Take that you unrelating people -
But on the other hand, there is a long-standing suspicion towards faith in many quarters of the development establishment, accentuated in recent years by a number of specific issues and coloured by the current nervousness about religious extremism. Religious communities do not begin from a clear Enlightenment doctrine of universal liberties; they are necessarily exclusive, in the sense that they are committed to particular beliefs that not everyone shares. There is always going to be the shadow of a suspicion that they will favour their own instead of working for universal benefit, or that they are using aid and development as a vehicle for propaganda on behalf of their convictions, a cloak for proselytism. And they may, of course, disagree about what “universal benefit” might mean: for example, in the area of reproductive rights and liberties. The development agency may come to see religion as a positive obstacle to liberation; and the result is often a standoff between what can look like two sets of absolutisms, traditional faith and a passionate enlightened universalism. Faced with the rise of aggressive religious conservatism – the word “fundamentalism” is not actually all that helpful – all this long standing unease becomes more sharply focused. Combined with governmental reluctance to be seen as favouring specific communities and their convictions, it can produce a standoff between development agencies and faith groups that has the effect of shrinking the possibilities of creative co-operation. (read the rest here)
What is it about absolutes that worry people?
November 13th, 2009 5:12 pm
What people dislike about absolutes? Simple: They can’t wiggle out of them.