Secular and Religious Dynamics in Humanitarian Response

Olivia J. Wilkinson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781032083506
• eBook ISBN: 9780429581984
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Humanism in Philosophy

This book investigates the ways in which the humanitarian system is secular and understands religious beliefs and practices when responding to disasters. The book teases out the reasons why humanitarians are reluctant to engage with what are seen as "messy" cultural dynamics within the communities they work with, and how this can lead to strained or broken relationships with disaster-affected populations and irrelevant and inappropriate disaster assistance that imposes distant and relatively meaningless values.

In order to interrogate secular boundaries within humanitarian response, the book draws particularly on qualitative primary data from the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines. The case study shows how religious practices and beliefs strongly influenced people's disaster experience, yet humanitarian organisations often failed to recognise or engage with this. Whilst secularity in the humanitarian system does not completely exclude religious participation and expression, it does create biases and boundaries. Many humanitarians view their secularity as essential to their position of impartiality and cultural sensitivity in comparison to what were seen as the biased and unprofessional beliefs and practices of religions and religious actors, even though disaster-affected people felt that it was the secular humanitarians that were less impartial and culturally sensitive.

This empirically driven examination of the role of secularity within humanitarianism will be of interest to the growing field of "pracademic" researchers across NGOs, government, consultancy, and think tanks, as well as researchers working directly within academic institutions.

1 Introduction

Why secular-religious dynamics matter in the humanitarian system

I was sitting in a café on an island in the Visayan region of the Philippines in 2015, waiting for an interviewee to arrive. It was about 18 months since Typhoon Haiyan hit and you could mostly no longer visibly see the effects of the typhoon in this area. My interviewee arrived a little late and apologised – they were working for a large and well-known secular humanitarian organisation in a community-facing position and were constantly busy. They were from another region in the Philippines and knew the Visayan region well. They voiced dissatisfaction with the humanitarian response and then went on to explain that, of course, they frequently brought up religion in their work with communities, just because it was part of life there.

Jump back a few months before and I was in a Western European country talking to an international humanitarian worker who had just come back from working on the Haiyan response. They explained to me that, as they work for a secular organisation, faith does not come into their work at all. Then they followed up by saying that, anyway, they were brought up in a Catholic school in Europe and so they “get” religion in the Philippines. They were mostly perplexed as to why I would ask about this subject.

These two staff members worked for the same secular humanitarian organisation, although different branches of it and I have no reason to believe they ever interacted. These two divergent perspectives represent two ends of a spectrum that we will call the secular-religious dynamics of humanitarian response. What is notable about these two responses is that both felt that their way of working was obvious. On the one hand, religious belief and practice were clearly part of humanitarian action for the humanitarian worker from the Philippines. On the other hand, religious belief and practice were clearly not part of humanitarian action for the humanitarian worker from Western Europe. And even if they were, they knew the main tenets of Catholicism, which is the majority religious tradition in the Philippines, and so they would know if there was reason to bring religion up.

I present these two responses as opposites not because every international humanitarian worker said the same thing, or every local and national worker reiterated a similar point. Other people questioned and subverted these modes of thought, acknowledging that there were secular-religious dynamics that they struggled with, asking what they should do about it, and wondering how to overcome divides that they perceived.

After studying the effects of secularity on humanitarian response for half a decade, the familiar narrative I hear among international humanitarians (that are not explicitly faith-based) is that religious beliefs and practices are overall a negative for humanitarian response. There has been, and is growing, debate about the pros and cons of religion in humanitarian response. I will sum them up without further ado. Faith-based actors in humanitarian response are positive because they allow for improved access to remote areas through religious networks, they are first – and last – responders, they have trust and authority in their communities, and they provide spiritual and communal support for improved coping during and following crises (Ager et al. 2015). Some of the usual negatives cited are fears of proselytising and conditional aid, a lack of technical capacity, especially a lack of familiarity with humanitarian principles, and the influence of religious positions on harmful social norms (e.g., gender inequality) and in conflict dynamics (religious actors as parties to conflict) (Wilkinson 2018a). There is no overarching, final conclusion that faith-based actors are more or less effective than others (Tomalin 2012). Yet the final, but arguably the most influential and little discussed, point is that secular perspectives in humanitarian action are not neutral either. The contribution of secular aspects to the secular-religious dynamic is understudied, meaning that the current state of the field has focused more attention on debates about the added value of faith-based approaches to humanitarian action, or critiquing the effects of religious beliefs and practices in humanitarian action. This leads to an imbalanced perspective that has overly wrought the significance of religion rather than holding the complexity of secular-religious dynamics in perspective and understanding that secularity has, equally, its opportunities and challenges and is intertwined with religious elements that make the isolation of religion, and faith-based organisations, unhelpful. The rest of this book delves into that point.

