violence….” 2023). in this context, we hear our interviewee reflecting on what has worked for her in the past and what seems to be effective right now. she particularly emphasizes the importance of face-to-face relationships and trustbuilding work; the dependence that peacebuilders have on jesus as the prince of peace; and the place for radical generosity in the face of need. she speaks primarily about the kind of informal work that ordinary christians can do in the midst of conflict, although she also mentions the role of some non-profit organizations. what are some of the things that you are aware of that religious, and particularly christian, people are doing to help protect one another when they are surrounded by violence? the moment the news [of the violence of may 3] spread in several areas, when kukis whose houses had christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 anonymous, a conversation with a christian woman from manipur, india 163 been burned came to naga places, in the initial stage, they cannot just go to kangpokpi, or lamka, or even to moreh [all cities or regions in manipur]; they had to find immediate neighboring places, meaning they have to go to naga villages to take shelter. many of the different naga and kuki villages are close together, so that’s how they go to take shelter. they would shelter in churches, in schools, in homes; lots of people open up their homes. one naga village i heard about, the next day, they took a truckload of people donating bags of rice or clothes or utensils, anything they have, to go down and help. that’s not just one village, but all the neighboring villages were able to do that and host people. the kukis cannot run to the group that’s attacking them [the meiteis], so they have to find other tribal groups that are not in the conflict to take shelter. [both kukis and nagas are christians]; they are believers, so they know they are brothers and they are the ones to help. despite whatever the condition there, helping the ones who are escaping from the burning villages or attacks, they put those in priority. one lady in my village says she was ordinarily never having any visitors, but she was able to host three to four families. she says it is like a celebration, because when you have christmas or new year or easter, people celebrate in community. we know it is a conflict situation, but having that fellowship with these different families that come from different villages, it was like a kind of fellowship celebration. my [relative] in the beginning, she was hosting five families with my [other relative]. daily they would cook, and after a month they also asked the families, okay, now you guys take turns and cook. it was like cooking for a feast, you are cooking for fifty people, for some they cook for 100 people! whatever you have, you have to share, whatever you need, you go and ask your neighbors, because they know we are there to help. i think my relatives did this because they have gone through a similar conflict [many years before], where our whole village burned down and we became homeless in a second, and the next day all the houses are just in cinders. in your heart you still see your house and the things you have, but in the physical sense you don’t have anything—these people are in the same situation. you don’t have any second thought, “oh no i should save this [for myself].” no, you feel that they need it the most. you have to serve them, and you have to share what you have. that willingness to host conflict refugees is really amazing! how long would people stay; what did that look like? some stayed for four or five months; some villages still have them. they are also giving shelter to the ones whose villages are not burned, but they have to escape because the places where they live, they are just in the buffer zone where you can be attacked any night, or any day, so those people have to escape. not all places are secure; where armies are stationed the armies would protect people, but that protection is not everywhere so for their own safety they have to leave and take shelter. in my relatives’ house there are four rooms. they cooked in the open with firewood. you cannot cook on small gas for twenty to thirty people. they sleep in four beds, the king or the queen size, just crammed together five or six people in one bed and that way they sleep. some, they are putting a mattress on the floor, so in all the four rooms they sleep. they have just one toilet at that house, so all of them had to go to my other relative’s house, where they have at least three toilets there. they just had to make use of every facility so that everyone gets to do stuff, whether to bathe or to use the restroom, that’s how they had to share. in the school setting, if it’s a wooden floor, people just give them a mat. they may have a duvet-type blanket, or some other blankets they may spread out and sleep on. so if you are in the hill village, when you have a wooden house that is good, you can lie down on the wooden floors. those are really difficult conditions! i remember reading a lot of news articles about how it was hard to get supplies in, to get food and medicine in. but the way you described it earlier, the mood was almost more like a holiday. so how did that feeling arise despite these difficult conditions? how did they maintain this good cheer, especially for four or five months of hosting people in these cramped conditions? my relative said, they always prayed with them, they’d pray together, every night, sometimes even daytime while doing stuff they still pray. prayer is something that also really comforts them, not only them, even my people, because my sister said every night there would be more than ten drones flying above our house in our area, there would be a vehicle that comes at 1:00 or 2:00 am and she would pray because we don’t know whose vehicle that is, or if it is someone that has come to attack them. she would pray most of the night. there would be some of the ladies, the mothers of those who were there, who would join them to pray. the kids, they would cry, they would laugh, you cannot control the kids because they want to play. they would sometimes nag their parents and cry. sometimes when the children cry at night she would be so scared; “if people hear us and if people come, because people know that in my neighborhood we are just a few of us, but now when the drone is watching they might even see christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 anonymous, a conversation with a christian woman from manipur, india 164 us, what is going on,” so she used to be very afraid and she would keep praying all the time. were there close pre-existing relationships between the hosts and the refugees? of course, they know each other. after the 1990s conflict, there were many new people who had moved in, but we know them, unless there are very new ones who come in, but people who had been there, any of the tribes, they know us, and we also know them. this is all really amazing to hear, because that 1990s conflict that you’re referencing, known as the famous “naga-kuki clash,” caused a lot of deaths. but now you are describing these two tribal groups helping each other and fellowshipping together as christians. was there no lingering animosity there, from that older conflict? i think people just felt the need to help. if they were still like, “i don’t even want to talk to you, i can’t be with you,” if that sense ever arose, then people might not even help to the extent that they helped. i know there are people who write still today [about] hatred, trying to spread hate and lies, but then, for those people i feel that they haven’t really forgiven one another or that they still bear grudges. to me even back then [in the 1990s] i would say, whatever they have done it is done, but me or my family or other people, what we need to do is offer forgiveness, because when god asks us to forgive seventy times seven, even if you are in anger, you shouldn’t let the anger continue beyond sunset. so when we say we are a follower of christ, if we still have grudges and do not forgive the other, how can we say we are a believer? as a believer in christ if you have that heart to forgive, that is where you are able to go beyond your tribe, your affinities, because as the children of god, every nation, every tribe, every tongue, for god we will be all one and that is his plan that we will be all together. so you are brothers and sisters in christ. that should be the most important thing that we need to take on. and unless you forgive, you cannot move on. i think because of genuine love people have come out to extend help as a family, to your family. and in those days in the 1990s i said we need to learn to live together, because we cannot say “you go away and i will live on my own.” my people, they even gave the land and that’s how the village got established [for the other group], so we have to live together. some people in my tribal group think i’m speaking for the other group. but to me i said, “i know my house was burned, my village was burned, and we lost everything, but i must learn to forgive, i must learn what christ has taught us, how he forgives the sinner, how he asks that we should also be able to forgive.” so many people would say you are siding with the other group, but me, i feel that is what needed to be done. do you think that these kinds of christian values that you’re describing—the need to forgive seventy times seven, the need to look beyond your affinities because of the ideal of heaven—does that extend to non-christians? does that extend to hindus in manipur? very much! god said love your enemies. in such a violent conflict now, you are being told that others are already your enemy. but then my family, we have pastors that we knew from even the meitei families, so we called them, we tried to send them whatever help we could, so it was not just to the tribal groups but to the meitei families that we knew who were affected, whose church was burned down. so love shouldn’t be only to your own people or the believers as such, but to those who didn’t believe. i’ll ask you now to take a step back and reflect a little bit on some potential lessons for our journal’s audience. as you are thinking about people working in development all over the world, primarily through christian nongovernmental organizations (ngos), do you have any advice based on your many years of christian peacebuilding work? what are some things that have worked for you, some sources of inspiration that keep you going, or some things that you think are really important? 1. i think, the first thing is, as a believer, when you see jesus’ command to love our enemies, to love your enemies as yourself, that’s difficult, but he already also forewarned us that we will have all these hardships in life. so i think we know that only jesus himself can give us true peace. we may do things [in our churches or in our organizations] to say, “this is peacebuilding, this thing may even work.” but i see true dependence on christ; i believe that he’s the true prince of peace. he only can give us peace. i need to have that peace myself, and unless i’m having that peace within me, it’s going to be difficult to work for peace, especially in this situation where you know you have one group as a believer and then you have the other who are not believers in christ. you cannot just give things, the material things, and that suffices as peacebuilding, but that building trust, i think trust is very christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 anonymous, a conversation with a christian woman from manipur, india 165 important here. how can i build trust? well, who sees me as his enemy? building that relationship is very important and it cannot be done in one meeting, one day, one month, it is going to be a long-term process and i think there will be failures. right after the peace deal there will be some killings that happen. you may say, oh this doesn’t work; if you give up, then there won’t be a chance to move ahead. despite whatever attacks we may face, we have to have that faith that this will work for our betterment. 2. i think acceptance of others is also something that has to be put as a priority because we know we are different. i cannot make meitei to be like a tribal or the tribal to be like a meitei or the christian to be like a hindu. so we may have our cultural differences, we may have all other differences, but to the believers i would say, when you put christ first as your example then we will have that faith in us, whatever the challenges may be in building the trust to gain acceptance. in all the circumstances i'm facing i still won’t give up because people have to truly see that i genuinely love them, i genuinely mean for their good or our collective good. because if they see me as working for my own good, for my own benefit, they will never accept it. 3. aid is also important, but in our part of the world we never talk about trauma counseling, all the traumas we face from living under a militarized regime. trauma counseling is very much needed. even myself, how i got healed, it was just learning and exposing myself to different people who are also going through similar conflicts. my exposure to the truth and reconciliation work in south africa, that trip where we visited people, the victims’ families, talking to parties, meeting the ngos that work there, meeting the government officials, hearing their stories, how they worked. that was something that helped me because we never go through any trauma counseling. here i also want to focus on how biblical trauma counseling can be incorporated for the region, if the organizations can support sponsoring people who can be trained or people who can be sent to work in that area, that can be helpful apart from the aid. we don’t need just developmental aid, but the psychological part, the counseling part would be very important, that can really benefit people to overcome. 4. there is an organization that is doing really good development work in manipur, the rural women upliftment society (https://rwus.org/), if people want to support what they are doing to help the refugees. having a connection with people on the ground is needed and helpful; only then can you know who is the neediest, who can get help from what we are doing. references hussain, afrida. 2023 (may 4). “how manipur violence unfolded: a timeline of events.” india today. https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/manipurviolence-tribals-protest-meiteis-kukis-clash-timelineof-events-2368651-2023-05-04 piang, l. lam khan. 2023 (may 26). “meiteis have not been ‘denied’ st status. exclusion was their own choice.” the wire. https://thewire.in/caste/meitei-st-status-exclusionchoice viswanath, sunita. 2023 (july 13). “the indian state of manipur is on the verge of a civil war. modi hasn’t said a word about it.” time magazine. https://time.com/6293988/modi-silence-manipurindia/ rajkumar, bobichand. 2024 (november 30). “failure of manipur government to protect lives and properties has put coexistence of different ethnic groups in jeopardy.” imphal review of arts and politics. https://imphalreviews.in/failureof-manipur-govt-to-protect-lives-and-properties-hasput-coexistence-of-different-ethnic-groups-injeopardy/ nepram, binalakshmi, manal taha, and kris inman. 2023 (october 12). “in northeast india, manipur’s violence echoes sudan’s darfur.” united states institute of peace. https://www.usip.org/publications/2023/10/northea st-india-manipurs-violence-echoes-sudans-darfur “manipur violence: death toll touches 175 mark, few stolen weapons recovered, says police.” 2023 (september 15). hindustan times. https://www.hindustantimes.com/indianews/manipur-toll-175-few-stolen-weaponsrecovered-police-101694716778763.html https://rwus.org/ christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(2), winter 2024 madriz bolaños, obedience to god requires decolonization 125 obedience to god requires decolonization: reflections of a practitioner maria fernanda (mafer) madriz bolaños before commenting on crda’s special issue on decolonization, i want briefly to explain the lenses through which i am reading. i'm not an expert on decolonization and i am not an academic. instead, i am a practitioner who has worked at compassion international in central america for close to twenty years. the roles i have had have been different and varied; some have been in direct implementation, and others have involved supporting local church partners so they can implement the program. a lot of my time has been serving in a regional role and most of my dayto-day work involved taking the big strategy for standards developed by our headquarters and mediating and bridging that perspective with the different contexts and nuances and perspectives of our local country teams. now, more recently, i have served in a global role and have lots of learning and lots of work to do. i was born and grew up in guatemala, in a marginal community, in poverty. even though i was not subjected to it myself, i nevertheless witnessed the discrimination that my fellow guatemalans of indigenous descent suffered, a reality that continues to the present day. reading this special issue as a non-expert on this topic provided me with space to reflect and gave me language and additional definitions. i think i'm in a better place now to identify areas in my own work where more intentional work is needed. the articles all conclude that the importance about decolonizing international development lies in the image of god, imago deo, that all human beings are created equal and in the image of god. the core question we need to answer is — are we going to accept this truth and are we going to take action? are we convinced enough to act on it? we could also argue that localization, when solutions are developed locally, is more effective, more relevant in the context and more likely to be sustained over time. but it's very clear to us that decolonization is important, because it is an act of obedience to god. it goes beyond mere effectiveness. this work is also important because, as we're seeking to do justice in our work and humbly obey god, he transforms us. we get a truthful understanding of who we are, and then we are able to perceive and participate in god's plan for reconciling the world to himself. he's the protagonist and the owner of the plan, and we have the privilege of joining him in what he's already doing in the communities we seek to serve. i want to underscore practical lessons that i got, especially from the articles about mcc, tearfund, and anadesa. their journeys and collective efforts bring valuable insights for all of us in the realm of international development. the first such insight is that these organizations created spaces for reflection on the word of god with regard to their mission and their approach to mission. they were willing to struggle with the tough questions. some of these questions are— what are the primary interests we are concerned with? who has the power in decision-making in this relationship? which voices do we hear most often? what is our role in what god is doing in the communities where we want to serve? as a result of their commitment and their openness to be shaken by scripture, all three organizations achieved deeper and clearer understandings of their mission and the meaning of justice. the other important practice to highlight is that clear understanding moved them to take action, and they moved from direct implementation and central design to accompaniment and localized design. as a result, they witnessed increased partner confidence and institutional capacity in their partners. one of the organizations, tearfund, made changes to their organizational structure to include more voices from the majority world in the board and executive roles. as a result, they experienced more diverse voices, both in setting the agenda and enriching debate. these organizations also let go of some extreme biases. they became willing to accept that they didn’t know everything and became more open to local tools and approaches. as a result, they were able to see more creative solutions, mixing local global south perspectives with global north perspectives, and also were able to support them and promote the use of locally developed tools. finally, these organizations were humble, but they were also bold enough to christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(2), winter 2024 madriz bolaños, obedience to god requires decolonization 126 acknowledge where they needed to decolonize their work and take action. i was especially impressed with the article about anadesa and mcc, and i want to highlight some of their significant insights. anadesa is an indigenous community development entity located in santiago atitlan, guatemala. they started working with mcc as a partner right around the time when mcc was moving away from direct implementation and toward partnership and accompaniment. as part of their journey, it became evident to mcc that anadesa did very transformative development work, but in unique ways, ways that were nevertheless very effective in their context. anadesa also talked about their work in unique ways. their leaders and staff gradually changed their story and their narrative from talking about needs and lacks to a conversation about human rights, worth, and vision. they were now able to push back on mcc and express their preferences as an institution and in partnership. finally, it is encouraging to learn how anadesa’s female staff were able to identify when they were being subject to coloniality, the legacy of colonialism, and discrimination by their fellow indigenous male colleagues who were leaders of their organization at the time. because they had a truth-based view of who they were and a vision for what their organization should be or what they what they wanted it to be, they put a plan into action to change the leadership, and they were able to get accompaniment and support from their partner mcc to see it become a reality. this is particularly exciting, because one can see how the women internalized the truth that all humans are created in the image of god, which gave them confidence to be able to identify and overcome coloniality within their own community and organization. contemplating the future of decolonization, i believe we will fail to progress unless our organizations spend time in the word thinking about mission, but also bring in more diverse voices from the majority world to set the agenda for these conversations. i also believe that this needs to be done alongside an effort to bring donors and funders with us on the journey of understanding god’s truth about equality and justice. maria fernanda (mafer) madriz bolaños directs compassion international’s partnership efforts focused on mobilizing and strengthening the capacity of local church partners. author email: mmadriz@compassion.com. mailto:mmadriz@compassion.com christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 reynolds, kretzer chun, and bronkema, gender mainstreaming and … 37 gender mainstreaming and christian relief, development, and advocacy organizations: introduction amy reynolds, joanna kretzer chun, and david bronkema introduction this special issue of the christian relief, development, and advocacy journal is focused on bringing to the forefront and tackling a major issue that exists in evangelical organizations affiliated with the accord network and beyond: the lack of the full inclusion of women in the theologies, cultures, practices, and leadership of christian organizations. for organizations, like those in accord, who are committed to restoring shalom, pursuing right relationships, and empowering those around them, this lack of inclusion hinders their mission. the articles in this issue come from a variety of scholars and practitioners, some based at accord organizations and others connected with ngos inside and outside the united states. in some ways, these articles are the product of years of conversation in the faith-based development sector as a whole. for example, a report by the world humanitarian summit (boan 2016) highlights the need for faith-based academic institutions to more rigorously engage in research with development groups, especially around macro-level development issues. we see research and conversations around gender mainstreaming as one such effort. indeed, motivated by this charge, a group of christian development practitioners and scholars came together around this topic in 2018, leading to the formation of the wheaton network initiative on gender, development, and christianity. this group collaboratively launched the first round of the principles for gender equality in development organizations (2019) [www.wheaton.edu/gender]. these working principles are intended for christcentered development agencies and are included directly following this introduction (6-8). the co-editors of this special issue are aware that naming gender inequality and calling for increased gender mainstreaming may immediately rub some in the evangelical sector the wrong way, because of the association of this topic and those terms and words with a liberal perspective. this topic has become even more controversial as this issue goes to publication in march 2025, because of the very strong political pressure to move back from intentional efforts to create more inclusive environments. in fact, one of the six articles that was to be featured in this special issue, a case study on gender mainstreaming in an evangelical organization, had to be pulled because of current political realities. yet relegating certain key issues to the domain of those deemed to be more progressive, and washing one’s hands of them as part of that process, is a poor and spiritually dangerous excuse for not engaging and thus avoiding scriptural and prayerful testing of the arguments in this important conversation. in other words, simply dismissing concerns about gender equality and other issues of inclusion within our evangelical organizations as arising from inherently suspicious and threatening viewpoints may limit the work of and quench the holy spirit (1 thessalonians 5:19-22). therefore, we hope and pray that all who read through the articles of this issue, including this introduction, will approach this topic prayerfully, humbly, and with openness to the leading of the spirit; as co-editors of this issue, we have tried to do the same. to this end, and in this context, it is important to provide clarity on how the term “gender” is being used and focused on in this special issue, since different people mean and perceive different things when they use or see this term. when we use the word gender, we are not talking primarily about issues of gender identity or sexuality. rather, we use this term to be able to talk about how perceptions and expectations around roles, attributes, and capacities of males and females vary greatly between countries and cultures where most of our organizations do our work, and because framing women’s equality as gender inequality helps us acknowledge that these gender roles are culturally shaped. gender as a term also acknowledges that the experiences of both women and men must be christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 reynolds, kretzer chun, and bronkema, gender mainstreaming and … 38 considered when we discuss equality and justice for women. our prayerful hope is that this special issue will both challenge and encourage everyone in christian relief, development, and advocacy organizations who seek to be faithful in pursuing the call to gender equality and gender mainstreaming in their institutions, and we have assembled this set of articles to try to achieve that goal. in what follows, we provide what we hope will be helpful background to them, first briefly exploring the concept of gender mainstreaming in development and discussing the central role of theology in informing such efforts. we then describe how and why this special issue as a whole came about and why we believe this topic to be so important for christian relief, development, and advocacy efforts. finally, we summarize the key themes of each of the articles that follow. development as a gendered issue and gender mainstreaming within the international development sector, gender inequality is recognized as a central concern that impacts the well-being of communities. although the topic of women’s marginalization has been discussed in many development conversations over the last 50 years, the focus on organizational structures and more systemic issues became more important in the last several decades. as discussed partially in reynold’s article in this issue reporting on the demographics of accord organizations, there have been different movements in the development space as regards gender equality. early on, in the 1970s, specific questions arose around how women were faring in development, and the women in development (wid) paradigm gained prominence. it focused attention on the well-being of women in development efforts, given the fact that most of the world’s poor were women, and that women were often not given equal access to development resources (tinker 2004). wid was replaced in the 1990s by the gender and development (gad) paradigm, which shifted attention to the systems (such as policies, market dynamics, and cultural understandings) that shaped gender relationships and ideas. instead of considering particular challenges faced by women in development projects carried out within an unquestioned system, the focus was turned to the systems that created these conditions (tinker 2004). gender mainstreaming is related to this latter approach. gender mainstreaming as a term was popularized in the late 1980s, but its roots lie in the broader history of international development, rights movements, and organizational change. gender mainstreaming is an approach that suggests that all areas that impact women and men—legislation, policies, or programs, in all areas and at all levels—must consider the concerns and experiences of both women and men so that both benefit and inequality is not perpetuated (beijing 1995). in practice, the idea of gender mainstreaming presents gender equality not as a separate agenda for women alone, but as a central organizational aspiration to be integrated into all shared efforts by women and men. first proposed at the third conference on women in 1985, and formally featured at the fourth conference on women in beijing in 1995, it built on key milestones, such as the first world conference of the international women’s year convened by the united nations in mexico city in 1975 and the un general assembly's proclamation of 19761985 as the united nations decade for women. gender mainstreaming is thus a long-standing approach, recognized and emphasized by ngos, governments, and agencies worldwide, that seeks to address gender disparities and promote gender equality in every facet of organizational and societal life. over these last thirty years, it has been both lauded as having led to significant improvements as well as critiqued for how it has been implemented and for not having done enough (see, for example, moser and moser 2005, tiessen 2007, meier and celis, 2011, keleher 2013, milward et al. 2015, and kotze et al. 2021). as with all ideas, paradigms, and movements, it is crucial to subject them to the testing of scripture and the spirit; to that end, as we have interacted with gender mainstreaming over the years and come together to share our organizational experiences, we have become convinced that unless we address underlying theological perspectives and practices, any efforts around diversity will stall. what makes the articles in this issue so truly powerful is that they do just that; they build upon the principles of gender mainstreaming, add the theological component, and direct this integrated offering toward our christ-centered organizations. this offering is needed more than ever in this present moment. although evangelical christian organizations represent a significant segment of the relief and development sector, they do not make up a significant percentage of those engaged in the gender mainstreaming conversations, at either the national or international level. this may be in large part because of a polarization that appears to exist between the “secularized” international development sector and the religious sector out of which these evangelical sectors were birthed, leading the latter to shy away from that kind of engagement. this chasm has been the subject of commentary by scholars, in particular marshall (2010) who notes that the “secular” development sector sees religion as having a mostly negative impact on women’s agency, whereas religious actors often believe that common development models undermine the family and religious values. still, she notes that these christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 reynolds, kretzer chun, and bronkema, gender mainstreaming and … 39 actors often share an emphasis on dignity and have some similar programs. whether or not this is a significant driving force behind the lack of engagement by evangelical christian relief, development, and advocacy organizations with gender mainstreaming issues, it is also the case that there is a dearth of adequate research around the intersection of gender, faith, and development. some groups studying religion, like the joint learning initiative on faith and local communities, stand out for their research focus on a number of issues around faith-based development, including research on gender based and sexual violence. further, a volume on gender, faith, and development (tomalin 2011), delves into a number of case studies around how religious actors engage with gender in development programs and efforts. but these are more exceptions than the norm in research on religious efforts around gender equality. in the current context it is even more vital to help those working in evangelical relief, development, and advocacy organizations understand the importance of prayerfully considering how they might be called to engage with their own gender mainstreaming issues. this special issue of crda is an attempt to do that, as well as to remedy the gap in the research itself. theology and commitments to gender equality given these gaps in the development literature on both the secular and faith-based side, it is not surprising that there has been a lack of adequate research on how theology shapes the gendered work of development organizations. three elements came to the fore along those lines as we began our work on this special issue. first, in the literature that does exist, religious communities are either often viewed as playing the role of merely pushing back on real feminist goals (marshall 2010), or as inappropriate communities to critically assess and critique (tomalin 2011). those involved in gender and development work tend to view religious ideologies and assumptions as being a negative factor, or they tend to leave them unexamined in relationship to that work. this is despite the fact that there are good examples of organizations that use theology and biblical texts as foundations for seeking transformation of harmful gender norms in programming, including those mentioned below and in the articles that follow. in short, how religion shapes the ideologies and assumptions around gender in christian relief, development, and advocacy organizations as well as among the people they serve, whether through current ideas or the continued importance of historical ideas (as highlighted in jones and odhiambo contribution on patriarchy), is understudied by the research community. second, one crucial area that has been underserved in the scholarly and practitioner attention in this field has been the implications of religion for women’s representation in christian development organizations. many christian organizations lack clear and transparent statements about women in leadership and gender equality; in fact, senior leaders of many christian nonprofits disagree on what the official theological views of their organizations are regarding gender equitable relationships and women in leadership. reynolds explored this confusion in her original work back in 2014 that considered the broader constellation of christian nonprofits. part of this confusion likely stems from the fact that a majority of accord members have ecumenical identities (offutt and reynolds 2019) and may bring together groups with dissimilar ideas around gender; this also points to the crucial fact that an examination and clear enunciation of theology is a necessary first step for christian organizations in implementing gender equality and inclusion efforts (birmingham and simard 2022, reynolds and curry 2017). this is something that appears still to be missing, as shown by reynolds’s updated study in this issue. this is not to say that all christian development organizations have failed to examine or are not currently probing these questions about the role of their faith when it comes to gendered realities. for example, world vision has been involved in asking these questions for several decades (tripp 1999); catholic relief services (crs) has pioneered a couples strengthening approach known as “the faithful house” with a strong set of tools for facilitators (crs 2009; brewster-lee 2011). as highlighted by deepan and blake (2025), tearfund has a long list of resources and programming around issues of christian theology and gender. others in the accord community, although a minority, could be mentioned as well, and we hope more examples can and will be shared in subsequent issues of the journal. but in general, the evangelical christian development sector lacks this deep theological reflection, something smith’s contribution (2025) alludes to when he analyzes how attention to scripture and gender in development theologies often engages with gender only superficially. third, we find that theologies in general have gendered implications even when gender is not the focus. the article in this issue by lee, for example, highlights the way that theological language around rescue, and the process (including the who) of theologizing in anti-trafficking work has had negative unintended impacts for many marginalized women. while lee focuses on anti-trafficking, she brings up broader questions for organizations involved in the work of women’s empowerment. christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 reynolds, kretzer chun, and bronkema, gender mainstreaming and … 40 in summary, while the enduring problem of gender inequality is an issue for the development sector as a whole, this problem is even more entrenched and significant for evangelical christian international development organizations. few of these organizations have robust gender equity or inclusion efforts or are actively pursuing gender mainstreaming, and as highlighted in reynolds’ contribution to this issue, women’s representation in leadership of christian organizations falls short of what we see in the sector more broadly, meaning that men are largely leading the work of organizations in the accord network. moreover, there seems to be a tendency for many male leaders to see gender inequality as a women’s issue. deepan and blake’s article here stands out as an example of a male leader rejecting this narrative. conclusion as signaled by the various articles in this collection, good resources exist that point toward ways to institute gender mainstreaming. we especially emphasize the “principles for gender equality in development organizations” mentioned above and published following this introduction. drawing on a history of past sources, most recently the gender practitioners collaborative (2017), these principles are specifically aimed at christian organizations and were created by the wheaton network initiative for gender, development, and christianity. they start by emphasizing the shared commitment to shalom (#1), before delving into five specific principles related to gender mainstreaming efforts—clear theological commitments (#2), measurement and accountability (#3), resourced intentionality (#4), appropriate hr policies/protocols (#5), and gender inclusive programming (#6). the articles in this issue embody these principles. reynolds starts off the issue by providing a quantitative overview of the gendered leadership realities in accord organizations, which highlights the lagging presence of women at all leadership levels. the second article, the original case study of how an organization implemented these principles, unfortunately had to be pulled just before this issue went to press, as noted above. this special issue moves then to theological concerns that underpin the topic of gender mainstreaming in critical way: first jones and odhiambo discuss the historical embeddedness of patriarchy and its impacts for christians, and then smith provides different approaches organizations might find helpful in doing a deep dive into the old testament and god’s heart for gender justice. to round things out theologically, lee, while not focused solely on biblical studies or theologies, provides a helpful call to expand the christian theological voices that development organizations consult and that shape our approaches to justice. this issue concludes with a testimonial by deepan, one of the central architects of tearfund’s transforming masculinities curriculum, co-written with blake, who draws on the insights of those around deepan. in sharing his personal and ongoing journey toward being an ally to women around issues of gender inequality, he invites male allies to engage more deeply in this work. we hope this concluding article reminds all christian organizations of the ongoing, neverfinished work of christian individuals and organizations in learning, listening, and pursuing shalom in this world, especially around matters of gender. we hope and pray too that the ideas, resources, and underlying theologies will help christian organizations and leaders think further about what new directions championing gender equality might look like in their organizations, and what useful tools might help us all along the way. references boan, david, ed. 2016. the role of faith-based academic institution in sustainable development: recommendations from wheaton regional meeting. birmingham, beth, and eeva sallinen simard. 2022. creating cultures of belonging: cultivating organizations where women and men thrive. downer’s grove: intervarsity press. brewster-lee, dorothy. 2011. the faithful house: core module manual and fertility awareness methods. baltimore: catholic relief services in collaboration with maternal life uganda. https://www.crs.org/sites/default/files/toolsresearch/the-faithful-house_0.pdf catholic relief services. 2009. the faithful house: training of facilitators manual. catholic relief services in collaboration with maternal life uganda and maternal life international. https://www.crs.org/sites/default/files/toolsresearch/faithful-house-training-of-facilitatorsmanual-secular_0.pdf curry, janel, and amy reynolds. 2016. “missional effectiveness: achieving institutional goals and mission,” report for the women in leadership national study. gordon college. eyben, rosalind, and laura turquet. 2013. feminists in development organizations: change from the margins. warwickshire: practical action publishing. freeman, dena. 2018. “from christians doing development to doing christian development: the changing role of religion in the international work of tearfund.” development in practice 28 (2): 280–291. https://www.crs.org/sites/default/files/tools-research/the-faithful-house_0.pdf https://www.crs.org/sites/default/files/tools-research/the-faithful-house_0.pdf https://www.crs.org/sites/default/files/tools-research/faithful-house-training-of-facilitators-manual-secular_0.pdf https://www.crs.org/sites/default/files/tools-research/faithful-house-training-of-facilitators-manual-secular_0.pdf https://www.crs.org/sites/default/files/tools-research/faithful-house-training-of-facilitators-manual-secular_0.pdf christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(2), winter 2025 reynolds, kretzer chun, and bronkema, gender mainstreaming and … 41 gender practitioners collaborative. 2017. minimum standards for mainstreaming gender equality. available at https://genderstandards.org/. accessed october 2024. keleher, helen. 2013. “policy scorecard for gender mainstreaming: gender equity in health policy.” australian and new zealand journal of public health 37 (2): 111–117. kotze, shelley, ana blazheva, and mirek dymitrow. 2021. “ticking boxes and clocking in: a critical view of gender mainstreaming in labour-market integration.” norwegian journal of geography 75 (3): 171–186. full article: ticking boxes and clocking in: a critical view of gender mainstreaming in labour-market integration marshall, katherine. 2010. “development, religion, and women’s roles in contemporary societies.” the review of faith and international affairs 8 (4): 33–40. meier, petra, and karen celis. 2011. “sowing the seeds of its own failure: implementing the concept of gender mainstreaming.” social politics: international studies in gender, state & society 18 (4): 469–489. https://doi.org/10.1093/sp/jxr020 moser, caroline, and annalise moser. 2005. “gender mainstreaming since beijing: a review of success and limitations in international institutions.” gender and development 13 (2): 11–22. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20053145 milward, kirsty, maitrayee mukhopadhyay, and franz f. wong. 2015. "gender mainstreaming critiques: signposts or dead ends?" ids bulletin 46 (4): 75–81. https://doi.org/10.1111/17595436.12160. offutt, stephen, and amy reynolds. 2019. “christian ideas of development: understanding the current theories, networks, and priorities of accord organizations.” christian relief, development, and advocacy 1 (1): 1–14. reynolds, amy. 2014. “gender dynamics in evangelical institutions: women and men leading in higher education and the nonprofit sector.” report for the women in leadership national study. gordon college. reynolds, amy, and janel curry. 2017. “best practices for attracting, promoting, and retaining female leadership in christian organizations.” report for the women in leadership national study. gordon college. tiessen, rebecca. 2007. everywhere/nowhere: gender mainstreaming in development agencies. west hartford: kumarian press. tinker, irene. 2004. “challenging wisdom, challenging policies: the women in development movement.” in developing power: how women transformed international development, eds. fraser and tinker. new york: feminist press at cuny. 65–76. tripp, linda. 