Rediscovering Humanitarianism

Using Secular and Religious Histories to Provide New Understandings of Refugee Resettlement

Jessica Stroja

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2025
• eBook ISBN: 9781040368824
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Comparative Religion

This book provides a new approach to understanding the histories of refugee resettlement and their relevance for contemporary emergencies. By drawing on histories of faith-based humanitarianism from 1917 to the present, it explores how faith-based organisations have engaged with refugee aid and the efforts of other secular humanitarian movements.

These understandings of humanitarianism and refugee resettlement are developed through the lens of faith-based histories and intersections with secular humanitarian movements. The book uses these histories to understand trends in humanitarian development and interactions between multiple organisations that have held ongoing roles in refugee emergencies. Exploring interactions between these organisations provides new ways of understanding humanitarianism and trends in the delivery of refugee aid. As the number of refugees requiring assistance continues to increase globally, understanding trends in this historical development has never been more important.

This gives new ways to understand the provision of refugee aid via a broad spectrum of organisations rather than groups from separate "categories" acting in isolation. Despite the frequent marginalisation of faith-based organisations, the book shows they have reframed humanitarian efforts. This provides researchers, policy makers and practitioners with new ways to approach this challenge and the historical development of refugee aid.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Figures
• Contributors
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Rediscovering Humanitarianism: Using a Faith-Based Lens to Uncover Histories and New Aspects of Humanitarian Aid for Refugees
• 2 Medical Missionaries and the Humanitarian Subject: The American Women’s Hospital, Faith-Based and Secular Humanitarianism, 1917–1939
• 3 Training the Friends Relief Service for the “Refugee Problem” at Mount Waltham, 1943
• 4 “A Mission Field, Backwards”: World Relief and American Evangelicals in U.S. Refugee Resettlement
• 5 Religious Humanitarianism in Post-War Queensland, Australia: Spiritual Guidance, Evangelism, or Humanitarian Aid?
• 6 Australian Baptist Missionaries, Humanitarianism and the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971
• 7 DIY Aid in Poland: How Grassroots Humanitarianism Helped Ukrainian Refugees
• 8 Conclusion: Legacies of Faith-Based Humanitarianism and Contemporary Refugee Emergencies
• Index