November 15, 2007 | Read Time: 1 minute
NEW BOOKS
Visions of Development: Faith-Based Initiatives
edited by Wendy R. Tyndale
“Maybe the time has come to abandon the monolithic thinking that if actions have consequences, then material actions alone have real material consequences and spiritual actions have only immaterial spiritual consequences,” writes Arvind Sharma, a professor of comparative religion at McGill University, in the preface to this book.
Bearing out Mr. Sharma’s hypothesis, this compilation describes 13 religious organizations around the world that “have actually tried to organize the socioeconomic life of communities along idealistic and spiritual lines, and in doing so, have succeeded in lifting them up by their bootstraps economically.”
The development projects encompass environmental conservation, economic development, antitorture movements, education, health, and women’s empowerment, built on the foundations of Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, and other religious beliefs.
One chapter discusses Muslim organizations — the Addis Ababa Muslim Women’s Council, in Ethiopia, and Nahdlatul Ulama, in Indonesia — that work to “challenge the interest groups that portray Islam as an oppressor of women and to overcome the customs and practices that do in fact oppress Muslim women.”
A final chapter discusses how society defines “religion” and “development,” collaboration between religious and secular groups, and other issues.
Wendy R. Tyndale, a human-rights and development activist, identifies an advantage spiritually motivated groups hold over secular groups: a knowledge of “the poverty that comes from emptying our lives of meaning.”
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing Company, 101 Cherry Street, Suite 420, Burlington, Vt. 05401; (802) 865-7641; fax (802) 865-7847; http://www.ashgate.com; 188 pages; $89.95; ISBN 0-7546-5623-3.