1999. “gender and development from a christian perspective: experience from world vision.” gender and development 7 (1): 62–68. tomalin, emma, ed. 2011. gender, faith, and development. warwickshire: practical action publishing. amy reynolds is an associate professor of sociology at wheaton college, where she specializes in economic globalization, religion, and gender. author email: amy.reynolds@wheaton.edu joanna kretzer chun has over twenty years of international development experience. she is passionate about seeing women and men fully live into their gifts and callings. joanna holds master’s degrees in intercultural studies and family studies from fuller seminary. author email: joanna.kretzer@gmail.com david bronkema is a professor at eastern university in the organizational leadership program and an editor of this journal. he worked in the field of international development for thirteen years and enjoys the continuing process of working with and learning from colleagues. author email: dbronkem@eastern.edu https://genderstandards.org/ https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00291951.2021.1929453 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00291951.2021.1929453 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00291951.2021.1929453 https://doi.org/10.1093/sp/jxr020 https://www.jstor.org/stable/20053145 https://doi.org/10.1111/1759-5436.12160 https://doi.org/10.1111/1759-5436.12160 mailto:amy.reynolds@wheaton.edu mailto:joanna.kretzer@gmail.com mailto:dbronkem@eastern.edu christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(1), summer 2024 addink de graaf, book review 34 book review strong together: building partnerships across cultures in an age of distrust by andrea nelson trice reviewed by roxanne addink de graaf salt desert media 2024. $20.00. why do cross-cultural partnerships and businesses often fail? how and why do americans and majority world leaders differ in their approach to building social enterprises? what are the most beneficial ways in which westerners can engage with the majority world? how do we build bridges in an era of growing distrust? andrea nelson trice’s strong together: building partnerships across cultures in an age of distrust examines these questions and seeks to equip readers with ways to unlock the potential of international partnerships. beyond nelson trice’s expertise in cultural and organizational dynamics, the insights presented in strong together emerge from interviews with ninety majority world and us american leaders working in cross-cultural social enterprises and international development organizations. the result is both a cautionary tale and a call to action to be more intentional when building partnerships across cultures. we live in a world in which technology allows increasing connectivity, yet we are witnessing growing divides within and across nations. as nelson trice points out in the title, we are living in an “age of distrust.” within the us, a focus of growing distrust is often associated with government interventions, as nelson trice points out, “only 20% of americans believe the government can be trusted to do what is right” (36). globally, this distrust has included international development efforts, especially when involving government interventions, big aid packages, traditional charities, and global north to south interventions (a critique famously brought to the forefront in dambisa moyo’s dead aid in 2009). what has risen from the ashes of this critique of big government and aid is an increasing awareness of the essential role of market-based solutions to global challenges, and of the need for local ownership and leadership in these solutions. the result? “it is estimated that 8% of the u.s. population is involved in social start-ups” (36). in strong together, nelson trice recognizes and celebrates this growing investment in market-based social enterprise solutions, and the increasing integration of majority world leaders in solutions to the complex global challenges of our time. she also recognizes the risk of repeating mistakes of the past, like cultureand power-blind approaches to cross-cultural partnerships, in this growing enthusiasm for social enterprises. what she presents in strong together is an approach that does not shy away from building bridges, businesses, and partnerships across cultures, but one that builds awareness of what is required to do so effectively. in part one, nelson trice identifies some oftenunrecognized cultural undercurrents that can undermine cross-cultural ventures. using real-world examples and well-established frameworks, nelson trice helps readers recognize common cultural differences and how to leverage them as unique strengths in partnerships. one example she shares is the differing view of achievement. “americans generally thrive on competition and define success by what we have achieved” (71), she argues, while james owolabi provides the contrast; “in non-western culture you christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(1), summer 2024 addink de graaf, book review 35 don’t get things done by working with data. you work through people, through relationships” (71). nelson trice’s examples and insights of cultural differences resonate with my twenty years of work with partners worldwide, a faith-based organization that builds partnerships with business volunteers and entrepreneurs from across the globe, working together towards a world without poverty. i have witnessed real world examples of every cross-cultural difference highlighted in strong together, representing both the challenges and complementary strengths, synergy, and impacts that can result from partnering across cultures. still, one question that arose as i read this section and reflected on the dynamics of the global team i work with is if the cultural differences identified are shifting or merging with younger generations. with increasing exposure to global media, connectivity and the resulting cross-pollination of ideas and values, are the cultural differences less prominent with social entrepreneurs in their 20s working across cultures? this could be a topic for nelson trice’s to dive into for her next book. in part two, nelson trice unpacks the relationship between cultural values and the problems we seek to solve through enterprise. as she points out, “differing problem definitions often lead to friction and power struggles between americans and those they are trying to help” (283). she asserts that us americans tend to define problems in more material terms, with an urgency to scale, while those from the majority world more often mention empowering individuals and communities “by building hope, respect and trust” (283). these differing perspectives often result in points of friction. among the seven common friction points nelson trice identifies, the “primacy of innovation vs. restoration” (142), stands out as a fresh and relevant insight. us americans embrace innovation and have a high tolerance for the inherent change that results, whereas the majority world values more highly the relational threads that are essential for resilient, restorative communities, threads that can be severed in the midst of fast-paced innovation. in part three, nelson trice shares five case studies of enterprises that have successfully partnered across cultures. the cases vary from a us american-initiated water enterprise to a majority world-led microfinance entity. each example utilizes majority world and us american leadership, illustrating the need for, and benefit of, recognizing the strengths and limitations of each partner in cross-culture ventures. nelson trice points out that the leaders in these case studies of success made three common assumptions: 1) they recognized their own limitations; 2) they recognized the importance of the community systems that surrounded their majority world staff and clients; and 3) they emphasized empowerment in their enterprises. one discerns these assumptions in the words of alice grau, the creative director of global mamas in ghana, when she says “we focus on the needs of our employees and what they are requesting…. we care for them in community” (209). instead of highlighting financial accomplishments or quantifiable impacts of these successful enterprises, nelson trice chooses to define and illustrate “success” from a more majority world perspective, focusing on enterprises that shared power and that local communities embraced, which led to the desired impact. after identifying common traits of successful cross-culture ventures, nelson trice goes on to identify common impediments to successful us americanmajority world partnerships, including the common desire among social entrepreneurs to be heroes, a common stumbling block to building enterprises that sustain impact. when faced with the plethora of challenges of partnering across cultures, nelson trice concludes people in the global north have three choices; go home, build alone, or build with others (248). not surprisingly, she recommends the third option, arguing that the path of building with others involves the “challenge of operating from a place of significant discomfort, but from a place that also offers tremendous opportunity” (249). she advocates that building with others, while risky and time consuming, offers three significant opportunities: 1) to build something bigger and better than anyone alone could build; 2) to release creativity and empower vulnerable people; and 3) to help everyone flourish (254). with sound research and engaging examples, andrea nelson trice reminds us of the many roadblocks to strong cross-cultural partnerships, while also affirming the need for the important work of bridging divides and merging our diverse strengths and perspectives. to facilitate dialogue and reflection on all these important ideas, she includes provocative questions at the end of each chapter. altogether, strong together is a vital resource for development practitioners, social entrepreneurs, impact investors, and anyone studying or engaged in cross-cultural teams, businesses, or partnerships who want to work together for sustained impact. while the title and cover may not stand out to the business-minded crowd (there is no mention of business or enterprise on the front cover), this is a book that everyone involved in business enterprises across cultures should read. so much so, that i am adding this book to the essential reading list for all partners worldwide staff and volunteers. strong together adds cultural insights and new perspectives to the market-based partnership stories in my business, my mission: fighting poverty through partnerships (seebeck and stoner 2009), which highlights the highs and lows of the first decade of partners worldwide. strong together also makes a christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(1), summer 2024 addink de graaf, book review 36 great companion to a book on our current reading list, the culture map, by erin meyer (2014), which focuses exclusively on, and thus is able to go deeper into, the impact of culture on business. the culture map also builds on several of the cultural differences highlighted in strong together, offering, for example, practical suggestions for working in teams that combine highcontext and low-context cultures. though nelson trice is herself a person of faith, strong together is not targeted exclusively to christian audiences as it carefully avoids language that might resonate only with christians. that said, she acknowledges the role and importance of faith for many people in the majority world and refers to the torah’s framework of an integrated vision of a flourishing society as a common language of purpose that spans jewish, muslim, and christian cultures (see figure 1). we also see elements of the biblical concept of shalom clearly reflected in this book through her call to listen to our neighbors, acknowledge each other’s strengths, share power, respect differences, and seek flourishing for all. figure 1: visual of an integrated society in the torah (151) nelson trice provides insights that go beyond strong cross-cultural partnerships and impactful social enterprises; the insights from her work can help build restorative relationships that bridge divides, in the us and across the globe, an essential task as we seek to bring god’s kingdom on earth as in heaven in this age of distrust. references addink de graaf, roxanne. 2013. business as mission and the end of poverty: bam at the base of the pyramid. https://bamglobal.org/wpcontent/uploads/2015/12/bmtt-ig-base-ofpyramid-final-report-october-2013.pdf meyer, erin. 2014. culture map: breaking through invisible boundaries of global business. public affairs books. moyo, dambisa. 2009. dead aid: why aid is not working and how there is a better way for africa. new york: farrar, straus and giroux. seebeck, doug and timothy stoner. 2009. my business, my mission: fighting poverty through partnerships. grand rapids: faith alive christian resources. roxanne addink de graaf is the director of strategy and impact at partners worldwide in grand rapids, michigan, where she has worked for the last two decades on global partnerships with local institutions and business leaders who are faithfully pursuing flourishing for all. she was the project manager for my business, my mission: fighting poverty through partnerships (seebeck and stoner 2009) and lead author of business as mission and the end of poverty: bam at the base of the pyramid (addink de graaf 2013). she recently finished a 2-year research and pilot project, funded by the templeton foundation, on “entrepreneurial grit.” this project studies factors of business resilience, focusing on enterprises in the majority world (see https://www.partnersworldwide.org/2024/06/26/gritand-resiliency-what-keeps-entrepreneurs-going-intough-times). author email: roxanned@partnersworldwide.org government finance family justice property community welfare work/rest https://bamglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/bmtt-ig-base-of-pyramid-final-report-october-2013.pdf https://bamglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/bmtt-ig-base-of-pyramid-final-report-october-2013.pdf https://bamglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/bmtt-ig-base-of-pyramid-final-report-october-2013.pdf https://www.partnersworldwide.org/2024/06/26/grit-and-resiliency-what-keeps-entrepreneurs-going-in-tough-times https://www.partnersworldwide.org/2024/06/26/grit-and-resiliency-what-keeps-entrepreneurs-going-in-tough-times https://www.partnersworldwide.org/2024/06/26/grit-and-resiliency-what-keeps-entrepreneurs-going-in-tough-times mailto:roxanned@partnersworldwide.org christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 a conversation with gregory gibson… 157 a conversation with gregory gibson, cofounder and global team leader for salt interview conducted and edited by karie riddle in this conversation with gregory gibson, the co-founder of salt, we learn about how his organization was upended by the 2022 russian invasion of ukraine. salt is, and has remained, a network of pastors in pursuit of leadership development, but many of its members' day-to-day tasks have shifted. pastors in ukraine and other parts of europe began caring for refugee families and bringing supplies to the front line, and the global network paused their regular operations to raise funds and provide logistical, emotional, and social support to this work. while they continued meeting online to discuss church planting and leadership development, the organization also pursued a "ministry of presence" to physically walk alongside those whose lives had been disrupted by the conflict. this ministry is inspired by the incarnational jesus, who showed up to dwell among us. “salt exists to train pastors to plant churches that serve the nations through gospel-driven leadership” (salt movement 2025). its primary area of interest is ukraine. according to its co-founder, gregory gibson, the organization is “protestant and loosely ecumenical.” salt’s work, while never wavering from its original mission, took a sharp turn following the russian invasion of ukraine in the spring of 2022. in the conversation that follows, we learn about salt’s work before and after the invasion, the principles and practices that have helped them to thrive even in the midst of war, and their advice for other organizations trying to serve communities that face violent disruption. karie riddle asks the questions, and gregory gibson provides the responses. can you tell me about how you got started in this line of work? in 2019, i was invited to visit ukraine for the first time by timofe dovgalyuk to participate in church planting work and training efforts for the church there. timofe had been working in ukraine, serving families who have children with disabilities for decades, and because of his work there he was building partnerships with organizations and local churches. when i returned [to the united states (us)], there was a pebble in my shoe that i couldn’t shake, and i really felt a desire to engage more with the work and with the people in ukraine as i built relationships there. and as i saw the need for leadership development training, i saw how my skill set and my passions overlapped with this particular part of the world. in 2020, timofe and i partnered together to launch salt. how would you describe your organization’s goals? our mission from the beginning has always been to train pastors to plant churches. we do this through what we call gospel-driven leadership development. so we’re coming alongside pastors all over ukraine, and our strategy is what we call our salt dna. we really have four quadrants we work in when we come alongside the church (salt movement 2025). the first quadrant is healthy leader. we want to see all leaders, whether they are pastors or church planters, or businesses with a mission, or those who are christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 a conversation with gregory gibson… 158 in the non-profit space, we want to see them healthy. the second quadrant is healthy teams. very rarely across the world have i seen healthy teams led by an unhealthy leader; it’s usually a one-to-one correlation. so our whole goal is to come alongside a leader to define health, in a principle that really can be translocal. we’re not defining a healthy leader in our context vs. a different context, such as america or ukraine, but looking at leadership through the lens of universal leadership principles, and really doing the hard work of creating these irreducible minimums that define healthy leadership regardless of context. we’re bringing that into teamwork, how high functioning teams work well regardless of context. is there nuance? absolutely! is language creating different barriers and hurdles to overcome? yes, but i would say that those two principles are universals. then from our teams, in quadrant three, we build healthy culture; not just one person, but many people, creating a healthy culture for their organization, whether a church, a non-profit, or a business, and we work together to define what a healthy culture is. the last quadrant is healthy systems. systems become the trellis that support the rest of the vine work of culture. for us, we take that process and infuse it into the leader. did you get into the leadership development space within church planting because you felt like that was a gap, or a need within the church? that is exactly right. from my understanding it’s common across mission organizations that the reason people leave the vocation of pastor or leave the mission field is not necessarily because they stop believing in the work; a high percentage leave because they are not healthy. clearly, there is greater impact if the leader and the team are healthy. that’s a little bit how we got into it. when i visited ukraine for the first time, my question as i was building relationships with pastors was for them to tell me how things were going, not what they needed. by no means did i want to present our work as the answer; it was just, “how are things?” “tell me about your ministry”; “tell me about your church.” and the gap that we kept seeing revolved around leadership development principles, in regard to healthy leadership, teams, culture, and systems. were your original goals, related to leadership development for church planting, disrupted by the russian invasion of ukraine? now, the war was already happening as i went for the first time in 2019, and as we started an organization with headquarters in ukraine, but the effects of the war weren’t quite like they were after february of 2022. because of that, our organization pivoted [in 2022] from training and leadership development to awareness for the work that was happening: pastors that were caring for their communities, pastors who cared for refugee families, pastors who were already working in areas now even more affected by the war. that really put us front and center in this conversation. we didn’t plan to engage in areas that were directly impacted by this particular crisis, but because of unfolding events we found ourselves there. and just by conscience and conviction, we continued into this space, because we thought it was the right thing to do. but the mission itself never changed. when february 2022 came about, our measurements and lag goals, or lag impact, began to change. for a couple months, we paused everything. it’s hard to come alongside the leader of a non-profit or a church when the tyranny of the urgent is just survival, to talk about how to build a healthy team. we thought to ourselves, “let’s pause and do what we can do, and we began to focus on bringing awareness to the plight of what’s happening here. let’s begin to ask a lot of questions, “what do you need,” “how can we close the gap on your fleeting resources during this season?” but because we’re a training organization, leadership training soon continued. we began to see pastors, business leaders, and non-profit leaders in ukraine lean into what we were talking about even more, because now there’s even more weight to the work they are doing. now they are not only pastoring their local congregations, but also caring for refugee families, sending medical teams to the front lines, officiating funerals, and serving families who have lost loved ones because of those crises. when i say it definitely flavored our leadership development training, it began to flavor it in ways that i personally never imagined. now everything is affected and colored by what ukrainians are currently experiencing in their dayto-day lives. we are now having active conversations along the lines of: how do we train pastors to plant churches in a healthy way, let’s say in lutsk, ukraine, on the western side of the country, that’s not necessarily affected by the frontlines, although the whole country is seeing the effects of the violence? but how does this church and this team now work to create healthy workplaces closer to the front lines? that requires both meeting intentional needs and working towards sustainability. can you say more about salt’s processes and how some of those shifted after february 2022? because of the impact of february 2022, there is a ukrainian diaspora all over the world, especially throughout europe. we were surprised to find that we were working with pastors and leaders who were christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 a conversation with gregory gibson… 159 working with ukrainians in poland, germany, the netherlands, france, really all over europe! the primary headquarters is kind of from warsaw to kyiv in our work, but we’re starting to see spokes extend all over europe. practically, what this looks like is what we call the salt hub. every thursday morning we have a meeting of about 100 pastors and leaders, at 6 am eastern time. that hits some good time zone marks in the places where we work. it is amazing to see that 45minute zoom meeting happen and grow. again, we are talking about leadership development principles. and people keep showing up and bringing more people. we then have what we call salt labs, which are less lecture and more laboratory environment, and this is also hybrid. we have pastors in poland and ukraine right now who create these gatherings in real time, and who bring pastors, non-profit, and business leaders together. i keep saying those three categories on purpose because leadership development is crossindustry. it seems like these are the groups who are kind of leaning into what we are doing. and they are forming these different groups all over both ukraine and poland, working through these things in real time. we have many churches who partner together to send mission teams or medical teams to the same place, for example the donetsk region, or luhansk, and they are sending teams to the exact same place over and over again. they are serving both the military men and women who are there, but also civilians who decided to stay regardless of the conflict. what we have seen is these churches who can come together and go to the same place over and over again, and we are starting to see the ultimate win of our organization, training pastors to plant churches. it might not look like a church in a traditional sense, but what’s happening is that these communities are beginning to be formed in these areas that are on or near the frontlines; these communities have become life-giving communities to people who live there. to me, as a pastor, i see what’s happening, … and i’m like whoa, there is not a lot of difference here between what’s happening in the book of acts in the early church, and how these communities are forming in a non-traditional kind of church planting sense, right? we are seeing a lot of celebration, if we can call it that, and wins for partnerships. you have these weekly online meetings and also these face-to-face collaborations that are happening with your team in eastern europe. can you say more about what you and others in the us have been doing in terms of traveling to some of these war-torn places? i know you really want to be there with the people you partner with if you’re an international organization, but you also have concerns for your own safety, and if something happens to you, the organization fails at its mission. how do you balance those things? that is a challenging question, which really gets to the heart of any organization working in these areas disrupted by conflict and violence. as a new organization, we do not have a lot of overhead, and when february 2022 occurred, we found ourselves not only stewarding all these old relationships that we have had for several years up to this point, but now we’re stewarding hundreds of thousands of dollars being given to our organization for this relief work. now, suddenly, ukraine is front and center all around the world, and salt has been given an opportunity to steward these resources. we thus committed as an organization to giving as liberally as we possibly could, and to meeting the needs that are currently arising, regardless of whether our giving leads to sustainability. in this moment, we’re giving to the current need. we are also asking about what happens to our in-person work. when the war ramped up, we moved our headquarters from kyiv to warsaw and started flying to warsaw and driving across the border in ukraine. the invasion happened in february, and the first time i was in-country was april. we decided then as an organization to continue to go. we’re going to use both faith and wisdom at the same time. every time we entered into the country, we made a decision the day-of, but we decided from the beginning to continue to engage relationally. engaging relationally is one principle that has kept our work going. salt could have ended when the conflict ramped up, but because we committed as a young, new, and growing non-profit during this time, there’s a handful of us who decided to continue to engage, and that’s what we have done. we have now gone dozens of times; i can’t even give you a number, from myself to the other leaders of salt. our whole goal during that time was to practice what we call a ministry of presence. it’s one thing to show up on zoom; it’s quite another when your sister or your brother is experiencing suffering and you show up alongside. when we committed to that, it created a whole different kind of trust for those that we partnered with on the ground. we have kept that same principle, even though it was not a core value we started with. but you can see the growth of our organization through this time, and we have kept that principle that we are going to practice a ministry of presence as much as we possibly can. we have gone all over ukraine—to the front lines, to citizens impacted by the war, kyiv, and to cities that have become refugee hubs. that kind of relationship, that christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 a conversation with gregory gibson… 160 kind of presence, created a deeper relationship with our partners over the last couple of years. can you tease out more how religious values guide your work? our organization is very much shaped by our statement of faith, or what we call our gospel statement. it drives who we are, and there is so much to that that creates what is behind our motivations for the work, for myself personally, for our team. i mentioned this idea of a ministry of presence, which is an incarnational principle we see modeled by jesus. in john chapter 1, he came and dwelt among us. this principle of presence is a biblical principle we practice as an organization. when it comes to the driving engine of our organization, it is jesus’s command in matthew 28 to go and make disciples of all nations. for us, the greek term “ethny” means countries without borders. it’s literally people all over the world. and i think it’s a beautiful partnership when an organization centered in the united states and pastors and non-profit leaders and businesses throughout eastern europe come together and commit to jesus’ command for the church, to make disciples. the impact of that is what we are talking about here; the impact is that it’s christians, regardless of their occupation, who care for their neighbor, who care for the needs of their community, who try to live their life the best way they know how, as salt and light, regardless of context. you are seeing the impact of that. whether it is churches and pastors coming together to serve in places impacted largely through conflict and violence, or medical teams serving, or pastors putting on chaplain hats because there are men and women serving in our country’s military, i feel compelled to serve them, because i was first served by christ. i hope all the action of our organization is driven by people who are first changed by jesus to live in such a way that it makes a difference in whatever context they find themselves in. i want to pick up on that idea of context, because that is a huge challenge for a lot of international organizations, particularly if your headquarters is in the us and you are trying to work cross-culturally or cross-nationally. many organizations think so much about this, but still struggle with it. i hear you saying, yes there is nuance from context to context, but there are still these universal principles, and there is still the universal love of christ that can inspire everyone regardless of where you are. have you encountered cross-cultural, cross-national kinds of challenges, and how have you worked through those? context is going to create a chasm in whatever partnership you’re trying to develop until trust is built. it can be context from washington, dc to new york city; it can be context from washington, dc to rivne, ukraine. one of the things we have learned is that, going back to this idea of being incarnational and working on being as present as possible, when you do those things in a consistent way—you continue to show up, and continue to let your yes be yes—what you begin to find is that, over time, trust gradually builds. that’s what i have found in this work. in the beginning you learn from one another, you learn a new language and a context that’s created largely by language. you learn a way that another person or group views the world. yet when you begin to partner on mission, that common mission begins to create a bond, and over time it strengthens into trust. it is not perfect, by any means. but we’re trying to come in with a learning posture as much as we are in a training posture. when we do that, it is amazing to see the trust that builds, and then the fruit that comes from a relationship that is built on trust. it seems the ideas of partnership and learning are really key to your success. we definitely come from trying to be as far from toxic charity or this kind of helping hurts idea (lupton 2012; fikkert and corbett 2009). it takes intentionality, a mindset that we are not coming to do anything better. when you come in with the idea that our training is through the lens of a relationship, then it truly does become a laboratory where we work it out together, instead of “come listen to my ted talk” as it were. that simple posture has really been the ethos of everything we have done. have we failed? yes. have we learned from it? have there been times when we have apologized? yes. have there been periods in our relationships, which we’ve been building for half a decade now, when we’ve had to work through tension and conflict together? yes. but on the other side of those things, there’s even deeper trust. i’m also wondering about the us political atmosphere and how american politics is now divided on the war in ukraine. what has that meant for your organization? i have felt that tension, and here’s the journey that we’ve been on: in february of 2022, ukraine-russia was kind of central worldwide news. in several following months, we’re raising awareness and stewarding resources that are going to our partners on the ground. then things begin to shift towards political ideologies. we saw the impact of that, and when you’re a largely christian christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 a conversation with gregory gibson… 161 organization that has an almost 98% donor base that would also be identifying as christian, and then you begin to divide your donors based on political ideology, it became a hurdle for us. but it has not been insurmountable, because as an organization we try to stay above that, by remaining a main issue organization, which for us is how the gospel leads us into this kind of work. it is a struggle to see good organizations and good work in these areas that have been disrupted by us political spaces, and i don’t know the answer to that … our part to play is that we continue to be faithful to our mission as an organization, regardless of what is happening politically. as we have done that, yes, it ostracizes people who want us to be vocal one way or the other, but that is okay for us. our goal is not to speak towards any kind of political ideology. our goal is to come alongside our partners. in closing, could share some advice with other religious organizations working in sensitive areas? three things have worked really well for our organization in responding to violence: 1. showing up consistently. when you show that you are there, and you’re not there for a marketing piece, or a promo piece, or a social media piece, and you keep showing up, that creates those relationships built on trust. 2. tell, with permission, the stories of others. tell stories of those you are partnering with and what they are going through. tell about their successes and about their wins. it allows other people to have awareness of the work. 3. give others opportunities to engage. this can be as simple as a zoom prayer night. we did a zoom prayer night the first week of march [2022] and several thousand people joined. these are people from all over the world who will probably never praying together for the ukrainian people on zoom ever again. but it was very powerful. we also provided tangible ways for people to engage and to give. so, we figured out how much it costs to send a truck from switzerland all the way to warsaw, and [we could tell our audience] this donation sends one truck full of supplies. ways like that have worked well. and the thing that keeps us going is that it helps us to overcome compassion fatigue. some organizations probably have mission statements that aim right at areas like this, but when you are a training organization like us, and you happen to be in an area impacted by conflict and violence, you yourself can experience compassion fatigue, but you also see that those around you can experience compassion fatigue. news cycles change; things happen; there are many situations to engage with, be a part of, and give to, but when you do those three things a lot and often—show up consistently, tell stories, and give opportunities to engage—we see a consistent, steady way that we can partner in a healthy way with those still impacted by conflict and violence in these areas. in general, be as incarnational as possible, do it with an open hand, and be willing to partner with other organizations. maybe the skeleton or aim of your organization might have been created differently, but the impact of what you’re both looking for may overlap and be very similar. i am a firm believer in this incarnational principle, whether it’s through church planting work or non-profit work or whatever it is. it creates a cross-cultural relationship in which the trust and the substance of the relationship are central. references fikkert, brian and steve corbett. 2009. when helping hurts: alleviating poverty without hurting the poor. . .and yourself. chicago: moody publishers. lupton, robert d. 2012. toxic charity: how churches and charities hurt those they help, and how to reverse it. new york: harperone. salt movement. 2025. “our mission.” https://www.saltmovement.org/mission gregory gibson serves as a united states navy officer and chaplain, and he is also the founding pastor of nations church in the washington, dc area. most importantly, he is married to grace, and is the proud father of cora and iver. they reside in the washington, dc area. author email: greg@gibsonleadership.com https://www.saltmovement.org/mission https://urldefense.com/v3/__http:/nationsdc.org/__;!!nqmqxtpg!7716bd3smihy6bpbuq82uxmyh9t095pcumwx7z0j9cpzb1p1mjdju7obn-bvqo14kronxzw_sosp3hk1fqclqzdanvpw$ mailto:greg@gibsonleadership.com christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 ozonze, book review 185 book review wrestling with god: ethical precarity in christianity and international relations by cecelia lynch reviewed by joachim ozonze cambridge. cambridge university press. 2020. $41.99 cecelia lynch’s wrestling with god: ethical precarity in christianity and international relations is a profound exploration of the intricate intersections between christian ethics and the political complexities of global relations. rooted in international relations (ir), but remarkably interdisciplinary, lynch examines how christian actors—both individual and institutional— have wrestled with their ethical commitments while engaging in international landscapes of war, alterity, justice, and peace. at the heart of lynch’s exploration is the concept of “ethical precarity,” a dynamic lens she employs to capture the ongoing negotiations and tensions between the interpretations of christian ethics, the demands of political power, and the exigencies of pragmatic decision-making. through a neo-weberian genealogical analysis of a wide range of strategicallychosen christian ethical struggles across history, lynch demonstrates how these negotiations are both contextual and contested, and fraught with contradictions. through her wrestling with intra-christian ethical debates, lynch challenges the reification of religion in ir, a tendency she argues lends itself to caricaturist interpretations of religion. this oversimplification, she notes, leaves unexplored the “political implications of the wide range of christian ethics at stake in international politics” (2). going beyond scholars like talal asad and saba mahmood, lynch’s genealogy of wrestlings in the west reveals the intertwined histories and ongoing entanglements of christianity and modern politics, dismantling any notion of a thick line between religion and secularism, and urging her readers to grapple with the ethical ambiguities at the nexus of christianity, secularism, and global politics (19). one of lynch’s most compelling contributions is unpacking the provocative parallels between early missionary enterprises and contemporary humanitarian response. whether these parallels manifest in the similarities between early missionizing efforts to save souls and contemporary donor proselytism, or the semblance between the civilizational rhetoric of contemporary humanitarianism and the epistemic violence of christian paternalism in the early modern era, lynch invites her readers to recognize how modern humanitarianism (whether secular or faith-based) mirrors the ethical precarities of earlier periods and provides an opportunity to critically reflect on the farreaching consequences of ethical shortcomings today. thus, while lynch’s concern is not to provide “settled best practices” (235), her historically expansive and richly nuanced analysis offers profound insights for christian non-governmental organizations (ngos) engaged in development and humanitarian work. for one, lynch’s call to embrace ethical precarity challenges these organizations to reflect—reflexively—on their ethical assumptions and operational theologies, their partnerships and paradigmatic organization, their hermeneutic of responsibility and logic of success. the goal is not simply to arrive at fixed answers but to continually grapple with these ethical tensions in light of evolving sociopolitical contexts, the aid environment, and the meaning of christ’s injunction to serve “the least of these.” lynch’s wrestling prompts critical questions for christian ngos: do their actions empower local christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 ozonze, book review 186 communities or perpetuate dependency? does their purpose inadvertently reinforce structural violence or inequality? are their theological commitments more focused on “compassion for and saving of those who suffer” or on fostering “mutual redemptive relationships”? what forms of suffering are prioritized, and why? how do they construct the “good” aid recipients, and who is left out? wrestling with these questions challenges christian organizations to not only recognize how christian ethical principles can be coopted in different ways, but also to adopt a posture of humility. this involves a deeply reflexive acknowledgement of ethical precarity—one that is courageous enough to relinquish the high moral ground and undermines justifications for epistemic and bodily precarity and violence (19). in fact, wrestling with god exemplifies this selfreflexivity—not only because lynch reveals how her personal wrestling has shaped the book, but also through her disruption of eurocentric and institutionalist narratives. the work challenges conventional imagination of the paradigmatic “christian actor,” embodying a perspective that is more attuned to the complexities and diversities of global christianity. yet, lynch’s exploration leaves readers wrestling with an essential question: what is christian? what constitutes the christian core? this question is not only pivotal for evaluating who or what is included or excluded in her analysis of “wrestling,” but it also anchors the concept of ethical precarity, preventing it from devolving into an unending vortex of ambiguity. while lynch, citing korean feminist liberation theologian chung hyun kyung, notes that “ethics are always in development,” it is dubitable that their boundaries are infinite (227). this raises a critical point: what makes a humanitarian effort distinctly christian? here, christian theology provides valuable resources. steven battin’s (2022, 90–99) concept of salvation as god’s protocol of interaction with the world, as well as a reference point and model of interaction for all theological subjectivities that claim god as the centripetal force of their cohesion, offers a framework for christian humanitarianism. it positions faith-based humanitarianism not as a saving venture, but as a praxis of solidarity and participation in the larger story of god’s transformative love in the world. this divine pattern is paradigmatically revealed in the incarnation and life of jesus. importantly, this incarnation is not merely a human event or, even, a solely christ-event; it is fully a god-event that encompasses the entirety of the godhead, all humanity, and all creation. thus, rather than serving as an obstacle, this incarnational paradigm propels greater openness to cosmic-centered, spirit-centered spiritualties and missiologies. shaped by this incarnational logic, christian humanitarianism emerges not only as a way of being in the world rooted in humility and mutual care, but also as a framework that compels practitioners to ask fundamental questions: “why am i here?” “who am i and why am i able to be here?” “whom do my actions serve?” this means that christian humanitarianism, informed by the incarnation, is an intrinsically prophetic vocation—standing in solidarity with the marginalized, interrogating structures of violence and privilege, and challenging established political practices in ways that embody risk but ultimately moves toward more egalitarian commitments and transformative actions in the world (236). cecelia lynch’s wrestling with god is a landmark work. seamlessly weaving together insights from multiple disciplines, it provides rich ethical frameworks with profound implications for both faith-based and secular humanitarianism. lynch’s concept of ethical precarity challenges scholars and practitioners alike to embrace reflexivity, humility, and the courage to wrestle with complexity. by doing so, they can navigate the tensions and ambiguities of global humanitarian work with integrity and justice. ultimately, wrestling with god is not merely an exploration of ethical precarity, but a testament to the productive and transformative power of wrestling—with ideas, practices, and the limits of our understanding. references battin, steven j. 2022. intercommunal ecclesiology: the church, salvation, and intergroup conflict. eugene: cascade books. joachim ozonze is a phd candidate in peace studies and theology at the kroc institute for international peace studies, university of notre dame. his research explores the interplay of ritual, drug violence, and healing, examining how individuals and communities are socialized into and out of cycles of violence. author email: jozonze@nd.edu mailto:jozonze@nd.edu christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 cross riddle, christian responses to violence and conflict 108 christian responses to violence and conflict: introduction to crda’s special issue karie cross riddle american poet robert frost (1963) said that “a poem…begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.” this is also an apt description for peace work. several of the pieces in this issue feature just such a lump in the throats of ordinary people who confronted violence, many of whom did not even intend to do the work of peacebuilding. these authors and the organizations some of them represent had the audacious courage to believe they might be the people who could respond to urgent wrong, extending mercy instead of perpetuating harm, and promoting healing instead of vengeance. i am honored to present their work for this audience. this journal typically focuses on global development work from a christian perspective, asking important questions about topics such as poverty alleviation, hunger, the development of strong political institutions, and power relations between the global north and global south. a special issue focused on violence and conflict may seem a bit far afield from its regular purview. as someone who has worked in both fields, however, i have come to the conclusion that a substantive understanding of violence, conflict, and peacebuilding is not only relevant but vital for christian work in relief and development. keeping these issues siloed from development work would hinder scholarship and practice in both fields. the relevance of one field to another may come down to terminology. academics love to define terms, and for good reason; our definitions of concepts and the way we draw boundaries around fields have enormous implications for the work that follows. is development merely the pursuit of economic growth, or is it much broader—the pursuit of freedom, for example, or of the transformation of the whole person (sen 1999; myers 2011)? is peacebuilding merely putting a stop to direct violence via ceasefires, or does it encompass building new, post-conflict institutions and developing new norms that replace violent structures with better ones (galtung 1969)? in both cases, if christians wish to pursue god’s kingdom on earth, broad conceptions of both development and peace will serve us well. in fact, the fields of development studies and peace studies have made similar strides towards inclusive rather than exclusive definitions. throughout this process of conceptual expansion, both have likewise broadened the range of actors and issues they address. this is good news for christians who want to be active in one or both fields. as development and peace work both move away from elite-centered models that offer narrow policy prescriptions, we can create much more space for the distinctive, creative, and even mysterious work of religious actors. before turning to the valuable contributions christians can make to peacebuilding, i will briefly review a number of resonances between development studies and peace studies, showcasing the opportunities for mutual learning that lie before us. i am not calling for us to collapse the distinction between the two types of work; poverty remains different from violence. still, a good understanding of both fields will be relevant for many of us, whether our development work is disrupted by violence or our long-term peacebuilding work includes development. such a review also serves to highlight areas in which christians can offer unique perspectives and practices that might produce more effective strategies. a review of development studies: what is development, who does the developing, and where does development happen? international development, as us president harry truman’s 1949 point four of his inaugural address defined it, was intended to be a sharing of technical expertise in the direction from an advanced economy to a developing one. according to historian of development gilbert rist, this speech made development “transitive” for the first time—something that could be done to or for a country. in his estimation, this approach fundamentally changed relations between the global north and global south (rist 2019, 71–73). global north economists were now encouraged to directly interfere in the policies and practices of poorer countries (many of whom were decolonizing), urging them to follow the modernization strategies that had undergirded economic successes in western industrialized countries (rostow 1991). what’s more, christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 cross riddle, christian responses to violence and conflict 109 these poorer countries were meant to welcome this intervention as beneficent, objective, and therefore apolitical, signaling goodwill and equality among countries that could all expect to rise together on the tides of unfettered economic growth (rist 2019, 73–77). thus, initially, development required technical assistance overseen by western economists in newlydecolonized developing nations. inhabitants of the global south had some things to say about this approach. in the 1960s, dependency theorists in latin america, such as raul prebisch, critiqued the imposition of modernization as perpetuating inequality, rather than enabling developing nations to “catch up.” such theorists called for the wealthier nations to leave latin america alone to develop on its own terms (kingsbury et al. 2016). yet far from leaving latin america and other regions alone, the development industry doubled down on interventionist measures such as structural adjustment programs, inspired by the rise of neoliberal thought. economic thought leaders established the “washington consensus” platform, arguing that austerity and the free hand of the market would help nations develop (peet and hartwick 2015, 98–101). the so-called lost decade of neoliberal development in the 1980s led postdevelopment theorists in the 1990s like arturo escobar and james ferguson to question the enterprise of development itself, arguing that it had resulted not only in economic harm but also the hurtful erasure of diverse forms of knowledge and culture (kingsbury et al. 2016, 68–69; sahle 2012, 82–83; ferguson 1995; escobar 1995). these thinkers tended to favor alternatives that featured local social movements undertaking collective and cooperative action (sahle 2012). at a similar time, through the 1990s and early 2000s, amartya sen, martha nussbaum, and others were likewise critical of top-down development, but still insistent that development could make people’s lives better. they understood development to be the expansion of human capabilities—what humans are able to do and to be (sen 1999; nussbaum 2000). human development, as it came to be called, captured the attention of the united nations development programme, which began releasing annual human development reports that centered not what nationstates had achieved but rather the capabilities of individuals living in poverty within them (“what is human development?” n.d.). sen, in particular, insisted that development had to be defined and pursued at the local level, because participation itself was an important element of freedom (sen 1999, 33, 78–79). 