For the Love of God: NGOs and Religious Identity in a Violent World. By Shawn Teresa Flanigan. Sterling, VA: Kumarian Press, 2009. Pp. 184. $75.00 (cloth); $24.95 (paper).

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Previous articleNext article FreeBook ReviewFor the Love of God: NGOs and Religious Identity in a Violent World. By Shawn Teresa Flanigan. Sterling, VA: Kumarian Press, 2009. Pp. 184. $75.00 (cloth); $24.95 (paper).Megan MeyerMegan MeyerUniversity of Maryland Search for more articles by this author University of MarylandPDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreDuring the past decade, support has grown in the United States for efforts to increase participation by faith-based organizations (FBOs) in the delivery of social services. This began with the Charitable Choice provision of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA; 110 Stat. 2105). Opportunities for FBOs to compete with secular and large human service organizations for federal funding increased with President George W. Bush’s executive orders to establish a White House Office of Faith-Based Initiatives and executive-department centers for faith-based initiatives (Executive Orders 13198 and 13199, 66 Fed. Reg. 21 [January 31, 2001]: 8497−8500). Later, another executive order created a similar office in the U.S. Agency for International Development to increase the access of international FBOs to U.S. funding (Executive Order 13280, 67 Fed. Reg. 241 [December 16, 2002]: 77145–46). Since then, there has been an expansion in social service provision by FBOs as well as lively scholarly debate about the benefits and limitations of this trend.Proponents of faith-based services suggest that FBOs are more deeply rooted in the communities they serve than are secular human service organizations, that FBOs are more cost-effective, and that FBO staff are more caring and committed because they are driven by their faith to serve others. Those critical of expanding FBO service provision caution that staff in service organizations hold implicit power over service recipients and that this makes clients especially vulnerable to conscious or unconscious evangelizing by FBO staff. Critics also worry that federal support for FBOs blurs the line between church and state.For the Love of God addresses some of these issues in an international context. It explores the role that FBOs play in the provision of social services in three countries with recent histories of significant ethnoreligious conflict and violence: Lebanon, Sri Lanka, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Flanigan analyzes qualitative data from interviews with more than 100 management-level staff members of 70 social service organizations across the three countries and takes a critical view of FBO behavior. She suggests that FBOs “can be particularly problematic in contexts of religious and ethnic conflict” (2–3).The staff she interviews work in both international and locally controlled organizations. Some are in secular nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and others are in FBOs. Flanigan primarily investigates how FBOs’ religious affiliations and the religious beliefs of their staff influence access to services by individuals of all faiths. She explains that certain groups may be excluded from receiving social services either because the FBO only reaches out to and serves its own ethnoreligious community or because individuals view the FBO with suspicion and do not seek its services. Ultimately, Flannigan seems most interested in how exclusive service provision and attempts by FBOs to evangelize while providing services affect clients’ trust of and participation in their country’s civil society organizations and political processes. However, because she does not interview clients themselves, she admits that her data do not allow her to explore this question.The relatively short book comprises five chapters. In the introductory chapter, Flanigan reviews how processes of “polarization” and “boundary activation” (5) lead to collective violence. She suggests that “FBOs may mirror, reinforce, and reproduce societal divisions that are present in the cultures in which they operate” (3). Each subsequent chapter examines one of Flanigan’s countries of interest, providing first an overview of the political and ethnoreligious history of each country. Each chapter also details the development of the NGO and FBO sectors in that country before analyzing interview data. Specifically, each chapter explores the extent to which staff members are motivated by their faith to work at their agencies, what they perceive the benefits of faith-based service provision to be, whether their organization serves one or more ethnoreligious community, and the extent to which their organization is the sole provider of social services in its target community.In her final chapter, Flanigan adopts a comparative perspective, examining the countries in relation to each other and to her data in the aggregate. One of her conclusions is “that FBO service provision in the contexts of violence will be exclusive based upon ethno-religious identity” (139). She concludes that nonprofit managers and public and private donors should strive to foster inclusive service provision by NGOs and FBOs in developing nations. She offers several practical suggestions for how this can be accomplished: “increasing the sustainability of local secular NGOs, encouraging relationships between local and international NGOs, increasing outreach and referrals among different ethnic and religious groups, initiating joint service provision by FBOs of multiple faiths, providing services in ‘neutral’ locations with approval from ‘neutral’ officials, and creating fair and balanced restrictions on proselytization” (140).For the Love of God presents a rich, contextualized portrait of the attitudes and practices of NGO and FBO staff delivering social services in conflicted regions. In doing so, it provides a window into three emerging and complex civil societies. Grounded in extensive fieldwork, this book contributes to the knowledge base about NGO and FBO social services outside European and American contexts. Overall, the book is interesting reading, but it also has important limitations that cast doubt on its conclusions and implications for future development practice.First, the book’s back cover and introduction lead one to expect a damning critique of FBO activities. For instance, the back cover mentions “dubious and harmful undercurrents,” as well as the “darker more ambivalent side of altruism,” but all the data really