The Role of Religion in Conceptualising and Dealing With Poverty

The conference Religion, Poverty, Politics brought together scholars from around the world. It was organised on 21th and 22th of February by CROP/UiB Global, University of Bergen (UiB) and Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI), with support from NorLARNet.

Hans Geir Aasmundsen at CROP/UiB Global and Sødertørn University College is the head of the work group which organised the conference. He explains that there has been increasing interest in the connection between religion and politics in general and the role of religion and religious actors in social- and development-related work in particular in the latest decade.

– This is a field which has been explored in many disciplines. Now there is also a greater focus on the role of religion in development in political quarters globally as well as on a national level. To name a few examples of the latter, the Oslo Centre for Peace and Human Rights and former Minister of International Development Erik Solheim have taken interest in the topic, says Aasmundsen.

This increasing interest was reflected in the variety of topics which were discussed at the conference:

– We had 13 presentations and 36 participants, in addition to a number of people in the audience during the open sessions. Given the cross-disciplinary character of the workshop and the fact that there were no geographical limits to the contributions, we touched upon a wide range of themes: indigenous peoples and multi-national corporations; religious statements in public spaces; class- and gender-issues; religious ethics or habituses as instrumental for change or status quo; religion as producer or re-producer of hierarchies; poverty as a crime against humanity; the relationship between religion and politics and many others, says Aasmundsen.

Click here to read the programme.

How conceptualisations of poverty can lead to action or inaction

While poverty and social injustice are glaring social facts in many societies, they are often conceptualised differently by different religious strands.

This means that there may also be qualitatively different ways in which poverty is addressed. The question of poverty and social injustice may for example involve withdrawal and isolation, non-action, or action against poverty through spiritual, ritual, organisational and/or political means.

– The first step is to understand how poverty is conceptualised in different religious contexts. Religious texts often refer to the injustices of poverty, as solidarity with the poor shows religious strength. But what practices does such a focus lead to? For the conference we were not specifically interested in religious texts as such, but rather in the ways in which people in different religions interpret their situation, and how this may lead to political action. Is poverty for example interpreted as a spiritual problem, as a part of the fight between good and evil addressed in prayers, prophesies and exorcism, or/and is it also problem to be solved on a societal level, i.e. through politics, asks Aasmundsen.

Blurring the line between the religious and the political

Of particular interest to the organisers of the conference were the various ways in which the religious and the political can converge in Catholic, Pentecostal and/or Muslim religious communities and movements, as well as through indigenous world views and cosmologies.

Mobilisation among religious actors may for instance bring in new perspectives on social relations, thereby generating new ways of conducting politics. By breaking with established divisions between the secular and the religious, such mobilisation may imply a shift of what it means to be a political actor.

– If we consider the Pentecostal or Charismatic movements, which may number 700 million to 800 million people worldwide, we see that politics for them is often directed from a particular understanding of themselves as protagonists of a combination of interior and exterior values. This may lead  to the conclusion that they have a socio-political role to play in society. The interior values concern factors such as sincerity, loyalty and justice. The exterior values are those which society are to be founded upon, including factors such as the nuclear family, the fight against abortion and same sex marriage, as well as biotechnology, which is perceived as tampering with God’s natural order, says Aasmundsen, who points to Pentecostal and Charismatic movements as good examples of how religious values can have very different practical applications in politics:

– The problem is that in a democracy there are negotiations and coalitions, meaning that the interior values can quickly become compromised. Even though Pentecostals  are concerned about social injustice, they find it easier to concentrate their efforts on the the exterior values, and this affects the way in which they are perceived politically. The combination of exterior and interior values means that they often find it difficult to manoeuver in the political space, as they cannot identify with neoliberalism, nor the liberal left. But it needs to be said that such movements will probably play a considerable political role in the future, especially in many African, Asian and Latin American countries. On the latter of these continents liberation theology, a socio-theological foundation for action, has since the 1960s constituted a vital branch of Catholicism. This movement considers social oppression and poverty as evils which need to be opposed – also through socio-political action, says Aasmundsen.    

Plans for a research project

The conference represents the first step in a larger project:

– As this is a work in progress with the aim of establishing a research-project, no definite conclusions were drawn at the conference. Rather we highlighted the questions and the academic discussions in order to come to a more clear-cut approch to the topic, says Aasmundsen, who emphasises the value of the conference in building a foundation for future research:

– An open and constructive tone at the workshop was helpful in creating conditions for the continued elaboration of theoretical and empirical research on the manifold and what is often considered as controversial interfaces between Religion, Poverty and Politics. For the proceedings ahead we will use the outcome of the workshop, the themes highlighted and the outcome of the discussions to get a better picture of how we want to approach the field. In addition, the participants will be part of an international network which will be helpful in this process.

(This article is partly based on the call for papers written by the organisers of the conference.)