1 it remains to be seen what will happen to usaid’s role in global poverty alleviation with or without faith-based groups, in light of the trump administration’s cuts to its funding and workforce in early 2025. see kakissis et al. 2025. powerful international actors who had implemented state-centered, top-down development programs for several decades slowly heeded these critiques and began reframing their work in important ways. first, they shifted their work from state-focused economic adjustment measures to individual-focused poverty alleviation (and in doing so, according to christine schliesser (2024, 4), made much more room for partnerships with faith-based actors who had long worked in service to the poor). second, they explicitly tried to incorporate local-level voices in their work, exemplified by the world bank’s voices of the poor study which surveyed poor people all across the global south (narayan and petesch 2002). critical scholars have raised their eyebrows at these efforts, noting the continued reign of neoliberal prescriptions (cornwall and fujita 2012). the turn to the local within development work has certainly been imperfect, but my sense is that few in the development industry would now agree to the definition of development as technical assistance sent from the global north to the global south. thanks to critics coming primarily from the global south, development is now seen as far broader than economic growth, and it incorporates many more people than the experts who control the levers of economic policy. international and domestic non-profit organizations, including faith-based organizations; local-level political leaders; grassrootslevel social movements—all have a role to play in expanding human development and addressing poverty. importantly for readers of this journal, this expansion of actors has entailed paying much more attention to religious thought and action. while approaches like human development and the united nation’s sustainable development goals (sdgs) are not explicitly religious, they make plenty of room for religious values within their conceptions of development and the range of relevant actors. schliesser (2024, 4–5) notes an uptick in partnerships between secular organizations like the world bank and the us agency for international development (usaid) and faith-based organizations (fbos), beginning around 2000. 1 a recent united nations report tracks the important contributions of fbos to six of the sdgs (specifically goals 6—clean water, 7— clean energy, 12—responsible consumption, 13— climate action, 14—life below water, and 15—life on land) (inter-agency network on women and gender and united nations environment programme 2020). emma tomalin and her co-authors analyze how faith actors have contributed to the development of local, contextual indicators to establish progress on the sdgs christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 cross riddle, christian responses to violence and conflict 110 (tomalin, haustein, and kidy 2019). clearly, development is a space that is increasingly by and for religious actors from multiple traditions, particularly following the industry’s expansion from economic to human development and from top-down to bottom-up initiatives. a review of peace studies: what are violence and peace, who does the peacebuilding, and where does it happen? i suggested above (following development scholar gilbert rist) that international development as we know it began in the wake of world war ii, with president truman’s point four of his inaugural address. peace studies scholars locate the creation of their field within a similar timeframe, noting the horrors of nuclear warfare and the holocaust and the international community’s urgent sense that something must be done to limit such destruction (morsink 1999; lauren 2011; hoglund and oberg 2011). although there was some interest in peace research following world war i, the true start of peace studies as a field coincided with the beginning of global governance at the close of world war ii and the creation of the united nations (un) (wallensteen 2011; harris 2008). herein lies perhaps the greatest difference between development studies and peace studies. while the development industry has never been divorced from politics, neither has it been as explicitly political as the preservation of international peace and security, located within the un security council (unsc) according to chapter vii of the un charter (berdal 1996). according to the charter, the unsc alone can authorize the use of force, supposedly controlling the monopoly on violence within the international system (whittle 2015; weber 1965). in sharp contrast, development was supposedly technical in nature, though never apolitical in practice, with many donors claiming they were staying well out of the internal politics of the recipients they targeted. while this “technical” assistance proceeded to surge after wwii and throughout the cold war (often used as a tool of the war, putting the lie to its characterization as apolitical), the politics of the cold war cut off international cooperation on the maintenance of peace before it could even begin (moyo 2008, 23–25). with bitter rivals both sitting as permanent members, the unsc could conduct almost no peace business without either the us or the union of soviet socialist republics (ussr, now loosely russia) vetoing whatever the other wanted to accomplish (berdal 1996, 72–74). therefore, very few high-level peace negotiations and almost no peacekeeping operations occurred before the end of the cold war, whereas development practice grew throughout the post-wwii era (wallensteen 2015, 4). obviously, peace work does not occur only at elite levels, among the leaders of states, and violence does not occur only on battlefields. although the new, postwar international architecture for peace suffered from relative paralysis during the cold war, scholars in this era got to work defining and measuring peace and working out policy recommendations that would flow from their findings. this led to new understandings of types of violence and new arenas in which peace work would be relevant. importantly for our discussion here, the reconceptualization of both violence and peace also brought concerns of peace studies closer to development studies. norwegian scholar johan galtung has been instrumental in developing new definitions of violence and peace, establishing foundational concepts such as structural and direct violence (and also cultural violence in later years), as well as positive and negative peace. rejecting the narrow definition of violence as direct injury stemming from traditional interstate warfare, galtung (1969, 168) broadened violence to include structures that are “the cause of the difference between the potential and the actual, between what could have been and what is.” another of galtung’s statements on structural violence characterizes it as “that which kills, although slowly, and un-dramatically from the point of view of direct violence” (galtung and hoivik 1971, 73). if violence is not only direct but also structural, then peace would have to be much more than the absence of direct violence, or what galtung referred to as negative peace. a thicker conception of positive peace would include opportunities for people to reach their potential. positive peace, galtung argued, was the appropriate goal if peace studies scholars were to care about people’s quality of life amidst all forms of violence (galtung 1969, 171; wallensteen 2011, 15). scholars quickly took up this admittedly vague definition of structural violence to try to operationalize it, and while models and measures differed, they supported galtung’s (1969, 173) claim that “there is no reason to assume that structural violence amounts to less suffering than personal [direct] violence.” whether looking at “number of life years lost” due to economic inequalities or an egalitarian model that measures how many deaths would have been avoided if global wealth had been equally distributed around the world, scholars have shown again and again that many more people come to harm via preventable disease, poverty, and discrimination, than via warfare (galtung and hoivik 1971, 73; kohler and alcock 1976, 344). positive peace in response to this structural violence, then, entails— among other things—economic development, better access to medical care, and building new norms about equality among different identity groups. in sum, it begins to sound a lot like human development as sen christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 cross riddle, christian responses to violence and conflict 111 (1999) defines it, as the expansion of people’s freedoms. positive peace also has much in common with the biblical ideal of shalom, a concept promoted by, among others, reformed philosopher nicholas wolterstorff. the idea of shalom emphasizes right relationships, enjoyment, and flourishing, within a context characterized by both peace and justice (wolterstorff 1983, 69). many of the authors in this special issue cite the importance of a positive, thick conception of peace as well, including john barton, michael mckoy, anne figge, carlos castañeda, and janna l. hunterbowman. while many peace studies scholars began using terms like structural violence and positive peace through the 1970s and beyond, that did not necessarily extend into the halls of power. once the peace industry emerged from the shadows of the cold war, “the liberal peace” came into its own. decades behind the establishment of international development, un secretary general boutros boutros-ghali published an agenda for peace in 1992, conveying the jubilant optimism about what global governance could finally accomplish for peace and security after the fall of the iron curtain. focused on preventive diplomacy, peacemaking, and peacekeeping, boutros-ghali imagined a world that could establish peace through international cooperation and even well-placed intervention (boutros-ghali 1992). now that francis fukuyama’s “end of history” had arrived with the victory of liberal democracy, the unsc could use chapter vii of the un charter to oversee state-building projects that would presumably diminish the risk factors for future armed conflicts (fukuyama 2006; goetze and guzina 2008). scholars have characterized the liberal peace as global consensus in the early 1990s. tantamount to the development industry’s washington consensus, practitioners and scholars alike, comprising what séverine autesserre has referred to as “peace, inc.,” have assumed that forced transitions to democratic politics, the rule of law, and market economies would propel the globe to sustainable peace (autesserre 2021; campbell, chandler, sabaratnam 2011). the unsc and other actors like the us department of state moved with new purpose, deploying the liberal peace in over 50 states such as somalia, bosnia/herzegovina, and timor leste, from the 1990s-forward. this deployment has “remained without challenge, at least in mainstream international fora,” according to oliver richmond (richmond 2011, 1–2). just as post-development thinkers challenged the washington consensus, critical scholars formed a school of thought called post-liberal peace. lobbing criticisms that paralleled those of post-development scholars, this group called attention to the harms of topdown peace policies and the penchant for the global north-dominated unsc to intervene primarily in global south locations, implying that the global south is inherently violent (richmond 2011, 6–7; 2014). part of the larger “local turn” within peace studies, postliberal peace scholars and other critics using decolonial, feminist, and anti-racist lenses, promote alternatives to the liberal peace, and particularly local-level peacebuilding that addresses everyday injustices from the viewpoints of differently marginalized groups (a point raised particularly by author anne figge in this special issue) (berlowitz 2002; huaman 2011; mac ginty 2014; leonardsson and rudd 2015; azarmandi 2018; zembylas 2018). mennonite sociologist john paul lederach looms large within the turn to the local and merits particular attention. famous for his conflict transformation approach, lederach locates peacebuilding away from the negotiating table and within regular relationships. for people who live side by side, he argues, conflict (understood as friction and disagreement) is inevitable. to try to resolve it forever would be foolhardy, because people simply cannot live in community without disagreeing. practitioners of conflict transformation, therefore, focus on building sustainable, nonviolent mechanisms that help communities navigate contention while maintaining relations across difference (lederach 2003, 31; 2005, 138–47). while he is a mainstream scholar and indeed a giant in the field of peace studies, lederach has never shied away from the christian influences on his work (2014). certainly a nonchristian could use conflict transformation, but lederach’s emphasis on mercy (1995, 20) (an idea unheard of in the self-interested approach to international relations known as realpolitik) and his understanding of the important roles of the mysterious and the serendipitous within peacebuilding (2005) resonate well with many christians, who believe that god cares about and intervenes in our earthly pursuits. indeed, many of the christian authors in this special issue cite lederach as important to their work, including mckoy, barton, castañeda, and hunterbowman. not everyone in the peace industry is comfortable with explicit religious values in peacebuilding, however, due to the belief that religion itself has been, and may continue to be, a driver of violence. (this is a quandary that barton captures in this issue with the help of theologian miroslav volf (2017), asking whether religion has been a poison or a gift.) as mentioned above, secular organizations like the world bank and the us department of state started to partner with religious actors in the development industry particularly around the year 2000, when they turned their attention to poverty alleviation (schliesser 2024). similar partnerships are not unheard of in the peace industry, christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 cross riddle, christian responses to violence and conflict 112 but they have been slower to form and, in my view, remain more contentious, due to the ambivalent role that religion has played in violent conflicts (appleby 2000). this is closely tied to the explicitly political nature of peacebuilding, which engages with the very function of a state—controlling violence within and at its borders (weber 1965). differences between peace and development in the early 21 st century demonstrate just how difficult it can be for religious actors to engage in peacebuilding which is necessarily and explicitly political. just as the development industry was getting a boost from the millennium development goals, the peace industry was contending with the realities of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on us soil, which us president george w. bush and many others linked inextricably with islam (shaw 2011). many peace studies and religious studies scholars published accounts of religious actors, including muslims, working for the common good, but at the same time, political scientist samuel huntington’s (1996) controversial argument proposing the “clash of civilizations” seemed to be borne out by the events of 9/11. more recently, religious right-wing movements in places like india and the united states appear to correspond with a rolling back of rights and increasing injustices against minority groups, leaving observers again wringing their hands about the interpolation of religious principles into politics (basu 2020, 3). must peace be secular to succeed? as theologian volf (2017, 13) argues (with another nod of thanks to barton’s piece appearing in this issue), religions are “an indispensable part of the solution” to violence. indeed, the pieces in this special issue reveal the radical and potentially paradigm-shifting nature of christian responses to violence and conflict. when a world driven by self-interest would expect retribution or at least putting up walls between enemies, christians promote mercy, forgiveness, and enemy love, often at a very high cost to themselves. what will you find in this special issue? the pieces that follow adopt a wide range of formats and are rooted in many different locations. readers will find academic analyses, personal memoirs, and dialogues by christians working against both direct and structural violence in israel/palestine, india, ukraine, south sudan, and the us. despite the wide variety among the pieces, we can tease out three major themes from the collection, which are all important for sensitive christian responses to diverse forms of violence. theme 1: who is my neighbor? first, many of the pieces address the thorny question: “who is my neighbor?” this question is not that difficult to answer if your neighbor looks and acts just like you and is on your side of an armed conflict. when one’s neighbor is a current or former enemy, however, a loving christian response becomes much more difficult. michael mckoy’s jus post bellum (after war) argument in favor of enemy love, illustrated with the case study of relations between south africa and libya, suggests that state leaders can act in more and less loving ways, producing better and worse outcomes in the wake of armed conflict. this argument may seem overly idealistic—can states really love, and in christian ways? yet augustine’s just war principles have long played important roles in the laws that govern warfare and humanitarian intervention, so perhaps christian love among states is not so far-fetched (burkhardt 2017). the two pieces that consider the resurgent violence in gaza, one by rev. dr. mae elise cannon and the other by rev. sally azar, also reference ideas found in just war theory, indicating that these principles are widely relevant for contemporary populations living through violent conflict. both cannon and azar also look well beyond just war theory to offer compelling ideas about peacebuilding with enemies-as-neighbors. for cannon, the executive director of churches for middle east peace, the idea of collective liberation captures the difficulty of loving someone who has hurt you. neither israel nor palestine can be free, she argues, without the liberation of the other side. azar, a palestinian christian pastor from jerusalem, similarly calls attention to palestinian liberation theology, which pairs faith with justice. a triumphant but unjust result for palestinians is not the goal, but rather care for the marginalized. finally, the interview with a christian woman from manipur, india (name redacted for her family’s safety) shows how radical christian love can appear in the sharing of a soup pot or even floorspace to sleep on, for a displaced neighbor. even though members of the ethnic groups known as nagas and kukis have a history of violence against each other, our interviewee reports nagas welcoming kukis with open arms now that their lives are threatened by a third group, the meiteis. with some nagas hosting entire kuki families for several months, these christians are learning how to live, pray, and hope together in the midst of ongoing violence that state leaders have not worked particularly hard to quell. theme 2: trauma healing may be the most important thing we can do for peace and development many of the pieces herein remind us that trauma may get in the way of promoting human flourishing, particularly in areas troubled by armed conflict. development workers focused on poverty alleviation may not necessarily have trauma at the front of their minds, but trauma may impede both development work and peace. the discussion of trauma healing for women’s savings groups in south sudan, by anne figge, as well as the dialogue with gregory gibson about salt’s work in ukraine, provide examples of christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 cross riddle, christian responses to violence and conflict 113 organizations that pivoted to meet the needs of the traumatized populations they were serving. trauma healing may not have been part of their initial plans, but it became an important step along the way. many approaches to both peace and development tend to ignore the psychological dimensions of flourishing, in favor of social and economic change, but these pieces remind us that business-as-usual cannot proceed until at least some psychological healing has occurred. according to our anonymous dialogue partner from india, this type of aid is often overlooked within development work, but in her experience it plays a vital role in helping people cope and start to thrive. both she and figge also point to particularly christian dimensions of trauma healing, in the form of forgiving those who have done you harm. whereas secular peacebuilders may wish to stop short of recommending this christian custom, these christian practitioners note the importance of forgiveness for moving forward into transformation. theme 3: choose your words wisely third, our terminology matters greatly when we are dealing with emotionally, socially, and politically sensitive issues like violence and peacebuilding. this is a very academic argument, but is nonetheless hugely important for practice. this theme relates to one of the main points i made in my comparative review of the fields of peace studies and development studies. violence and peace are explicitly political, with the potential for producing real winners and losers in regard to power and influence. any intervention in such issues is thus necessarily political, and religious actors, in particular, must take great care when taking sides (even as our faith demands that we stand on the side of justice). given the political morass that anyone engaging in peace work might encounter, what kinds of terms are helpful? john barton’s contribution offers an excellent overview of key arguments in the literature on religion and peacebuilding, revealing several terms and corresponding ideas to avoid, as well as more constructive terms that we can use. among other helpful recommendations, he makes a plea for religious actors to get away from making essentializing, evaluative statements about entire religious traditions as “peaceful” (or violent) in favor of seeking out specific, “peaceable” elements. this work of careful excavation matches well the concerns of rev. azar who, from her viewpoint as a palestinian christian, notes that both israel and palestine can “claim historical and theological justifications for their actions.” when that is the case, barton tells us that interreligious peacebuilders should not try to claim that their own religion is inherently peaceful (and therefore superior to others), but should rather privilege those elements from their theological traditions that would lead to peace. our terms reveal our beliefs, which drive our actions. in the participatory action research dialogue between carlos castañeda and janna l. hunterbowman on movimiento cosecha, a nonviolent immigrant-led social movement in the us, they discuss the difference between framing a relationship as “helper/helped” or as a partnership grounded in solidarity and invitation. in their dialogue, hunterbowman reports a provocative question that should challenge white christians in the us while immigration and customs enforcement (ice) goes after our undocumented neighbors: “excuse me, what if what we want and need is not to go into your churches but for you to join us in the streets, would you do that?” (posed by dara marquez at a meeting hunter-bowman led in 2016). here, the terms matter greatly. one framing sees the church as “helping” but remaining in control, by offering its spaces as sanctuary to immigrants in need. the other frame sees immigrants in more control of their own destinies, and being joined by christians who show up when invited. such partnerships can be hugely important for fighting the kind of structural violence that undocumented immigrants face in the us every day. many more interesting ideas and stories abound in the pieces that follow, from gibson’s notion of the ministry of presence, coming physically alongside someone in their suffering; to cannon’s advocacy for proximate justice when ideal justice is not attainable; to figge’s promotion of roger mac ginty’s asset-based “everyday peace” that covers household conflict as well as broader armed conflict. i will leave it to you, the readers, to discover these nuggets of wisdom in the pieces that follow. my primary goal in gathering these diverse pieces together is to share a wide range of arguments and practices that have circulated within the peace studies space but that may be new to scholars and practitioners in the development space. not every piece will speak to every reader, but hopefully at least one of these will spark a new idea that aids each reader with their own work, whether it be in humanitarian aid, disaster relief, long-term development, or human rights advocacy. if we define development broadly, and if we define peace broadly, then we are partners together in many shared efforts. my secondary goal is to encourage readers who find themselves struggling to respond to violence with hope. many of the stories and arguments found in the pages that follow can inspire us to do the next right thing, and then the next right thing after that, even when we would much rather fire back at those who harm us and members of our communities. pacifists often look to the sermon on the mount for inspiration, in which christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 cross riddle, christian responses to violence and conflict 114 jesus commands us to turn the other cheek (cortright 2006, 67). turning one’s cheek is not an act of passive capitulation but rather active resistance. some of the radical christian responses to violence we see in this issue have the ability to disrupt cycles of violence. unexpected acts of radical love can help people pause, reflect, and reform their behavior. as lederach (2005, 165) says, when violence is what is known, peace feels like a risk. castañeda and hunter-bowman in this issue also refer to trust as a risk. both require vulnerability, which is inherent in creating something unknown and new. the pieces in this issue demonstrate that these risks are well worth taking. references appleby, r. scott. 2000. the ambivalence of the sacred: religion, violence, and reconciliation. lanham: rowman & littlefield publishers. autesserre, séverine. 2021. the frontlines of peace: an insider’s guide to changing the world. oxford: oxford university press. azarmandi, mahdis. 2018. “the racial silence within peace studies.” peace review 30 (1): 69–77. basu, anustup. 2020. hindutva as political monotheism. durham: duke university press. berdal, mats r. 1996. “the security council, peacekeeping and internal conflict after the cold war.” duke journal of comparative & international law 7 (1): 71–91. berlowitz, marvin j. 2002. “eurocentric contradictions in peace studies.” peace review 14 (1): 61–65. boutros-ghali, boutros. 1992. an agenda for peace: preventive diplomacy, peacemaking and peacekeeping. new york: united nations. burkhardt, todd. 2017. just war and human rights: fighting with right intention. albany: state university of new york press. campbell, susanna, david chandler, and meera sabaratnam. 2011. “introduction: the politics of liberal peace.” in a liberal peace? the problems and practices of peacebuilding, edited by susanna campbell, david chandler, and meera sabaratnam. london; new york: zed books. cornwall, andrea, and mamoru fujita. 2012. “ventriloquising ‘the poor’? of voices, choices and the politics of ‘participatory’ knowledge production.” third world quarterly 33 (9): 1751–65. cortright, david. 2006. gandhi and beyond. boulder: paradigm publishers. escobar, arturo. 1995. encountering development: the making and unmaking of the third world. princeton: princeton university press. ferguson, james. 1995. the anti-politics machine: “development,” depoliticization and bureaucratic power in lesotho. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. frost, robert. 1963. the letters of robert frost to louis untermeyer. new york: holt rinehart. fukuyama, francis. 2006. the end of history and the last man. paperback. new york: free press. galtung, johan. 1969. “violence, peace, and peace research.” journal of peace research 6 (3): 167– 91. galtung, johan, and tord hoivik. 1971. “structural and direct violence: a note on operationalization.” journal of peace research 8 (1): 73–76. goetze, catherine, and dejan guzina. 2008. “peacebuilding, statebuilding, nationbuilding - turtles all the way down?” civil wars 10 (4): 319–47. harris, ian. 2008. “the history of peace education.” in encyclopedia of peace education, edited by monisha bajaj, 15–24. charlotte: information age publishing, inc. hoglund, kristine, and magnus oberg. 2011. “doing empirical peace research.” in understanding peace research, edited by kristine hoglund and magnus oberg, 3–13. london: routledge. huaman, elizabeth sumida. 2011. “transforming education, transforming society: the coconstruction of critical peace education and indigenous education.” journal of peace education 3: 243–58. human development reports. “what is human development?” accessed january 17, 2025. https://hdr.undp.org/about/human-development huntington, samuel p. 1996. the clash of civilizations and the remaking of world order. new york: simon & schuster. inter-agency network on women and gender, and united nations environment programme. 2020. “faith action on the sustainable development goals.” united nations. https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/3895334?ln=en &v=pdf kakissis, joanna, kate bartlett, eyder peralta, and diaa hadid. 2025 (february 11). “how the gutting of usaid is reverberating around the world: worry, despair, praise.” npr. https://www.npr.org/sections/goats-andsoda/2025/02/11/g-s1-47661/trump-musk-usaidukraine-south-africa-mexico-colombia-indiaafghanistan-hiv?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-u kingsbury, damien, john mckay, janet hunt, mark mcgillivray, and matthew clarke. 2016. international development: issues and challenges. 3rd ed. london: palgrave macmillan. https://hdr.undp.org/about/human-development https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/3895334?ln=en&v=pdf https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/3895334?ln=en&v=pdf https://www.npr.org/sections/goats-and-soda/2025/02/11/g-s1-47661/trump-musk-usaid-ukraine-south-africa-mexico-colombia-india-afghanistan-hiv?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-u https://www.npr.org/sections/goats-and-soda/2025/02/11/g-s1-47661/trump-musk-usaid-ukraine-south-africa-mexico-colombia-india-afghanistan-hiv?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-u https://www.npr.org/sections/goats-and-soda/2025/02/11/g-s1-47661/trump-musk-usaid-ukraine-south-africa-mexico-colombia-india-afghanistan-hiv?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-u https://www.npr.org/sections/goats-and-soda/2025/02/11/g-s1-47661/trump-musk-usaid-ukraine-south-africa-mexico-colombia-india-afghanistan-hiv?utm_source=firefox-newtab-en-u christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 cross riddle, christian responses to violence and conflict 115 kohler, gernot, and norman alcock. 1976. “an empirical table of structural violence.” journal of peace research 13 (4): 343–56. lauren, paul gordon. 2011. the evolution of international human rights: visions seen. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press. lederach, john paul. 1995. preparing for peace: conflict transformation across cultures. syracuse: syracuse university press. ———. 2003. the little book of conflict transformation. intercourse: good books. ———. 2005. the moral imagination. oxford: oxford university press. ———. 2014. reconcile: conflict transformation for ordinary christians. harrisonburg: herald press. leonardsson, hanna, and gustav rudd. 2015. “the ‘local turn’ in peacebuilding: a literature review of effective and emancipatory local peacebuilding.” third world quarterly 36 (5): 825–39. mac ginty, roger. 2014. “everyday peace: bottom-up and local agency in conflict-affected societies.” security dialogue 45 (6): 548–64. morsink, johannes. 1999. the universal declaration of human rights: origins, drafting, and intent. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press. moyo, dambisa. 2008. dead aid: why aid is not working and how there is a better way for africa. new york: farrar, straus and giroux. myers, bryant l. 2011. walking with the poor: principles and practices of transformational development. revised and expanded ed. maryknoll: orbis books. narayan, deepa, and patti petesch, eds. 2002 voices of the poor: from many lands. new york: oxford university press and the world bank. nussbaum, martha. 2000. women and human development. cambridge: harvard university press. peet, richard, and elaine hartwick. 2015. theories of development: contentions, arguments, alternatives. 3rd ed. new york: guilford press. richmond, oliver. 2011. a post-liberal peace. london; new york: routledge. ———. 2014. failed statebuilding: intervention and the dynamics of peace formation. new haven: yale university press. rist, gilbert. 2019. the history of development. 5th ed. london: zed books. rostow, w. w. 1991. the stages of economic growth: a non-communist manifesto. 3rd ed. cambridge: cambridge university press. sahle, eunice. 2012. “post-development and alternatives to development.” in introduction to international development: approaches, actors, and issues, 2nd ed, edited by paul a. haslam, jessica schafer, and pierre beaudet, 68–85. toronto: oxford university press. schliesser, christine. 2024. “religion matters: religion and the sustainable development goals.” religions 15 (337): 1–11. sen, amartya. 1999. development as freedom. new york: anchor books. shaw, jonathan. 2011. the role of religion in national security policy since september 11, 2001. carlisle: strategic studies institute, us army war college. tomalin, emma, jörg haustein, and shabaana kidy. 2019. “religion and the sustainable development goals.” review of faith & international affairs 17 (2): 102–18. volf, miroslav. 2017. flourishing: why we need religion in a globalized world. new haven: yale university press. wallensteen, peter. 2011. “the origins of contemporary peace research.” in understanding peace research, edited by kristine hoglund and magnus oberg, 14–32. london: routledge. ———. 2015. understanding conflict resolution. 4th ed. los angeles: sage publications ltd. weber, max. 1965. politics as a vocation. philadelphia: fortress press. whittle, devon. 2015. “the limits of legality and the united nations security council: applying the extra-legal measures model to chapter vii action.” the european journal of international law 26 (3): 671–98. wolterstorff, nicholas. 1983. until justice and peace embrace. grand rapids: w.b. eerdmans pub. co. zembylas, michalinos. 2018. “con-/divergences between postcolonial and critical peace education: towards pedagogies of decolonization in peace education.” journal of peace education 15 (1): 1–23. karie cross riddle is an assistant professor of political science at pepperdine university, where she teaches courses in global development, women and politics, international ethics, and south asian politics. she is the author of critical feminist justpeace (oxford university press, 2024). author email: karie.riddle@pepperdine.edu mailto:karie.riddle@pepperdine.edu christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(1), summer 2024 sabin et al., multiplying impact for smallholder farmers 12 multiplying impact for smallholder farmers scott sabin, josh meyer, emile icoyavuze, honorine murorunkwere, méthode ntibandye, jared white, milmer martinez vergara, corey chin, paul thompson, robert morikawa1 smallholder farmers around the world often find themselves at the nexus of poverty and environmental degradation. promotion of savings groups has become a well-recognized strategy for addressing poverty. evidence shows that while savings group promotion can result in positive impact, these results are often small. this paper examines a quasi-experimental (difference-in-differences) study of an integrated approach to savings group promotion, combining a savings methodology with participatory training in regenerative agriculture/agroecology techniques. after 2 years of participation, farmers who participated in both church-based savings group activities and regenerative agriculture training saw positive change across economic, environmental, and spiritual dimensions, with the treatment group experiencing a 39% decrease in poverty as measured by a multidimensional poverty index relative to the control group. results support the integration of savings methodologies with agricultural training to multiply impact among smallholder farmer communities. introduction over 600 million smallholder farmers in the world (fao 2023b) often find themselves living at the nexus of poverty and environmental degradation. they are also often located in some of the most ecologically critical zones in the world, and as such are positioned to be important stewards of not only food security, but above and below ground ecosystems, water resources, biodiversity, and carbon. equipping smallholder farmers, who daily face urgent issues of deforestation, declining soil health, and farm productivity is a critical element in any global strategy to address environmental degradation and climate change. many strategies have been developed to help equip smallholder farmers and other households living in conditions of poverty under the umbrella of poverty alleviation (lipton 1996). promotion of savings groups has become a significant component of poverty alleviation strategies in the past 30 years (vsla 2023). reviews and meta-analyses of savings group literature show a link between savings and positive well-being outcomes (annan, et al. 2013; biscaye et al. 2015; karlan, ratan, and zinman 2014; stewart, et al. 2012; van rooyen, stewart, and de wet 2012). one of the first systematic reviews of savings and microfinance studies (stewart, et al. 2012; van rooyen, stewart, and 1 the authors wish to acknowledge the efforts of the smallholder farmers in the study areas, who are improving the resilience of their communities and watersheds, one group at a time. all authors are employees of non-governmental organizations (ngos) that work in the study area and provide training support to farmers. de wet 2012) concludes that savings promotion can have a positive impact on health, food security, and nutrition outcomes, but that results are mixed, and authors found little consistent evidence of a positive impact on income. a randomized control trial (rct) of village savings and loans associations (vslas) conducted in burundi (annan, et al. 2013) shows a positive impact on food security indicators and a statistically significant reduction in poverty. the intervention studies combined training on vsla group formation with training on entrepreneurship and financial literacy. a review that looks specifically at studies of savings (karlan, ratan, and zinman 2014) indicates that access to savings opportunities has a positive long-term impact on poverty and income. this review study finds little evidence that additional training on financial literacy leads to increases in savings habits. an extensive review of over one thousand papers looking specifically at agricultural communities (biscaye et al. 2015) references a wealth of data on the impact of credit on smallholder farmers but much less information on the impact of savings. most studies of savings show at least some positive effect, but evidence of increased income and resilience is mixed. authors note that context may play an important role in study outcomes, contrasting christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(1), summer 2024 sabin et al., multiplying impact for smallholder farmers 13 for example urban versus rural settings. another large meta-analysis of thousands of titles—filtered to 24 studies that meet author criteria—shows that promotion of savings has a small but significant impact on poverty metrics such as expenditures, income, return on family business, and food security (steinert et al. 2018). a multi-sector approach, while requiring greater coordination, has been shown to have a positive impact on poverty. in particular, agricultural growth is strongly associated with poverty reduction (lipton 1996). integration of savings with other types of interventions has been examined in several studies (entz, kaarsgaard, and salomons 2016; gugerty, biscaye, and anderson 2019; rippey, and fowler 2011). a meta-analysis of self-help group studies (gugerty, biscaye, and anderson 2019), shows that self-help groups often have multiple goals, and experience a wide range of beneficial outcomes in multiple areas such as maternal and childcare, reproductive health, savings, and agriculture. a review of studies of savings groups integrated with other initiatives (gugerty, biscaye, and anderson 2019) reveals that integration can have positive outcomes. as these authors note, it also seems true that, with other organizations, in some instances, these outcomes appear to be more beneficial for the linked organization than for the savings group. federations or apex models in particular represent a risk of reduced transparency. several studies have examined the linkage between savings and agriculture. a study in ghana (ankrah twumasi et al. 2019) shows that farmers perceive that savings result in an increase in capital, and therefore in agricultural production. participation in village savings and loan associations (vslas) in tanzania results in increased farm productivity, food availability, increased diversity of income sources, and decreased school drop-out rates among smallholder farm households (nyamaka 2019). another study indicates that participation in vsla results in 38% higher agricultural productivity compared with farmers who do not participate in vsla (dawuni, mabe, and damba 2021). this study suggests that acquisition of inputs is a key factor contributing to the increase in productivity. households that are actively saving are more likely to adopt climate-smart agriculture techniques according to a study in kenya (gikonyo et al. 2022). this study notes that the majority of households actively saving are involved in community groups. some organizations, observing the benefit of combined savings with agriculture, have integrated savings promotion components to enhance their regenerative agriculture or agroecology intervention. a training program in kenya combined sustainable agricultural land management practices with vsla (shames et al. 2015). authors note that vsla participation provides a source of funding that helps farmers implement sustainable agricultural land management practices on a long-term basis. a four-year study of a training package integrating sustainable land management practices and vsla in kenya finds project farmers experiencing higher levels of savings and increased farm yields relative to a control group (nyberg et al. 2020). a climate-smart agriculture program in ghana observes that training programs can have a positive influence on adoption of climate-smart techniques, and that vsla can positively influence farmer participation in such programs (martey, etwire, and mockshell 2021). a financing model called community ecofund credits utilizes a vsla model and provides grants to groups who implement an environmental management plan—this program is being implemented in uganda, malawi, and tanzania (wild et al. 2021). a conservation agriculture research program in south africa provides vsla training to interested farmer groups and observes vsla is key to the long-term application of conservation agriculture practices (kruger et al. 2022). an agroforestry program in ghana supports formation of vsla groups which allowed farmers, especially female farmers, to access credit and diversify farming practices (kusters, k 2023). a smaller number of studies provide evidence of a causal link for the impact of integrated savings and agricultural training. a quasi-experimental study in tanzania shows that combining vsla with farmer field schools (ffs) helps increase adoption of climate-smart agriculture practices such as mulching, composting, and crop rotation (pamuk et al. 2021; 2018). a differencein-differences (did) study of an integrated development model combining savings groups with regenerative agriculture training in the democratic republic of the congo observes positive changes in household economic condition and ecosystem health (sabin et al. 2019). a case study in haiti and the dominican republic at the height of the covid-19 pandemic (sabin et al. 2022) indicates that smallholder farmers who participate in savings groups are resilient in the face of major shocks and continue to apply regenerative agricultural techniques. another did study of a combined savings and agricultural training intervention operated by world relief in rwanda shows that participating farmers are more likely to apply innovative farming techniques, have better food security, and improved economic conditions (dent et al. 2020). the evidence discussed above makes a case for complementary interaction between savings activities and agriculture, and in particular, support for agricultural training. yet the number of studies providing rigorous quantitative evidence for this interaction is small. to contribute to the evidence being gathered on this topic, the remainder of this paper examines the effect of integrating a regenerative agriculture training component into an established savings group model using a quasi-experimental design christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(1), summer 2024 sabin et al., multiplying impact for smallholder farmers 14 in burundi, further building the case for complementary interaction between savings and agricultural training. methods this study arises from a partnership between two organizations, hope international and plant with purpose. data gathering took place in southern burundi, in the provinces of rutana and makamba. two watersheds were selected, the treatment watershed, rukuzira (104 square km), and the control watershed, nyakayi (72 square km). both watersheds have somewhat rugged relief and range in elevations from approximately 1200 m to 2100 m above sea level (open topography 2013). both are considered miombo woodlands ecoregion type (olson et al. 2001) and are primarily rural, practicing highlands agricultural systems (hoogeveen and george 2010). figure 1: location of study watersheds within burundi, treatment = rukuzira, control = nyakayi previously established savings groups, 74 in total, were identified in the treatment watershed. each group consists of approximately 20-25 members trained in group savings methodology using hope international’s program (hope international 2023). the savings group methodology (hope international 2024) is churchcentered with a biblically integrated curriculum that places a strong emphasis on the transformational power of jesus, and the importance of key principles including trust, discipline, transparency, leadership, stewardship, fellowship, and commitment to time in prayer and the bible. the goal is to see men and women around the world find their soul’s satisfaction in christ and become dignified, hope-filled providers in their families and communities. a core element of this approach is discipleship: through regular interactions with the men and women in the savings group ministry, church-based volunteers and pastors share the gospel, facilitate bible studies, and invite them to experience lasting transformation through a relationship with jesus christ. groups select their own leadership, write their own bylaws, establish their own savings and credit norms, and conduct savings and loans transactions openly during regular meetings. over a two-year period from 2020 to 2022, plant with purpose provided additional training in agroecology practices such as agroforestry and soil conservation to savings groups in the treatment watershed. multiple training strategies were implemented including: • use of a multi-year curriculum that covers topics including agroforestry, soil conservation, soil health, conservation agriculture, biointensive agriculture and watershed management. • lecture-style training in which technicians provide theoretical and practical information to farmer groups on regenerative agriculture/agroecology practices. • groups were encouraged to prioritize key practices and test them in a farmer field school (ffs) model (fao 2023a). ffs is a training methodology that seeks to “level the playing field” between trainer and farmer, acknowledging the value of both local and external knowledge, and providing the opportunity to test farming practices under local, “real life” conditions. using a donated parcel of land in the community, participating farmers get to try out what they learn in experiments that they propose, and then participate in analyzing the outcomes. • volunteer members within savings groups known as “endogenous facilitators” were equipped with knowledge in regenerative practices and acted as a locally-based resource for other farmers. a difference-in-differences (did) design (“difference…” 2020) was applied, comparing groups in the treatment watershed who did receive regenerative agriculture training to similar groups in the control watershed who continued with savings activities but received no regenerative agriculture training. in 2020 a baseline study was conducted with 488 randomly selected households surveyed from existing savings groups, 309 in the treatment watershed, and 179 from the control watershed. in 2022, an endline study was conducted with the same randomly selected households where possible, 404 in total, 245 from the treatment watershed and 159 from the control watershed. data were collected on a suite of indicators addressing environmental, economic, and social/spiritual themes (see table 1). results were analyzed using the open-source r statistical platform (r core team 2023). multidimensional poverty was estimated using the method developed by the oxford poverty and human development initiative (alkire and foster 2011). the multidimensional poverty index christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(1), summer 2024 sabin et al., multiplying impact for smallholder farmers 15 (mpi) is a robust approach to measuring poverty and has been tested in a wide variety of contexts. the mpi looks at poverty as not simply economic, but also having social, health, educational, and even spiritual components. this holistic approach aligns well with the model applied by both collaborating organizations in this study (hope and plant with purpose) who see faith as a critical dimension of well-being or poverty. this approach/model therefore influences what is measured, the definition of impact, and what