“Secularism is not the future; it is yesterday’s incorrect vision of the future.” David Brooks’ words back in 2003 spoke of the undeniable religiosity of the post-9/11 world. But the reality of religion today is not that it explodes in dramatic events every decade or so – the Polish Solidarity movement, the fall of the Shah, 9/11, the rise of ISIS – but that it is bubbling everywhere under the surface of public life. Only the veneer of a western secularism has hidden it, or perhaps more accurately, refused to see it.
Humanitarian agencies across the globe are today coming to terms with this religiosity. But how are they to engage with religion, when humanitarianism holds neutrality, impartiality and modernity so centrally to its credentials? Is it not a violation of the very identity of the humanitarian to wade into such partisan territory?
We welcome growing interest in engagement with faith groups in the context of humanitarian crises. The long history of humanitarian work by religious communities, organizations and traditions is widely recognized. More recently there’s been an acknowledgement that seeking to put local actors at the centre of humanitarian response inevitably means closer working relations with faith groups. And the resources and capacities of those groups to support community recovery are increasingly accepted. Strengthening engagement with faith groups has become a focus of attention of many UN initiatives, including UNFPA’s work on Religion and Development Post-215 and UNHCR’s Dialogue on Faith and Protection. The World Humanitarian Summit has now identified a specific strand of activities related to engagement with religion and faith-based organizations in the lead up to next May’s meeting in Istanbul.
These moves are a welcome respite from the ‘sweep it under the rug’ philosophy that has held sway for so long. However, there are major barriers to effective engagement between international humanitarian actors and local faith communities. While some of these relate to basic issues of program management and coordination, more fundamental issues are at stake. In particular, we consider that this engagement with religion is being sought with little awareness of the implications of the secular framing of humanitarian action that was established in the course of the previous century and the need for adjustment of it in the 21st.
Forces of globalization, professionalization and secularization during the course of the 20th century established a particular way of describing humanitarian needs and specifying appropriate solutions.
There are a number of taken-for-granted assumptions from this era that are increasingly untenable for current circumstances. Let’s take one core example – the principle of neutrality.
Neutrality – initially articulated in the formulation of the mandate of the Red Cross movement – has been claimed as a key foundation for the whole humanitarian movement. Although neutrality in contexts of active combat is clearly a humanitarian imperative, the understanding of neutrality is generally broadened to stipulate that ‘Humanitarian actors must not …engage in controversies of a political, racial, religious or ideological nature.’
This conceptualization of neutrality is at the root of concerns regarding the potential role of religious organizations in humanitarian work: faith-based groups are routinely and inevitably engaged in controversy regarding religion and its implications; they are therefore suspect humanitarian actors. However, it has recently been acknowledged in the formulation of the Common Humanitarian Standard that the phrasing of such a definition also encompasses many secular groups for whom their mandate inevitably involves their engagement in controversial issues and social change. More broadly, contemporary analyses of the historical development of secularism and the manner in which it privatizes, marginalizes and instrumenalizes religion have established that to frame issues in secular terms is no way a neutral act.
In the terms of Charles Taylor, we see that this formulation of neutrality has become something of a totem – a promised means of managing a dilemma but one that ultimately distracts attention from its original objective. The core principal of humanitarianism is that of humanity. This involves not only addressing human suffering, the protection life and health and ensuring respect for human beings but also promoting, in the original words of the Red Cross movement ‘mutual understanding, friendship, cooperation and lasting peace amongst all peoples’.
This recognition of plurality and difference, the acknowledgement that no one perspective – religious or secular – represents an uncontested ‘neutral’ view, and on this basis determining effective means of global and (especially) local dialogue between actors, are crucial steps for rethinking humanitarianism for the complexities of the 21st century.
Upcoming Event:
Alastair Ager will be speaking at on Online Learning Session on Faith and religion in humanitarian action on Thursday, 4 June 2015. Please click here to find out more about the event and to register. The session will be immediately followed by a World Humanitarian Summit live consultation event on this topic. Participants are encouraged to participate in both the learning session and the consultation event.
Alastair Ager is Professor of Clinical Population and Family Health at the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University. He takes up the position of Director of the Institute for International Health & Development at QMU, Edinburgh in July 2015.
Joey Ager is a Community Organizer with PICO, a national network of faith communities organizing around justice issues confronting faith communities across the USA.
Their book Faith, Secularism and Humanitarian Engagement is scheduled for publication by Palgrave in August 2015.
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