This pilot research considers if these different approaches complement or compromise affected communities and humanitarian professionals responding in partnership. Twenty-two humanitarian professionals were interviewed in Australia and the USA. These professionals worked in both faith-based organizations (referred to as FBOs) as well as secular agencies (referred to as NGOs). As professionals undertaking rapid deployment to humanitarian events globally, they are often attached to US and Australian government-funded humanitarian responses. In these roles, they work with directly affected communities as well as government donors. They were selected using a snowballing and referral selection (see Patton 2002). Respondents were interviewed either face to face or via telephone based on their availability and preference. Interviewees lasted between 30 and 45 min and were all undertaken by the first-named author. The survey instrument was a short series of open-ended questions designed (pre-tested and tested) to allow respondents to reflect on their own experiences and to allow flexibility in terms of the numbers of examples given or discussed.
Analysis of the data collected through these 22 interviews provided three primary findings: (1) communities understand humanitarian events through diverse lenses of religious beliefs; (2) FBOs and NGOs institutionally manage to accommodate religious worldviews in their professional responses, but understand that religion (beliefs, practice and leaders) has the potential to either help or hinder responses; and (3) the relationships between affected communities and humanitarian aid workers responding to humanitarian events are not sufficiently well understood at this time.
Religious worldviews are diverse
When humanitarian events occur, multiple ways of understanding why result, especially when aid agencies and communities are working together (Merli 2012). When secular NGOs encounter the religious worldviews of communities, there is a risk that religious worldviews are viewed as ‘the other’, since the secular worldview is viewed automatically as the default norm. Religious worldviews are therefore often understood as a departure from this assumed norm. Wilson (2017) suggests that religious worldviews in this instance are thus automatically ‘subordinated to secular ontologies’ (p. 1). Such an understanding, that situates religious worldviews as departures from a default secular worldview, potentially weakens the authenticity given to religious engagement by aid agencies working with communities affected by humanitarian events (Clarke 2011) and risks religion and religious worldviews being not properly considered and appreciated (see Mavelli and Petito 2014).
This is important to note because across a variety of humanitarian events (natural as well as human-induced), that our interview subjects described, that affected communities explains their experience of the humanitarian events through the lens of religious belief (see Ager et al. 2015; Hilhorst et al. 2015). This was observed in a range of humanitarian events including cyclones, volcanoes, civil war, displacement of populations, tsunamis, earthquakes, drought and epidemics. Such religious understanding of these events was observed in people self-professing a range of religious beliefs, including Islam, Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism and traditional religions, such as Kastom (in the Pacific). Indeed, all respondents indicated that they had an experience of an affected community member describing the event and their subsequent situation through a religious lens.
Humanitarian professionals in both FBOs and NGOs reported these experiences empathically:
FBO: ‘Humanitarian Responses don’t occur in isolation … and [the] solidarity of faith communities help them overcome disaster’ (respondent D)
FBO: ‘Grieving people turn to faith to help explain and rationalise what they are going through’ (respondent A)
NGO: ‘[Their faith] helps them find strength and resilience’ (respondent H)
NGO: ‘It is important to acknowledge this is a cry for help’ (respondent G)
It is important to note though that there was variation in how humanitarian events were understood by individual community members. Respondents were able to identify that affected community members understood humanitarian events and the impact of these events on themselves personally and their wider community in both positive and negative ways in terms of religious worldviews. Some respondents, for example, had experiences where outcomes of events were mitigated by perceptions of God’s grace, whereas others shared experiences where affected community members saw these events as acts of God’s wrath. These responses may be understood as poles of a continuum of theistic beliefs, as illustrated in Fig. 1. It is interesting to note that where the grace of God is understood as active in a disaster, it is often framed in highly selective terms, namely that those who are good or faithful will be granted protection. This finding accords well with the literature on ‘Belief in a Just World’ (BJW) where people believe that the world functions in a just manner: good people are rewarded and bad people are punished (Furnham 2003; Kaplan 2012; Lerner 1980; Lerner and Simmons 1966; Montada and Lerner 1998; Pichon and Saroglou 2009; Stroebe et al. 2015). An important implication of these findings is that people with a strong religious belief, and a strong BJW, may undergo secondary trauma from a disaster. After the initial trauma of the loss and devastation, their entire worldview may crumble if they are forced to face the reality of large-scale underserved suffering. Specialized psycho-spiritual support may therefore be needed in disaster-affected communities characterized by a strong BJW before the disaster.