a flourishing life means. see figure 9 below for the indicators included in this study. table 1: metrics linked to desired mpi outcomes indicator metric cash reserves amount of emergency cash available, months land protected % of farm protected with trees or soil conservation measures technique diversity number of regenerative agriculture techniques applied on farm soil health evaluated health of soil on farm, likert scale nutrition index estimated nutrition diversity based on frequency of consumption of key food groups crop yield estimated yield in current season relative to previous seasons, likert scale spiritual support estimated support received from fellow group members, likert scale, (measured by support through prayer or the sharing of prayer requests – not included in the mpi summarized in figure 9) results using the difference-in-differences approach, a series of key metrics linked to the indicators in table 1 shows a positive difference in the treatment group relative to the control group from the baseline data collected in 2020 to the endline data collected in 2022. these consist of an increase in cash reserves, percentage of land protected with regenerative practices on farms, diversity of regenerative agriculture techniques applied per farm, soil health, nutrition diversity measured as an index, crop yield, and spiritual support provided by other group members. differencein-differences analysis looks at the relative change from baseline to endline-—his means the absolute difference at endline is less important if the change over time indicates a difference between treatments. for example, spiritual support remains relatively flat for the treatment group from baseline to endline, but declines for the comparison group, resulting in a relative positive change (the difference in the differences) for the treatment group. note that all these differences are statistically significant at a p value of 0.01. each of these outcomes is summarized separately in figures 2-8 on the following pages: figure 2: cash reserves measured in months christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(1), summer 2024 sabin et al., multiplying impact for smallholder farmers 16 figure 3: percent of land on farm protected with trees or soil conservation measures figure 4: regenerative agriculture technique diversity per farm figure 5: soil health figure 6: nutrition index christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(1), summer 2024 sabin et al., multiplying impact for smallholder farmers 17 figure 7: crop yield figure 8: spiritual support table 2: results of statistical tests of difference-in-differences indicator baseline endline did value p-value control treatment control treatment cash reserves (months) 0.51 0.78 0.68 1.38 .43 0.00292 land protected (% of farm) 42 28.5 42.7 43 13.8 0.00273 technique diversity (per farm) 2.4 2 2.1 3.3 1.6 1.59e09 soil health (1-5) 2.7 2.7 2.4 3 0.6 9.94e06 nutrition index (1-4) 2.8 2.8 1.6 1.8 0.2 0.00859 crop yield (1-3) 1.6 1.6 1.6 2.2 0.6 3.08e07 spiritual support (0-3) 1.5 1.3 1.3 1.3 0.2 0.00288 in addition, a multidimensional poverty index (mpi—see figure 9) is estimated using a series of 12 indicators across 6 dimensions. households are evaluated for level of deprivation based on the 12 indicators in the index. household size is also considered in order to estimate both the poverty headcount and intensity of poverty. by considering multiple dimensions such as education, and access to water, mpi reflects a perspective that poverty is about more than cash scarcity. the mpi analysis in this study shows a decrease in levels of multidimensional poverty among the treatment group by 20% from 2020 to 2022, and an increase in levels of multidimensional poverty among the control group of 19% (see figure 10). christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(1), summer 2024 sabin et al., multiplying impact for smallholder farmers 18 figure 9: multidimensional poverty index metrics figure 10: mpi results (note: no error bars provided on mpi as an aggregate value) discussion this study was implemented among wellestablished and well-functioning savings groups. the treatment group received training in regenerative agriculture techniques while the control group did not. at baseline, the control and treatment cohorts were similar based on the indicators measured. after two years of training and application of techniques, the treatment group showed significant improvement in a variety of dimensions, including soil health, crop yield, cash reserves, nutrition, and spiritual support. simple transfer of knowledge was likely not the only factor in this change. traditional lecture-style training was provided to farmers, but this was integrated with more participatory training methods. in particular, ffs was promoted among the treatment group allowing farmers to share indigenous knowledge, prioritize, and test regenerative techniques locally and appropriately. at baseline, approximately 10% of the treatment group reported involvement in ffs while at endline participation in ffs had increased to 40%. christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(1), summer 2024 sabin et al., multiplying impact for smallholder farmers 19 it is worth noting the larger context in which this study took place. the timing of the study, 2020-2022 was a period of considerable upheaval—a global pandemic, supply chain disruptions, and rampant inflation. regionally burundi was also experiencing drought. as a result, some indicators, such as nutrition, show a decline in the comparison group. this is not evidence for declining program effectiveness as much as it is evidence of the greater global and regional context. the treatment group over the same period for nutrition for example, also showed a decline, but one that was less drastic—providing some evidence of greater resilience. several extensive reviews of savings studies (biscaye et al. 2015; karlan, ratan, and zinman 2014; steinert et al. 2018), report positive impacts of savings promotion, but these impacts are often mixed or small. it is worth remembering that mature savings groups in this study were formed out of, and participated in, a hope international church-based savings group ministry that has been associated with significant change. in a previous study of hope international savings groups from zambia using the same curriculum and methodology (hope international 2024), 73% of group members changed something about the way they lived because of discipleship training, and were 3 times more likely to enjoy increasing trust in relationships than a comparison group. the results of this current study provide strong evidence that integration of savings promotion goals with regenerative agriculture promotion can multiply impact and support the results of other similar studies (dent et al. 2020). farmers in this study who participated in both savings group activities and application of regenerative techniques saw a 39% decrease in levels of poverty as measured by a multidimensional poverty index relative to the control population farmers who were involved only in savings group activities. this impact is large and supported by a rigorous quasi-experimental design building on the limited number of quantitative studies that add to the understanding of the interaction between savings groups and regenerative agriculture training. this study shows positive, statistically significant change across a suite of indicators using a quasiexperimental design. where the control population remained unchanged or even showed declines in key indicators, the treatment population showed measurable improvement. these changes were not only economic, for example increases in cash reserves, but also environmental, specifically increase in the amount of land protected per farm, technique diversity, and soil health. furthermore, the treatment group showed improvement in spiritual support provided by other group members, indicating that the overall impacts are truly multidimensional. use of the quasiexperimental design, difference-in-differences, and clear, statistically significant differences between comparison savings groups and treatment savings groups permit a high level of confidence in attributing change to the influence of the regenerative agriculture/ agroecology training component. in addition to reduction in levels of economic poverty, positive changes in other dimensions such as improved soil health, increased amount of land protected with trees or soil conservation measures, and increased spiritual support among participants suggests that change is not economic only, but truly multidimensional. it further suggests possible drivers of change—improved soil health for example, can lead to healthier crops, increased production, and greater ability to earn income. gender is also a consideration— the regenerative agriculture training component is inclusive for both men and women. typically, female participation is between 60-70% of all participants. in many contexts, including burundi, women do at least as much farming as men. while beyond the scope of this paper, inclusion of women is likely another driver of change. further studies should be conducted to better understand the possible drivers of change observed in this study. this study considers two treatment plans: churchbased savings groups as the control, and church-based savings groups plus regenerative agriculture training as the treatment. a future study could consider four treatment regimes: 1) no training (control) 2) savings groups alone 3) regenerative agriculture training alone 4) combined savings and regenerative agriculture training. this would allow a clearer understanding of change and how each component may contribute to change. a larger study could look at 3 key components— environment, economics, and spiritual factors. such a study might have 8 treatments plans: 1) no training 2) savings groups alone 3) regenerative agriculture training alone 4) spiritual renewal training alone 5) savings groups and regenerative agriculture training combined 6) savings & spiritual renewal training combined 7) regenerative agriculture and spiritual renewal training combined 8) all three components combined. conclusion savings groups, in particular the village savings and loan methodology (vsla 2023), are well established as christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(1), summer 2024 sabin et al., multiplying impact for smallholder farmers 20 an effective community development intervention, although the impact has been shown to be mixed or small (biscaye et al. 2015; steinert et al. 2018). this study demonstrates that the integration of complementary interventions, in this case regenerative agriculture training, can multiply the impact of savings groups. in this study, farmers who participated in both church-based savings group activities and regenerative agriculture technique application saw higher levels of savings reserves, improved soil health, increased household nutrition levels, and decreased levels of multidimensional poverty, when compared to savings groups with no participation in regenerative agriculture training. these results were not small or mixed, with the treatment group seeing a 39% relative decline in levels of multidimensional poverty over a two-year period. this outcome builds on the growing body of evidence from other practitioners such as world relief (dent et al. 2020) and suggests that an integrated approach to savings can multiply impact, result in significant reductions in multidimensional poverty among smallholder farmers, and achieve multiple goals of both poverty alleviation and environmental restoration. references alkire, sabina, and james foster. 2011. “counting and multidimensional poverty measurement.” journal of public economics 95 (7): 476–87. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2010.11.006. ankrah twumasi, martinson, yuansheng jiang, frank osei danquah, abbas ali chandio, and wonder agbenyo. 2020. “the role of savings mobilization on access to credit: a case study of smallholder farmers in ghana.” agricultural finance review 80 (2): 275–90. https://doi.org/10.1108/afr-05-2019-0055. annan, jeanine, tom bundervoet, juliette seban, and jaime costigan. 2013. a randomized impact evaluation of village savings and loans associations and family-based interventions in burundi. usaid. https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/arandomized-impact-evaluation-of-villagesavings-annanbundervoet/11088c32d5b9d0afdbf21eb20701075 030acf3d3. biscaye, pierre, chris clark, katie panhorst harris, c. leigh anderson, and gugerty, mary kay. 2015. “review of rural and agricultural finance in subsaharan africa.” epar brief no. 307. evans school of public policy & finance. https://epar.evans.uw.edu/review-of-rural-andagricultural-finance-in-sub-saharan-africa/. dawuni, peter, franklin mabe, and osman damba. 2021. “effects of village savings and loan association on agricultural value productivity in northern region of ghana.” agricultural finance review 81, 657-674. https://doi.org/10.1108/afr02-2020-0024. dent, kallisse, rodney green, rhona murungi, beatrice nyiranzeyimana, jean de dieu habiyaremye, rafael flores, and andrew jones. 2020. a case study of world relief’s agriculture for life and savings for life in rwanda. https://www.meda.org/document/a-case-study-ofworld-reliefs-agriculture-for-life-and-savings-forlife-inrwanda/?wpdmdl=4453&refresh=6712b84161bc9 1729280065. “difference-in-differences.” 2020. sciencedirect. https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/economicseconometrics-and-finance/difference-indifferences. entz, meghan, janet kaarsgaard, and michael salomons. 2016. an overview of savings and self help groups, their contribution to improved food security, and how to improve their function: a review of the literature. canadian foodgrains bank. https://issuu.com/jmakau/docs/an-overview-ofsavings-and-self-help-groups-their fao. 2023a. “global farmer field school platform. food and agriculture organization of the united nations. https://www.fao.org/farmer-fieldschools/home/en/. ———. 2023b. the state of food and agriculture 2023: revealing the true cost of food to transform agrifood systems. food and agriculture organization of the united nations. https://doi.org/10.4060/cc7724en. gikonyo, naomi wanjiru, john rono busienei, john kamau gathiaka, and george njomo karuku. 2022. “analysis of household savings and adoption of climate smart agricultural technologies. evidence from smallholder farmers in nyando basin, kenya.” heliyon 8 (6): e09692. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2022.e09692. gugerty, mary kay, pierre biscaye, and c. leigh anderson. 2019. “delivering development? evidence on self-help groups as development intermediaries in south asia and africa.” development policy review: the journal of the overseas development institute 37 (1): 129–51. https://doi.org/10.1111/dpr.12381. hoogeveen, jippe and hubert george. 2010. “major agricultural systems (global).” food and agriculture organization of the united nations. https://data.apps.fao.org/catalog/iso/c9be830edaf5-4926-bbf6-0051ad057c53. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2010.11.006 https://doi.org/10.1108/afr-05-2019-0055 https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a-randomized-impact-evaluation-of-village-savings-annan-bundervoet/11088c32d5b9d0afdbf21eb20701075030acf3d3 https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a-randomized-impact-evaluation-of-village-savings-annan-bundervoet/11088c32d5b9d0afdbf21eb20701075030acf3d3 https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a-randomized-impact-evaluation-of-village-savings-annan-bundervoet/11088c32d5b9d0afdbf21eb20701075030acf3d3 https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a-randomized-impact-evaluation-of-village-savings-annan-bundervoet/11088c32d5b9d0afdbf21eb20701075030acf3d3 https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a-randomized-impact-evaluation-of-village-savings-annan-bundervoet/11088c32d5b9d0afdbf21eb20701075030acf3d3 https://epar.evans.uw.edu/review-of-rural-and-agricultural-finance-in-sub-saharan-africa/ https://epar.evans.uw.edu/review-of-rural-and-agricultural-finance-in-sub-saharan-africa/ https://doi.org/10.1108/afr-02-2020-0024 https://doi.org/10.1108/afr-02-2020-0024 https://www.meda.org/document/a-case-study-of-world-reliefs-agriculture-for-life-and-savings-for-life-in-rwanda/?wpdmdl=4453&refresh=6712b84161bc91729280065 https://www.meda.org/document/a-case-study-of-world-reliefs-agriculture-for-life-and-savings-for-life-in-rwanda/?wpdmdl=4453&refresh=6712b84161bc91729280065 https://www.meda.org/document/a-case-study-of-world-reliefs-agriculture-for-life-and-savings-for-life-in-rwanda/?wpdmdl=4453&refresh=6712b84161bc91729280065 https://www.meda.org/document/a-case-study-of-world-reliefs-agriculture-for-life-and-savings-for-life-in-rwanda/?wpdmdl=4453&refresh=6712b84161bc91729280065 https://www.meda.org/document/a-case-study-of-world-reliefs-agriculture-for-life-and-savings-for-life-in-rwanda/?wpdmdl=4453&refresh=6712b84161bc91729280065 https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/economics-econometrics-and-finance/difference-in-differences https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/economics-econometrics-and-finance/difference-in-differences https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/economics-econometrics-and-finance/difference-in-differences https://issuu.com/jmakau/docs/an-overview-of-savings-and-self-help-groups-theirhttps://issuu.com/jmakau/docs/an-overview-of-savings-and-self-help-groups-theirhttps://www.fao.org/farmer-field-schools/home/en/ https://www.fao.org/farmer-field-schools/home/en/ https://doi.org/10.4060/cc7724en https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2022.e09692 https://doi.org/10.1111/dpr.12381 https://data.apps.fao.org/catalog/iso/c9be830e-daf5-4926-bbf6-0051ad057c53 https://data.apps.fao.org/catalog/iso/c9be830e-daf5-4926-bbf6-0051ad057c53 christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(1), summer 2024 sabin et al., multiplying impact for smallholder farmers 21 hope international. 2023. “sg multiply.” https://www.hopeinternational.org/what-we-do/sgmultiply. ———. 2024. “restore: savings curriculum.” https://www.hopeinternational.org/resources/resto re-agreement. karlan, dean, aishwarya lakshmi ratan, and jonathan zinman. 2014. “savings by and for the poor: a research review and agenda.” review of income and wealth 60 (1): 36–78. https://doi.org/10.1111/roiw.12101. kruger, erna, hendrik smith, phumzile ngcobo, mazwi dlamini, and temakholo mathebula. 2022. “conservation agriculture innovation systems build climate resilience for smallholder farmers in south africa.” in conservation agriculture in africa: climate-smart agricultural development, edited by saidi mkomwa and amir kassam, 345–60. wallingford: cabi. https://doi.org/10.1079/9781789245745.0021. kusters, koen. 2023. supporting agroforestry adoption for climate-smart landscapes: lessons from the working landscapes programme. tropenbos international. https://www.tropenbos.org/resources/publications/ supporting+agroforestry+adoption+for+climatesmart+landscapes. lipton michael. 1996. “successes in anti-poverty.” issues in development discussion paper 8, international labour organization. http://www.ilo.org/employment/whatwedo/public ations/wcms_123434/lang--en/index.htm. martey, edward, prince m. etwire, and jonathan mockshell. 2021. “climate-smart cowpea adoption and welfare effects of comprehensive agricultural training programs.” technology in society 64: 101468. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techsoc.2020.101468. nyamaka, kasukura. 2019. “the impact of informal savings schemes on household welfare of smallholder farmers in kilolo district, iringa, tanzania.” masters thesis, the open university of tanzania. http://repository.out.ac.tz/2507/. nyberg, ylva, caroline musee, emmanuel wachiye, mattias jonsson, johanna wetterlind, and ingrid öborn. 2020. “effects of agroforestry and other sustainable practices in the kenya agricultural carbon project (kacp).” land 9 (10): 389. https://doi.org/10.3390/land9100389. olson, david m., eric dinerstein, eric d. wikramanayake, neil d. burgess, george v. n. powell, emma c. underwood, jennifer a. d’amico, et al. 2001. “terrestrial ecoregions of the world: a new map of life on earth: a new global map of terrestrial ecoregions provides an innovative tool for conserving biodiversity.” bioscience 51 (11): 933–38. https://doi.org/10.1641/00063568(2001)051[0933:teotwa]2.0.co;2. open topography. 2013. “shuttle radar topography mission (srtm). https://doi.org/10.5069/g9445jdf. pamuk, haki, marcel van asseldonk, karl deering, evan h. girvetz, joseph hella, stanley karanja ng’ang’a, thabit masoud, jamleck osiemo, and ruerd ruben. 2018. “testing a new model combining micro-finance and farmer training to upscale the adoption of climate-smart agriculture practices by small-scale farmers in developing countries.” cgiar research. https://hdl.handle.net/10568/99020. pamuk, haki, marcel van asseldonk, cor wattel, stanley karanja ng’ang’a, joseph philip hella, and ruerd ruben. 2021. “farmer field business schools and village savings and loan associations for promoting climate-smart agriculture practices: evidence from rural tanzania.” working paper no.361. cgiar research program on climate change, agriculture and food security (ccafs). https://cgspace.cgiar.org/handle/10568/114490. r core team. 2023. “the r project for statistical computing.” https://www.r-project.org/, rippey, paul and ben fowler. 2011. beyond financial services: a synthesis of studies on the integration of savings groups and other developmental activities. aga khan foundation. https://akflearninghub.org/documents/beyondfinancial-services. sabin, scott, annah amani, guy paraison, durbel lora brito, milmer vergara, grace santos, corey chin, and robert morikawa. 2022. “smallholder farmer resilience: a multi-year multidimensional study in the dominican republic and haiti.” trees, forests and people 7: 100189. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tfp.2021.100189. sabin, scott, birori dieudonne, john mitchell, jared white, corey chin, and robert morikawa. 2019. “community-based watershed change: a case study in eastern congo.” forests 10 (6): 475. https://doi.org/10.3390/f10060475. shames, seth, krista heiner, martha kapukha, amos wekesa, and john w. m. recha. 2015. “scaling up sustainable agriculture land management in bungoma county, kenya.” ecoagriculture policy focus no. 12. washington dc: ecoagriculture partners. https://cgspace.cgiar.org/handle/10568/68429. steinert, janina i., juliane zenker, ute filipiak, ani movsisyan, lucie d. cluver, and yulia shenderovich. 2018. “do saving promotion https://www.hopeinternational.org/what-we-do/sg-multiply https://www.hopeinternational.org/what-we-do/sg-multiply https://www.hopeinternational.org/resources/restore-agreement https://www.hopeinternational.org/resources/restore-agreement https://doi.org/10.1111/roiw.12101 https://doi.org/10.1079/9781789245745.0021 https://www.tropenbos.org/resources/publications/supporting+agroforestry+adoption+for+climate-smart+landscapes https://www.tropenbos.org/resources/publications/supporting+agroforestry+adoption+for+climate-smart+landscapes https://www.tropenbos.org/resources/publications/supporting+agroforestry+adoption+for+climate-smart+landscapes http://www.ilo.org/employment/whatwedo/publications/wcms_123434/lang--en/index.htm http://www.ilo.org/employment/whatwedo/publications/wcms_123434/lang--en/index.htm https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techsoc.2020.101468 http://repository.out.ac.tz/2507/ https://doi.org/10.3390/land9100389 https://doi.org/10.1641/0006-3568(2001)051%5b0933:teotwa%5d2.0.co;2 https://doi.org/10.1641/0006-3568(2001)051%5b0933:teotwa%5d2.0.co;2 https://doi.org/10.5069/g9445jdf https://hdl.handle.net/10568/99020 https://cgspace.cgiar.org/handle/10568/114490 https://www.r-project.org/ https://akflearninghub.org/documents/beyond-financial-services https://akflearninghub.org/documents/beyond-financial-services https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tfp.2021.100189 https://doi.org/10.3390/f10060475 https://cgspace.cgiar.org/handle/10568/68429 christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(1), summer 2024 sabin et al., multiplying impact for smallholder farmers 22 interventions increase household savings, consumption, and investments in sub-saharan africa? a systematic review and meta-analysis.” world development 104: 238–56. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2017.11.018. stewart, ruth, carina van rooyen, kelly dickson, mabolaeng majoro, and thea de wet. 2012. “what is the impact of microfinance on poor people? a systematic review of evidence from sub-saharan africa technical report.” eppi centre-social science research, https://gsdrcwebsite-pjp5ov869n.livewebsite.com/document-library/what-is-the-impactof-microfinance-on-poor-people-a-systematicreview-of-evidence-from-sub-saharan-africa/. van rooyen, c., r. stewart, and t. de wet. 2012. “the impact of microfinance in sub-saharan africa: a systematic review of the evidence.” world development 40 (11): 2249–62. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2012.03.012. vsla. 2023. “the vsla methodology.” vsla associates. https://www.vsla.net/the-vslamethodology/. wild, robert, moses egaru, mark ellis-jones, barbara nakangu bugembe, ahmed mohamed, obadiah ngigi, gertrude ogwok, jules roberts, and sophie kutegeka. 2021. “using inclusive finance to significantly scale climate change adaptation.” in african handbook of climate change adaptation, edited by nicholas oguge, desalegn ayal, lydia adeleke, and izael da silva, 2565–90. springer international publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45106-6_127. scott sabin is ceo at plant with purpose. author email: scott@plantwithpurpose.org. josh meyer is senior director of savings group programs at hope international. https://www.hopeinternational.org, author email: josh.aaron.meyer@gmail.com. emile icoyavuze is deputy national director at floresta burundi. author email: icoyavuze@gmail.com. honorine murorunkwere is monitoring and evaluation manager at floresta burundi. author email: murorunkwereh2019@gmail.com. méthode ntibandy is coordinator for environmental restoration at floresta burundi. author email: mntibandye@gmail.com. jared white is senior program officer, africa at plant with purpose, www.plantwithpurpose.org. author email: jared@plantwithpurpose.org. milmer martinez vergara is vice-president, international programs at plant with purpose, www.plantwithpurpose.org. author email: milmer@plantwithpurpose.org. corey chin is director of monitoring, learning & evaluation at plant with purpose, www.plantwithpurpose.org. author email: corey@plantwithpurpose.org. paul thompson is coo at plant with purpose, www.plantwithpurpose.org. author email: paul@plantwithpurpose.org. robert morikawa is senior director, innovation lab at plant with purpose, www.plantwithpurpose.org. author email: robert@plantwithpurpose.org. communication regarding this article may be directed to robert@plantwithpurpose.org, 4747 morena blvd., suite 100, san diego, ca, usa, 92117 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2017.11.018 https://gsdrcwebsite-pjp5ov869n.live-website.com/document-library/what-is-the-impact-of-microfinance-on-poor-people-a-systematic-review-of-evidence-from-sub-saharan-africa/ https://gsdrcwebsite-pjp5ov869n.live-website.com/document-library/what-is-the-impact-of-microfinance-on-poor-people-a-systematic-review-of-evidence-from-sub-saharan-africa/ https://gsdrcwebsite-pjp5ov869n.live-website.com/document-library/what-is-the-impact-of-microfinance-on-poor-people-a-systematic-review-of-evidence-from-sub-saharan-africa/ https://gsdrcwebsite-pjp5ov869n.live-website.com/document-library/what-is-the-impact-of-microfinance-on-poor-people-a-systematic-review-of-evidence-from-sub-saharan-africa/ https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2012.03.012 https://www.vsla.net/the-vsla-methodology/ https://www.vsla.net/the-vsla-methodology/ https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45106-6_127 mailto:scott@plantwithpurpose.org https://www.hopeinternational.org/ mailto:josh.aaron.meyer@gmail.com mailto:icoyavuze@gmail.com mailto:murorunkwereh2019@gmail.com mailto:mntibandye@gmail.com http://www.plantwithpurpose.org/ mailto:jared@plantwithpurpose.org http://www.plantwithpurpose.org/ mailto:milmer@plantwithpurpose.org http://www.plantwithpurpose.org/ mailto:corey@plantwithpurpose.org http://www.plantwithpurpose.org/ mailto:paul@plantwithpurpose.org http://www.plantwithpurpose.org/ mailto:robert@plantwithpurpose.org mailto:robert@plantwithpurpose.org christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 tang, book review 187 book review decolonizing religion and peacebuilding by atalia omer reviewed by flora x. tang new york. oxford university press. 2023. $29.37. in this book, omer speaks to and with on-theground practices of intrareligious and interreligious peacebuilding in the global south. drawing on participant-observation and interview-based fieldwork with interreligious peacebuilding organizations such as catholic relief services in kenya and the philippines, atalia omer offers a critical yet generous review of neoliberal peacebuilding industries’ usage of religion as a bureaucratic tool in peacebuilding. omer highlights how religion and religious traditions have been “harnessed” by peacebuilding non-governmental organizations (ngos) and programs to become a “technocratic tool” to promote liberal governance and societal harmony. this process reduces the prophetic voice and rich, decolonial, or feminist theologies or religious interpretations present in major world religions, and instead emphasizes “hermeneutically closed accounts of religion and culture” (58) that can be used as simplified justifications for peace and neighbourly love. one central thesis of this book is that these on-theground, ngo-ified religious peacebuilding practices are worlds away from decolonial theories of religion, which emphasize colonial history, power, empire, and gender/sexual dimensions of such power imbalances in the history of religion and coloniality. omer attempts to highlight this abyssal gap between theory and praxis by offering a decolonial critique of neoliberal peacebuilding industries’ usage of religion, while also allowing for on-the-ground lived experiences of religious practitioners to speak back to the privileges and purist tendencies of decolonial theory. omer notices the individual-centric nature of much interreligious peacebuilding: peacebuilding programs focus on “capacitating” individuals to adjust to their predicaments, as well as “planting a seed” of peace by promoting contact and relationships across communities to prevent intergroup violence (60). while these practices can have positive effects, they prioritize a “problem-solving” approach that facilitates people’s resilience in present-day conditions rather than a more analytical or intersectional approach to challenging why the present-day conditions were there in the first place. as a result, religious traditions’ deep historical and intersectional complexities are reduced to “sticky note” or “twitter” versions of religious aphorisms, harnessed solely for the purpose of cultivating individual resilience or harmonious relationships, rather than allowing for religious hermeneutics themselves to be complexified, decolonized, and transformed by or transformative of alternative futures of decoloniality. omer dubs this throughout the book as an example of “doing religion,” which comes at the expense of “knowing religion.” the dichotomy between “doing religion” and “knowing religion” emerges as another central thesis of the book: “knowing religion” and knowing religious traditions in and through their colonial, historical, gendered, structural, and material complexities—as well as allowing for new hermeneutical reinterpretations from queer/feminist or decolonial perspectives—are sidelined in the current neoliberal peacebuilding industry, whereas “doing religion” (or putting religious traditions into easily understandable and essentialized, bite-sized information pieces that promote peace) emerges as the primary mode of religious engagement by these organizations and practitioners. this attempt to “systemize, measure, and ngo-ize constructive religious forces” (111) affects women religious practitioners in unique ways. in particular, omer notices that gender norms are re-inscribed in these efforts. the structural and gendered violences christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 tang, book review 188 that are caused by religiously-informed gender norms in society are not questioned or destabilized in this practice of religious peacebuilding. women (imagined by ngos as mothers) are seen as primarily responsible for forming youths’ religious and peace education, for forming their children’s religious morality in the direction of socially acceptable peace rather than extremist violence. muslim and christian women interviewed in the book also see a link between their pious religiosity and their capacity to survive personally, economically, and socially (135) in a “neoliberal and unequal economy” (141). omer dubs this tendency among women and men to spiritualize resiliency and material survival as “pious resiliency” or “survivalist piety” (134): influenced by neoliberal religious peacebuilding industries, religious piety is increasingly experienced by people on the ground as that which leads to further capacity for survival and economic wellbeing for women and their families. this inadvertently spreads a form of “prosperity gospel” among global south religious practitioners, thereby depoliticizing the potentially socially transformative messages (including decolonial, anti-capitalist, and feminist messages) of various religious traditions. economic conditions of poverty, which are almost always rooted in histories of colonialism, structural exploitation, and systemic inequality (as theologies such as liberation theology would be able to identify), are now depoliticized in this analysis to become individual issues that are able to be transcended with enough piety and enough resiliency. the book also unveils the many ways that these onthe-ground practices of interreligious peacebuilding have “exceeded the critical gaze” (5) and offer material insights into questions of survival--something frequently elided in academic decolonial theories of religion. the book’s genius and humility lie in this very ability to allow for individual stories to be narrated in this complexity: just as decolonial academic theories offer valuable critiques of the neoliberal peacebuilding “industry,” the lived religion of kenyans and mindanaoans speaks back to the academic “industry” of critique itself. omer narrates, via stories of peacebuilding practitioners she interviews, the various openings to an unrevolutionary “decolonial love” (235) among christians and muslims who participate in interreligious peacebuilding programs. this love—manifested as relationality and friendship across difference—is neither feminist nor revolutionary, nor does it critique or dismantle the colonial power structure. still, these “openings of decolonial love” are nonetheless real and tangibly impactful on the spiritual lives, material lives, and survival of kenyans and mindanaoans at the heart of omer’s ethnographic research. for scholars committed to decoloniality, the fact that this book includes these stories is a gift, even if (or perhaps precisely because) these stories and these lives exceed simple theories of decoloniality, just as global subaltern lives have and will continue to exceed our academic imaginations of them. this book presents several takeaways for practitioners of religion and peacebuilding: first, the book reminds us that interreligious peacebuilding programs may not work (or may do more harm) when religious difference itself is not the primary source of conflict—in many communities, it is not simply the hatred between christians and muslims that leads to local conflict, but rather centuries of colonial domination, historical power imbalances, structural exploitation, or territorial conflict that are the true cause of conflict. interreligious peacebuilding programs ought not pretend that religious difference is the primary source of violence when there may be greater material concerns at stake. instead, they ought to give space for these material, economic, and land-based sources of conflict to be concretely addressed in their programming. second, omer’s work reminds us that an overemphasis on “doing religion” in peacebuilding programs may present a “hermeneutically closed” account of religious traditions that centers only the dominant, simplified, and sticky note-like versions of major world religious traditions. practitioners of religious peacebuilding can work against this tendency by continuing to center more prophetic voices within religious traditions that offer hermeneutically open, decolonial, feminist, and empowering re-interpretations of religious traditions. this often looks like featuring the voices of liberation theologians (or preachers who draw from this background) and centering queer/feminist religious examples, as well as other groups who are at the margins of their respective religious traditions. these voices would also help combat the overly individualistic tendencies of these religious peacebuilding programs by inviting individuals of faith to not primarily see their economic suffering as their own fault and disentangle economic prosperity from religious piety. while simplified versions of religious traditions might be the easiest to “do” when implementing programs, we must continue to allow for the prophetic nature of religious traditions to offer people new imaginations of a radically different world, so that decolonial hope and love become more than just a struggle for survival in a violent world. flora x. tang is a phd candidate in peace studies and theology at the university of notre dame. she researches decolonial feminist theologies and asian diasporic frameworks of land justice and trauma healing after displacement. author email: xtang3@nd.edu mailto:xtang3@nd.edu christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 figge, using church-based savings groups for trauma healing and peacebuilding… 166 using church-based savings groups for trauma healing and peacebuilding: a view from the field in south sudan anne figge this article addresses the role of church-based savings groups in trauma healing and community peacebuilding amid ongoing conflict in south sudan. in partnership with the episcopal church of south sudan and mothers’ union, five talents—a christian non-governmental organization (ngo)— has implemented a savings group program that has improved livelihoods for thousands. since 2018, the initiative has integrated trauma healing, acknowledging the link between unresolved trauma and cyclical violence. through peer counseling and everyday peacebuilding practices, participants have addressed trauma, fostered interethnic trust, and engaged in local advocacy. findings indicate enhanced household and community relationships, greater economic agency, and progress toward reconciliation. the study underscores the interconnection between trauma, livelihoods, and peacebuilding, highlighting the potential of localized, faith-based interventions in fostering communitybased positive peace in conflict-affected settings. introduction it is extremely difficult to carry out development work in the midst of armed conflict, and many if not most international organizations, including christian ones, tend to focus primarily on relief work in those contexts. what is lost in this, however, are the ways that local actors, including the church, continue to press forward in these difficult situations when both development and peacebuilding efforts seem necessary. one such situation is in south sudan, where a ministry of the episcopal church of south sudan called mothers’ union partners with five talents (ft), an international christian organization that “trains women and men to find a sustainable path out of extreme poverty through entrepreneurship” (five talents n.d.). in 2018, they integrated a trauma healing and peacebuilding component into their ongoing work with literacy and savings groups. this article describes the process by which this happened and assesses the reasons for the program’s success. it begins with a brief history of the situation in south sudan, describes the how and why of the project and the ideas behind its implementation, and then presents the results to date. the article concludes with some ideas about why this program has been so effective. south sudan context in 2011, south sudan became the youngest nation on earth, born out of civil war in sudan. in december 2013, south sudan fell into its own civil war. despite repeated attempts at peace agreements and cease-fires in 2015, 2017, and 2018, political violence and instability have persisted between government forces and opposition factions (center for preventive action 2025). in 2018, after nearly five years of civil war, salva kiir and riek machar, the heads of the two main opposing political coalitions, participated in negotiations and signed the revitalized agreement on the resolution of the conflict in south sudan (ibid.). this peace deal led to a cease-fire and the formation of a unity government in 2020. but as of march 2025, the implementation of the agreement has been worryingly slow, and extensions to the transitional period have been necessary (security council report 2022). for example, long-delayed elections scheduled for december 2024 have been further postponed to december 2026 (freedom house 2024). during the official peace process, the united nations (un) and multilateral agencies have continually remarked upon the ongoing violence across the country including “pervasive insecurity and particular intercommunal violence” (security council https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-34066511 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/23/south-sudans-warring-parties-agree-ceasefire-bid-end-four-year-war-machar-kiir https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/30/world/africa/south-sudan-cease-fire-violated-within-hours.html https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/6/25/south-sudan-rivals-meet-in-khartoum-for-peace-talks https://docs.pca-cpa.org/2016/02/south-sudan-peace-agreement-september-2018.pdf https://docs.pca-cpa.org/2016/02/south-sudan-peace-agreement-september-2018.pdf https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/11/1156661 christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 figge, using church-based savings groups for trauma healing and peacebuilding… 167 report 2022). for example, between april to june 2024, un mission to south sudan (unmiss) reported a 43% increase in incidents involving violence against civilians as compared to the same period in 2023 (“brief on violence...” 2024). major incidents took place in six of the ten states of south sudan, including all four major forms of individual harm experienced by victims in the context of the armed conflict (i.e., killings, injuries, abductions, and conflict related sexual violence [crsv]) (ibid.) unmiss has also stated that “intra/intercommunal violence involving communitybased militias and/or civil defense groups linked to border disputes, cross-border violence, cyclical attacks and retaliatory attacks, as well as ethnic polarization, continued to be the primary driving factor of violence affecting civilians throughout the country” (usaid 2019). these reports provide a picture of how official and unofficial conflicts at local, regional and national levels continue to affect communities across the country. bearing this in mind, it is unsurprising to note that a usaid study indicated that 41% of south sudan’s population displayed symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder, rising to 51% among displaced people and informal settlements (ibid.). episcopal church of south sudan and the savings group partnership with five talents since 2007, eleven dioceses of the episcopal church of south sudan (ecss) have entered into partnership with ft around a project to create savings groups linked with the church. 1 the implementing ministry of the church is mothers’ union of south sudan, the women’s ministry of the ecss and a member of the worldwide mothers’ union movement affiliated with the anglican church (“our story” n.d.). the project uses a method called the literacy and financial education program (lfep), which provides one year of participatory adult literacy and numeracy to majority women’s groups in three regions of south sudan. this foundational focus on literacy has been necessary because literacy rates in south sudan are 35% overall, and only 20% among adult women aged 25-64 (unesco n.d.). informal surveys by ft suggest that 1 ft has been working in south sudan since 2007. its current implementing partners include mothers’ union south sudan, episcopal church of south sudan as well as world concern development organisation. this article focuses particularly on the work of mothers’ union south sudan and ecss. american friends of the episcopal church of south sudan (afrecs) and mothers’ union worldwide are also strategic partners in this project. afrecs has worked alongside ft to refine and support the trauma healing and peacebuilding curricula relevant to this article. 2 this data is from ft’s internal monitoring, evaluation, and learning data. for the purposes of this article, henceforth all data will refer to the programs in juba among internally displaced people from all over the country, in renk within the upper nile region on the border with sudan and south sudan, and in terekeka in central equatoria. 3 trauma-informed means recognizing the impact of trauma in the lives of all people—in other words, no one is immune to this experience. the assumption is that people offering healing from trauma have also experienced trauma (see knight 2019). literacy rates among adult women in some rural areas might be as low as 10%. without the capacity to read and write, savings group members find it difficult to maintain records transparently, and to build the trust needed for successful functioning of a savings group. after one year of functional literacy, the program moves into a phase of savings group formation and management and business skills training, during which the savings groups are officially formed and launched. this project is active in three states of south sudan and has provided literacy and numeracy for 22,075 women and men. along with literacy and numeracy, ft and its partners have supported savings groups among 71,434 women and men in the last 18 years across more than 2,850 groups. 