“The world of
religion has been an unacknowledged and often unseen force for many development
practitioners in the past . . . Yet religion is such a pervasive and vital force,
that the tendency to ignore it has had important and even grave consequences in
some situations” (Marshall 1999 pp3).
Religion has
always been a key aspect of the cultures of many ethnic communities in Kenya
and by extension other countries on the continent of Africa. Religion was a key
identity factor within these communities and their cultures. These religions are what comprise what is
known today as African Traditional Religion(ATR). ATR was organized around a set of beliefs,
comprised of a god that the community worshiped through rituals and practices
that they performed, had sacred objects such as trees, mountains, forests among
others. Religion thus played a big role in these ethnic communities and a bid
part of their cultures.
At the wake of colonialism in Kenya with the
arrival of British missionaries, they brought a new religion that was deemed to
be better than ATR (this is a debate for another day). The British missionaries
converted although with some resistance the natives of the land to
Christianity. The missionaries together
with Christianity also introduced formal education. The combination of the two
was aimed at transforming the communities that the missionaries saw as not progressive.
To me this was the beginning of modernizing these traditional communities, one
of the goals of the dominant modernization paradigm. This paradigm is however
silent when it comes to religion and culture aspects that define these
traditional societies in need of being modernized.
Leah Selinger in
her article The Forgotten Factor: The Uneasy Relationship between Religion
and Development states that development can be traced back
to the influence of Christian mission in the colonial countries a factor that
remains unacknowledged in development discourse as development paradigms focus
on economic growth. Selinger argues that
“the understanding of religion that has been expanded in the development
discourse has focused on its use as a spiritual or institutional force, not as
a cultural and social practice that governs worldviews and can directly
influence social and economic development” (pp. 539).
I wonder though
whether in a country like Kenya where 80% of the population identifies as
Christian and others affiliated to other religions, religion can be ignored as
an important factor in development agenda.
What role does religion play in gender related issues? Is it
acknowledged in the discourse of gender and development? Like the article on
Malawi examining sexuality and the donor culture, religion does play a role in
setting the tone on the stand which governments take on issues. Groups of people have organized around
religion to champion for different courses in the society. The role of these religious bodies can thus
not be ignored. Selinger points out that religion “must be understood as a
force that will not dissolve with modernization and one that will impact on the
way development is received and used by communities around the world “ (pp
540).
Although the
concept of development in Kenya began with the advent of Christianity and the
growth of other religions such as Islam, the role of these religions in the
development agenda continue to be sidelined. This is happening even as religion is used as a way of reaching out to people in developing nations. This video potrays one of the many instances of religious bodies organizing to support people living in poverty in developing nations http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piN7swDYN5o.
References
Marshall, K.
(1999) ‘‘Development and Religion: A Different
Lens on Development Debates’’, www.wfdd.org.uk/articlesandtalks.html#marshall
Selinger, L.
(2004). The forgotten factor: The uneasy relationship between religion and
development. Social compass, 51(4), 523-543.
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