Describing God as actively protecting or inflicting harm upon believers was observed in those holding various theistic religious beliefs. Respondents were also able to identify other possible drivers including ‘religiosity’ and geographic location of more negative religious worldviews.
FBO: ‘If religious views are hardline, the more they connect disasters to God’s punishment’ (respondent A)
FBO: ‘The more rural, the more ‘act of God’ (respondent C)
Holding that humanitarian events are acts of God (either displaying wrath or mercy) does not however mean religious worldviews are always fatalistic (Bankoff 2003; Schipper 2015)—though sometimes people do hold deeply fatalistic worldviews (see Aids agencies accommodating religious worldviews section). There usually, however, remains significant scope for agency for those that hold all but the most fatalistic views. It is this agency that aid agencies can utilize in their responses with affected communities.
Aid agencies accommodating religious worldviews
There is value in accommodating world views of those affected by humanitarian events (see Bankoff et al. 2015; Browne and Olson 2019). Programs that do not properly consider local contexts will be sub-optimal (Patterson et al. 2010). Whether our interviewees were from faith-based or secular humanitarian aid agencies, all respondents affirmed the ability of their agencies to accommodate the religious worldviews of affected communities. Thus, despite very distinct appreciations of the causes of these events, these humanitarian workers could identify how their own agency (faith-based or secular) was able to work alongside alternative worldviews and explanations:
FBO: ‘As a Christian Organisation, we understand that faith plays an important role in how people deal with grief and loss’ (respondent A)
Such solace may be in religious practice or it may be in the community bonds that they are able to draw upon. Of course, there is also an understanding that religious beliefs, practices and leadership can also diminish humanitarian responses. Respondents were able to identify that religious worldviews did hinder humanitarian responses at various times. They observed a range of ways in which religious teachings, practices and leaders compounded the impacts of humanitarian events and compromised the ability of aid agencies to fulfil their response goals. These conclusions were reached by humanitarian workers in both faith-based and secular aid agencies.
Disability:
FBO: ‘[People with disabilities were considered] not whole. They had no respect in the community’ (respondent E)
Agency:
NGO: ‘Religious beliefs can lead to a lack of agency as disasters are the will of God’ (respondent H)
FBO: ‘People felt abandoned by God and helpless’ (respondent E)
NGO: ‘The community rejected solutions as they saw this as God’s will and so it was punishment they had to suffer’ (respondent J)
FBO: ‘If God wants this to happen, why should we try to prevent God’s will… God will protect us. We won’t show our faith by running away’ (respondent L)
Human rights:
NGO: ‘Difficult though when religious beliefs undermine or clash with human rights’ (respondent H)
Small FBOs and missionaries:
NGO: ‘[The community is] dismissive of religious organisations and smaller FBOs, as they are disorganized and add burden to relief efforts…[They believe] missionaries often have no idea what they are doing. They just get in the way’ (respondent R)
Responses from interviewees indicated that there was a difference between how religious worldviews were understood and appreciated between faith-based and secular agencies, but it was clear that both FBOs and secular NGOS were motivated to engage with religious worldviews.
FBO: ‘The entry point to communities is religion. You can’t get anywhere if you can’t talk at a religious level’ (respondent D)
NGO: ‘We need to communicate with people in a language they understand’ (respondent P)
FBO: ‘We can train religious leaders how to respond. They can be part of resilience and Disaster Risk Reduction’ (respondent A)
NGO: ‘Engaging with Imams was very critical in helping people comply with new burial requirements’ (respondent S)
Respondents from both faith-based and secular agencies had pragmatic reasons for seeking to accommodate these views as it ensured access, enhanced programming and aided the ability to disseminate information. Accommodation by aid agencies often requires modification of programming and approaches to the delivery of humanitarian resources.