2 integrating a trauma-informed peacebuilding approach in 2018, the leaders of mothers’ union south sudan and the episcopal church recognized that they wanted to influence their communities for peace, especially with regard to helping people heal from the trauma of ongoing conflict and insecurity. they saw this as the work of the church following the model of jesus’ ministry and a contribution towards building peace in south sudan. but the peace they wanted to contribute to was not just defined by an absence of violence and fighting since they knew that ending violence was not enough. lasting change would come through restored relationships and holistic human flourishing. this move towards an integrated, “trauma-informed” peacebuilding approach was based on two fundamental insights. the first was the recognition that violence causes trauma, which may cause more violence. thus, peacebuilding must be trauma-informed, recognizing the impact of trauma on people’s lives and using it as a lens. 3 a key insight to being trauma-informed is that people who have been traumatized are more likely to hurt people and perpetuate a cycle of violence (usaid 2019). if trauma is both an effect and a cause of conflict, then trauma healing must be part of peacebuilding christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 figge, using church-based savings groups for trauma healing and peacebuilding… 168 (ibid.). without addressing the effect of trauma, traumatized people are less able to participate at the community level as agents for peace. furthermore, they may actively inflame conflict as a result of their own experiences. the second insight noted the limitations of trauma healing through short-term, one-off interactions. while this can be an important introduction, one-off workshops can miss the point that trauma healing is an ongoing process rather than a specific event. noting this, the vision of mothers’ union and ecss dioceses involved in this project proposed an alternative, which was to leverage the relationships already forming within literacy and saving groups to pilot trauma healing and peacebuilding training as part of the established group methodology. the trauma healing training implemented within savings groups consisted of an informal peer-to-peer counselling methodology in which members learn about the impact of trauma (giving them a language to talk about it), recognize and reflect on the consequences of trauma in their own lives, and share this with other group members. such peer-to-peer counselling is recognized as a valuable component of trauma healing (lane 2003, 116-17), and meets local needs given that, realistically, this type of counselling is the only kind people can access in a country with a very low provision of mental health services (usaid 2019). this training helps people connect abstract concepts of peace, conflict, trauma, and others with personal experience, making possible the skills to do something about it in their own lives or the lives of their community. it is particularly effective using the empowering platform of cohesive relationships in the savings groups. for example, the ft team in renk recount a story of a colonel in the army who shared that “we learned about traumatic stress, we never knew about this thing. but we were forced to do many bad things” (spla soldier, january 31, 2020). this was the first time he and many other soldiers had the opportunity to reflect on the many traumatic experiences they had gone through and to connect them with how they felt and how they lived now. the peacebuilding aspect of the training is based on the concept of “everyday peace” that has been popularized by the work of roger mac ginty (2014) and pamela firchow (2018). as a new “bottom up” approach to peacebuilding, it is defined as ... the practices, norms and stances deployed by individuals and groups in deeply divided societies to avoid and minimise conflict at both the intra and inter-group level. it is a form of tactical agency and depends on social awareness, an ability to “read” situations and react accordingly. it is also logic or a way of thinking. it can be both conflict-calming and conflictprovoking, and often occurs in unthreatening or marginal spaces (mac ginty 2014, 553). as this definition suggests, each person in every community has the capacity either to inflame or calm conflict. these are strategies that many people living in conflict affected areas already have and employ naturally in order to “get on with life,” and as seen above, they can be deeply impacted by trauma. building everyday peace is an asset-based approach to peacebuilding. it starts with the strengths and resources already in a community and builds upon those rather than externally imposing ideas and structures. this is both an approach and a mindset, and in the case of this project, 67% of the savings groups participants participated in “everyday peacebuilding” activities as a result of the trauma training. topics covered included mediating household and community conflict, advocating for victims of domestic violence, and intentionally building bridges with people from other ethnic groups. the results of this integrated approach have been remarkable. first, according to mothers’ union staff, participants typically respond to the training by empathizing with one another as they grieve and experience challenges, providing support for other members as well as family and community members. staff describe this as members “carrying each other’s burdens through prayer and pastoral care.” second, participants report that they are better able to recognize symptoms of trauma in themselves and others and speak out against further cycles of violence (and apathy to violence) as coping mechanisms within their homes and communities. for example, “revenge attacks” or retaliatory violence is one way that participants have noted people giving expression to their hurt and pain. while not everyone may support “revenge killing,” many people have become desensitized or numb to violence and other people’s suffering. after gaining a trauma-informed lens through which participants can view their experiences, they are more likely to be sensitive to the suffering of others in the community and to actively oppose retaliatory violence. lastly, savings group members have demonstrated that they are willing to share in the community about their personal journeys and desire for peace as a form of advocacy. one community involved in the project provides a powerful example. in an interview, the pastor in that community recounted an ethnically motivated attack which razed their whole village and destroyed their church in 2021. community members lost lives and property—cattle were stolen, houses were burned down, and food stores were purposefully destroyed. in fear for their lives, the community members fled across a regional border and remained displaced for more than christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 figge, using church-based savings groups for trauma healing and peacebuilding… 169 one year. when they returned to their village and began to rebuild, many community members became involved in the savings group program. as the pastor shared: many had lost their faith in god as a result of what happened, but it was restored in this [program]. it was as if people were born again. when we received this training, we decided that we wanted to invite those who had harmed us to come and reconcile with us. we wanted to tell them that they were forgiven so that we could live in peace together. even we began to talk about how—as we began to hope again--that we wanted to rebuild the church. these people—those who burned the church—have already contributed more than 70 poles (for constructing the tukul and roof). even some of them will come to church and we can pray together (june 5, 2024). such attitudinal and behavioral changes can also be seen in the measurable differences that members reported experiencing as a result of the trainings. members reported that as their personal capacity to cope with trauma has improved, so too have their household and community relationships. for example, from a december 2023 sample of 2,568 participants from 3 regions, 74% of members reported improved household relationships as a result of their participation in the trauma healing training and their improved coping mechanisms. moreover, 1,983 (77%) participants also reported improved community relationships as a result of trauma healing and peacebuilding training. this had much to do with the ability to forgive: “their relatives were killed. their properties were looted. but they have learned that they can forgive and start a new life,” remarked a juba program trainer (july 30, 2021). “they have been able to forgive those who have hurt them, and this has freed them to pursue opportunities beyond dwelling on their pain,” observed another (april 27, 2022). these responses to the training constitute positive contributions towards building everyday peace— recognizing and using the strategies that are available to support peace in their communities and to address conflicts before they arise. this continues in spite of lack of progress in the formal peace process. the key dimensions of improved livelihoods and trust building why has this project has been so successful in the 4 c. r. snyder et al. proposed that hope is a cognitive behavioural process versus an emotion. that hope came from having a goal, a pathway to achieve that goal and a sense of agency or “i can do this” (1991). savings groups meet these criteria for creating hope. midst of the continuing violence in south sudan? in analyzing the results of this locally led endeavor, two insights take shape that might inform peacebuilding in other contexts: the trauma-informed dimensions of improved livelihoods and trust-building. improved livelihoods first, the improved livelihoods and development dimension of savings group promotion may have played a key role in the success around trauma healing and peacebuilding. there may be three reasons for this. first, there will always be people who profit from war, but in large part, war destroys property and prosperity, stalling and reversing economic development. the economic despair that comes from having one’s livelihood destroyed is traumatizing and can fuel further conflict and cycles of fighting and destruction. economic despair is one reason to include practical avenues for improved livelihoods in a communitybased peacebuilding approach. in this case, the scope and nature of the economic results of the savings groups were typical of what is reported in the associated literature. 15-25 participants create economic and social assets by saving together and borrowing from one another (creating member owned financial services). after one year of saving together, the group refunds individual savings back to its individual members plus a proportional percentage of earned interest. either through accumulation of savings or through access to loans, participants have the capital to start new businesses. to facilitate enterprise development, participants also receive training in micro and small enterprise development, thus providing a way for families both to provide for themselves and to invest further. in this project, initial baseline surveys indicated that 55% of respondents had an income generation activity. furthermore, only 8% of respondents reported having any kind of productive asset (something reusable to help them generate an income). roughly three years later, 90% of the 2,568 survey respondents reported starting or expanding a business as a result of participation in a savings group—an increase of 45%. a further 55% of the 2,568 participants reported owning a productive asset—an increase of 47%. as is standard practice for savings groups, financing for the business or asset acquisition could come either from borrowing from the group or using the lump sum provided at the group share-out. importantly for people in conflict situations, economic recovery permits them to support themselves through their own efforts, thus providing hope and a counter narrative to economic despair. 4 as one christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 figge, using church-based savings groups for trauma healing and peacebuilding… 170 displaced member from bor, who now lives in the shirkat community outside of juba said, all of us, we have come from bor in 2020 when the floods were terrible. we came to juba with nothing. all of my things were swallowed by water—my clothes, all of the food in our granary, my house. it is only because of this (savings) box where we save our money that we have coped. we have come together and through one another’s support is how i have paid school fees for my children and survived. i took a small loan of 200,000 ssp and i used it to start a small business making mandazi. i don’t even know how this small business pays for our needs, but we manage day by day and have rebuilt our lives (savings group member, june 6, 2024). additionally, individual potential for economic agency and prosperity is clearly affected by war and trauma. people who are traumatized often feel overwhelmed by their pain, whether expressed through hopelessness, helplessness, anger, withdrawal, and apathy. responses like these affect one’s capacity to make changes in their own lives, including the ability to provide for their families. being trauma-informed means recognizing that people may need new livelihood opportunities to grow into community-based peacebuilding activities. in this sense, consideration needs to be given to how traumatic events affect people’s economic agency and entrepreneurialism but also how leveraging agency through entrepreneurialism helps people to experience hope and even healing from trauma. building trust second, trust in communities is severely affected by war and conflict. mistrust is a commonly cited impact of trauma in south sudan, one that works on and shapes people’s perceptions and understanding of others’ motivations (usaid 2019). in the context of widespread mistrust, being trauma-informed means recognizing that small misunderstandings can grow into violent conflict, and this is especially true when members of a community have been victimized by others in the community. if groups are mobilized out of this context of mistrust for any economic or developmental purpose—such as group farming initiatives, microenterprise development, or community-based microfinance—the problems with trust and people’s inability to collaborate, can spill over 5 this idea also links with john paul lederach’s idea of creating platforms or social spaces for peace and social change to take place once peace accords have been signed in post conflict areas (see lederach 2005, 47-49). 6 a similar positive impact of savings group on reducing conflict and increasing peacebuilding in south sudan was noted in a recent report by care netherland (whipkey 2021). into groups and their dynamics. rather than try to bury what is uncomfortable or divisive, the group platform provides opportunities for positive interaction and healing required for real cooperation. 5 this is also how groups exercise everyday peace. as gordon allport points out, if well-facilitated, contact among different groups of people can have positive effects on the respective group members by breaking down negative perceptions and stereotypes of the other group (as cited in pettigrew and tropp 2005). indeed, international alert notes that “bringing people face-to-face, within and across communities to jointly plan, design and implement processes [intergroup contact] is the cornerstone of peacebuilding” (2020, 5). savings groups in south sudan apply this idea by bringing people together as equals within a group; they have a common, practical goal that they are cooperating towards—savings group management and livelihood development—and they are supported by the local church and mothers’ union as respected local institutions in their efforts. in renk, for example, 70.8% of savings groups had more than one ethnic group represented and interacting within the group-based platform. in juba, among savings groups composed of displaced people, there is an average of more than four ethnic groups represented in one savings group. at a minimum, this means that groups meeting together on a regular basis is a form of building everyday peace for the individual members. this happens through exposure to the other, breaking down barriers of mistrust and prejudice, and creating a platform for trusted engagement, reconciliation, healing, and solidarity to take place. this building of trust is relationally and economically significant for group members themselves as trust and peaceful cooperation is the foundation of savings groups. members, for example, are not likely to provide loan capital to one another if they cannot trust each other to repay. as one renk program trainer remarked, “the members will not trust each other unless we do something to bring people together.” cooperation in groups also demonstrates to others in the community that it is possible and productive to work together, even among those who may formerly have been in conflict. membership in a savings group is then an example of everyday peacebuilding in a group and at the community level as it incentivizes a group’s capacity to calm conflict and provides an example of the value of doing so to others in a community. 6 christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 figge, using church-based savings groups for trauma healing and peacebuilding… 171 conclusion: conflict, peace, and traumainformed savings groups how we define peace and conflict matters. our working definitions influence how and in what ways we work with conflict and towards peace (brock-utne 1989). in peacebuilding literature, there is a longstanding differentiation made between negative and positive peace. negative peace is the absence of physical violence, but structural and cultural violence in different forms such as poverty, racism and sexism may very well still be present (galtung 1969). if peace is defined as an absence of armed conflict brokered by the international community and multilateral actors, then peace becomes something external and one dimensional that is imposed or received. while recognizing that there is good motivation in working towards peace with the support of the multilateral community, this definition can feel disempowering and inaccessible to many because there is a service provision element to it. some people get it and maintain it, while others do not. positive peace, on the other hand, is the absence of physical violence in the presence of increasing social justice (galtung 1969). positive peace considers the attitudes, institutions, and structures that create and sustain peaceful societies (institute for economics and peace 2020). as a concept, the idea of positive peace is holistic and seems similar to biblical shalom. nicholas wolterstoff says that in shalom, each person enjoys justice, enjoys his or her rights. there is no shalom without justice. but shalom goes beyond justice. shalom is the human being dwelling at peace in all his or her relationships… but the peace which is shalom is not merely the absence of hostility, not merely being in right relationship. shalom at its highest is enjoyment in one’s relationships… to dwell in shalom is to enjoy living before god, to enjoy living in one’s physical surroundings, to enjoy living with one’s fellows, to enjoy life with oneself (1983, 69). the mothers’ union and ecss provide an example of how the local church in south sudan is not satisfied with the limitations and fragility of top-down negative peace. it recognises that shalom, likened to positive peace, has a highly practical and experiential element to it. while pursuing shalom does not exclude the cessation of violence that comes through high-level negotiations, it also includes personal relationships, meeting physical needs as well as emotional and spiritual needs. in addition to ending violence, moving towards shalom as a peacebuilding ministry of the local church points toward long term social, economic, and spiritual wellbeing of all god’s image bearers. taking this into account, it is clear that south sudan is in a state of negative peace, and even that continues to break down. a peace agreement was brokered and signed in partnership with the international and multilateral communities. yet there has been no real reconciliation between people. there is little trust between ethnic groups and the threat of violence is ongoing—in response to even the smallest stimuli. so, while the peace agreement has brought periods of reduced violence over the last nine years, it is impossible to say that south sudan is at peace. conflict, on the other hand, can be understood as “…an expressed struggle between at least two interdependent parties who perceive incompatible goals, scarce resources, and interference from others in achieving their goals” (hocker and wilmot 2018, 3). this is a purposefully broad definition because there are many forms of conflict. conflicts may be interpersonal, intra-group, inter-group, intra-national, international, or a combination of these. in the above definition, the words “expressed,” “perceive,” and “incompatible” are emphasized. how people perceive each other, including their character and intentions, as well as the degree to which they believe their goals are compatible can shape how they understand conflict. moreover, looking through a community lens reveals inconsistencies in common assumptions about peace and conflict. at the community level, people’s lived experiences show that peace and conflict do not exist in absolute states (boulding 2000); rather, they co-exist all the time. the goal of peacebuilding is not to eradicate conflict and experience only peace, as such a goal is not possible or even productive. this is particularly true in south sudan, and it is exemplified in the project of mothers’ union of the episcopal church of south sudan in partnership with five talents. their trauma-informed peacebuilding and savings group methodology shows how addressing conflict and trauma can contribute to the pursuit of shalom and/or “everyday peace” even amid ongoing conflict. i suggest four reasons for this: 1. it connects personal reflection on traumatic experiences with agency and action, leading to community-level advocacy and opportunities for everyday peace. 2. it helps participants learn to identify and cope with their trauma through integrated trauma healing and peer to peer counselling. 3. it builds trust through intergroup contact. 4. it provides a counternarrative to economic despair through new livelihood opportunities. in sum, the work of building positive peace in both south sudan and other countries in similar situations is christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 figge, using church-based savings groups for trauma healing and peacebuilding… 172 ongoing, and actors at local, regional, national, and international levels, especially those connected with the local church, are leading the way in looking for the best ways to do that. may the international community pay close attention to and learn from their experiences, supporting local efforts instead of imposing top-down negative peace. references boulding, elise. 2000. cultures of peace: the hidden side of history. syracuse: syracuse university press. “brief on violence affecting civilians.” 2024 (april/june). human rights division, united nations mission in south sudan. https://unmiss.unmissions.org/sites/default/files/q uarterly_brief_on_violence_affecting_civilians_ap ril_-_june_2024.pdf brock-utne, birgit. 1989. feminist perspectives on peace and peace education. oxford: pergamon press. center for preventive action. 2025 (march 13). “instability in south sudan.” global conflict tracker. https://www.cfr.org/global-conflicttracker/conflict/civil-war-south-sudan firchow, pamela. 2018. reclaiming everyday peace: local voices in measurement and evaluation after war. cambridge: cambridge university press. five talents. n.d. https://www.fivetalents.org freedom house. 2024. “south sudan.” https://freedomhouse.org/country/southsudan/freedom-world/2024 galtung, johan. 1969. “violence, peace, and peace research.” journal of peace research 6 (3): 167– 191. https://www.jstor.org/stable/422690 hocker, joyce and william wilmot. 2018. interpersonal conflict (10th ed). new york: mcgraw education. institute for economics and peace. 2020. positive peace report 2020. https://www.visionofhumanity.org/wpcontent/uploads/2020/10/gpi_2020_web.pdf international alert. 2020 (december). “can we build peace from a distance? the impact of covid19 on the peacebuilding sector.” background paper. https://www.internationalalert.org/app/uploads/2021/07/covid-19building-peace-distance-en-2020.pdf knight, carolyn. 2019. “trauma informed practice and care: implications for field instruction.” clinical social work journal 47: 79–89. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10615-018-0661-x lederach, john paul. 2005. the moral imagination: the art and soul of building peace. oxford: oxford university press. mac ginty, roger. 2014. “everyday peace: bottom-up and local agency in conflict-affected societies.” security dialogue 45 (6): 548–564. https://doi.org/10.1177/0967010614550899. mac ginty, roger. 2019 (november 13). critical conversation with roger mac ginty: ted talk. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdy7q6rbtri neustaeter, robin. 2021. week 7 facilitator notes: conflict transformation & peacebuilding for community development. coady institute. “our story.” n.d. https://www.mothersunion.org/ourstory lane, jonathan paul. 2023. “evaluation of clinician versus peer-counsellor delivered skills training in affective and interpersonal regulation (stair) program for australian defence force members, veterans and first responder personnel.” adelaide medical school. https://librarysearch.adelaide.edu.au/discovery/full display/alma9928357670101811/61adelaide_ inst:uofa pettigrew, thomas. f. and linda r. tropp. 2005. “allport's intergroup contact hypothesis: its history and influence.” in on the nature of prejudice: fifty years after allport, edited by john. f. dovidio, peter. glick, and laurie. a. rudman, 262–277. oxford: blackwell publishing. https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470773963.ch16 security council report. 2022 (june 7). “south sudan.” https://www.securitycouncilreport.org/chronology/ south-sudan.php snyder, c. r., cheri harris, c., john r. anderson, sharon a. holleran, lori m. irving, sandra t. sigmon, lauren yoshinobu, june gibb, charyle langelle, & pat harney. 1991. “the will and the ways: development and validation of an individual-differences measure of hope.” journal of personality and social psychology 60 (4): 570–585. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.60.4.570 unesco. n.d. gal country profiles. https://www.uil.unesco.org/sites/default/files/medi as/files/2022/11/gal_country_profiles_southsudan. pdf?hub=90 usaid. 2019. “south sudan trauma assessment, findings, conclusions and recommendations.” whipkey, katie. 2021. addressing root causes of instability: influence of village savings and loans associations on social cohesion in south sudan. care nederland. https://www.carenederland.org/carexpertise/addre ssing-root-causes-of-instability-in-south-sudan https://unmiss.unmissions.org/sites/default/files/quarterly_brief_on_violence_affecting_civilians_april_-_june_2024.pdf https://unmiss.unmissions.org/sites/default/files/quarterly_brief_on_violence_affecting_civilians_april_-_june_2024.pdf https://unmiss.unmissions.org/sites/default/files/quarterly_brief_on_violence_affecting_civilians_april_-_june_2024.pdf https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/civil-war-south-sudan https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/civil-war-south-sudan https://www.fivetalents.org/ https://freedomhouse.org/country/south-sudan/freedom-world/2024 https://freedomhouse.org/country/south-sudan/freedom-world/2024 https://www.jstor.org/stable/422690 https://www.visionofhumanity.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/gpi_2020_web.pdf https://www.visionofhumanity.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/gpi_2020_web.pdf https://www.international-alert.org/app/uploads/2021/07/covid-19-building-peace-distance-en-2020.pdf https://www.international-alert.org/app/uploads/2021/07/covid-19-building-peace-distance-en-2020.pdf https://www.international-alert.org/app/uploads/2021/07/covid-19-building-peace-distance-en-2020.pdf https://doi.org/10.1007/s10615-018-0661-x https://doi.org/10.1177/0967010614550899 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdy7q6rbtri https://www.mothersunion.org/our-story https://www.mothersunion.org/our-story https://librarysearch.adelaide.edu.au/discovery/fulldisplay/alma9928357670101811/61adelaide_inst:uofa https://librarysearch.adelaide.edu.au/discovery/fulldisplay/alma9928357670101811/61adelaide_inst:uofa https://librarysearch.adelaide.edu.au/discovery/fulldisplay/alma9928357670101811/61adelaide_inst:uofa https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470773963.ch16 https://www.securitycouncilreport.org/chronology/south-sudan.php https://www.securitycouncilreport.org/chronology/south-sudan.php https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/0022-3514.60.4.570 https://www.uil.unesco.org/sites/default/files/medias/files/2022/11/gal_country_profiles_southsudan.pdf?hub=90 https://www.uil.unesco.org/sites/default/files/medias/files/2022/11/gal_country_profiles_southsudan.pdf?hub=90 https://www.uil.unesco.org/sites/default/files/medias/files/2022/11/gal_country_profiles_southsudan.pdf?hub=90 https://www.carenederland.org/carexpertise/addressing-root-causes-of-instability-in-south-sudan https://www.carenederland.org/carexpertise/addressing-root-causes-of-instability-in-south-sudan christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 figge, using church-based savings groups for trauma healing and peacebuilding… 173 wolterstorff, nicholas. 1983. until justice and peace embrace. grand rapids: wm. b. eerdmans publishing. anne figge is a technical advisor with fifteen years of experience in micro-enterprise development. she has worked in south sudan since 2013 and currently supports five talents programme partners across the country. anne is passionate about how savings groups contribute to community empowerment and peacebuilding in conflict-affected areas. author email: annefigge@fivetalents.org mailto:annefigge@fivetalents.org christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(2), winter 2024 dejean, et al., compelling, consistent and credible… 108 compelling, consistent, and credible: tearfund’s experience of measuring the impact of the church on holistic wellbeing through church and community transformation (cct) in lowand middleincome contexts catriona dejean, charlotte flowers, kyle hanna, harrison manyumwa, rebecca middleton, emmanuel murangira, rachel paton, bethany sikes in 2022 tearfund worked with an independent evaluation and social value specialist, state of life, to measure the impact of the participatory church and community transformation (cct) process across four countries in africa, using a holistic wellbeing survey and pioneering an application of the wellby (wellbeing-adjusted life year) social value methodology in africa for the first time. the cross-national study of almost 8,000 community members generated robust evidence of the positive and sustained impact of the cct process, offering valuable insights for development actors and reinforcing the role of local churches as catalysts for community transformation. the study provides valuable insights for the development sector, showcasing the potential of locally-owned and churchdriven initiatives in bringing about transformative and lasting change. christian international development charity tearfund works with local churches around the world to address poverty and bring transformation to communities. tearfund’s participatory church and community mobilisation process is a bible-based guided training approach that a local church can use with its community. through this approach, churches and communities identify the resources they have and work together to create long-lasting, whole-life change, referred to as church and community transformation (cct). as local churches and communities work through this process together, they decide what outcomes and activities work best in their situation (tearfund 2021). over the last fifty years tearfund has grappled with the challenge of measuring and aggregating the impact of decentralised and locally-owned development initiatives such as cct. this article discusses how the recently published local church, lasting transformation study (fawcett et al. 2023) presents robust quantitative evidence of the impact of working with the local church in a way that addresses these measurement and aggregation challenges. published in march 2023, it is tearfund’s largest ever impact study. almost 8,000 people across rwanda, sierra leone, tanzania, and zimbabwe participated in this research. in order to generate rigorous quantitative evidence, tearfund engaged uk-based independent evaluation and social value specialist state of life to lead the study. state of life are named advisors on the uk hm treasury 2021 green book supplementary guidance on wellbeing. tearfund also engaged a peer reviewer with experience of using wellbeing methodologies within the uk government. the study tested the hypothesis that tearfund’s church and community mobilisation process (referred to for simplicity in this article as the “cct process”) leads to improved wellbeing and reduced poverty for https://www.tearfund.org/ https://res.cloudinary.com/tearfund/image/fetch/https:/learn.tearfund.org/-/media/learn/resources/impact-reports/2023-tearfund-impact-report-cctimpactstudyseries-2022-en.pdf https://res.cloudinary.com/tearfund/image/fetch/https:/learn.tearfund.org/-/media/learn/resources/impact-reports/2023-tearfund-impact-report-cctimpactstudyseries-2022-en.pdf https://res.cloudinary.com/tearfund/image/fetch/https:/learn.tearfund.org/-/media/learn/resources/impact-reports/2023-tearfund-impact-report-cctimpactstudyseries-2022-en.pdf https://res.cloudinary.com/tearfund/image/fetch/https:/learn.tearfund.org/-/media/learn/resources/impact-reports/2023-tearfund-impact-report-cctimpactstudyseries-2022-en.pdf https://www.stateoflife.org/ christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(2), winter 2024 dejean, et al., compelling, consistent and credible… 109 individuals, church congregations, and communities. the multi-year study, which will incorporate an additional four countries in its second year, also includes a calculation of social value based on wellbeing. the evaluators, state of life, described the study as having a “pioneering and robust design,” producing positive results that are “compelling, consistent and credible,” indicating that cct brings positive whole-life transformation, which is sustained and far-reaching, and is value for money (fawcett et al. 2023, 4). this article outlines how the methodology of the study supports this conclusion, and the lessons tearfund has learned from carrying out this study. this is of particular relevance to other development actors seeking to evaluate the impact of highly decentralised and community-owned interventions in low-income settings. introduction to tearfund and cct tearfund recognises that poverty is the result of a social and structural legacy of four broken relationships: with god, damaged understanding of self, unjust relationships between people, and exploitative relationships with the environment (tearfund 2019). tearfund believes that local churches have a special place in society and play a unique role at local and global levels. this understanding of the church reflects tearfund’s understanding of poverty, and is inspired by an “integral mission” theology 1 that recognises the role and responsibility of the church to focus not only on spiritual matters but also to alleviate other forms of poverty and pursue justice. tearfund’s vision is therefore to see local churches actively responding to the holistic needs of their communities in practical and sustainable ways, using their own resources. tearfund does this through the cct process, which takes between two and five years for an individual church and community to reach the final stage. the aim of this process is to envision local churches to mobilise communities and individuals to achieve holistic church and community transformation, in which these broken relationships are restored and people flourish in all aspects of life: physically, emotionally, and spiritually. tearfund's role is to catalyse this journey by helping churches recognise that they can play an active role in bringing about the change they long to see. the envisioning and equipping process of cct aims to inspire the church to mobilise the whole community to identify and respond to their own needs. first, a church 1 for tearfund, “integral mission…understands that god is working to restore broken relationships by responding holistically to people’s needs, including economic, emotional, spiritual and physical ones. the church, as the body of christ, therefore has a vital and distinctive role to play in fulfilling this mission” (tearfund 2019). for more on tearfund’s view of mission, see tearfund 2023. see also padilla 2002. member or leader is identified to act as a cct facilitator, who is then equipped with the knowledge of the process and skills to adapt it to their own context. cct processes then begin with bible studies that are facilitated, not taught. this enables those who are on the journey to read the bible in a new way. after the initial bible studies, the cct processes empower church members to reach out to their communities and invite them to work together to mobilise, and then use, local resources to overcome the issues in their communities. the processes are full of participatory tools and activities that help people better understand their communities and their potential to transform them (tearfund 2021). by encouraging community members to work together to understand their own context, capabilities, and agency and, subsequently, to self-develop through community-led and -resourced activities, churches facilitate holistic development that positively impacts the wellbeing of the community, based on the community’s self-determined priorities. as a result of being a locally-owned and -led process, in keeping with tearfund’s aim to work in a decolonised way, the outcomes of cct can be challenging to measure and aggregate, particularly at a national or even cross-national or global level. the initiatives undertaken by churches and communities can be very diverse, even within similar contexts, ranging from rebuilding bridges physically to rebuilding relationships within communities. as a result, the outcomes relate to a broad range of aspects of wellbeing, from economic and material prosperity to improved relationships in society and greater care for the environment. about the study in order to evaluate this flexible and participatory approach to working with churches, the local church, lasting transformation study adopted tearfund’s holistic wellbeing framework, the light wheel, which defines nine “spokes” of holistic wellbeing and is used by churches as part of the cct process, as well as providing a measurement framework for outcomes. the large -n quantitative ex-post design used a crosssectional and cross-national approach to measure 23 indicators of wellbeing, covering seven out of nine “spokes” or aspects of wellbeing defined by the light wheel. the study combined measurement of a broad range of aspects of wellbeing with an approach to social value measurement focused on subjective life satisfaction, allowing diverse impacts on wellbeing (whether social/relational, spiritual, economic, or https://res.cloudinary.com/tearfund/image/fetch/https:/learn.tearfund.org/-/media/learn/resources/impact-reports/2023-tearfund-impact-report-cctimpactstudyseries-2022-en.pdf https://res.cloudinary.com/tearfund/image/fetch/https:/learn.tearfund.org/-/media/learn/resources/impact-reports/2023-tearfund-impact-report-cctimpactstudyseries-2022-en.pdf christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(2), winter 2024 dejean, et al., compelling, consistent and credible… 110 personal) to be effectively summarised, aggregated, and compared with the costs of the cct process. it was, to the authors’ knowledge, the first study to adapt the wellby (wellbeing-adjusted life year) (hm treasury 2021) in lower-income contexts outside the uk to measure the social value of an initiative, in this case, the cct process. the next section outlines methodological considerations involved in this design, and why this study is characterised as robust, pioneering, credible, consistent, and compelling. choosing an appropriate, robust study design one of the challenges tearfund confronted in implementing this study is the methodological challenge of impact attribution. attributing observed changes, in this case wellbeing, to a particular intervention or approach, in this case the cct process, is often difficult due to the absence of a true counterfactual for comparison, i.e., “what the situation would have been had the intervention not taken place.” one way of coming up with a true counterfactual is adopting a purely experimental approach such as a randomised control trial, where individuals are randomly assigned between treatment and control, i.e., participation and non-participation. this approach presents numerous limitations (deaton and cartwright 2018) such as the ethical implications of excluding participants or communities from an intervention on a random basis, where there is existing evidence of positive impact (ogden 2016, xx-xxi). the study compares participants of the cct process with nonparticipants within the same communities, as well as those in cct communities with those in communities which had not started cct; randomly excluding participants from participating within communities would have been extremely difficult and counter to the approach taken by cct. another limitation of a purely experimental approach is that of compromised external validity, i.e., conducting a development intervention as an experiment can be more intensive and controlled than usual, to the extent that when the same interventions are repeated or scaled, they do not always work as well (de souza leão and eyal 2019). lastly, experimental approaches are very costly, and the value for money can be debatable, especially when the cost of research outweighs that of the development investment (de souza leão and eyal 2019). quasi-experimental approaches that mimic random assignment by statistical design are a widely accepted alternative to more resource intensive and 2 “the propensity score allows one to design and analyse an observational (nonrandomized) study so that it mimics some of the particular characteristics of a randomised controlled trial. in particular, the propensity score is a balancing score: conditional on the propensity score, the distribution of observed baseline covariates will be similar between treated and untreated subjects” (austin 2011, 399). practically challenging experimental designs (rogers and revesz 2019, handley et al., 2018). the aim is to find a suitable substitute for the true counterfactual, or what would have happened in the absence of cct, and account for and reduce as much as possible the phenomenon of heterogeneity/selection bias, i.e., differences in outcomes attributable to other observable and/or unobservable factors. nonetheless, quasiexperimental techniques such as propensity score matching (psm) can also be relatively resource intensive. for instance, in psm comparison between treatment and non-treatment only happens between those observations that “balance” in terms of their propensity score, 2 based on observable characteristics (which may not be the only relevant characteristics). this means collecting a reasonable amount of data that might not be related to the actual intervention to create the matching score. in addition, it is a requirement to oversample non-treatment respondents to compensate for the redundancy of observations that fail to meet the “matching criteria.” again, this creates an ethical dilemma by engaging participants to spend time providing data that may not be used. there are alternatives to psm such as regression discontinuity designs, but these require the predictor variable to be continuous, which unfortunately is not the case for the key explanatory variable in this study, i.e., cct participation. based on a consideration of the various methodological options, as well as the unique attributes of the cct process, the local church, lasting transformation study explores flexible and practical ways of assessing impact, taking into account potential selection bias by (1) identifying comparable treatment and non-treatment respondents based on consistent selection criteria, and accounting for observable factors such as socioeconomic and demographic variables, (2) applying a multi-stage statistically and practically representative sampling technique, and (3) using multiple linear regression analysis with variable selection anchored in a large diverse sample, and supporting theory and evidence related to the determinants of wellbeing. each of these is explained further below. while the study could not adopt an experimental or quasi-experimental design, a number of factors allowed for claims of association between various variables to be made with a high level of confidence. these include achievement of a large sample size across countries and regions, and the use of multiple linear regression analysis that allowed for influence of other factors to be accounted for on the basis of supporting https://res.cloudinary.com/tearfund/image/fetch/https:/learn.tearfund.org/-/media/learn/resources/impact-reports/2023-tearfund-impact-report-cctimpactstudyseries-2022-en.pdf https://res.cloudinary.com/tearfund/image/fetch/https:/learn.tearfund.org/-/media/learn/resources/impact-reports/2023-tearfund-impact-report-cctimpactstudyseries-2022-en.pdf christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(2), winter 2024 dejean, et al., compelling, consistent and credible… 111 theory and evidence, e.g., from previous qualitative studies. 1. identifying comparable treatment and nontreatment respondents based on consistent selection criteria, and accounting for observable factors such as socioeconomic and demographic variables: the main comparison group in the study were respondents from communities with similar demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, including development initiatives, identified using the same approach as cct communities, but where cct activities had not been launched. these communities needed to be sufficiently spaced from the treatment communities to avoid potential spillover or “contamination” from cct. these were referred to as non-cct communities. given practical challenges with community entry, those communities where tearfund partners had made some contact with local authorities or were otherwise wellplaced to access communities were prioritised, as long as they had comparable attributes. this non-cct community identification process was participatory, involving tearfund staff, partners, local leaders, and the research team. a total of 29 non-cct communities (five in sierra leone, five in rwanda, six in zimbabwe, and thirteen in tanzania) across the four study countries were selected. the comparability of these communities is key to the research design. whilst observable individual and community level characteristics that may determine wellbeing can be controlled for in the regression analysis, the comparator communities might not have yet engaged in cct due to potential unobservable factors distinguishing them from the treatment group, affecting their ability to offer a good counterfactual to what would have happened in the absence of cct. as explored in section 6 of the research report on limitations, selection of communities to implement cct is based on three criteria: level of need, level of engagement of church leaders, and geographical accessibility. the relative importance of these three factors varies by partner and between countries, and could introduce selection bias in either a positive or negative direction. to the extent that current cct communities are participating in the process because of greater need relative to non-participating communities, any observed impact of cct would more likely be an underestimation rather than an overestimation of impact, whilst differences in level of engagement by leaders and geographical accessibility may work in the opposite direction. selection bias was minimised by requesting tearfund country teams to select communities that could start cct in the next two years, both to address the ethical challenges of engaging these communities in research only, and to ensure comparability by applying the same selection approaches. a decision was taken to focus on comparing communities actively participating in cct rather than attempting to trace every community that had ever started cct. recording the names of every community that had ever started cct in the sampling frame was logistically challenging, as in some countries this involved going back more than ten years, and tearfund was particularly interested in the impact of an active cct process. focusing on communities actively participating in cct could have introduced a related source of selection bias. if continuing with or dropping out of the cct process is dependent on characteristics of churches or communities that cannot easily be identified or measured, cct churches or communities might be systematically different from churches and communities that have not yet started cct in unobservable ways. this latter group is likely to contain a mix of these unobservable characteristics; until these churches and communities start cct, it will not be possible to know which ones will continue with the process. but this was not anticipated to be a major concern, because the “dropout” rate for churches and communities stopping cct is estimated to be fairly low, and at least one of the factors that tearfund has observed to be associated with communities stopping the cct process—trained cct facilitators moving to a different church—is not necessarily due to church or community level characteristics, but could plausibly result from individual circumstances related to the facilitators or to decisions by governance structures overseeing churches. 2. applying a multi-stage statistically and practically representative sampling technique: the study adopted a multistage sampling technique, coupling randomised and purposive selection at different levels to ensure a both statistically and practically representative sample. by identifying a cct participating church as a community, a complete sampling frame of 2,112 communities actively engaging in the cct process from the four study countries was established, though the number of communities in the sampling frame in each country ranged from as few as 97 in sierra leone to as many as 1,217 in rwanda. using a cluster sampling approach, about fifty communities from each country were randomly selected to produce a sample of 201 communities engaged in cct. at a 95% confidence interval and a margin of error of approximately 6.5%, this can be considered a statistically representative sample size in terms of communities. the randomly sampled communities were evaluated for practical representativeness by assessing the following: (1) the geographical spread of the sampled communities, and, https://res.cloudinary.com/tearfund/image/fetch/https:/learn.tearfund.org/-/media/learn/resources/impact-reports/2023-tearfund-impact-report-cctimpactstudyseries-2022-en.pdf christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(2), winter 2024 dejean, et al., compelling, consistent and credible… 112 (2) sufficient spread across various levels of cct maturity. using an ex-post approach allowed the study to include communities that had been engaged in cct for considerably more than five years, allowing the sustainability of the initial training to be explored. accessibility restrictions were also considered in the review of the random sample, and, where necessary, appropriately similar accessible replacements were made. once communities were sampled, church leaders were requested to mobilise around thirty respondents in cct communities and one hundred in non-cct communities, representing a mix of ages, genders, members of the sampled church, others who were not members, and in cct communities, a mix of participants and non-participants. 