Mind, Heart and Soul in the Fight Against Poverty

Catholic New Times, Dec 5, 2004 by Gregory Baum

Mind, Heart and Soul in the Fight Against Poverty, by Katherine Marshall and Lucy Keough, Washington, The World Bank, 2004, 284 pp.

This book can be read as an interesting report of development and peace projects inspired by religious faith and supported in part by secular funds, including financial aid from the World Bank. The authors want to persuade secular development agencies that, in most parts of the South, religion is a powerful cultural force, and hence development projects sponsored by the North should look for religiously motivated partners in the South. The authors think that the staff of international organizations find it hard to believe that world religions can make a contribution to the overcoming of poverty through peace-making and economic development.

The book provides empirical evidence that in Asia, Africa and Latin America's religiously Oriented institutes or movements--Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu or Buddhist--are promoting human development in troubled circumstances. The Catholic reader will be surprised to read about a host of anti-poverty projects invented by Jesuits and other Christian groups and supported by bishops and church leaders. At a time when religion is used in all part of the world to divide people and legitimate violence it is a relief to read a book that records religiously motivated peacemaking and development projects rescuing people from misery.

The same book can also be read as a work in praise of the World Bank and its financial support for poverty-reduction programs in the South. Five years ago, an article of mine, "The World Bank's New Interest in Religion," (see The Ecumenist, April-May 1999, 6-9) described the new strategy of the World Bank, its willingness to cooperate with agents of civil society, including NGOs, and its dialogue with the world religions. The new relationship is fostered by an office in Great Britain called World Faith Development Dialogue (www.wfdd.org.uk). The exchange between the World Bank and the world religions has produced a body of interdisciplinary research, an ongoing debate and a series of joint development projects, the latter recorded in this book. Yet the book does not report the ongoing debate.

We read, for instance, that the faith institutions in Tanzania were at first suspicious of the World Bank "driven by misinformation," yet the book does not tell us the reasons why these religious groups did not trust the Bank, nor the information the Bunk offered them to overcome their scruples.

That the World Bank, despite years of dialogue, has never ceased to impose Structural Adjustment Policies on poor countries, is only mentioned in one or two sentences. The book prefers to be silent about the literature on this topic produced by faith institutions all over the world. Even if it can be shown that neo-liberalism or the unregulated market system undermines the subsistence economy and creates poverty and helplessness in the South, small-scale economic development at the community level helps thousands of people and is therefore of great importance, even though it occurs only in the margins of the dominant economic forces. Under what conditions community economic development should accept financial support from powerful institutions such as banks or governments is a topic widely discussed in the literature on the social economy.

This work will please readers interested in faith-based involvement in development projects and disappoint readers interested in development economics.

Internationally known Canadian theologian Gregory Baum writes from Montreal.