FBO: ‘It wasn’t truck and chuck. It was truck, pray and chuck’ (respondent I)
NGO: ‘Cash Transfers are considerate of Islamic Law’ (respondent Q)
Such modifications were considered necessary to ensure optimal engagement by affected communities and were not seen as necessarily requiring aid agencies to compromise their own worldviews.
Transcendent or transactional
As a pilot study, the findings of this survey add to a small empirical evidence base (see Curtis 2018; King 2019). It is evident that more work is required to better understand how religious worldviews held by those affected by humanitarian events impact the programming of both secular and faith-based aid agencies. Whilst there has been a growing literature concerned with the intersection between religion and longer-term development (e.g. Deneulin and Bano 2009; Clarke and Tittensor 2014; Fountain and Feener 2015), such empirical and conceptual work in the humanitarian field remains somewhat limited. Humanitarian professionals were able to identify this gap in comparing their professional work with that of colleagues working within the development field.
FBO: ‘Religion is part of development, but not so much humanitarian response’ (respondent A)
NGO: ‘You might consider religion in long-term crisis or development project, but not acute emergencies… religion is left out of strategy. It could be more of a focus and part of planning and design’ (respondent G)
It was also unclear whether there was some sort of natural advantage held by either faith-based agencies or secular agencies when it came to working with communities professing religious belief in preparation for or in response to humanitarian events (Tomalin 2012). Clearly respondents from both types of agencies saw themselves as having some advantages:
FBO: ‘They can relate to us…[we] can engage better with communities than secular agencies’ (respondent A)
NGO: ‘[Communities] are negative when FBOs favour religious communities over others’ (respondent K)
Indeed, it may be that both types of agencies have different opportunities and constraints that can both advantage and hinder their responses. More work is required to better understand how this occurs.
At a minimum, however, we would argue that greater religious literacy is essential for humanitarian workers, whether from FBOs or secular NGOs. Religious literacy increases the likelihood that staff will be alert to religious sensitivities and that they will understand better the possible deeper phycho-spiritual impacts of a humanitarian event and may be more sensitive to ideas as to how best to help the community recover. For example, the rapid repair of a temple, church or mosque may be a low priority from a secular perspective but may assist enormously with the recovery of a community’s sense of psycho-spiritual well-being and cohesion.
Religious literacy is also essential to help anticipate possible secondary negative repercussions from a disaster that may be closely linked to the community’s religious worldview. For example, aid from some FBOs may come with a strong message that the disaster was caused because the community was not strict enough in their religious adherence and so may lead to an increase in fundamentalist teaching in the region. Alternatively, a community may seek scapegoats as they try to make meaning of the disaster. Vulnerable individuals or families may be targeted, such as people with physical disabilities who may be viewed as ‘cursed’; those suspected of either engaging in witchcraft, such as marginalized women; or being useful for its rituals, such as people with albinism (UNHRC 2018). Finally, as mentioned above, a humanitarian disaster may shatter the religious worldview of a community, particularly one with a strong Belief in a Just World. Such a community may need prolonged assistance to reconstitute their worldview and may be more vulnerable than usual to exploitation during such a difficult time.
In short, culturally aware and religiously informed staff are essential for humanitarian agencies, whatever the agency’s own worldview.
It is also necessary to better understand the distinction between religious beliefs and worldviews of individual humanitarian workers and that of institutional identity. The workforce in this sector is highly mobile and those interviewed often worked for many agencies across their professional careers. Since they often moved between FBOs and NGOs, they at times held the same or different religious beliefs or worldviews to that of the agency for whom they were working. Better understanding the private versus corporate impact of religion would be beneficial. It would also be valuable to understand how aid agencies (both FBOs and NGOs) themselves accommodate different worldviews in their programming in terms of their standards, policies and practices.