3. using multiple linear regression analysis with variable selection anchored on a large diverse sample, and supporting theory and evidence related to the determinants of wellbeing: in order to compare wellbeing outcomes such as life satisfaction, expectations for the future, or satisfaction with close relationships between cct participants and nonparticipants, or any other comparator group, it is important to account for the influence of other factors such as age, gender, marital status, or employment, as these could also explain the outcomes and tend to be significant in determining levels of wellbeing (vassilev and manclossi 2019, joshanloo and jovanovic 2020, blanchflower 2021). to achieve this, the study used multiple linear regression analysis. like all other regression techniques, the direction and strength of the relationship between two variables, a dependent or predictor variable (in our case the wellbeing outcomes) and independent or explanatory variable, for instance cct participation, is expressed using a coefficient. the degree to which we can be confident in these coefficients depends on a number of factors related to the research design. as well as increasing the likelihood of detecting statistically significant differences in wellbeing between the cct and comparison group, in the absence of experimental or quasi-experimental designs, achieving a large sample size derived from multiple regions and countries is likely to lead to robust estimates and to be representative of the impact of cct more broadly, reducing the likelihood of systematic differences between comparison and cct communities not due to cct as an explanatory variable. in addition, if the relationship between dependent and independent variables is backed by a well-developed theory of change and triangulated using existing evidence, this also adds to the robustness of the findings. state of life was able to draw upon tearfund’s existing literature and theory of change about cct to inform their interpretation of the findings. it has already been highlighted how an experimental or quasi-experimental research design would have been ethically and practically challenging. as a result, the study does not infer causation, but instead makes claims about association supported by a large and diverse sample and existing theory and evidence, such as advanced qualitative studies on how cct influences wellbeing, adding to the degree of confidence in the findings. as such, the study draws conclusions on whether and the extent to which various wellbeing outcomes are associated with cct participation (in particular, related to the adoption of tearfund’s cct process in a sub-saharan african context), while controlling for observable factors. a pioneering approach to calculating social value: building on this robust design and analytical approach, the study sought to measure the social value associated with cct by pioneering an application of the wellby (wellbeing-adjusted life year) in lowerincome contexts outside of the uk for the first time. social value measurement seeks to monetise wellbeing costs and benefits, including those for which there is no market price (such as the social benefit we experience from increased self-worth, improved trust in our community or the social cost of poor mental health) so that they can be compared in a social cost-benefit analysis. the resulting net benefit indicates the value of an intervention to society in monetary terms. taking a social value approach enabled tearfund to understand the monetary value of the “holistic transformation” hypothesised as a result of cct, and to compare this to the costs. the wellby is a newly-defined, standardised unit of measurement used “to consistently measure and value improvements in wellbeing, first introduced in 2020” (fawcett, 2023). to its proponents it provides “at last a common currency with which to compare the outcomes of all policies,” which can be used as part of a social cost benefit analysis (layard and oparina 2021). although this methodology does not have its origins in faith-based organisations, tearfund nevertheless considers this to be a valuable approach to assessing the social value of its work with churches. this is because of its potential to measure and aggregate improvements in wellbeing resulting from a wide range of initiatives and sources, through the summary measure of life satisfaction, and to do so in a way recognised by “secular” organisations and can thus be compared with ways of working that are not faith-based. tearfund understands church and community transformation in terms of holistic wellbeing, incorporating spiritual, social/relational, economic, and personal domains that are defined by the light wheel framework. tearfund finds this approach to social christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(2), winter 2024 dejean, et al., compelling, consistent and credible… 113 value calculation has particular resonance with its organisational focus on holistic wellbeing. the method utilises a life satisfaction survey question, one of four standard questions recommended by the uk office for national statistics for measuring subjective wellbeing. 3 one wellby is defined as an increase in life satisfaction of one point on a scale from 0 to 10, affecting one person for one year, and caused by the intervention being assessed. 4 life satisfaction as a measure of subjective wellbeing has the advantage of being simple, easy to understand, and highly predictive of diverse outcomes related to jobs, relationships, and even voting behaviour (layard and de neve 2023). wider research has shown that faith, or “religiosity,” tends to be positively correlated with life satisfaction (see sholihin et al. 2022; ten kate et al. 2017; pew research center 2019). this subjective wellbeing approach allows community members to self-report, rather than outside researchers making assumptions about what matters to them. its use is based on some key assumptions, as noted by layard and oparina (in the world happiness report 2021), including that a one point difference at any point between 0 and 10 on the life satisfaction scale is equivalent, and that there is no extra weight given to the prevalence of “misery.” in the past three years, the wellby has been adopted for use by the uk government and by the treasury in new zealand. for policy appraisal and evaluation in the uk, government guidance states: “the change in life satisfaction [shown to result from an intervention] can be converted to a monetary value by multiplying by £13,000 (hm treasury 2021, 30), which signifies a value of £13,000 per wellby. this is based on two valuation methods that are sensitive to the target population’s income levels. both methods utilise uk data. the value of £13,000 is therefore appropriate for use in the uk, or countries with similar income levels. in tearfund’s african study countries with significantly lower income levels, the value needs to be converted to a more appropriate figure. in the absence of an equivalent wellby valuation for any of the study countries, this was achieved by making comparisons to median income in the uk and scaling accordingly for countries in the cct study (fawcett 2023). the strengths and limitations of this pragmatic approach to converting the wellby have been discussed by state of life in a blog post on the what works centre for wellbeing website (fawcett 2023). while the wellby was used to monetise wellbeing benefits associated with cct, principles of social value measurement were also applied to capture the costs of cct, including non-market or in-kind contributions as well as financial contributions. notably, this included the value of the time and resources that community members mobilise and contribute towards their own church and community transformation. using this approach, all of this could be fed into a social cost-benefit analysis sensitive to the community-led and -owned nature of cct, and to the holistic nature of its impact. measuring wellbeing beyond life satisfaction: though life satisfaction as a measure of subjective wellbeing was sufficient for social value measurement, the study also integrated the light wheel, tearfund’s own tool for measuring holistic wellbeing. a key tenet of tearfund’s approach to wellbeing measurement is to incorporate multiple aspects of wellbeing, not just one single measure of subjective wellbeing. developed from internal evaluations, evidence, and published research, and with input from colleagues and partners globally, the light wheel, shown below in figure 1, visualises how nine different aspects (or “spokes of the wheel”)— a mix of economic, personal, social/relational, and spiritual factors—add up to whole-life wellbeing (tearfund 2016). the light wheel has been tested, validated, and refined over the last ten years through use by communities tearfund works with across the world. the study collected data on 22 aspects of wellbeing in addition to life satisfaction, such as hope for the future, year on year change in income, trust in neighbours, and participation in household and community-level decision-making. these metrics were informed by the light wheel, collected using survey questions from validated question sources, and analysed via multilinear regression analysis. to the authors’ knowledge, this is one of few studies to measure life satisfaction and social value alongside a range of specific, tangible aspects of holistic wellbeing. 3 overall, how satisfied are you with your life nowadays? please answer on a scale of 0 (not at all) to 10 (completely). 4 this individual value can then be applied to the number of individuals who have been or will be reached by an intervention within a defined timeframe and does not normally include any considerations related to life expectancy. https://whatworkswellbeing.org/blog/converting-the-wellby/ https://whatworkswellbeing.org/blog/converting-the-wellby/ christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(2), winter 2024 dejean, et al., compelling, consistent and credible… 114 figure 1: tearfund’s light wheel framework compelling, consistent, and credible results the study found that, compared to non-cct communities, all 23 measured aspects of wellbeing were significantly higher in communities that had engaged in cct. according to the regression analysis, people in cct communities had +1.185 higher life satisfaction and were, on average, 13.9 percentage points more likely to report positive outcomes across the other 22 aspects of wellbeing (see figure 2). moreover, those within cct communities who participated in cct activities reported significantly higher life satisfaction and were more likely to report positive wellbeing outcomes than those who did not participate. even so, those who lived in communities engaged in cct but did not participate still reported higher wellbeing in terms of life satisfaction and in 20 of the 22 other wellbeing measures compared with those living in communities that had not yet started cct. christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(2), winter 2024 dejean, et al., compelling, consistent and credible… 115 participating in cct activities for longer periods or more frequently was also associated with higher life satisfaction. these differences are, as far as possible within the design, attributable to cct and not to other factors controlled for in the regression models. the high level of consistency in the findings across the different aspects of wellbeing and different communities supports this conclusion. considering the length of time churches have been engaged in cct, even those engaged for less than two years had higher life satisfaction and better wellbeing in their communities when compared with people in noncct communities. this was the case across all measured aspects of wellbeing. meanwhile, those living in communities where churches had engaged in cct for 3-5 years, and for 5+ years, also showed increased levels of wellbeing. again, these differences are associated with cct, implying that cct had an impact upon people’s wellbeing quickly (within the first two years of a church’s involvement), but also that this impact is sustained for 5+ years. notwithstanding, the effect size varies with the length of time engaged in cct, and between different aspects of wellbeing. for life satisfaction, the largest impact was observed in communities where the church has been engaged in cct for 3-5 years, implying “optimum” impact during this period. it makes intuitive sense that more “visionary” outcomes (such as people reporting that they have sometimes or often raised an issue to decision-makers in the last 12 months) show the largest impact where churches have been engaged for more than five years. the study also explored how the relationship between life satisfaction and length of church involvement in cct varies for different groups of respondents. in tearfund’s experience, the impact of cct often starts with facilitators as they experience holistic transformation in their own lives. 5 the study found that facilitators have significantly higher life satisfaction than people in non-cct communities, and the impact is greatest for facilitators during the first few years (0-2) of cct. whole-life transformation is soon experienced as well by church members, who are the most likely to attend and take part in cct activities from the outset. the study found that for church members, the greatest impact occurs once their church has been engaged in cct for 3-5 years. and then, as church members with facilitators progress through the stages of cct and reach out to their communities, nonchurch members become more likely to participate and benefit. indeed, the study found that non-church members experience the greatest uplift in life satisfaction when cct has been happening for 3-5 and 5+ years. after a thorough accounting of the costs of cct, and monetisation of the social benefits, the social costbenefit ratio of cct is between 1:18 and 1:38 (with a midpoint of 1:28). this means that for every £1 invested in cct by tearfund and communities, approximately £28 may be created in social value. time and resources invested by communities account for a substantial proportion of the inputs to the cct process. for every £1 invested in the cct process by tearfund, communities mobilise £7.10 worth of time, money, and resources for projects and initiatives to bring about the change they desire to see. in tearfund’s experience, these initiatives range from installing a new water pump, to establishing a school scholarship scheme, to repairing a local bridge or road, and they help to explain how the impact of cct might spread from participants to non-participants in cct communities, one of the findings of the study. 6 considering again the cost-benefit ratio, the value of the higher life satisfaction observed in cct communities, compared to non-cct communities, substantially exceeds all of these costs. 5 facilitators play a critical role in cct; they are responsible for guiding churches and their wider communities through the cct process. many are pastors/leaders of the participating churches; all are church members. tearfund trains and invests in facilitators, equipping them with the knowledge of the process and skills to adapt it to their own context, and they commit to implementing it in their local church and community. 6 nine in every ten cct facilitators whose communities took part in the study reported that their communities have new or improved community assets due to cct. these are descriptive data not based on regression analysis. christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(2), winter 2024 dejean, et al., compelling, consistent and credible… 116 figure 2: differences between cct communities and control communities for wellbeing measures (excluding numeric variables) lessons for tearfund from conducting the study reflecting on both the research process and the results, tearfund has drawn a number of lessons from carrying out this study. first, the evidence from the study supporting the positive impact of cct in these four countries for both church members and those in the wider community supports tearfund’s understanding of churches as potential transformation centres, highlighting that faith-based organisations, and in particular churches, have an important role to play in community development. the findings of the impact study offer compelling evidence for the effectiveness of the cct approach in promoting community wellbeing in africa, and contribute to the academic understanding of the church’s potential in promoting wellbeing and improved economic outcomes for the poor, countering scepticism even within some christian organisations about the ability of churches to play such a role. 7 these results come at an unprecedented time in the history of human development, when the gains of the past six or more decades of community development could be undone by the devastating effects of climate change or the increasing threat of pandemics and conflict. they underscore the 7 the results do not indicate that the impact of the church on community development is always or necessarily positive, nor that the cct process has this same positive impact in all contexts. importance of holistic and participatory interventions that empower communities and foster sustainable change. indeed, these results have prompted tearfund to focus on scaling up the number of cct churches across the world, with an ambitious target of a ten-fold increase from around 25,000 currently to 250,000. the consistency of the findings across the aspects or indicators of wellbeing studied, including subjective assessments of wellbeing such as life satisfaction and more objective aspects such as recent investment in assets, has confirmed the value of measuring wellbeing in low and middle-income contexts, like those of the four countries studied, and in incorporating a range of dimensions of wellbeing. wellbeing policy-making has been growing in prominence in uk policy circles over recent years, but is much less developed in the international development sector, where “wellbeing” has tended to be used to refer to the outcome of mental health interventions, rather than the broader understanding adopted by tearfund and highlighted by amartya sen’s work on capabilities (sen 1999). the wellbeing measures included in the study speak to a number of sustainable development goals (sdgs), as more conventional development indicators, and there is evidence that achievement of the sdgs is closely related to wellbeing. a study by de neve and sachs christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(2), winter 2024 dejean, et al., compelling, consistent and credible… 117 (2020) notes that “looking at how each sdg relates to wellbeing shows, in most cases, a strong positive correlation” (de neve and sachs 2020). the team leading the study consulted with colleagues in the four participating countries to ensure the approach taken to the study was both appropriate for their ways of working and robust. throughout the design of the study tools, the team from tearfund and state of life navigated the challenge of achieving the necessary consistency across countries alongside the impetus to contextualise the wellbeing measures used. validated survey items used in cross-national surveys were prioritised for inclusion, along with survey questions developed specifically by tearfund to measure the nine “spokes” of the light wheel. these were simplified where necessary, and enumerators were trained to hold the tension between asking the survey questions consistently based on a pre-agreed translation, and providing country-specific examples or guidance for respondents where necessary. investing in a quantitative study, the largest tearfund has ever commissioned, has been significant at this juncture, building as it has on a strong existing, largely qualitative evidence base and a well-developed theory of change (tearfund 2022). before embarking on this study, tearfund had strong evidence from a robust four-country qualitative study using qualitative impact protocol (quip) methodology (tearfund 2021b) that cct was having a positive impact on individuals participating, and from this and previous qualitative evidence, how and why cct was making a difference in communities. this quantitative study enabled tearfund to increase the level of confidence that these positive differences were associated with cct and not other factors, and to quantify the size of the impact on wellbeing for those in cct communities. indeed, the countries selected to take part in the study were those with a well-developed existing evidence base for their cct process, and this existing evidence has been crucial for several reasons. first, it justified the investment in a large-scale, rigorous, and therefore costly, study of this nature, and it informed the research questions explored by the study. second, as noted above, it provided triangulation for the results of the study, addressing potential limitations. third, when combined with the wide range of wellbeing measures and comparisons explored in the study, it has enabled tearfund to interpret the results confidently and learn from the findings. finally, it has facilitated social value measurement, which has proved a powerful 8 as noted above, state of life is a uk-based consultancy that helps organisations to evaluate and measure the social impact and economic value of their activity or project. state of life’s expertise lies in quantitative analysis, particularly in measurement and evaluation of wellbeing outcomes, in line with the h m treasury 2021 green book, in which state of life is a named advisor in the supplementary guidance on wellbeing. way to understand and communicate the value of churches taking part in cct. furthermore, the finding that cct is very good value for money, as suggested by the social value calculation, is important not only to inform tearfund’s strategy and to convince potential funders of the value of investing in cct, but also for existing and potential cct churches considering whether to invest their time and resources into the process. it is important to point out that a large proportion of the costs of cct are borne by church members themselves (£7 out of every £8 of resources invested in cct), highlighting the importance of this study in tearfund’s accountability to participating communities. investing appropriately in using and communicating the findings beyond the production of the comprehensive research report has been key to tearfund making the most of this study. having the appropriate staff in post—for tearfund, an evidence communication officer embedded across impact and fundraising teams, working closely with the research team—has been a major factor in ensuring effective research uptake within the organisation and external sharing. the global dissemination process was projectmanaged by a colleague outside of the main research team; this external perspective and particular focus on dissemination was extremely valuable to enable the production of research products that have included written summaries, blog posts, infographics, and an animated video, combined with launch events in the uk and in the study countries. this dissemination process required an appropriate budget to ensure the value of the research was maximised; in studies of this scale, there is a need to budget adequately for dissemination, including to communities taking part in the study and decision-makers, a requirement of tearfund’s research ethics approach and a very important aspect of dissemination for this study (daehnhardt and bollaert 2021). the process of undertaking the study has underlined the value for tearfund of working with external experts such as state of life. 8 as well as providing an impartial external perspective and credibility, state of life’s expertise on social value and evaluation has provided invaluable insight, married with tearfund’s experience of working in lowand middleincome contexts, including rural, hard-to-reach communities across the four african countries studied, and established thinking on wellbeing measurement. state of life’s experience of contributing to uk government guidance on and training civil servants in christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(2), winter 2024 dejean, et al., compelling, consistent and credible… 118 using the wellby methodology placed them perfectly to provide such expertise, and both organisations have learned from working together to carry out the study, applying this methodology to new contexts. the report on the findings was further strengthened by a peer review from a uk governmentbased economist with extensive experience of applying the wellby methodology. conclusion tearfund's local church, lasting transformation study provides robust evidence of the positive and sustained impact of the cct process across four contexts in africa, offering valuable insights for development actors and reinforcing the role of local churches as catalysts for community transformation. in a world facing unprecedented challenges such as climate change, disasters, and conflict, the study reaffirms the importance of holistic, participatory interventions that empower local communities to foster sustainable change. as a result of the success of the study in 2022, tearfund is continuing the study in 2023/2024, expanding data collection to an additional four countries, including one non-african country, adding to an already large dataset to generate further rich insights about wellbeing in low resource contexts and the role of the church, and exploring the impact of cct beyond africa, including in contexts where christians represent a very small minority. the study also makes a significant contribution to the field of development evaluation by pioneering the application of the wellby methodology in lowerincome contexts outside of the uk. this methodology has proven to be a powerful tool for measuring and communicating the social value of cct, and has the potential to be applied to other development interventions in the future. furthermore, the integration of wellbeing measures in low and middle-income contexts aligns with emerging trends in wellbeing policymaking (see hoekstra 2020, layard and de neve 2023b), contributing to the understanding of development beyond traditional indicators. in conclusion, tearfund's experience, as demonstrated by this study, provides valuable insights for the development sector, showcasing the potential of locally-owned and church-driven initiatives in bringing about transformative and lasting change. references austin, peter c. 2011. “an introduction to propensity score methods for reducing the effects of confounding in observational studies.” multivariate behavioral research 46(3): 399–424. https://doi.org/10.1080/00273171.2011.568786. blanchflower, d.g. 2021. “is happiness u-shaped everywhere? age and subjective well-being in 145 countries. journal of population economics 34: 575–624. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00148-02000797-z. daehnhardt, madleina, and cathy bollaert. 2021. doing research ethically–principles and practices for international development practitioners and evaluators. london: tearfund and christian aid. https://res.cloudinary.com/tearfund/image/fetch/htt ps://learn.tearfund.org//media/learn/resources/tools-andguides/2021/2021-tearfund-consortium-doingresearch-ethically-en.pdf. deaton, angus, and nancy cartwright. 2018. “understanding and misunderstanding randomized controlled trials.” social science & medicine 210: 2-21. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2017.12.005. de neve, jan-emmanuel, and jeffrey d. sachs. 2020. “the sdgs and human well-being: a global analysis of synergies, trade-offs, and regional differences.” scientific reports 10(15113). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-71916-9. de souza leão, luciana, and gil eyal. 2019. “the rise of randomized controlled trials (rcts) in international development in historical perspective.” theory and society 48: 383-418. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-019-09352-6. fawcett, rose et al. 2023. church and community transformation (cct) impact study series: local church, lasting transformation. london: state of life and tearfund. https://res.cloudinary.com/tearfund/image/fetch/htt ps://learn.tearfund.org//media/learn/resources/impact-reports/2023/2023tearfund-impact-report-cctimpactstudyseries-2022en.pdf. fawcett, rose. 2023 (june 1). “converting the wellby.” what works wellbeing. https://whatworkswellbeing.org/blog/convertingthe-wellby/. freeman, dena. 2018. “from ‘christians doing development’ to ‘doing christian development’: the changing role of religion in the international work of tearfund.” development in practice 28 (2): 280-291. https://doi.org/10.1080/09614524.2018.1418837. handley, margaret a., courtney r. lyles, charles mcculloch, and adithya cattamanchi. 2018. "selecting and improving quasi-experimental designs in effectiveness and implementation research." annual review of public health 39: 525. https://res.cloudinary.com/tearfund/image/fetch/https:/learn.tearfund.org/-/media/learn/resources/impact-reports/2023-tearfund-impact-report-cctimpactstudyseries-2022-en.pdf https://res.cloudinary.com/tearfund/image/fetch/https:/learn.tearfund.org/-/media/learn/resources/impact-reports/2023-tearfund-impact-report-cctimpactstudyseries-2022-en.pdf https://res.cloudinary.com/tearfund/image/fetch/https:/learn.tearfund.org/-/media/learn/resources/impact-reports/2023-tearfund-impact-report-cctimpactstudyseries-2022-en.pdf https://res.cloudinary.com/tearfund/image/fetch/https:/learn.tearfund.org/-/media/learn/resources/impact-reports/2023-tearfund-impact-report-cctimpactstudyseries-2022-en.pdf https://res.cloudinary.com/tearfund/image/fetch/https:/learn.tearfund.org/-/media/learn/resources/impact-reports/2023-tearfund-impact-report-cctimpactstudyseries-2022-en.pdf https://doi.org/10.1080/00273171.2011.568786 https://res.cloudinary.com/tearfund/image/fetch/https:/learn.tearfund.org/-/media/learn/resources/tools-and-guides/2021/2021-tearfund-consortium-doing-research-ethically-en.pdf https://res.cloudinary.com/tearfund/image/fetch/https:/learn.tearfund.org/-/media/learn/resources/tools-and-guides/2021/2021-tearfund-consortium-doing-research-ethically-en.pdf https://res.cloudinary.com/tearfund/image/fetch/https:/learn.tearfund.org/-/media/learn/resources/tools-and-guides/2021/2021-tearfund-consortium-doing-research-ethically-en.pdf https://res.cloudinary.com/tearfund/image/fetch/https:/learn.tearfund.org/-/media/learn/resources/tools-and-guides/2021/2021-tearfund-consortium-doing-research-ethically-en.pdf https://res.cloudinary.com/tearfund/image/fetch/https:/learn.tearfund.org/-/media/learn/resources/tools-and-guides/2021/2021-tearfund-consortium-doing-research-ethically-en.pdf https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2017.12.005 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-71916-9 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-019-09352-6 https://res.cloudinary.com/tearfund/image/fetch/https:/learn.tearfund.org/-/media/learn/resources/impact-reports/2023/2023-tearfund-impact-report-cctimpactstudyseries-2022-en.pdf https://res.cloudinary.com/tearfund/image/fetch/https:/learn.tearfund.org/-/media/learn/resources/impact-reports/2023/2023-tearfund-impact-report-cctimpactstudyseries-2022-en.pdf https://res.cloudinary.com/tearfund/image/fetch/https:/learn.tearfund.org/-/media/learn/resources/impact-reports/2023/2023-tearfund-impact-report-cctimpactstudyseries-2022-en.pdf https://res.cloudinary.com/tearfund/image/fetch/https:/learn.tearfund.org/-/media/learn/resources/impact-reports/2023/2023-tearfund-impact-report-cctimpactstudyseries-2022-en.pdf https://res.cloudinary.com/tearfund/image/fetch/https:/learn.tearfund.org/-/media/learn/resources/impact-reports/2023/2023-tearfund-impact-report-cctimpactstudyseries-2022-en.pdf https://whatworkswellbeing.org/blog/converting-the-wellby/ https://whatworkswellbeing.org/blog/converting-the-wellby/ https://doi.org/10.1080/09614524.2018.1418837 christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(2), winter 2024 dejean, et al., compelling, consistent and credible… 119 hm treasury. 2021. wellbeing guidance for appraisal: supplementary green book guidance. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/60fa 9169d3bf7f0448719daf/wellbeing_guidance_for_ appraisal__supplementary_green_book_guidance.pdf. hoekstra, r. 2020. measuring the wellbeing economy: how to go beyond-gdp. wellbeing economy alliance. https://wellbeingeconomy.org/wpcontent/uploads/weall-briefings-measuringthe-wellbeing-economy-v6.pdf. joshanloo, mohsen, and veljko jovanović. 2020. "the relationship between gender and life satisfaction: analysis across demographic groups and global regions." archives of women's mental health 23: 331-338. layard, richard, and ekaterina oparina. 2021. "living long and living well: the wellby approach." world happiness report: 191-208. https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2021/living-longand-living-well-the-wellby-approach/ layard, richard, and jean-emmanuel de neve. 2023 (march 27). “a new science of wellbeing will change policy and decision making.” lse blog post. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2023/ 03/27/a-new-science-of-wellbeing-will-changepolicy-and-decision-making/. layard, richard, and jean-emmanuel de neve. 2023b. wellbeing. cambridge university press. lee, david s., and thomas lemieux. 2010. "regression discontinuity designs in economics." journal of economic literature 48 (2): 281-355. ogden, timothy n. 2016. experimental conversations: perspectives on randomised trials in development economics. cambridge: mit press. padilla, rené. 2002. “integral mission and its historical development.” in justice, mercy and humility: integral mission and the poor, edited by tim chester, 42-58. carlisle: paternoster press. pew research center. 2019 (january 31). “religion’s relationship to happiness, civic engagement and health around the world.” https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2019/01/31/r eligions-relationship-to-happiness-civicengagement-and-health-around-the-world/. rogers, john, and andrea revesz. 2019. "experimental and quasi-experimental designs." in the routledge handbook of research methods in applied linguistics, edited by jim mckinley and heath rose, 133-143. oxon: routledge. https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10091265/7/r evesz_rogers%20revesz_experimental%20design %20book%20chapter.pdf. sen, amartya. 1999. development as freedom. new york: oxford university press. sholihin, muhammad, hardivizon hardivizon, deri wanto, and hasep saputra. 2022. “the effect of religiosity on life satisfaction: a meta-analysis.” hts teologiese studies / theological studies 78(4): 10 pages. https://doi.org/10.4102/hts.v78i4.7172. tearfund. 2016. the light wheel toolkit: a tool for measuring holistic change. https://res.cloudinary.com/tearfund/image/fetch/htt ps://learn.tearfund.org//media/learn/resources/tools-andguides/2016/2016-tearfund-light-wheel-toolkiten.pdf. tearfund. 2019. understanding poverty: restoring broken relationships. https://res.cloudinary.com/tearfund/image/fetch/htt ps://learn.tearfund.org//media/learn/resources/tools-andguides/2019/2019-tearfund-understanding-povertyen.pdf. tearfund. 2021. an introduction to church and community transformation (cct): overcoming poverty through a whole-life response to the gospel. https://res.cloudinary.com/tearfund/image/fetch/htt ps://learn.tearfund.org//media/learn/resources/tools-andguides/2021/2021-tearfund-an-introduction-to-cctportrait-en.pdf. tearfund. 2023. “online course: integral mission.” https://learn.tearfund.org/en/resources/onlinecourses/integral-mission. ten kate, josje, willem de koster, and jeroen van der waal. 2017. “the effect of religiosity on life satisfaction in a secularized context: assessing the relevance of believing and belonging.” review of religious research 59(2): 135–155. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13644-016-0282-1. the treasury te tai ōhanga, new zealand. 2023 (december). “the treasury’s cbax tool.”. https://www.treasury.govt.nz/information-andservices/state-sector-leadership/investmentmanagement/investment-planning/treasurys-cbaxtool#reference-index-1. vassilev, gueorguie, and silvia manclossi, g. v. o. s. 14th may 2019. personal and economic well-being office for national statistics. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcom munity/wellbeing/articles/personalandeconomicwel lbeingintheuk/whatmattersmosttoourlifesatisfaction #:~:text=people%20who%20are%20married%20or %20in%20a%20civil%20partnership%20rate,any% 20other%20economic%20activity%20group. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/60fa9169d3bf7f0448719daf/wellbeing_guidance_for_appraisal_-_supplementary_green_book_guidance.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/60fa9169d3bf7f0448719daf/wellbeing_guidance_for_appraisal_-_supplementary_green_book_guidance.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/60fa9169d3bf7f0448719daf/wellbeing_guidance_for_appraisal_-_supplementary_green_book_guidance.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/60fa9169d3bf7f0448719daf/wellbeing_guidance_for_appraisal_-_supplementary_green_book_guidance.pdf https://wellbeingeconomy.org/wp-content/uploads/weall-briefings-measuring-the-wellbeing-economy-v6.pdf https://wellbeingeconomy.org/wp-content/uploads/weall-briefings-measuring-the-wellbeing-economy-v6.pdf https://wellbeingeconomy.org/wp-content/uploads/weall-briefings-measuring-the-wellbeing-economy-v6.pdf https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2021/living-long-and-living-well-the-wellby-approach/ https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2021/living-long-and-living-well-the-wellby-approach/ https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2023/03/27/a-new-science-of-wellbeing-will-change-policy-and-decision-making/ https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2023/03/27/a-new-science-of-wellbeing-will-change-policy-and-decision-making/ https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2023/03/27/a-new-science-of-wellbeing-will-change-policy-and-decision-making/ https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2019/01/31/religions-relationship-to-happiness-civic-engagement-and-health-around-the-world/ https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2019/01/31/religions-relationship-to-happiness-civic-engagement-and-health-around-the-world/ https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2019/01/31/religions-relationship-to-happiness-civic-engagement-and-health-around-the-world/ https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10091265/7/revesz_rogers%20revesz_experimental%20design%20book%20chapter.pdf https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10091265/7/revesz_rogers%20revesz_experimental%20design%20book%20chapter.pdf https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10091265/7/revesz_rogers%20revesz_experimental%20design%20book%20chapter.pdf https://doi.org/10.4102/hts.v78i4.7172 https://res.cloudinary.com/tearfund/image/fetch/https:/learn.tearfund.org/-/media/learn/resources/tools-and-guides/2016/2016-tearfund-light-wheel-toolkit-en.pdf https://res.cloudinary.com/tearfund/image/fetch/https:/learn.tearfund.org/-/media/learn/resources/tools-and-guides/2016/2016-tearfund-light-wheel-toolkit-en.pdf https://res.cloudinary.com/tearfund/image/fetch/https:/learn.tearfund.org/-/media/learn/resources/tools-and-guides/2016/2016-tearfund-light-wheel-toolkit-en.pdf https://res.cloudinary.com/tearfund/image/fetch/https:/learn.tearfund.org/-/media/learn/resources/tools-and-guides/2016/2016-tearfund-light-wheel-toolkit-en.pdf https://res.cloudinary.com/tearfund/image/fetch/https:/learn.tearfund.org/-/media/learn/resources/tools-and-guides/2016/2016-tearfund-light-wheel-toolkit-en.pdf https://res.cloudinary.com/tearfund/image/fetch/https:/learn.tearfund.org/-/media/learn/resources/tools-and-guides/2019/2019-tearfund-understanding-poverty-en.pdf https://res.cloudinary.com/tearfund/image/fetch/https:/learn.tearfund.org/-/media/learn/resources/tools-and-guides/2019/2019-tearfund-understanding-poverty-en.pdf https://res.cloudinary.com/tearfund/image/fetch/https:/learn.tearfund.org/-/media/learn/resources/tools-and-guides/2019/2019-tearfund-understanding-poverty-en.pdf https://res.cloudinary.com/tearfund/image/fetch/https:/learn.tearfund.org/-/media/learn/resources/tools-and-guides/2019/2019-tearfund-understanding-poverty-en.pdf https://res.cloudinary.com/tearfund/image/fetch/https:/learn.tearfund.org/-/media/learn/resources/tools-and-guides/2019/2019-tearfund-understanding-poverty-en.pdf https://res.cloudinary.com/tearfund/image/fetch/https:/learn.tearfund.org/-/media/learn/resources/tools-and-guides/2021/2021-tearfund-an-introduction-to-cct-portrait-en.pdf https://res.cloudinary.com/tearfund/image/fetch/https:/learn.tearfund.org/-/media/learn/resources/tools-and-guides/2021/2021-tearfund-an-introduction-to-cct-portrait-en.pdf https://res.cloudinary.com/tearfund/image/fetch/https:/learn.tearfund.org/-/media/learn/resources/tools-and-guides/2021/2021-tearfund-an-introduction-to-cct-portrait-en.pdf https://res.cloudinary.com/tearfund/image/fetch/https:/learn.tearfund.org/-/media/learn/resources/tools-and-guides/2021/2021-tearfund-an-introduction-to-cct-portrait-en.pdf https://res.cloudinary.com/tearfund/image/fetch/https:/learn.tearfund.org/-/media/learn/resources/tools-and-guides/2021/2021-tearfund-an-introduction-to-cct-portrait-en.pdf https://learn.tearfund.org/en/resources/online-courses/integral-mission https://learn.tearfund.org/en/resources/online-courses/integral-mission https://doi.org/10.1007/s13644-016-0282-1 https://www.treasury.govt.nz/information-and-services/state-sector-leadership/investment-management/investment-planning/treasurys-cbax-tool#reference-index-1 https://www.treasury.govt.nz/information-and-services/state-sector-leadership/investment-management/investment-planning/treasurys-cbax-tool#reference-index-1 https://www.treasury.govt.nz/information-and-services/state-sector-leadership/investment-management/investment-planning/treasurys-cbax-tool#reference-index-1 https://www.treasury.govt.nz/information-and-services/state-sector-leadership/investment-management/investment-planning/treasurys-cbax-tool#reference-index-1 https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/wellbeing/articles/personalandeconomicwellbeingintheuk/whatmattersmosttoourlifesatisfaction#:~:text=people%20who%20are%20married%20or%20in%20a%20civil%20partnership%20rate,any%20other%20economic%20activity%20group https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/wellbeing/articles/personalandeconomicwellbeingintheuk/whatmattersmosttoourlifesatisfaction#:~:text=people%20who%20are%20married%20or%20in%20a%20civil%20partnership%20rate,any%20other%20economic%20activity%20group https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/wellbeing/articles/personalandeconomicwellbeingintheuk/whatmattersmosttoourlifesatisfaction#:~:text=people%20who%20are%20married%20or%20in%20a%20civil%20partnership%20rate,any%20other%20economic%20activity%20group https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/wellbeing/articles/personalandeconomicwellbeingintheuk/whatmattersmosttoourlifesatisfaction#:~:text=people%20who%20are%20married%20or%20in%20a%20civil%20partnership%20rate,any%20other%20economic%20activity%20group https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/wellbeing/articles/personalandeconomicwellbeingintheuk/whatmattersmosttoourlifesatisfaction#:~:text=people%20who%20are%20married%20or%20in%20a%20civil%20partnership%20rate,any%20other%20economic%20activity%20group https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/wellbeing/articles/personalandeconomicwellbeingintheuk/whatmattersmosttoourlifesatisfaction#:~:text=people%20who%20are%20married%20or%20in%20a%20civil%20partnership%20rate,any%20other%20economic%20activity%20group christian relief, development, and advocacy 5(2), winter 2024 dejean, et al., compelling, consistent and credible… 120 catriona dejean is tearfund’s chief impact officer, leading the strategy and impact unit. catriona is a fellow of the royal society of arts (rsa) and a fellow at st george's house, windsor castle, society of leadership fellows. charlotte flowers is church and community transformation corporate priority strategic coordinator at tearfund. she has an msc in social development practice from university college london, and a degree in theology from the university of oxford. kyle hanna is head of impact and effectiveness at tearfund. he has an msc in global development from the open university, and experience working for an indigenous ngo in uganda, as well as various uk and european organisations working for social justice and community regeneration. harrison manyumwa, formerly the regional design, monitoring, evaluation and learning advisor for southern and east africa at tearfund, is now program quality lead for oxfam in southern africa. he has a master’s degree from the university of zimbabwe in agricultural and applied economics. rebecca middleton is tearfund's global impact and research lead. rebecca has an msc in development studies (research) from the london school of economics and political science and completed an odi fellowship in ghana. emmanuel murangira is tearfund's country director in rwanda. he is an economist and theologian, working towards a phd by publication in economics at martin luther university hallewittenberg and a phd in theology. rachel paton is research and learning analyst at tearfund. she has a geography degree from the university of oxford, started her career in nepal, and has experience across humanitarian and development sectors. bethany sikes is evidence and communications officer at tearfund. prior to joining tearfund, she managed large mixed-method evaluations and research studies and has a master’s degree in development practice from emory university. author emails: email communication can go through either of the following: catriona dejean: catriona.dejean@tearfund.org rebecca middleton: rebecca.middleton@tearfund.org mailto:catriona.dejean@tearfund.org mailto:rebecca.middleton@tearfund.org christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 cannon, the 2023-2024 israel-hamas war… 132 the 2023-2024 israel-hamas war: what jewish trauma and genocide in gaza taught me about collective liberation mae elise cannon drawing on personal experiences, theological reflections, and history, rev. dr. mae elise cannon reimagines peacemaking, resolution to conflict and violence, and collective liberation. following both the author’s time spent in the holy land, and the events of october 7 and what followed, the author argues for a christian response that gives witness to the suffering in gaza and for all who suffer. 