Mixed Blessing: Religion in contemporary politics

The focus of this volume is on religious actors as important social actors or drivers of change, particularly as promoters of social change, democracy and development. It is an acknowledgement of the vital role that religious communities and similar organised groups and their leaders play in achieving goals that Western policy-makers and development agents consider important for the progress of many non-Western societies, which are also often poor. While such a focus reflects an important insight into the functioning of those societies, in my article I want to move away from the emphasis on the institutional aspect of religion – easiest for us to deal with – and highlight the importance of the type of ideas that sustain religious communities: something far more difficult to grasp and work with, but of crucial importance for effective forms of cooperation. We have to ask ourselves what kinds of ideas drive religious actors – most of whom are ordinary believers – and motivate them to do the sort of things they actually do. This will help us to explain why they do them, and why in this particular way. We need to understand the thinking, reasoning and motivation of faith-inspired actors. For effective cooperation it is important that civil society groups, even if they are secular, collaborate with religious communities and their leaders not just in practical terms, as they often do, but also engage with them at the level of ideas.

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