Why does analysing the secular in humanitarian response matter?

This book presents an analysis of the ways in which secular-religious dynamics affect international humanitarian response to disasters, using evidence from the response to Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines and drawing further insights from the workings of the humanitarian system as a whole. The inspiration came from my own initial forays into humanitarian research, when I had the startling realisation that people went out of their way to avoid discussing “messy” cultural aspects of humanitarian response, such as how disasters affect people’s religious beliefs and practices and how those same religious beliefs and practices affect the humanitarian response. The stakes can be high when these aspects are ignored, with misunderstandings leading to strained or broken relationships with disaster-affected populations and irrelevant and inappropriate disaster assistance that imposes distant and relatively meaningless values on people that are in need.

Why are some secular humanitarians scared of the subject of religion? Or, more alarmingly in some ways, why do they simply not care about this subject? I have come across senior humanitarians who have stated that secular-religious dynamics are not important for humanitarian response and then, within almost the same breath, listed the ways in which beliefs and practices have affected their operations recently. What is the effect of this secularity on humanitarian recipients? It appears that pervasive secularism in the humanitarian system has served to marginalise religion so thoroughly that it has become, at best, forgotten and, at worst, taboo and hidden. The dynamics of proselytising humanitarian organisations have also served to make many humanitarians forcefully anti-religion, believing that their secularity ensures their impartiality and neutrality in comparison to the biased and unprofessional beliefs and practices of religions and religious actors. I have equally heard time and again from faith-based humanitarian actors that they completely reject proselytisation, as seen in the ways in which they are hyper-vigilant about maintaining their impartiality and neutrality.

Despite a recent surge of academic interest (Ferris etc.), with recent additions in the area of the history of humanitarian action as related to Faith-Based Organisations (FBOs) (Curtis 2018; Freeman 2019; King 2019), weaknesses remain in both academic and practical understanding of secular-religious dynamics and the humanitarian system. For several years, scholars have called for an analysis of secular values over an essentialised, myopic focus on religion in humanitarian and development research (Fountain 2013b, p. 9, 2015, p. 91). Away from the purely academic, organisations are also lagging behind in their engagement with this dynamic. Consultations have pointed towards the fact that there is a lack of religious literacy among policy makers and warned against an “add religion and stir” model of religious engagement and inclusion in policymaking (Wilson and Mavelli 2014). Many barriers remain and previous reports have highlighted the need for further research into “conflicting secular and religious worldviews” (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh and Ager 2013).

Much of the debate so far has been conceptual and theoretical. This is one of the few pieces of research that specifically analyses empirical findings on secularity in humanitarian response. By grounding the work in empirical data, I am able to show that the secular is a resonant concept for study in humanitarian response and that the application of concepts from the sociology of religion such as secularisation theory and post-secularism can clarify some of the forces at work in interactions in humanitarian settings around the world.

This book is about the secular but also necessarily therefore about religion and ranges of how religious and secular beliefs and practices affect each other. I propose that the post-disaster context provides a uniquely clear example of when relatively delineated (or as far as the two can ever be delineated) versions of secular and religious expressions meet, precisely because the need for humanitarian response is defined as the point at which the local and national systems to respond to crisis are overwhelmed and external, frequently Global North, actors arrive to assist. Many of these organisations originate from largely secularised countries yet work in more religiously-centred cultures around the world (Barnett and Stein 2012, p. 23; Ager and Ager 2015, p. 9). The post-disaster environment signals a convergence of worldviews and power plays between external and internal actors (Merli 2012, p. 28). Secular and religious beliefs are one way in which worldviews can differ. The post-disaster environment provides a place for the religious and the secular to work together, which may lead to challenges as well as opportunities both for those providing humanitarian assistance (aid organisations) and those receiving it (the beneficiaries). There is a broad range of organisations present in the humanitarian sector, from those directly inspired by faith to those who maintain a strictly secular approach. Yet there is an inherent assumption that the secular is the default and the faith-based is the deviation (Barnett and Stein 2012, p. 22). Ager and Ager (2011) call this the “functional secularism” of the humanitarian community, implying that the secular is seen as the norm to be attained and maintained. Others have stated that this dominant secularism constitutes “an ontological injustice, where both alternative non-secular visions of the world and visions of alternative non-secular worlds are subordinated to secular ontologies” (Wilson 2017, p. 1). A focus on the secular in research on humanitarian action is innovative in that it illuminates what can be particularly and peculiarly seen as secular in the humanitarian system, whereas much of the previous research in this area has focused on what can be particularly and peculiarly called faith-based or focusing on the influence of religion and more broadly on development work, rather than specifically humanitarian action (for example, G. Clarke and Jennings 2008; M. Clarke and Halafoff 2017; Tomalin 2013a, 2015; Heffernan et al. 2009; Bush et al. 2015b).