1 cannon explores the idea that to seek justice and pursue peace it is essential to abhor evil and cling to what is good (romans 12:9). arguing that the christian’s call is one of collective liberation, cannon considers new ways to respond to violence and affirms the christian commitment to god's promise of peace. the gaza that i knew and loved the first time i rode down the rolling urban streets of gaza city, i felt both overwhelmed and surprised at the view of the minaret silhouetted in the distance overlooking the mediterranean as the sun set in light pink and yellow hues on the horizon. if i hadn’t known that i had just arrived in an enclave already blockaded for well over a decade, which had been virtually destroyed in the war of the summer of 2014, i could almost imagine i was on the riviera of the italian seaside town. while taking in the view, i also had to unimagine what i knew to be true, that tens of thousands of gallons of raw sewage were being dumped into the water every minute (cannon and hill 2017). at the same time, i had to work hard to ignore the constant buzz like a loud gargantuan electronic fly hovering in the distance, sometimes very close and at other times higher up in the clouds—israeli military drones constantly present. the incessant buzz makes one feel like they are going slightly crazy, for while electricity never stays on consistently, the constant knowledge of being enclosed, watched, and under surveillance remains always present. i never felt unsafe with the people of gaza. in fact, the hospitality i experienced there rivaled the warm welcome and warmth of rural communities in egypt and other parts of the middle east. it is impossible to 1 editor’s note: it is very difficult to publish updated information on current events in a timely manner. please note that this piece was written in 2024 and last updated in early 2025. important events have occurred since the time of writing. enter a household without having coffee, juice, and sweets offered in abundance, even in homes with little material wealth. in homes where people have nothing, muslim and christian alike, palestinians in gaza still give from what little they do possess. when i visited in 2018, i attended a giving circle with a development agency in khan yunis. every week, the women would meet and save only a few shekels (the equivalent of us$0.50). their savings eventually contributed to micro-loans so they could start their own businesses, and another bucket was kept for benevolence if one of the women’s family members got sick or needed money for medicine or food. the women had skills in sewing, cooking, or other domestic skills that could be used to help support their families. these women were devout muslims, dressed in black niqabs from head to toe, with only their eyes showing. i dressed conservatively, at least for an american, but did not cover my hair and was not wearing a hijab. my hair is dirty blond and long, so there was no mistaking that i was from the west and not muslim. while my hosts were used to working with internationals and primarily men, these women were not. and yet, i interacted with the community and experienced a complete welcome, despite my abhorrent arabic and the limitations in our direct communication. one of the most sumptuous weekly treats for the women includes a piece of christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 cannon, the 2023-2024 israel-hamas war… 133 chocolate that the development agency gives them—a special delicacy for women living in abject poverty. the women absolutely insisted that i take their chocolate, not the extras the agency had brought—for they each wanted me to give me something that was theirs to give and to be sure that when i left, i was not leaving emptyhanded. such is the hospitality of the palestinians. gaza is no exception. i typically visit gaza once a year as part of my work with churches for middle east peace (cmep). the last time i entered gaza was in may 2022. permits were in progress, and i was scheduled to return in october 2023. then hamas committed the atrocities of october 7, 2023. now, after the horrors of october 7 and israel’s war to destroy hamas, with its ghastly effects on the civilian population of gaza, where to begin in the middle of stories of such trauma and horror? that’s often the question when discussing the israeli/palestinian conflict. does one begin in 1948? or does one begin with the biblical story of the children of abraham—isaac and ishmael? i speak at churches across the united states and to christian and religious communities worldwide. one of the fundamental things we discuss includes debunking the question of when the current conflict—war, genocide, ethnic cleansing, occupation, traumas, and divisions between israelis and palestinians—really began. it was not thousands of years ago. nor was it when tragedy struck on october 7, 2023. a call for collective liberation this brief memoir includes some of the stories, encounters, thinking, theologies, history, and geopolitics of the israeli-palestinian conflict. it describes a small glimpse of my life in leadership as the executive director of cmep over the past year. this account includes a summary of more than 380 days (still ongoing) amid what the world has come to know as the israel-hamas war (or now the israel-hamashezbollah war). some identify the horrors in gaza as genocide. others recognize it only as jewish trauma, seeing it as nothing short of resounding anti-semitism toward jewish people and the state of israel that has echoes of the holocaust. i, and the organization i lead, advocate for an end to violence by all parties—including terrorist organizations, militants, and state actors—the demilitarization of conflict, the end of the bombing of civilians and all people, the end of the holding of hostages of any kind, the release of people held in prison without the due process of law of civil protections, upholding human rights and international law, the recognition of the humanity and dignity of all people, while addressing the more than decades-long historic core issues of the israeli-palestinian conflict. as a pastor and christian leader, my call and leadership go even further, calling christians in the united states and around the world to look within our hearts and root out the hatred that is within us, seeking to redefine not only who is our enemy, but also who is our neighbor. in the specific case of this conflict, being american and leading a us-based non-profit peacebuilding organization based in washington, dc at the same time when the biden administration in recent months has sent billions of dollars of weaponry and arms that have been used to kill tens of thousands of people, my organization and i have an obligation to ask the question of what our culpability is and what our responsibility as american citizens is in contributing to this war and all the death it has caused. collective liberation in this context means the idea many attribute to rev. dr. martin luther king, jr. in the context of the black struggle for liberation in the united states, an idea often heard from civil rights hero fannie lou hamer; “nobody’s free until everybody’s free,” she said as she told the national women’s political caucus in washington, dc in 1971 that black and white women had to work together for the freedom of all (as cited in parker brooks and houck 2011, 136). as the american jewish world service reminds us, the famous quote, “until we are all free, we are none of us free,” was penned in 1883 by american jewish poet emma lazarus in 1883 at a time when global jewish anti-semitism increased so rapidly, that in some ways a jewish nationalist movement may have felt like the only hope for safety and preservation for a worldwide jewish community that had yet to see the horrors of the holocaust (bank and abelow 2021). collective liberation in the context of the israeli/palestinian conflict demands that justice not be only sought for some but for all. one cannot have liberation for palestinians without security for jewish people—in israel and everywhere. one cannot have security for jewish people without freedom, self-determination, and liberation for palestinians. democratic people in the united states will never be “free” while investing in wars in foreign lands and impinging upon the liberties of others. our future together, in the middle east and the world, is inextricably linked. a short history of the israeli/palestinian conflict for those who think god curses the descendants of ishmael (muslims), please consider genesis 21 when hagar cries out to god in the wilderness. god does not reject her. quite the opposite. god reveals himself to hagar in the very first theophany (revelation of his presence) in the hebrew scriptures (royo 2019, 8). bible and middle eastern studies scholar at southwestern baptist theological seminary, tony maalouf, wrote an excellent book about this very christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 cannon, the 2023-2024 israel-hamas war… 134 question called arabs in the shadow of israel: the unfolding of god’s prophetic plan for ishmael’s line (2003), and if you don’t want to read an entire book, i would point you to the chapter “the holy land and the larger family of abraham” in the book i edited titled a land full of god: christian perspectives on the holy land (cannon 2017). the israeli/palestinian conflict is a contemporary geopolitical conflict that began in the late 19th century as the ottoman empire was declining and primarily motivated by the jewish zionist movement, as jewish immigration to the historic territory of palestine increased. conflicts between the immigrant jewish population, the local arab population, and the british administration after world war i through 1947 ultimately escalated into unresolved disputes over land, borders, jerusalem, security concerns, the right of return, prisoners, and settlements, which continue to be unresolved in large part until today. terminology and the israel—hamas war today there are as many battles about what terminology to use regarding the situation happening on the ground now and historically in israel and the occupied palestinian territories (opt) as there are about when it began in history. i will seek to use the relatively “neutral” terminology of the israeli/palestinian conflict, while noting that the 2023-2024 hostilities between israel and hamas, which, as of late october 2024 has already killed 42 thousand people, is referred to by many as genocide. 2 numerous individuals and groups in the activist space, like jewish voices for peace and palestinian christians, consider using any term other than “genocide” offensive (jewish voice for peace 2024). others believe the state of israel is the only democracy in the middle east, surrounded by militant groups and states like hamas and hezbollah who are determined to accomplish its destruction, and that thus the 2023-2024 hostilities are a legitimate and necessary self-defense for survival (deloy 2021). however, on january 26, 2024, the international criminal court of justice (icj) ruled that “at least some of the rights claimed by south africa and for which it is seeking protection are plausible’, including ‘the right of the 2 i am choosing to use the term “conflict” not to minimize the atrocities of current realities in gaza, but to acknowledge that there have been multiple phases of historical engagement and hostilities and war between multiple parties residing on the current geographic land of the modern nation-state of israel and the occupied palestinian territories (opt), including but not limited to: indigenous jewish and arab populations; members of the palestinian resistance movements; palestinians who later became citizens of the state of israel; palestinians living in the occupied palestinian territories of east jerusalem, the west bank, and gaza; jewish citizens of israel living on the israeli side of the green line; israeli setters; palestinian refugees from 1948, 1967, and other periods; diaspora communities; and others. palestinians in gaza to be protected from acts of genocide and related prohibited acts’” (2024). increasingly, the world’s opinion seems to be that israel’s actions against hamas have had a far too extreme and disproportionate response to the civilian population in the gaza strip. on may 24, the icj ruled by thirteen votes to two that: “the state of israel shall, in conformity with its obligations under the convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide, and in view of the worsening conditions of life faced by civilians in the rafah governorate: immediately halt its military offensive, and any other action in the rafah governorate, which may inflict on the palestinian group in gaza conditions of life that could bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part” (international criminal court 2024). cmep came to an apparent decision early on in october 2023; all of our more than 30 member communions and denominations may not agree on the specific terminology, but they do unanimously agree on the “prevention of genocide” as it relates to the atrocities in gaza post-october 2023. in other words, regardless of what you call the situation in gaza—ethnic cleansing, genocide, atrocities, mass slaughter, there are many descriptive terms—the most important thing is that the hundreds and thousands of deaths of men, women, and children happening in gaza must be brought to an immediate end. some people argue these deaths are justified because the population supports the militant group hamas. still, honestly, such thinking ignores that the vast majority of the population are children and youth, who are not guilty of the crimes of hamas. the top priority has been calling and advocating for a comprehensive and immediate ceasefire, which means an end to all violence, including that by hamas and the israeli military, and a return to the negotiating table. cmep’s other asks have included the demand for immediate and adequate humanitarian assistance into gaza, the release of hostages being held by hamas or other militant groups, the release of palestinian prisoners who are being held in israeli jails without due process, and that the core causes of the conflict be addressed, including but not limited to addressing human rights issues as a result of the decades-long occupation of the palestinian people such as the expanding settlement expansion, forced displacement, christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 cannon, the 2023-2024 israel-hamas war… 135 settler violence, and numerous other human rights concerns. the past twelve-plus months have been the most difficult season of my professional life. my credentials include a doctorate of philosophy (on the history of the israeli/palestinian conflict nonetheless) and a doctorate of ministry (focusing on the spiritually transformative process of learning to love your enemy), three master's degrees, more than fifteen years in international development experience, and more than twenty years in christian ministry, yet they seem woefully inadequate for the demands of this moment. i feel woefully inadequate daily, even though i’ve received numerous awards and acknowledgments in past months for my peacebuilding efforts, including sojourners identification as one of the nine christian women shaping the church (schnaser 2024), one of the top 50 women of 2024 in the state of maryland (“the top fifty…” 2024), the armenian apostolic church’s “friend of the year award” (diocese of the armenian church… 2024), and north park theological seminary’s “alumni of the year award.” all of that, and i’ve never felt like more of a failure—every day, more and more people continue to die. in many ways, we are further away from peace in the middle east than ever before. october 7, 2023: hamas attacks on southern israel so, where do we begin? i will start on october 7, 2023. not because that’s where the israeli/palestinian conflict began, by any means, but because i think that is when many christians around the world, especially americans, perhaps for the first time, first really began paying attention. on that day, october 7, 2023 (martinez 2023), israelis experienced, and jews around the world witnessed, the most traumatic event since the holocaust. during the early morning of october 7, 2023, at 6:35 a.m., israeli sirens began to warn residents of incoming rockets. shortly after, the israeli defense forces (idf) confirmed that hamas fighters had entered southern israel. it quickly became clear that the scale of these attacks by hamas and other militant groups would leave many israeli citizens devastated for decades and generations to come. at 7:40 a.m., on a sabbath morning, the idf confirmed hamas fighters had crossed into southern israel, and the military warned residents in the south to stay in their homes. by 11:35 a.m., prime minister benjamin netanyahu of israel made his first statement to citizens, announcing that israel was at war. as fighting continued throughout the day, israel estimated that about 1,200 people were killed in hamas’s october 7 attack, including more than 300 soldiers (bisset 2024). israel also estimated that more than 250 people were taken into hamas territory as hostages, including israeli citizens and internationals. by october 9, 2023, israel had declared that “no food, no electricity, and no fuel” would be allowed into the gaza strip and that the enclave would be under a complete siege. no trucks. nothing. humanitarian assistance and any supplies needed for life were to be completely cut off. by the fall of 2024, debates around the world existed about whether or not israel was using the withholding of food and humanitarian assistance as a weapon of war. in the first weeks after the attacks, the government’s policy under prime minister netanyahu was absolutely nothing in or out of the enclave until all of the hostages would be returned home. the nova music festival one of the most devastating massacres occurred on october 7 at the nova music festival, where many israelis had gathered in the desert, which took place just 5 km from the gaza border. the location was close enough for people in gaza to hear the music themselves. in the early morning hours, as rockets were being fired into israel, many people at the festival paid little attention to the sound. it was not uncommon to hear rocket fire from this territory, so attendees were unaware that they, too, would soon be under attack. hamas fighters quickly cut off routes from the north and south to trap the crowd; concertgoers who attempted to escape in cars were shot at. militants targeted shelters where people hid and continued to chase those who tried to flee into the desert. according to israeli authorities, the death count at nova was over 350 (mackintosh et al. 2023). israel’s response to the october 7 attacks after october 7, the majority of the israeli population ardently supported not only the war against hamas in gaza but also the complete destruction and annihilation of the gaza strip, believing the war to be a “just war” that was thrust upon them and not their choice (teibel 2023). many israelis not only supported the war, but they did not express reservations about the shutting off of all humanitarian aid, food, and water if it meant bringing home the hostages sooner. revenge and despair, in addition to trauma, left little room for israelis committed to making peace with palestinians. in fact, during the first weeks and months after the war, attempts to protest the war and call for a comprehensive ceasefire were almost unilaterally shut down by the police and israeli government (sharon 2023). the israeli government, the most right in the country’s history, further emboldened extremists and settlers within israel and the occupied palestinian territories with statements like: christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 cannon, the 2023-2024 israel-hamas war… 136 “we will avenge this black day,” netanyahu said almost immediately after the attacks, promising to take wider action against gaza and “turn it into a ruin” (times of israel staff 2023). “there will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed… we are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly,” said yoav gallant, israel defense minister on october 9, 2023 (fabian 2023). “now there is only one goal: nakba (expulsion of the palestinians). a nakba in gaza that will dwarf the nakba of 1948,” said ariel kallner, member of parliament, october 13, 2023 (kauss 2023). “we are dropping hundreds of tons of bombs on gaza, the focus is on destruction, not accuracy,” added daniel hagart, idf rear admiral and head of israeli defense forces (idf) spokesperson’s unit, on october 10, 2023 (mckernan and kierszenbaum 2023). 3 in the united states, after september 11, 2001, a common question became, “where were you on september 11?” many have said october 7, 2023, has become israel’s september 11 in that it is a tragedy that will continue to define the future of the nation. in addition, the united states warned the israeli government not to respond to the hamas attacks the way that the united states did by entering into a long, drawn-out war that “cannot be won.” from the beginning, israel declared their primary goal of “operation swords of iron”—the complete and utter destruction of hamas. military leaders and the war cabinet declared the destruction of all infrastructure in gaza a secondary goal of their engagement, but the destruction of hamas has always been the primary goal over the past eight months (nakhoul et al. 2023). still, analysts since the beginning, in addition to arab leaders like the hashemite kingdom of jordan’s deputy prime minister and minister of foreign affairs ayman safadi, have said, “hamas is an idea, and ideas do not die.” by june 2024, even the idf spokesperson, rear admiral daniel hagari, seemed to come around to the belief that hamas exists as an ideology and cannot be eradicated, saying, “this business of destroying hamas, making hamas disappear–it’s simply throwing sand in the eyes of the public… hamas is an idea, hamas is a [political] party. it’s rooted in the hearts of the people—anyone who thinks we can 3 note: the guardian published this quote on october 10, 2023, and it was corrected december 5, 2023 to say, “while balancing accuracy with the scope of damage, right now we are focused on what causes maximum damage” (mckernan and kierszenbaum 2023). eliminate hamas is wrong” (times of israel staff 2024). the adage often used in the middle east is the idea that if you “cut off the head of the snake” or the leaders of the movement are killed, then more leaders will just rise up, having the opposite effect of what is desired. the movement will actually multiply and grow rather than be destroyed or diminished in its support or capacity. regardless of whether or not the destruction of hamas might have been achievable by may 2024, netanyahu still did not wavere from his commitment that their destruction remained his primary goal. by early june, the prime minister still insisted the destruction of hamas was a critical part of the ceasefire deal, telling the parliament’s foreign affairs and defense committee that in efforts to bring back hostages, “we have maintained the goals of the war, the first of them the destruction of hamas” (associated press 2024). by late june 2024, tens of thousands of israelis had participated in protests throughout israel against netanyahu and his coalition (peleg et al. 2024). for the duration of hostilities, many israelis have been ardently critical of the government’s lack of focus on bringing the hostages home, one of the main critiques levied against the netanyahu coalition during the now nine months of israel’s war against hamas (rascoe 2024). where were you on october 7, 2023? i was up late that friday night. it was a friday night for me in the pacific northwest of the united states when i started to hear the news that something was happening on the gaza border. saturday morning had already begun in jerusalem. october 7, 2023. the world would never be the same again. for me and so many in israel, gaza, for so many around the world. we started to chat on our whatsapp group with the few staff on our team based in jerusalem and bethlehem. were they safe? what was happening? no one knew. x (formerly twitter) was one of the only places i could get news. at first, it seemed like this was another “escalation between israel and hamas.” i had seen this before. i wasn’t directly involved in late 2008-2009. but by 2012, i was actively engaged, traveling back and forth to and from israel and the opt several times a year. in november 2012, i was leading a delegation in israel and the opt during the idf’s “operation pillar of defense” and hamas’ “operation stones of shale” from november 14-21. i had been leading the trip in bethlehem when hostilities began. after evacuating the west bank, the team slept on mattresses in jerusalem, air sirens went off regularly, and the tel aviv airport christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 cannon, the 2023-2024 israel-hamas war… 137 remained closed during those days of war until the team could eventually be flown out safely. a couple of years later, i worked diligently during the ~50 days of the 2014 war, operation protective edge as israel called it, which had such devastating effects, including the deaths of more than 500 children (unwra 2024). at that time i was working for world vision, and the number of children killed during the 2014 war represented an appalling number of lives lost in a humanmade conflict. jake tapper interviewed me on cnn to talk about the devastation and how children had been “disproportionately affected” and always faced the worst consequences of war. i’ve worked through numerous other escalations and wars in the middle east since 2010, but nothing prepared me for the aftermath of october 7 (tapper 2024). by may 2024, the number of children killed in gaza rose to more than 15,000—more than 20x the number that horrified us ten years ago. children continue to pay the highest price (imemc news 2024). that night, october 7, 2023, the fastest news came on x (formerly twitter), and i lay there in bed in the early hours of the morning, waiting for news and the subsequent “tweets” to come through. watching short clips, we learned that hamas militants had taken over towns in israel, not knowing yet what that meant. it was weeks and months before any comprehension of specifics became clear of what had transpired. in may 2024, i spent some time with survivors of the hamas attacks. i visited some of the kibbutzim and the location of the october 7 massacres, including the nova music festival site. i watched the almost hour-long compilation video of the attacks that was screened privately by the israeli embassy in washington, d.c., upon invitation to religious leaders. how can i call israelis and palestinians to make peace and reconciliation after such violence if i myself was not willing to witness such atrocities? i felt the very integrity of my ministry and efforts toward peace demanded that i not close my eyes but rather sit through every harrowing second. i cannot imagine what the young people, the families, the parents, let alone the children, experienced as kibbutzim, the city of sderot, and other israeli towns became overrun by hamas and other militants on that day (cbs news 2023). i have lost hours of sleep and have cried countless tears on behalf of the horror and terror imposed by those attacks. my heart is broken for the daily experiences of those held hostage from october 7 until the temporary agreement lasting from november 24 to december 1 that resulted in the release of 105 hostages, and also for the 250-plus days suffered for the very few hostages who may remain alive today. we have called daily for their release and will continue to advocate for their safe return home to their families. news reported israel was under attack. sirens went off in jerusalem. i asked different staff members if they had access to bomb shelters (if they were in jerusalem). for staff persons located in the west bank, we discussed evacuation plans and how they might be able to leave if things escalated further and departure became necessary. i stayed up through the night, preparing for a season of heightened and intense advocacy during war. however horrible i thought things might be, we never would have imagined how bad things would become over the next year-plus. unfathomable. the next day, october 7, in the united states, the cmep board met. we put out our first statement, condemning all violence, especially that against civilians, calling for prayer, and calling on global leaders to address core causes of the conflict, including decades of military occupation of east jerusalem, the west bank, and gaza and the more than 16 years long blockade of gaza. the statement made explicit condemnations of the attack on israel and called on hamas to “stop all acts of aggression, the targeting of israeli civilians, and the taking of civilian hostages” (cmep 2024). cmep supports nonviolent engagement in peacebuilding and focuses on de-escalating violence and demilitarization. professionals, far more experienced than i, suggest there is little debate in international law about the “right to resist” in terms of subjugated people living under military occupation and whether or not violence against the occupying power, not civilians, might be permissible. the october 7 attacks violated international law in that the majority of hostages were not combatants, and the majority of sites attacked were not military targets (scheffer 2023). attackers brutally killed women, children, and the elderly. as months progressed, more details about what happened that day were revealed. still, many investigations are pending, including those conducted by israel, the united states, the united nations, and other international actors. a crisis unlike any in modern times for those within israel, the penetration of hamas militants was a violation of the agreement between the citizens and the state. the military had promised its civilians to keep them safe and protect them. on monday, may 27, 2024, i visited what is known as hostage square in tel aviv and heard one of the volunteers there tell about how it took the military eight hours before reaching the victims of the nova site massacre (leatherby et al. 2023). this is unheard of in a state that has one of the most sophisticated “red alert” systems to warn its civilians of rocket attacks or other vulnerabilities. it ended up that the majority of the military that should have been defending the gaza christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 cannon, the 2023-2024 israel-hamas war… 138 enclave had been redeployed to other parts of israel, such as central israel or the west bank. thus, when hundreds of israelis pled for the military to come and rescue them, there was no one on their way for several hours. for us in the united states, within hours and indeed the first few days, it became clear that this attack and war between israel and hamas was different than those in the past. no one would have thought it was possible that hamas could have, virtually without resistance, launched such a massive attack in so many geographic locations so successfully. the israeli military did not regain control of the police station in sderot, a city near the gaza border that was penetrated by hamas fighters, until the following morning (margulies 2023). over 350 members of the stderot community were killed, and dozens were taken hostage (bachner and fabian 2023). it took 48 hours until israel had wholly regained control of its territory and declared a “full siege” of gaza (both and hill 2023). gaza before october 2023 the political situation and life's challenges before october 7 must be included as an essential backdrop in understanding this story. in 2006, hamas was democratically elected, but israel and the united states would not allow them to assume political power (deeb 2023). thus, they took power by force, having violent hostilities with fatah members in gaza, where 683 were killed in 2006, which resulted in hamas becoming both the political authority and the military controlling body (b’tselem 2006). israel imposed a blockade by sea and by land beginning in june 2007 (unicef 2022). before october 2023, gaza had been considered “de-developing” by international humanitarian actors. the enclave was already in a severe humanitarian crisis where more than 90-95 percent of the water was not potable (tower 2024). electricity supplied by egypt and israel often shut off or was unavailable because the main power plant was destroyed during the 2014 war and was never allowed to be repaired; thus, there was also an electricity crisis (human rights watch 2014). in addition, food insecurity existed in gaza long before october 7, and severe restrictions on the number of trucks and humanitarian aid allowed in caused health challenges even before the beginning of this devastating crisis (lipkind 2024). it was documented in 2012 that israel had calculated the number of calories needed per resident of gaza to “maintain the basic fabric of life,” and that was what determined the number of trucks allowed per day (reuters staff 2012). according to humanitarian actors, the average amount of trucks carrying humanitarian aid, food, and assistance before october 7, 2023, averaged 500 trucks per day, primarily through the karem shalom or erez crossings (united nations office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs n.d.). christians disappearing in gaza before the hamas attacks and israel's subsequent war on gaza, there were between 800-1000 christians in gaza. this population has been gradually shrinking for several reasons over the past decades. the primary reason was almost always the “situation,” meaning the decades-long occupation of the palestinian people and, most recently, the more than sixteen years blockade of the gaza strip. a second reason for the decrease in the christian population is because, in general, muslims have more children than christians. thus, there is a natural demographic shift in the population. the third reason for the diminishing number of christians includes emigration. palestinian christians receive international visas more readily than arab muslims and thus are able to leave more quickly than their muslim neighbors. many christians in the occupied territories have left since october 2023. in may 2024, i heard of more than two dozen christian families between ramallah and bethlehem who had already left and more who were considering leaving because of how desperate the political situation was on the ground. in gaza, there are two primary churches: the holy family latin (catholic church) and st. porphyrius orthodox church. both churches very quickly became shelters for hundreds of refugees after the forced displacement where prime minister netanyahu ordered the population to leave north gaza, and more than 1.7 million people were living in internal displacement at the end of the year in the gaza strip (internal displacement monitoring centre 2024). after october 7, my team started to monitor the news and reports coming from gaza, our palestinian christian partners and community, and our connections in israel and the opt. i started to create daily video summaries compiled from things i was reading, including israeli and arab news sources, readouts from the state department and white house, reports from local ngos, stories from peacebuilders, and especially first-hand accounts of people we know from all sides who are right in the middle of the situation. it was important for people to hear about the ways communities in israel and palestine were being affected. it was important for people in the united states to hear first-hand accounts from people in gaza. often, i have texted daily with contacts in gaza. on october 19, 2023, i received a whatsapp message that said, “air strike targets the orthodox church in gaza. casualties and injuries inside.” my contact is a dear friend who leads a large development agency responsible for distributing aid to hundreds of thousands of palestinians. he continued, “we have one staff member inside. he reported helping save christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 cannon, the 2023-2024 israel-hamas war… 139 people from one part of the small compound. the number of injuries and casualties still unknown.” then, over the next few hours, the texts increasingly came in, stating “there are at least six martyrs” at the orthodox church. i think it’s important to note that “martyrs” can also be translated as “witnesses.” this word in arabic means someone who died for a cause. it is an honoring term for those who have given their lives for something. just as we in the christian tradition would say that someone’s life was a “witness to christ,” devout muslims would use the term martyrs. in jewish tradition, the idea might be that when someone passes, it is common to say, “may their memory be a blessing.” it is unfortunate that in the west, the term “martyr” has different associations with the word. after final reports, the death count at st. porphyrus church included 16 palestinians, four of whom were children (graham-harrison 2023). many had died under the rubble. one of the things i was sent during those days was the coordinates of all the christian churches and locations in gaza. they had also been sent to the israeli military at the beginning of the operations in early october. it was reported that the church was not a target, rather a militant’s home had been targeted next to the church, and the church’s annex was collateral damage. one of my closest friends in bethlehem had two aunts who resided at that church, taking refuge. one of them was killed in the blast—not immediately, but she had suffered severe injuries and died from internal bleeding. the other aunt sustained severe injuries and had to have repair surgery on her hip without anesthetic. these are just two of the examples of the statistics one reads about related to the humanitarian crisis in gaza, with now more than 42 thousand killed and 100 thousand injured. there is fear that the longer the war goes on, the christian community in gaza might be eradicated entirely. in may 2024, in a meeting with the foreign minister of the palestinian authority, her excellency varsen aghabekian announced that three percent of the christian population in gaza had been killed as a result of the war (umar 2024). what is a christian response to the crisis in israel and palestine? above, i mentioned some of cmep’s priorities. another one of our priorities is the sustainability of the christian community in the middle east, and especially the holy land—israel, the opt, egypt, jordan, the very lands where christianity first began. in large part, the palestinian christian community, based primarily, but not only in bethlehem and in other christian cities like nazareth (in israel) and small christian villages throughout the west bank, feels ignored and neglected by the western church. this was true long before the october war. and all the more after that, when leading christian periodicals such as christianity today published articles like russel moore’s editorial calling people to “stand with israel” if they wanted to stand on the side of god (2023). i wrote a response published by religious news service (rns) entitled “god calls us to stand with people and not states” (cannon 2023). these are just some of the battles that the christian community in israel and palestine have been caught in the middle of because of the political crisis. palestinian christians are often not considered “christian enough,” as the majority come from traditional orthodox communities. in addition, if arab christians show any allegiances to their own people’s national aspiration for self-determination, they are viewed as essentially illegitimate by international conservative christians, particularly evangelicals, many of whom have a theological allegiance to israel and the jewish people. my damascus road experience—an introduction to the nakba i first went to israel in april 2009 on a spiritual pilgrimage. i had dreamt of traveling to the historic land of the jewish people and seeing the holy places where jesus had lived, breathed, and done ministry. on that trip, i had a sort of “damascus road” experience. i had come to “israel” to learn about the history of the bible and to be more connected to the jewish people. i had grown up in a secular zionist home (my family were not practicing christians). i had read books like chaim potok’s the chosen (1987) and leon uris’ exodus (1958) as a backdrop to my expectations. when i crossed the allenby bridge over the jordan river into the west bank, the border guard asked me: “are you going to the west bank?” i wasn’t sure what to say. “no,” i said hesitantly. little did i know that i was standing in the west bank. my first book, social justice handbook: small steps for a better world (2009), was about what the bible says about global justice issues and was just about to be published. throughout those few days, i felt the holy spirit provoking my heart. i saw signs that said “free palestine,” and, honestly, i thought palestine was just a map in the back of my bible. then we had a visit and lecture by bishara awad, the founder and then-president of bethlehem bible college, who told his family story as a palestinian christian. his father was killed by a sniper in 1948, and his entire family became refugees. if you ever visit our offices at cmep in washington, dc, above my desk there is a picture of me at that moment. you can still see the tears in my eyes—i wept for most of that talk. as tears streamed down my face, my heart broke as i learned the story of what palestinians call the nakba (the great catastrophe) of 1948, where more than three-quarters of a million palestinians were forced out christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 cannon, the 2023-2024 israel-hamas war… 140 of their homes or fled and became permanently displaced refugees. i say this was a “damascus road” experience because i felt like the apostle paul, who, when traveling on the road to damascus, had scales “[fall] from his eyes” (acts 9:18). if we want to have a christian response to the crisis in israel/palestine, or anywhere in the world, we must pray and ask god to open our eyes to the history and current realities of oppression and injustice. give witness to suffering and oppression i believe one of the global church's unique roles is to witness suffering and oppression. again, here i am referring specifically to israel and the occupied palestinian territories, but this principle applies to anywhere in the world. this has been one of the primary ways i have felt called by god to engage with jews, christians, muslims, and israelis and palestinians in the middle east and the united states over the past eight months. the african american theologian howard thurman wrote about spiritual liberation and said, “it is a strange freedom…to go nameless up and down the streets of other minds…” (as cited in fluker and tumber 1998, viii). palestinian christians, and palestinians in general, have not felt “seen” for most of their modern history. by listening to their stories and, when appropriate, elevating their voices, we “give witness” and provide evidence that they are not ignored. listening and seeing someone offers the opportunity to come alongside them in solidarity and validate that they are seen and not ignored. thurman said that as a black man in the united states in the 1930s, being “unseen” was one of the most significant forms of oppression, and thus, liberation could be experienced when someone “saw him” and called him by his name. what might it look like for us to do that today, not only for palestinian christian brothers and sisters, but for israeli siblings as well? in south africa, the zulu word for saying hello in isizulu, one of the most popular languages spoken in south africa, is “sawubona” (singular), which, when literally translated, means, “i see you.” 4 if nothing else, christians around the world have the opportunity to say to those who are suffering, “we see you.” and to acknowledge that we see the suffering, pain, and loss of palestinians and israelis alike. since october 7, israelis and palestinians, because of each person’s collective trauma, have less and less capacity to have empathy for one another. i believe entering into the pain and suffering of multiple experiences is one of the roles christians can play at this critical moment. 4 when greeting more than one person, the plural “sanibonani” is used. i have sought to give witness to the suffering of palestinians in gaza by daily being in touch and telling the stories we hear from mothers and those who are suffering the consequences of daily bombings, inadequate water, and dwindling food supplies. mothers in gaza have taken to writing their children’s id numbers on their limbs so that they might be able to be identified if they are killed in a bombing and their bodies are found underneath the rubble (humaid and ibrahim 2023). we must let parents in gaza know that we hear their cries and see their suffering. i also have sought to spend time with jewish friends who know or have lost loved ones on october 7. there is no equivalency in pain and suffering. one horror does not negate another horror. i have felt it is essential for the integrity of christian witness to listen to the stories of survivors of october 7 and to also give witness to their experiences. but seeing and witnessing suffering and oppression should just be the beginning of our journey. break our hearts, increase our capacity to love bob pierce, world vision’s founder, used to often pray, “break my heart for the things that break the heart of god” (world vision n.d.). as we hear stories from those who have often lost dozens of family members in gaza, and as the death toll increases day after day, it is hard to fully understand what is actually happening. sometimes, statistics can just become numbers, and our hearts are hardened. often, these days, i do not know where to begin. i feel immobilized by grief. at the time of this writing, i feel immobilized by the fact that the bombing and war on gaza has been going on for more than 380 days. it seems day by day, we continue to hear about bombs dropping and children dying. global efforts that mobilize the world have not yet made a significant difference. for every mother who has just lost their child, we have failed. the church has failed. these are the moments when we should most pray, “break our hearts for the things that break the heart of god.” i quickly became overwhelmed as i continued praying that prayer throughout october (more than a year ago). my heart just is not big enough. there is too much brokenness, and the horrors are too horrific. my heart cannot contain the horrors we hear each and every day. a pregnant woman dies, and her child is delivered into the world after her death, only to become an orphan surrounded by rubble, bombing, and violence, with no end in sight (sanchez 2024). what kind of world do we live in such that we allow this to go on for one more day, let alone another week, christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 cannon, the 2023-2024 israel-hamas war… 141 let alone another month, let alone an entire year, more? what kind of world do we live in that sweet and beautiful little hind, the six-year-old palestinian girl who was abandoned in her family’s car in north gaza, surrounded by her dead relatives for hours, must plead with rescue workers to come and save her (democracy now! 2024). how does the entire world not rush in and demand that she, as a child of god, be protected, and saved? how does the world hear the stories about the hostage attacks and not unilaterally demand their release and return home to their families safely? i have often felt my heart is not big enough to carry the brokenness i have witnessed. thus, i have also begun to pray, “god expand the capacity of my heart.” if we pray those two things, “break our hearts for the things that break god’s heart” and “expand the capacity of our hearts,” i believe god will hear and honor our prayers. otherwise, the devastation that has happened over the past decades, the death and violence of october 7, the destruction and massive killings in gaza, honestly, it is too much for any human to bear. it is just too much. these realities are too much to hear about, let alone live through. so, we must ask god to break our hearts for the things that break god’s heart and expand our hearts so that we can carry more pain. but i’ll be honest: god has been expanding my heart for both palestinian and israeli people alike. i’m not falsely equivocating. we must address systemic injustice and differentials of power. i am not ignoring the gross and distorted power differentials between israelis and palestinians who have been living under military occupation for decades. i am also not ignoring that the most critical thing at this moment is that the mass killings in gaza must be brought to an immediate end, and hostages must be returned home. the prayer asking god to expand our hearts returns us to the heart of the gospel message that all we do would be compelled by love. we are told in matthew 22:36-40 that the greatest commandment is to love the lord your god and to love your neighbor as yourself. jesus also issues the profound challenge that we must also “love our enemies” in matthew 5:44. as we seek peace, an end to all violence, justice, and liberation for palestinians and all people, might the core motivation be that of love as modeled and commanded by jesus in the scriptures. 