Abstract
In the wake of the Faith-Based Initiative in the USA, substantial research has resulted in an increased awareness of religious congregations and faith-based organizations as welfare service providers. The next frontier appears to be the role of religious organizations in international social and economic development, a topic that only recently started to attract academic interest. In this paper, we review available literature on the role that religious, or faith-based, organizations play in international social and economic development. We also provide results from our own study of USA international NGOs1 that are faith-based. We divide the paper into the positive contributions of faith-based international NGOs and the drawbacks of these NGOs. We find that faith-based nonprofits constitute almost 60 percent of USA-based international development organizations, and their contribution to international social development is quite considerable. We conclude with a call for further research and nuanced understanding of the role religion plays in international development.
Highlights
Some scholars look at the Faith Based Initiative of the George W
It is our contention that the errant expectation for congregations and other faith-based organizations to do more welfare provision came from a misunderstanding of the level of welfare service provision from the faith-based community before the initiative took place
Center on Charitable Statistics, we looked at those organizations that fall under the National Taxonomy of Exempt Entities (NTEE) category of Q3 International Development organizations [24]
Summary
Some scholars look at the Faith Based Initiative of the George W. In the USA context, the faith community provides more welfare services to more people than any other group of nonprofit organizations. There are numerous congregations as well as faith-based organizations caring for the welfare of Americans even though this is not their primary raison d'être. Starting with this perspective, we aim to recognize one area of welfare activity that is poorly understood—faith-based international social and economic development. We aim to recognize one area of welfare activity that is poorly understood—faith-based international social and economic development We identified as many resources as we could find from as many locales as possible though a large share of our findings came from USA-based literature
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