While this research process has shown the ways in which the humanitarian system does work effectively based on the constantly negotiated, micro-level interactions between humanitarians and crisis-affected people, international, national, and local staff, those with fervent theistic and atheistic beliefs and everyone else somewhere in between, these processes are ad hoc, unrecognised, and unsupported. Acknowledging that there are many success stories with the slow and almost imperceptible navigation of potentially highly sensitive terrain thanks to the work of individual staff members and community leaders that act as culture brokers, it remains the case that secular-religious dynamics can be a factor that have the potential for serious effects on a humanitarian response. For example, Fiddian-Qasmiyeh (2011) gives an example of tense and unforthcoming relationships between secular and faith-based organisations in Sahrawi refugee camps, to the extent that the beneficiary population have learned and worked within these tensions between the International Non-Governmental Organisations (INGOs) by presenting themselves in the required fashion according to differing Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) worldviews, even altering religious practices (or at least pretending to). In another example from Burchardt (2013) in South Africa, evidence from research shows that FBOs must live up to the institutionalised secular standards of the international system. Fiddian-Qasmiyeh, this time with Ager (2013, p. 29), also offers another angle in which organisations could miss important elements of aid provision if not religiously and culturally aware:

As the Tsunami struck in the early morning, women were dressed in whatever they were wearing indoors… . Some of them were very, very unhappy with the way that service delivery was provided: having to line up, and stand in a queue without having a headscarf to wear was very uncomfortable for them… . It was very important, when we were designing what we call “dignity kits” or “hygiene kits,” for us to put scarves in the kits.

(Stakeholder Interview, Henia Dakkak, UNFPA)

These are but a few examples that show not only that organisations can inadequately acknowledge religious experience and well-being within humanitarian programming but also struggle to engage with other organisations due to differing secular or faith-based outlooks. This is a struggle noted not only between the secular and religious but also across the international humanitarian system, which fails to recognise “the underlying structures and assumptions” that lead to prejudices and biases that ultimately challenge improved engagement and partnership with local and national actors, as well as beneficiaries (Bennett 2016, p. 4). It is a system that operates according to its own international standards and has trouble relating to local contexts and realities, meaning that it comes across as out-of-touch, inappropriate, and even neo-colonial in its perceived Westernising agenda. For the successful implementation of humanitarian strategies, programmes must be culturally appropriate and relevant to the affected communities (Oliver-Smith and Hoffman 1999, p. 11; Patterson et al. 2010, p. 132). Problems and mistakes will occur if they are not (Lin and Lin 2016). The implication for secular humanitarian actors is that religions should be acknowledged as significant for a large number of their beneficiaries and that programmes will not be relevant or appropriate if it is not recognised that their secular background may be biasing their understanding of this dynamic.

The influence of biases is strong. An international humanitarian in the Philippines once told me that, “There’s a perception that ‘religion’ will be troublesome, but all would say they try to be culturally sensitive,” demonstrating the tensions between perceptions and the gaps in accepted norms, such as cultural sensitivity. It is the influence of unconscious biases that is often the most significant. People say that they want cultural sensitivity, but then they repeat words and actions that undercut this ideal, not realising their own biases about religious beliefs or practices. There is a fundamental lack of examination of the effects of a secular-religious dynamics on the relevance, appropriateness, and effectiveness of an organisation’s programmes in highly religious contexts. As such, this book is also a critique of the power imbalances in the international humanitarian system, discussed as broke and broken (Barder and Talbot 2016), in need of reform, and insufficient for the ever-growing levels of need around the world.

Overall, I do not find that secularity in the humanitarian system completely excludes religious participation and expression. Instead, secularity is about boundary-making, about carefully demarcating what aspects of religion are allowed in a secular, humanitarian public sphere and what aspects are disallowed and should therefore be ignored, discouraged, or banned using secular justifications. Secularity is demonstrated by a secularised (non-transcendent) morality and ethical structure, strict prohibition of proselytisation, a secularised mission and vision for organisations, the dominance of...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of acronyms
• 1 Introduction: why secular-religious dynamics matter in the humanitarian system
• 2 The secular humanitarian system
• 3 How people affected by disaster understand religious dynamics in the humanitarian system
• 4 How humanitarians experience secular dynamics in the humanitarian system
• 5 Evolving secular-religious dynamics in the humanitarian system
• 6 Conclusion
• Index