5 there is clear evidence that incidents of rape and sexual violence occurred during the attacks on october 7, 2023. the un commission of inquiry investigation “documented cases indicative of sexual violence perpetrated against women and men in and around the nova festival site, as well as the nahal oz military outpost and several kibbutzim, including kfar aza, re’im and nir oz,” and “found indications that members of the military wing of hamas and other palestinian armed groups committed gender-based violence (gbv) in several locations in southern israel on 7 october” (united nations human rights council 2024). abhor what is evil, cling to what is good what does it mean to pursue peace and seek justice in the middle east during these moments? romans 12 has been a guiding passage for me the past several months. i began reflecting on the chapter throughout lent. sometimes, when the days seem particularly long or i’m not quite sure what direction to take, romans 12:9 provides moral clarity and direction: “abhor what is evil. cling to what is good.” those simple words have been so helpful over the past weeks and months. having just finished up weeks in the middle east and more than a month of travel domestically and internationally, i know that there are thousands of opinions about what pursuing justice looks like. and there is so much anger, much of which i understand—i have never been angrier. and there is so much pain. and all of that intensity of rage, pain, and trauma comes out and is often directed at those who are in the line of fire. peacemakers tend to be caught in the middle and sometimes pay the highest price. innocents tend to be in the line of fire. in some ways, “abhor what is evil…” can be the clearest of commandments. killing is evil. murder is evil. the october 7 attacks were evil. decades of occupation and military control over an entire people group are evil. rape and the violation of a woman’s body is evil. 5 when things are evil, it can feel easy to hate them—to abhor them. but then we must remember jesus’ commandment during his sermon on the mount, “in your anger do not sin.” personally, i would much rather stay angry. it would be a lot easier! rather than allow my anger to be transformed into something constructive—an emotion, energy, or motivation that can be used for good. such transformation requires arduous work and a lot of grace from others and god. i believe one of the unique roles the church and christian agencies can play is to provide constructive processes for the legitimate anger that is experienced in response to evil to be transformed into energy and power invested toward positive solutions. sometimes, the instruction to “cling to what is good” can be particularly hard during such difficult times. when people are dying every day, i feel guilty if i experience any joy (or self-care, for that matter). these verses permitted me to “cling to joy” when i witness it or experience it in the community. one of the most beautiful things i’ve seen is videos from gaza christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 cannon, the 2023-2024 israel-hamas war… 142 where people come together and share meals—even if the meal is just a salty soup of brackish water and grass with limited sustenance. or watch the videos of palestinians in gaza dancing the traditional palestinian dance, the dabka—clinging to joy and not allowing their spirits to be broken. these scenes are inspiring to witness. during my visit to hostage square, i met with members of different kibbutzim. i learned that almost all of the members (sometimes current and past) of the different communities will often come together to share shabbat meals at the square. the sense of community and support was a beautiful thing to witness. i left their sharing thinking, “cling to what is good”—the community that comes alongside one another to lift one another in the most challenging times reflects the goodness of god. seek justice, pursue peace most of my work at cmep takes place within the context of pursuing human rights and equality for all people within the middle east. what does it mean to seek justice and pursue peace? how do we pursue collective liberation amid such death and violence? as it relates to israel and the occupied palestinian territories, palestinians often say, “no peace without justice.” meaning there shouldn’t be a peace agreement when the status quo and the military occupation continue and when daily there are human rights abuses and ongoing violations of the basic dignities of the palestinian people. i fundamentally believe the military occupation of the palestinian people must be brought to an end. the situation in the opt not only causes daily humiliations and continual dehumanization of palestinian people, but i also believe the occupation is one of the most significant security threats to jews living in israel. the 2012 documentary the gatekeepers features former leaders of israel’s security establishment who made the same argument (the gatekeepers 2013). for justice to be accomplished, it will not be absolute but rather proximate justice. dr. syd hielema of redeemer university colleges says, “proximate justice recognizes that perfection is not an option, and seeking the kingdom of god is not just an option but our deepest calling” (hielema 2013, 13). this means that perfect and absolute justice cannot be obtained but can also be cruel and punishing to those on the other side. every oppressed group, unless through the pursuit of some type of process of collective liberation, remains at risk of also becoming abusive and guilty of the very same crimes they once accused their oppressors of having perpetrated. proximate justice provides a pathway toward collective liberation. practical theologian peter heltzel of union theological seminary argued that reinhold niebuhr, american philosopher and public intellectual, believes that “pragmatic realism argues for the implementation of proximate forms of justice” (heltzel 2009). for example, it is an unrealistic expectation to expect that more than five million palestinian refugees around the world will ever fully receive the right to return and be awarded back the lands confiscated from their families in 1948. but, i hope, through negotiated settlements among political leaders, religious actors, and civil society, there might be a solution that would allow for the injustices of history to at least be acknowledged, if not compensated, and somehow proximate justice might be achieved. today, palestinians in gaza would benefit from steps toward proximate justice of being allowed to live daily without being bombed while continuing in the quest for an end to decades of military occupation. in contrast, the right to return seems a far and distant cry from the immediate and most acute injustices of the current moment. justice does demand that systems that abuse power differentials and control must be dismantled, such as the military control by the israeli army in the west bank. occupation manifests differently in east jerusalem, the west bank, and gaza. specifically in the west bank, palestinian residents do not have the fundamental rights afforded to them by the protections of civil law. many international human rights groups, including amnesty international, identify what is happening in the west bank as apartheid because of the two different legal systems that apply to residents living there. israeli citizens living in west bank settlements receive protections afforded by israeli civil law, whereas palestinians live under military control (amnesty international n.d.). for example, an israeli child who throws a stone has civil rights and goes to an israeli civil court with rights for a lawyer, their parents to be present, and many other protections. a palestinian child who throws a stone on that same geographical territory receives no civil rights or protections and instead will be arrested and prosecuted by the israeli military courts according to military law (baumgarten-sharon 2011). the immediate goal of peace must include ending all violence and that all combatant parties agree to a comprehensive and lasting ceasefire. this applies to hamas and the israeli military in gaza and also to hezbollah and the israeli army on the southern border of lebanon and the northern border of israel. there are many different types of peace, including negotiated settlements and political peace. but many israelis and palestinians have increasingly come to realize that peace must move beyond just a lack of violence and a negotiated agreement. historically, the mechanism by which the state of israel provides “peace” for its people has been by christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 cannon, the 2023-2024 israel-hamas war… 143 military deterrence (steinberg 2011). after gaza lived under a military blockade for more than 16 years, the atrocities of october 7 happened, and the israeli military failed to protect the israeli public. most israelis see this as a failure of the state to live up to its promise (steinberg 2023). if peace and security cannot be accomplished by military might, violence, physical domination, and military control, what other options exist? collective liberation after spending the day at a kibbutz along the gaza border in may 2024, the woman who hosted us began to say goodbye. in her closing comments, she shared very vulnerably how she has little affection or “like” for the palestinian people of gaza. as she spoke, we were standing next to rows of homes where the youth of the kibbutz had lived. each of the small apartments had been almost completely destroyed or bombed out by grenades or bullet holes. many of the residents had been killed or taken hostage. she did not speak of hatred. she said, almost struggling for words, “i do not like them very much, but i know what we have tried has not worked. and what they have tried has not worked. if we ever want to have peace, they will have to have peace. i know our futures are completely tied to one another.” mother teresa said something similar: “if we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to one another” (catholic online n.d.). the palestinian struggle for liberation and an end to occupation is not only a struggle for their own self-determination. instead, as nelson mandela said, “we know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the palestinians” (as cited in davis 2016, 53). collective liberation. the palestinian situation is not just an issue for those who care about palestinians and the middle east. what is happening in palestine is an issue that affects the future of the world—and the very soul of the church is at stake. is the church going to bury its head and ignore what is happening in gaza? or will the church “choose sides” and make the situation more binary than it already is by causing more division and strife? or is the church going to “see” and witness the stories of all the people in the land while calling and pursuing justice, freedom, self-determination, human rights, and equality for all people? pursuing peace will be the most demanding work ever done by individuals and communities. it requires searching deep within us to see what needs to be rooted out and transformed more into the image of god. what hatred or prejudices reside deep within our hearts that must be transformed? such integrity and personal honesty take work. and i promise you, if you enter the work of pursuing peace, there will be critiques and opposition from all sides. please do not misunderstand; i am not talking about compromising on advocating for human rights and justice. i am discussing a multi-narrative approach that rejects the overly simplistic oppressor and oppression narrative as a universally true paradigm. from the perspective of international law, the metanarrative at this moment requires that the state of israel face its legal obligations and bring an end to the illegal occupation of the palestinian people that has existed since 1967. israel not only has legal obligations according to international law, but inequalities and the privileges afforded to jewish citizens of the state of israel over palestinians of all statuses, including citizens of israel, jerusalemites, and others in the occupied palestinian territories, must be addressed. similarly, militant groups like hamas, hezbollah, and others must be held accountable for the atrocities they have committed. collective liberation means no one will be free until we are all free. we have much to learn from nelson mandela and the anti-apartheid movement. one of the powerful opportunities provided by the truth and reconciliation commission in south africa was the concept and idea that the oppressed are not liberated until the oppressor is also free. this is an example of collective liberation. the commission was founded with the goal of telling the truth about past human rights violations, often in the public sphere, as a way to promote understanding. as the commission’s final report states, the road to reconciliation…implies wideranging structural and institutional transformation and the healing of broken human relationships. it demands guarantees that the past will not be repeated. it requires restitution and the restoration of our humanity—as individuals, as communities, and as a nation… the commission’s…purpose in attempting to uncover the past had nothing to do with vengeance; it had to do, instead, with helping victims to become more visible and more valuable citizens through the public recognition and official acknowledgment of their experiences... by bringing the darker side of the past to the fore, those responsible for human rights violations could also be held accountable for their actions. in the process, they were given the opportunity to acknowledge their responsibility to contribute to the creation of a new south african society (truth and reconciliation commission of south africa 1998, 110). our collective liberation is inextricably linked to the freedom of one another. christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 cannon, the 2023-2024 israel-hamas war… 144 hard and sacrificial work “therefore, i urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of god’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to god—this is your true and proper worship” (romans 12:1, new international version [niv]). this is the most challenging work i’ve ever done. and i am not talking about the “external work,” working 380+ days in a row, the hours coordinating and collaborating, or the long hours, the extensive travel to more cities than i can count around the world, or the being away from home for 7-8+ weeks at a time. all of that is true. and it's nothing compared to what so many others have lost and sacrificed. all of those things are hard, but that’s not the tough part. the most challenging part is being willing to see and witness the complex and multifaceted realities of pain, suffering, and trauma—to see clearly and give witness while not compromising on advocating for justice, human rights, and equality for all people in israel and the occupied palestinian territories. the hardest part is seeing the ugliness within that also needs to change and be transformed. palestinians have suffered under the oppression of occupation, unseen, for far too long. the erasure of palestinian history and culture from the 1948 nakba to today’s ethnic cleansing in gaza includes decades of untold, ignored, buried, and intentionally delegitimized stories. why is it so hard for people to see the palestinian people and to hear their history? for palestinians, the displacement of the 1948 nakba, which included the death of about 15 thousand people, has continued through today in gaza with the displacement of more than 1.7 million people, the majority of the population, and a death toll many times the magnitude of that in 1948. in addition to that traumatic history, often palestinian leadership has engaged in mechanisms of liberation that included violent resistance against civilians. consider the suicide bombings during the second intifada, the hijackings of airplanes during the 1970s and 1980s, and the assassinations of the israeli olympic team at the 1972 munich olympics. ignoring this history does no one any favors. this history must also be acknowledged and addressed. at cmep, we have been calling daily for an end to the military campaigns on gaza because of the moral argument that so many civilians are being killed, including, as of may 2024, more than 15,000 children (imemc news 2024). but if the moral argument can’t be won, a pragmatic argument must be made. today, in late october 2024, every day that the bombing of gaza continues, the state of israel becomes increasingly isolated from countries around the world opposing its war against hamas, which caused utter destruction and devastation in gaza. the result of israel’s military campaign has been nothing less than a slaughter of civilian populations in various parts of gaza. antisemitism has been on the rise, and legitimate threats to jewish people around the world have increased manifold since october 7 (antidefamation league 2024). in our advocacy for palestinian human rights and justice, there must also be a stalwart commitment to stand up against antisemitism and any forms of hatred or bigotry. the church should lead the way in sacrificial ministry, standing in the gap to advocate on behalf of palestinians seeking justice, liberation, and selfdetermination and israelis seeking security and peace. the lord promises to be faithful therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. let nothing move you. always give yourselves fully to the work of the lord because you know that your labor in the lord is not in vain (1 corinthians 15:58, niv). while we diligently work to end war, violence, and killing, we know that the world is not ours to save. we must do all that we can. we must work diligently and sacrificially. we must seek to root out everything within us that contains prejudices, hatred, or strife. we will remain steadfast and “give ourselves fully,” as the verses in 1 corinthians discuss. might god expand our hearts and the capacity of our hearts to both grieve and love and give witness to the stories we encounter and observe. for me, i hope my advocacy and solidarity and witnessing of the palestinian cause is strengthened by the ability to be able to also give witness when israelis and others experience grief or pain and trauma. that is my prayer. and the hope christians profess is this, that he who promised is faithful. 2 thessalonians 3 tells us, “but the lord is faithful, and he will strengthen you and protect you from the evil one” (3:3). we will maintain our confidence in god and hold onto hope, even amid war, death, and destruction (3:4). all the time asking that god might direct our hearts increasingly into god’s love and christ’s perseverance” (3:5). may we pursue collective liberation together so that one day all might be free. references amnesty international. n.d. “human rights in israel and occupied palestinian territories.” accessed may 31, 2024. https://www.amnesty.org/en/location/middle-eastand-north-africa/middle-east/israel-and-occupiedpalestinian-territories/report-israel-and-occupiedpalestinian-territories/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/location/middle-east-and-north-africa/middle-east/israel-and-occupied-palestinian-territories/report-israel-and-occupied-palestinian-territories/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/location/middle-east-and-north-africa/middle-east/israel-and-occupied-palestinian-territories/report-israel-and-occupied-palestinian-territories/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/location/middle-east-and-north-africa/middle-east/israel-and-occupied-palestinian-territories/report-israel-and-occupied-palestinian-territories/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/location/middle-east-and-north-africa/middle-east/israel-and-occupied-palestinian-territories/report-israel-and-occupied-palestinian-territories/ christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 cannon, the 2023-2024 israel-hamas war… 145 antidefamation league. 2024 (april 16). “u.s. antisemitic incidents soared 140 percent in 2023—breaking all previous records.” https://www.adl.org/resources/press-release/usantisemitic-incidents-soared-140-percent-2023breaking-all-previous associated press. 2024 (june 3). “netanyahu says destruction of hamas ‘part of the’ ceasefire proposal, according to media reports.” pbs. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/netanyahusays-destruction-of-hamas-part-of-the-cease-fireproposal-according-to-media-reports. viewed july 1, 2024. baumgarten-sharon, naama. 2011. no minor matter: violation of the rights of palestinian minors arrested by israel on suspicion of stonethrowing. translated by zvi shulman. jerusalem: b’tselem. https://www.btselem.org/download/201107_no_m inor_matter_eng.pdf bachner, michael, and emanuel fabian. 2023 (october 8). "forces continue to battle terrorists in gaza border area after devastating assault." the times of israel. https://www.timesofisrael.com/forces-continue-tobattle-terrorists-in-gaza-border-area-afterdevastating-assault/ bank, robert, and bradley abelow. 2021. “letter during covid.” american jewish world service (blog). accessed october 25, 2024. https://ajws.org/wpcontent/uploads/2021/11/ajws_annual_report _2021_welcomeletter.pdf. bisset, victoria. 2024 (april 7). “six months of the israel-gaza war: a timeline of key moments.” the washington post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/04/0 7/israel-hamas-gaza-war-timeline-anniversary/ both, elizabeth, and annie hill. 2023 (october 9). “israel reclaims territory and declares ‘full siege’ of the gaza strip: morning rundown.” nbc news. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/october-9-2023morning-rundown-rcna119434 b’tselem. 2006 (december 28). “683 people killed in the conflict in 2006.” https://www.btselem.org/press_releases/20061228 cannon, mae elise. 2009. social justice handbook: small steps to a better world. downers grove: intervarsity press. cannon, mae elise, ed. 2017. a land full of god: christian perspectives on the holy land. eugene, or: wipf and stock publishers. cannon, mae elise. 2023 (october 17). “in the mideast, evangelical leaders need to stand with people, not states.” religious news services. https://religionnews.com/2023/10/17/in-themideast-evangelical-leaders-need-to-stand-withpeople-not-states/ cannon, mae elise, and jessica hill. 2017 (july). “life inside the gaza blockade.” sojourners. https://sojo.net/magazine/july-2017/life-insidegaza-blockade catholic online. n.d. "mother teresa quotes." accessed june 4, 2024. https://www.catholic.org/clife/teresa/quotes.php cbs news. 2023 (october 11). "map and images: israel, gaza strip, and hamas." https://www.cbsnews.com/news/map-imagesisrael-gaza-strip-hamas/ churches for middle east peace (cmep). 2023 (october 7). “cmep condemns all acts of violence, calls for prayer, and implores global leaders to address core issues of the war between hamas and israel.” https://cmep.org/wpcontent/uploads/2023/10/oct-7.pdf davis, angela y. 2016. freedom is a constant struggle: ferguson, palestine, and the foundations of a movement. chicago: haymarket books. deeb, sarah el. 2023 (october 24). “what is hamas? the group that rules the gaza strip has fought several rounds of war with israel.” ap news. https://apnews.com/article/hamas-gazapalestinian-authority-israel-wared7018dbaae09b81513daf3bda38109a deloy, corinne. 2021 (march 16). “israel, a fragile democracy. interview with samy cohen.” sciencespo. https://www.sciencespo.fr/ceri/en/content/israelfragile-democracy-interview-samy-cohen.html democracy now! 2024 (february 16). “‘they were so close’: israel kills medics trying to save dying 6-year-old hind rajab.” democracy now! https://www.democracynow.org/2024/2/16/gaza_h ind_rajab_palestine_red_crescent diocese of the armenian church of america (eastern). 2024 (may 1). “122nd diocesan assembly convenes this week in springfield, ma.” https://armenianchurch.us/122nd-diocesanassembly-convenes-this-week-in-springfield-ma/ fabian, emanuel. 2023 (october 9). “defense minister announces complete ‘siege of gaza’: no power, food or fuel.” times of israel. https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/defe nse-minister-announces-complete-siege-of-gazano-power-food-or-fuel/ fluker, walter earl, and catherine tumber, eds. 1998. a strange freedom: the best of howard thurman on religious experience and public life. boston: beacon press. https://www.adl.org/resources/press-release/us-antisemitic-incidents-soared-140-percent-2023-breaking-all-previous https://www.adl.org/resources/press-release/us-antisemitic-incidents-soared-140-percent-2023-breaking-all-previous https://www.adl.org/resources/press-release/us-antisemitic-incidents-soared-140-percent-2023-breaking-all-previous https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/netanyahu-says-destruction-of-hamas-part-of-the-cease-fire-proposal-according-to-media-reports https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/netanyahu-says-destruction-of-hamas-part-of-the-cease-fire-proposal-according-to-media-reports https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/netanyahu-says-destruction-of-hamas-part-of-the-cease-fire-proposal-according-to-media-reports https://www.btselem.org/download/201107_no_minor_matter_eng.pdf https://www.btselem.org/download/201107_no_minor_matter_eng.pdf https://www.timesofisrael.com/forces-continue-to-battle-terrorists-in-gaza-border-area-after-devastating-assault/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/forces-continue-to-battle-terrorists-in-gaza-border-area-after-devastating-assault/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/forces-continue-to-battle-terrorists-in-gaza-border-area-after-devastating-assault/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/forces-continue-to-battle-terrorists-in-gaza-border-area-after-devastating-assault/ https://ajws.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/ajws_annual_report_2021_welcomeletter.pdf https://ajws.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/ajws_annual_report_2021_welcomeletter.pdf https://ajws.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/ajws_annual_report_2021_welcomeletter.pdf https://ajws.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/ajws_annual_report_2021_welcomeletter.pdf https://ajws.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/ajws_annual_report_2021_welcomeletter.pdf https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/04/07/israel-hamas-gaza-war-timeline-anniversary/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/04/07/israel-hamas-gaza-war-timeline-anniversary/ https://www.nbcnews.com/news/october-9-2023-morning-rundown-rcna119434 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/october-9-2023-morning-rundown-rcna119434 https://www.btselem.org/press_releases/20061228 https://religionnews.com/2023/10/17/in-the-mideast-evangelical-leaders-need-to-stand-with-people-not-states/ https://religionnews.com/2023/10/17/in-the-mideast-evangelical-leaders-need-to-stand-with-people-not-states/ https://religionnews.com/2023/10/17/in-the-mideast-evangelical-leaders-need-to-stand-with-people-not-states/ https://religionnews.com/2023/10/17/in-the-mideast-evangelical-leaders-need-to-stand-with-people-not-states/ https://religionnews.com/2023/10/17/in-the-mideast-evangelical-leaders-need-to-stand-with-people-not-states/ https://sojo.net/magazine/july-2017/life-inside-gaza-blockade https://sojo.net/magazine/july-2017/life-inside-gaza-blockade https://www.catholic.org/clife/teresa/quotes.php https://www.catholic.org/clife/teresa/quotes.php https://www.cbsnews.com/news/map-images-israel-gaza-strip-hamas/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/map-images-israel-gaza-strip-hamas/ https://cmep.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/oct-7.pdf https://cmep.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/oct-7.pdf https://apnews.com/article/hamas-gaza-palestinian-authority-israel-war-ed7018dbaae09b81513daf3bda38109a https://apnews.com/article/hamas-gaza-palestinian-authority-israel-war-ed7018dbaae09b81513daf3bda38109a https://apnews.com/article/hamas-gaza-palestinian-authority-israel-war-ed7018dbaae09b81513daf3bda38109a https://www.sciencespo.fr/ceri/en/content/israel-fragile-democracy-interview-samy-cohen.html https://www.sciencespo.fr/ceri/en/content/israel-fragile-democracy-interview-samy-cohen.html https://www.democracynow.org/2024/2/16/gaza_hind_rajab_palestine_red_crescent https://www.democracynow.org/2024/2/16/gaza_hind_rajab_palestine_red_crescent https://armenianchurch.us/122nd-diocesan-assembly-convenes-this-week-in-springfield-ma/ https://armenianchurch.us/122nd-diocesan-assembly-convenes-this-week-in-springfield-ma/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/defense-minister-announces-complete-siege-of-gaza-no-power-food-or-fuel/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/defense-minister-announces-complete-siege-of-gaza-no-power-food-or-fuel/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/defense-minister-announces-complete-siege-of-gaza-no-power-food-or-fuel/ christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 cannon, the 2023-2024 israel-hamas war… 146 graham-harrison, emma. 2023 (october 20). “‘destruction chased them’: funeral held for those killed in gaza church airstrike.” 2023. the guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/20/ destruction-chased-them-funeral-held-for-thosekilled-in-gaza-church-airstrike hielema, syd. 2013. “broken lights: seeing the church through jesus’ call to justice.” prorege 42 (1): 9–17. https://digitalcollections.dordt.edu/cgi/viewcontent .cgi?article=1082&context=pro_rege heltzel, peter. 2009 (june 26). “the freedom to love: the black social gospel and prophetic christian politics.” paper presentation at envision panel of scholars, washington dc. humaid, maram, and arwa ibrahim. 2023 (october 28). "‘so world knows’: gaza parents mark children’s names on bodies amid bombing." al jazeera. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/28/soworld-knows-gaza-parents-mark-childrens-nameson-bodies-amid-bombing imemc news. 2024 (june 4). “over 15,000 children, including school and kindergarten students, killed in gaza, says ministry of education— wafa." https://imemc.org/article/over-15000children-including-school-and-kindergartenstudents-killed-in-gaza-says-ministry-of-educationwafa/ human rights watch. 2014 (august 10). “gaza: widespread impact of power plant attack.” accessed june 4, 2024. https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/08/10/gazawidespread-impact-power-plant-attack international criminal court. 2024 (may 24). “192— application of the convention on the prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide in the gaza strip (south africa v. israel).” https://www.icj-cij.org/node/204100. internal displacement monitoring centre (idmc). 2024 (may 14). “palestine—conflict in gaza leaves 83 per cent of the population internally displaced in less than three months.” https://www.internaldisplacement.org/spotlights/palestine-conflict-ingaza-leaves-83-per-cent-of-the-populationinternally-displaced-in-less-than-three-months/ jewish voice for peace. 2024 (may 7). "jewish voice for peace responds to president biden: you dishonor the memory of our families killed in the holocaust." jewish voice for peace. https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/2024/05/07/j ewish-voice-for-peace-responds-to-presidentbiden-you-dishonor-the-memory-of-our-familieskilled-in-the-holocaust/ krauss, joseph. 2023 (october 14). “in israel’s call for mass evacuation, palestinians hear echos of their original catastrophic exodus.” associated press. https://apnews.com/article/israelpalestinians-gaza-evacuation-history-nakbaa1bec1ee3477573e80b39b4044a48111 leatherby, lauren, emma bubola, arijeta lajka, amy schoenfeld walker, molly cook escobar, and pablo robles. 2023 (october 11). “the long wait for help as massacres unfolded in israel.” the new york times. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/10/11/ world/middleeast/israel-gaza-hamas-attacktimeline.html lipkind, simone. 2024 (april 18). "gaza's food crisis began long before the israel-hamas conflict," think global health. accessed june 4, 2024. https://www.thinkglobalhealth.org/article/gazasfood-crisis-began-long-israel-hamasconflict#:~:text=before%20the%20war,given%20the%20plethora%20of%20obstacles%2 c%20two%2dthirds%20of%20gaza's%20populati on,consistently%20intensified%20gaza's%20food %20shortages mackintosh, eliza, gianluca mezzofiore, and katie polglase. 2023 (october 14). “how a rave turned into a frenzied massacre.” cnn. https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2023/10/middlee ast/hamas-music-festival-attack-investigation-cmdintl/ malouf, tony. 2003. arabs in the shadow of israel: the unfolding of god's prophetic plan for ishmael's line. grand rapids: kregel academic & professional. margulies, joanie. 2023 (october 8). “idf regains control over sderot police station.” 2023. the jerusalem post. https://www.jpost.com/israelnews/defense-news/article-763198 martínez, andrés r. 2023 (october 8). “here’s a timeline of saturday’s attacks and israel’s retaliation.” the new york times. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/08/world/midd leeast/timeline-gaza-israel-attacks-hamas.html mckernan, bethnan and quique kierszenbaum. 2023 (october 10). “we’re focused on maximum damage: ground offensive in gaza seems imminent.” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/10/r ight-now-it-is-one-day-at-a-time-life-on-israelsfrontline-with-gaza moore, russell. 2023 (october 7). “american christians should stand with israel under attack.” christianity today. https://www.christianitytoday.com/2023/10/israelhamas-middle-east-war-christians/ https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/20/destruction-chased-them-funeral-held-for-those-killed-in-gaza-church-airstrike https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/20/destruction-chased-them-funeral-held-for-those-killed-in-gaza-church-airstrike https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/20/destruction-chased-them-funeral-held-for-those-killed-in-gaza-church-airstrike https://digitalcollections.dordt.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1082&context=pro_rege https://digitalcollections.dordt.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1082&context=pro_rege https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/28/so-world-knows-gaza-parents-mark-childrens-names-on-bodies-amid-bombing https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/28/so-world-knows-gaza-parents-mark-childrens-names-on-bodies-amid-bombing https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/10/28/so-world-knows-gaza-parents-mark-childrens-names-on-bodies-amid-bombing https://imemc.org/article/over-15000-children-including-school-and-kindergarten-students-killed-in-gaza-says-ministry-of-education-wafa/ https://imemc.org/article/over-15000-children-including-school-and-kindergarten-students-killed-in-gaza-says-ministry-of-education-wafa/ https://imemc.org/article/over-15000-children-including-school-and-kindergarten-students-killed-in-gaza-says-ministry-of-education-wafa/ https://imemc.org/article/over-15000-children-including-school-and-kindergarten-students-killed-in-gaza-says-ministry-of-education-wafa/ https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/08/10/gaza-widespread-impact-power-plant-attack https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/08/10/gaza-widespread-impact-power-plant-attack https://www.hrw.org/news/2014/08/10/gaza-widespread-impact-power-plant-attack file:///c:/users/dbronkem.eastern/documents/eastern/publication%20and%20research/christian%20development%20journal/editorial%20work/special%20issues/conflict/articles%20for%20publication/ready%20articles/ file:///c:/users/dbronkem.eastern/documents/eastern/publication%20and%20research/christian%20development%20journal/editorial%20work/special%20issues/conflict/articles%20for%20publication/ready%20articles/ https://www.icj-cij.org/node/204100 https://www.internal-displacement.org/spotlights/palestine-conflict-in-gaza-leaves-83-per-cent-of-the-population-internally-displaced-in-less-than-three-months/ https://www.internal-displacement.org/spotlights/palestine-conflict-in-gaza-leaves-83-per-cent-of-the-population-internally-displaced-in-less-than-three-months/ https://www.internal-displacement.org/spotlights/palestine-conflict-in-gaza-leaves-83-per-cent-of-the-population-internally-displaced-in-less-than-three-months/ https://www.internal-displacement.org/spotlights/palestine-conflict-in-gaza-leaves-83-per-cent-of-the-population-internally-displaced-in-less-than-three-months/ https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/2024/05/07/jewish-voice-for-peace-responds-to-president-biden-you-dishonor-the-memory-of-our-families-killed-in-the-holocaust/ https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/2024/05/07/jewish-voice-for-peace-responds-to-president-biden-you-dishonor-the-memory-of-our-families-killed-in-the-holocaust/ https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/2024/05/07/jewish-voice-for-peace-responds-to-president-biden-you-dishonor-the-memory-of-our-families-killed-in-the-holocaust/ https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/2024/05/07/jewish-voice-for-peace-responds-to-president-biden-you-dishonor-the-memory-of-our-families-killed-in-the-holocaust/ https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/2024/05/07/jewish-voice-for-peace-responds-to-president-biden-you-dishonor-the-memory-of-our-families-killed-in-the-holocaust/ https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-gaza-evacuation-history-nakba-a1bec1ee3477573e80b39b4044a48111 https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-gaza-evacuation-history-nakba-a1bec1ee3477573e80b39b4044a48111 https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-gaza-evacuation-history-nakba-a1bec1ee3477573e80b39b4044a48111 https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/10/11/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-hamas-attack-timeline.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/10/11/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-hamas-attack-timeline.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/10/11/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-hamas-attack-timeline.html https://www.thinkglobalhealth.org/article/gazas-food-crisis-began-long-israel-hamas-conflict#:~:text=before%20the%20war-,given%20the%20plethora%20of%20obstacles%2c%20two%2dthirds%20of%20gaza's%20population,consistently%20intensified%20gaza's%20food%20shortages https://www.thinkglobalhealth.org/article/gazas-food-crisis-began-long-israel-hamas-conflict#:~:text=before%20the%20war-,given%20the%20plethora%20of%20obstacles%2c%20two%2dthirds%20of%20gaza's%20population,consistently%20intensified%20gaza's%20food%20shortages https://www.thinkglobalhealth.org/article/gazas-food-crisis-began-long-israel-hamas-conflict#:~:text=before%20the%20war-,given%20the%20plethora%20of%20obstacles%2c%20two%2dthirds%20of%20gaza's%20population,consistently%20intensified%20gaza's%20food%20shortages https://www.thinkglobalhealth.org/article/gazas-food-crisis-began-long-israel-hamas-conflict#:~:text=before%20the%20war-,given%20the%20plethora%20of%20obstacles%2c%20two%2dthirds%20of%20gaza's%20population,consistently%20intensified%20gaza's%20food%20shortages https://www.thinkglobalhealth.org/article/gazas-food-crisis-began-long-israel-hamas-conflict#:~:text=before%20the%20war-,given%20the%20plethora%20of%20obstacles%2c%20two%2dthirds%20of%20gaza's%20population,consistently%20intensified%20gaza's%20food%20shortages https://www.thinkglobalhealth.org/article/gazas-food-crisis-began-long-israel-hamas-conflict#:~:text=before%20the%20war-,given%20the%20plethora%20of%20obstacles%2c%20two%2dthirds%20of%20gaza's%20population,consistently%20intensified%20gaza's%20food%20shortages https://www.thinkglobalhealth.org/article/gazas-food-crisis-began-long-israel-hamas-conflict#:~:text=before%20the%20war-,given%20the%20plethora%20of%20obstacles%2c%20two%2dthirds%20of%20gaza's%20population,consistently%20intensified%20gaza's%20food%20shortages https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2023/10/middleeast/hamas-music-festival-attack-investigation-cmd-intl/ https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2023/10/middleeast/hamas-music-festival-attack-investigation-cmd-intl/ https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2023/10/middleeast/hamas-music-festival-attack-investigation-cmd-intl/ https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/defense-news/article-763198 https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/defense-news/article-763198 https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/08/world/middleeast/timeline-gaza-israel-attacks-hamas.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/08/world/middleeast/timeline-gaza-israel-attacks-hamas.html https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/10/right-now-it-is-one-day-at-a-time-life-on-israels-frontline-with-gaza https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/10/right-now-it-is-one-day-at-a-time-life-on-israels-frontline-with-gaza https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/10/right-now-it-is-one-day-at-a-time-life-on-israels-frontline-with-gaza https://www.christianitytoday.com/2023/10/israel-hamas-middle-east-war-christians/ https://www.christianitytoday.com/2023/10/israel-hamas-middle-east-war-christians/ christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 cannon, the 2023-2024 israel-hamas war… 147 nakhoul, samia, matt spetalnick, and alexander cornwell. 2023 (october 18). “israel's endgame? no sign of post-war plan for gaza,” reuters. https://www.reuters.com/world/middleeast/israels-endgame-no-sign-post-war-plan-gaza2023-10-18/ parker brooks, maegan and davis w. houck, eds. 2011. the speeches of fannie lou hamer: to tell it like it is. jackson: university of mississippi press. https://m.jacksonfreepress.com/news/2011/apr/15 /fannie-lou-hamer/ peleg, bar, linda dayan, adi hashmonai, and eden solomon. 2024 (june 29). “tens of thousands rally across israel against netanyahu coalition, demanding gaza truce.” haaretz. https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-0629/ty-article/.premium/continuing-the-war-meansisrael-will-murder-hostages-families-demand-toend-gaza-war/00000190-6488-d9ec-a19ee79d4e520000 potok, chaim. 1987. the chosen. skokie: fawcett publications. rascoe, ayesha. 2024 (april 7). “6 months of war: israelis say netanyhu isn’t doing enough to bring home the hostages.” npr. https://www.npr.org/2024/04/07/1243294309/6months-of-war-israelis-say-netanyahu-isnt-doingenough-to-bring-home-the-hosta reuters staff. 2012 (october 17). “israel gaza blockade study calculated palestinians' calories.” reuters. https://www.reuters.com/article/idusbre89g0n m/ royo, daniel. 2019. “a god who sees and hears the ‘other’: hagar’s theophany as an illustration of the lord’s benevolence toward those outside the covenant.” journal of the adventist theological society 30 (1): 8. sanchez, raf. 2024 (april 23). “heartbreak and hope as gaza baby is delivered” nbc news. https://www.nbcnews.com/nightlynews/video/heartbreak-and-hope-as-gaza-baby-isdelivered-209578565805 scheffer, david j. 2023 (october 19). “what international law has to say about the israelhamas war,” council on foreign relations. https://www.cfr.org/article/what-international-lawhas-say-about-israel-hamaswar#:~:text=hamas's%20war%20crimes&text= moreover%2c%20hamas's%20continuous%2c% 20indiscriminate%20rocket,provisions%20and%2 0customary%20international%20law schnaser, lexi. 2024 (march 7). “9 christian women shaping the church in 2024.” sojourners. https://sojo.net/articles/9-christian-womenshaping-church-2024 sharon, jeremy. 2023 (november 8). “high court rejects request to hold anti-war marches in north, cites lack of manpower.” the times of israel. https://www.timesofisrael.com/high-courtrejects-request-to-hold-anti-war-marches-in-northcites-lack-of-manpower/ steinberg, gerald m. 2011 (october). israel studies an anthology: israeli military strategy." jewish virtual library. https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/israel-studiesan-anthology-israeli-military-strategy steinberg, jessica. 2023 (november 8). “at knesset protest, two mourners blame netanyahu for oct. 7, urge end to the war.” the times of israel. https://www.timesofisrael.com/at-knessetprotest-two-mourners-blame-netanyahu-for-oct-7urge-end-to-the-war/ tapper, jake. 2014 (august 1). “children in gaza sponsored by christian charity killed.” cnn. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cu_m5rl0w2 g teibel, amy. 2023 (november 6). “israelis are overwhelmingly confident in the justice of the gaza war, even as world sentiment sours.” associated press. https://apnews.com/article/israel-gaza-hamaspalestinians-war-mood0cebcbcf0550ee08c0d757334f69851d the gatekeepers. 2013. directed by dror moreh. jerusalem; cinephil and sony pictures classics. dvd. “the top 50 women leaders of maryland for 2024.” 2024 (april 15). women we admire. https://thewomenweadmire.com/2024/04/15/thetop-50-women-leaders-of-maryland-for-2024/ times of israel staff. 2024 (june 20), “idf spokesperson says hamas can’t be destroyed, drawing retort from pm: ‘that’s war’s goal.’” times of israel. https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-spokesmansays-hamas-cant-be-eliminated-will-remain-in-gazaif-no-alternative/ times of israel staff. 2023 (october 8). “promising merciless war on hamas, netanyahu says israel will ‘avenge this black day.’” times of israel. https://www.timesofisrael.com/promisingmerciless-war-on-hamas-netanyahu-says-israel-willavenge-this-black-day/ tower, amali. 2024 (january 11). “the not-sohidden climate risks for gaza's displaced "gaza." climate refugees. accessed june 4, 2024. https://www.climaterefugees.org/spotlight/2023/1/11/gaza#:~:text=fre https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israels-endgame-no-sign-post-war-plan-gaza-2023-10-18/ https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israels-endgame-no-sign-post-war-plan-gaza-2023-10-18/ https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israels-endgame-no-sign-post-war-plan-gaza-2023-10-18/ https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israels-endgame-no-sign-post-war-plan-gaza-2023-10-18/ https://m.jacksonfreepress.com/news/2011/apr/15/fannie-lou-hamer/ https://m.jacksonfreepress.com/news/2011/apr/15/fannie-lou-hamer/ https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-06-29/ty-article/.premium/continuing-the-war-means-israel-will-murder-hostages-families-demand-to-end-gaza-war/00000190-6488-d9ec-a19e-e79d4e520000 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-06-29/ty-article/.premium/continuing-the-war-means-israel-will-murder-hostages-families-demand-to-end-gaza-war/00000190-6488-d9ec-a19e-e79d4e520000 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-06-29/ty-article/.premium/continuing-the-war-means-israel-will-murder-hostages-families-demand-to-end-gaza-war/00000190-6488-d9ec-a19e-e79d4e520000 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-06-29/ty-article/.premium/continuing-the-war-means-israel-will-murder-hostages-families-demand-to-end-gaza-war/00000190-6488-d9ec-a19e-e79d4e520000 https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2024-06-29/ty-article/.premium/continuing-the-war-means-israel-will-murder-hostages-families-demand-to-end-gaza-war/00000190-6488-d9ec-a19e-e79d4e520000 https://www.npr.org/2024/04/07/1243294309/6-months-of-war-israelis-say-netanyahu-isnt-doing-enough-to-bring-home-the-hosta https://www.npr.org/2024/04/07/1243294309/6-months-of-war-israelis-say-netanyahu-isnt-doing-enough-to-bring-home-the-hosta https://www.npr.org/2024/04/07/1243294309/6-months-of-war-israelis-say-netanyahu-isnt-doing-enough-to-bring-home-the-hosta https://www.reuters.com/article/idusbre89g0nm/ https://www.reuters.com/article/idusbre89g0nm/ https://www.reuters.com/article/idusbre89g0nm/ https://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/video/heartbreak-and-hope-as-gaza-baby-is-delivered-209578565805 https://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/video/heartbreak-and-hope-as-gaza-baby-is-delivered-209578565805 https://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/video/heartbreak-and-hope-as-gaza-baby-is-delivered-209578565805 https://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/video/heartbreak-and-hope-as-gaza-baby-is-delivered-209578565805 https://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/video/heartbreak-and-hope-as-gaza-baby-is-delivered-209578565805 https://www.cfr.org/article/what-international-law-has-say-about-israel-hamas-war#:~:text=hamas's%20war%20crimes&text=moreover%2c%20hamas's%20continuous%2c%20indiscriminate%20rocket,provisions%20and%20customary%20international%20law https://www.cfr.org/article/what-international-law-has-say-about-israel-hamas-war#:~:text=hamas's%20war%20crimes&text=moreover%2c%20hamas's%20continuous%2c%20indiscriminate%20rocket,provisions%20and%20customary%20international%20law https://www.cfr.org/article/what-international-law-has-say-about-israel-hamas-war#:~:text=hamas's%20war%20crimes&text=moreover%2c%20hamas's%20continuous%2c%20indiscriminate%20rocket,provisions%20and%20customary%20international%20law https://www.cfr.org/article/what-international-law-has-say-about-israel-hamas-war#:~:text=hamas's%20war%20crimes&text=moreover%2c%20hamas's%20continuous%2c%20indiscriminate%20rocket,provisions%20and%20customary%20international%20law https://www.cfr.org/article/what-international-law-has-say-about-israel-hamas-war#:~:text=hamas's%20war%20crimes&text=moreover%2c%20hamas's%20continuous%2c%20indiscriminate%20rocket,provisions%20and%20customary%20international%20law https://www.cfr.org/article/what-international-law-has-say-about-israel-hamas-war#:~:text=hamas's%20war%20crimes&text=moreover%2c%20hamas's%20continuous%2c%20indiscriminate%20rocket,provisions%20and%20customary%20international%20law https://sojo.net/articles/9-christian-women-shaping-church-2024 https://sojo.net/articles/9-christian-women-shaping-church-2024 https://www.timesofisrael.com/high-court-rejects-request-to-hold-anti-war-marches-in-north-cites-lack-of-manpower/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/high-court-rejects-request-to-hold-anti-war-marches-in-north-cites-lack-of-manpower/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/high-court-rejects-request-to-hold-anti-war-marches-in-north-cites-lack-of-manpower/ https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/israel-studies-an-anthology-israeli-military-strategy https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/israel-studies-an-anthology-israeli-military-strategy https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/israel-studies-an-anthology-israeli-military-strategy https://www.timesofisrael.com/at-knesset-protest-two-mourners-blame-netanyahu-for-oct-7-urge-end-to-the-war/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/at-knesset-protest-two-mourners-blame-netanyahu-for-oct-7-urge-end-to-the-war/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/at-knesset-protest-two-mourners-blame-netanyahu-for-oct-7-urge-end-to-the-war/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cu_m5rl0w2g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cu_m5rl0w2g https://apnews.com/article/israel-gaza-hamas-palestinians-war-mood-0cebcbcf0550ee08c0d757334f69851d https://apnews.com/article/israel-gaza-hamas-palestinians-war-mood-0cebcbcf0550ee08c0d757334f69851d https://apnews.com/article/israel-gaza-hamas-palestinians-war-mood-0cebcbcf0550ee08c0d757334f69851d https://thewomenweadmire.com/2024/04/15/the-top-50-women-leaders-of-maryland-for-2024/ https://thewomenweadmire.com/2024/04/15/the-top-50-women-leaders-of-maryland-for-2024/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-spokesman-says-hamas-cant-be-eliminated-will-remain-in-gaza-if-no-alternative/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-spokesman-says-hamas-cant-be-eliminated-will-remain-in-gaza-if-no-alternative/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-spokesman-says-hamas-cant-be-eliminated-will-remain-in-gaza-if-no-alternative/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/promising-merciless-war-on-hamas-netanyahu-says-israel-will-avenge-this-black-day/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/promising-merciless-war-on-hamas-netanyahu-says-israel-will-avenge-this-black-day/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/promising-merciless-war-on-hamas-netanyahu-says-israel-will-avenge-this-black-day/ https://www.climate-refugees.org/spotlight/2023/1/11/gaza#:~:text=fresh%20water%20was%20in%20short,required%20by%20established%20humanitarian%20standards https://www.climate-refugees.org/spotlight/2023/1/11/gaza#:~:text=fresh%20water%20was%20in%20short,required%20by%20established%20humanitarian%20standards https://www.climate-refugees.org/spotlight/2023/1/11/gaza#:~:text=fresh%20water%20was%20in%20short,required%20by%20established%20humanitarian%20standards christian relief, development, and advocacy 6(3), spring 2025 cannon, the 2023-2024 israel-hamas war… 148 sh%20water%20was%20in%20short,required%20 by%20established%20humanitarian%20standards trt world. n.d. “israel wiped out 3% of gaza’s christians since october 7—palestine.” accessed may 21, 2024. https://www.trtworld.com/middleeast/israel-wiped-out-3-of-gazas-christians-sinceoctober-7-palestine-18164914 truth and reconciliation commission of south africa. 1998.volume one: truth and reconciliation of south africa report. united nations office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs (ocha). n.d. “gaza crossings: movement of people and goods.” https://www.ochaopt.org/data/crossings unicef: middle east and north africa. 2022 (june). “the gaza strip: the humanitarian impact of 15 years of blockade.” https://www.unicef.org/mena/documents/gazastrip-humanitarian-impact-15-years-blockade-june2022 united nations human rights council. 2024 (july 18). “report of the independent international commission of inquiry on the occupied palestinian territory, including east jerusalem, and israel.” 56th session, agenda item 2. https://www.un.org/unispal/document/coi-reporta-hrc-56-26-27may24/ unwra. n.d. “2014 gaza conflict.” unrwa. accessed june 21, 2024. https://www.unrwa.org/2014-gaza-conflict uris, leon. 1958. exodus. new york: doubleday. world vision. n.d. “our history.” accessed may 31, 2024. https://www.wvi.org/our-history. the rev. dr. mae elise cannon is executive director of churches for middle east peace (cmep). cannon has two doctorates, in american history (phd, uc davis) and spiritual formation (dmin, northern theological seminary). she is an ordained pastor and author of several books, and the editor of a land full of god: christian perspectives on the holy land. her work has been highlighted in the new york times, the washington post, cnn, chicago tribune, christianity today, and other international media outlets. author email: info@maecannon.com https://www.climate-refugees.org/spotlight/2023/1/11/gaza#:~:text=fresh%20water%20was%20in%20short,required%20by%20established%20humanitarian%20standards https://www.climate-refugees.org/spotlight/2023/1/11/gaza#:~:text=fresh%20water%20was%20in%20short,required%20by%20established%20humanitarian%20standards https://www.trtworld.com/middle-east/israel-wiped-out-3-of-gazas-christians-since-october-7-palestine-18164914 https://www.trtworld.com/middle-east/israel-wiped-out-3-of-gazas-christians-since-october-7-palestine-18164914 https://www.trtworld.com/middle-east/israel-wiped-out-3-of-gazas-christians-since-october-7-palestine-18164914 https://www.ochaopt.org/data/crossings https://www.unicef.org/mena/documents/gaza-strip-humanitarian-impact-15-years-blockade-june-2022 https://www.unicef.org/mena/documents/gaza-strip-humanitarian-impact-15-years-blockade-june-2022 https://www.unicef.org/mena/documents/gaza-strip-humanitarian-impact-15-years-blockade-june-2022 https://www.un.org/unispal/document/coi-report-a-hrc-56-26-27may24/ https://www.un.org/unispal/document/coi-report-a-hrc-56-26-27may24/ https://www.un.org/unispal/document/coi-report-a-hrc-56-26-27may24/ https://www.un.org/unispal/document/coi-report-a-hrc-56-26-27may24/ https://www.unrwa.org/2014-gaza-conflict https://www.wvi.org/our-history https://cmep.org/ https://cmep.org/ https://cmep.org/resources/a-land-full-of-god/ https://cmep.org/resources/a-land-full-of-god/ mailto:info@maecannon.com 