indicate is that locally controlled FBOs may be more likely than secular NGOs and international FBOs to provide services exclusively to their own ethnoreligious groups. The author’s conclusion that her data paint a “dismal portrait of religious exclusion” (140) is thus a bit overstated. Although some NGOs and FBOs in her sample (the book is not clear on how many exactly) have clear goals to serve one ethnoreligious group, most of the interviewees express clear desires to decrease ethnic tensions and serve people of all faiths. Most appear to be open to serving any individual who is suffering or disadvantaged. It also appears that many groups, both FBOs and secular NGOs, serve a mixed recipient base. The conclusion that organizations in Flanigan’s sample show “little evidence of active attempts to generate ‘bridging social capital’” is therefore somewhat perplexing (147). Those that are exclusive in their service provision (again, the exact numbers are unclear, but both FBOs and secular NGOs figure among the exclusive organizations) cite a variety of reasons for being exclusive. These reasons include their inability to reach other ethnoreligious groups because of geographic segregation.A further limitation of the book is the absence of a chapter or well-developed section detailing the author’s core research questions, definitions of terms, and data collection and analysis methods. Such a discussion could clarify a number of methodological questions. Why does she choose those three countries? What is her sampling strategy? Were each country’s interviewees chosen intentionally to represent a range of social service types that exist in that country? What was the format of the interviews? For instance, it is unclear if all the interviews were open-ended. Flanigan does not indicate how long they lasted, whether they were tape-recorded, whether a similar interview guide was used for each, or what types of questions were asked. What was the data analysis strategy? The only thing that is clear is that 102 staff members were interviewed across 70 organizations.A section of this sort could also have provided definitions for a number of specialized or specific terms that are left unclear in the book. For instance, one never finds out exactly what the author means by “identify salience” (132), though it figures prominently in her concluding chapter. Even the term “faith-based” could be better defined; the author defines as faith-based those organizations whose members “self-identified the NGO as faith-based” (13). The absence of a well-developed methods section or chapter is puzzling, as it would not only provide transparency but help the reader to understand the extensive nature of the author’s fieldwork.The book would also benefit from a presentation of information on the basic characteristics of the groups examined, particularly as one delves into the final chapter and attempts to understand the author’s conclusions. Because the study’s sample is made up of individual staff, not organizations, it is unclear how many NGOs and FBOs are examined or how many are in each region. How many are locally or internationally controlled? How many are exclusive in their provision of services, and how many are inclusive? What ethnoreligious groups are represented in each country? All these characteristics are central to the author’s arguments, and the concluding chapter shifts back and forth from talking about staff to talking about organizations. It would be useful to have a chart or appendix with these details.Also relevant but missing, albeit not as central to the book’s argument, is information about the range of services that the groups provide, the range of sizes and ages among the groups, and their funding sources. Providing this background information would flesh out the picture that is only partially drawn by the qualitative interview data presented.Ultimately, the scope of the book does not extend to whether service exclusivity among FBOs reinforces or fuels ethnoreligious conflict in these nations. It also does not extend to whether service exclusivity in these locales has negative implications for clients’ perceptions of civil society organizations and their participation in civil society and politics. The author clearly acknowledges that these questions can only be answered by interviews with service recipients and other observational data. This acknowledgement sits oddly with the clear assumption in her introductory and concluding chapters that inclusive social service provision is always to be preferred. But she nowhere fully makes the case that inclusivity is the best choice or even realistic in contexts with recent and wide-scale ethnoreligious violence, significant geographic segregation along ethnoreligious lines, or weak, state-run social service sectors. If the primary goal in the aftermath of violence or natural disasters is to serve the greatest number of people in need, then resonating with a specific ethnoreligious group or tailoring services to one group may be both realistic and effective, especially in the early stages of building or rebuilding civil society. Indeed, in each country-specific chapter, the author details benefits that FBO staff associate with their organization’s faith-based orientation. Some of the benefits include “added credibility” (30) in the community, “increased safety for service recipients” (33), “less conflict and greater trust among staff” (34), and “more effective service provision” (80) because of their ability to use religious networks. This is not to imply that Flanigan is unreasonable in her claim that exclusivity may reinforce or heighten existing divisions. Nor do I suggest that her proposals to increase the inclusivity of services are poorly conceived. However, the book would be enriched by a more critical exploration of the assumptions that exclusive service delivery in these regions is dangerous and that inclusivity in all contexts is most effective or necessary for the development of a healthy civil society.Like all qualitative studies, For the Love of God raises many interesting questions, and the interview data presented for each country are varied as well as rich. This work clearly reinforces the need to examine the efficacy and pitfalls of faith-based initiatives within a contextual analysis. Previous articleNext article DetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Social Service Review Volume 85, Number 1March 2011 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/660079 Views: 146Total views on this site © 2011 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.