Suchergebnisse

Though scholars now view religion as a legitimate topic of study in International Relations (IR), most continue to ignore practices like prayer, despite the fact that prayer is present in global political contexts, including in the service-advocacy work of transnational faith-based organizations (FBOs). In addition, FBO funders like the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) require religious organizations to separate prayer from projects funded by these agencies due to contradictory perceptions about both the dangers and the inconsequence of incorporating "inherently" religious activities into development projects. The neglect of prayer in international relations scholarship and funding policies is, I contend, due to common ontologies of religious practice that link prayer with the transcendental, emotional, and private. Such ontologies lead scholars and others to assume that prayer is, and should be, materially and analytically distinct from the "real" work of FBOs. Drawing on interviews and participant observation of three FBOs working in areas of peace, development, and human rights, I argue that common ontologies of prayer employed by scholars of international relations and FBO funders do not accurately reflect the ontologies of FBOs themselves. Moreover, because scholars rely on such ontologies, they miss the ways that prayer manifests as a central, consequential, and sometimes political practice in the transnational work of FBOs.

My dissertation asks: (1) What are the meanings that faith-based organizations (FBOs) assign to their own values, identities, and practices?, and (2) How do such meanings shape the service-advocacy work of FBOs? Scholars are increasingly interested in the role of FBOs in areas of peacebuilding, development, humanitarianism, and human rights. Such scholars often categorize certain practices and ideas exhibited by FBOs as "religious," "secular," or "political." However, other scholars in international relations, political theory, and other fields have shown that the religious-secular analytical framework is problematic at best. Thus, I argue that scholars who want to understand the role of "religion" in the work of FBOs should move past religious-secular categorizations, and the related assumptions that go along with such designations, and examine the meanings and roles that FBOs assign to their values, identities, and practices. This reflexive and bottom-up concept approach provides more specificity in understanding why and how FBOs engage in their political projects. Drawing on interviews, participant-observation, and textual analysis, I show this methodological approach "in action" through an empirical examination of three FBOs—Religions for Peace, International Justice Mission, and the Taizé Community.Employing a reflexive and bottom-up conceptual approach yields several important findings for IR, political theory, and interdisciplinary studies of FBOs. First, my research reveals the critical importance of practices like prayer for FBOs. I show that such practices are not always conceptually distinguished from the "political" or "real" work of FBOs and that they facilitate peacebuilding, reconciliation, and other FBO projects. Second, my cases highlight some of the problems with current scholarly approaches to engagements of religious difference, which often focus on dialogue. I also argue that more attention need be paid to shared experiential practices like prayer, communal manual labor, and cooperative action in such encounters. By shedding light on the specific differences and similarities between FBO and scholarly conceptualizations of religious phenomena and what they do, my research suggests that a more fruitful way to approach the study of religion is to view what we call "religion" as a set of ontologies, which function as overlapping, and sometimes competing, authoritative discourses.

"Religion in International Relations" published on by Oxford University Press.