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