The global humanitarian movement, which originated within Western religious organizations in the early nineteenth century, has been of most important forces in world politics in advancing both human rights and human welfare. While the religious groups that founded the movement originally focused
on conversion, in time more secular concerns came to dominate. By the end of the nineteenth century, increasingly professionalized yet nominally religious organization shifted from reliance on the good book to the public health manual. Over the course of the twentieth century, the secularization of
humanitarianism only increased, and by the 1970s the movement's religious inspiration, generally speaking, was marginal to its agenda. However, beginning in the 1980s, religiously inspired humanitarian movements experienced a major revival, and today they are virtual equals of their secular
brethren.
From church-sponsored AIDS prevention campaigns in Africa to Muslim charity efforts in flood-stricken Pakistan to Hindu charities in India, religious groups have altered the character of the global humanitarian movement. Moreover, even secular groups now gesture toward
religious inspiration in their work. Clearly, the broad, inexorable march toward secularism predicted by so many Westerners has halted, which is especially intriguing with regard to humanitarianism. Not only was it a highly secularized movement just forty years ago, but its principles were based on
those we associate with "rational" modernity: cosmopolitan one-worldism and material (as opposed to spiritual) progress. How and why did this happen, and what does it mean for humanitarianism writ large? That is the question that the eminent scholars Michael Barnett and Janice Stein pose in Sacred
Aid, and for answers they have gathered chapters from leading scholars that focus on the relationship between secularism and religion in contemporary humanitarianism throughout the developing world. Collectively, the chapters in this volume comprise an original and authoritative account of religion
has reshaped the global humanitarian movement in recent times.
1. Introduction: The Secularization and Sanctification of Humanitarianism
2. Stephen Hopgood and Leslie Vinjamuri: Faith in Markets
3. Jonathan Benthall: "Cultural proximity" and the Conjuncture of Islam with Modern Humanitarianism
4. Ajaz Ahmed Khan: Religious Obligation or
Altruistic Giving? Muslims and Charitable Donations
5. Peter Walker, Dyan Mazurana, Amy Warren, George Scarlett, and Henry Louis: The Role of Spirituality in Humanitarian Crisis Survival and Recover
6. Erica Bornstein: Religious Giving Outside the Law in New Delhi
7. Bertrand Taithe:
Pyrrhic Victories? French Catholic Missionaries, Modern Expertise and Secularizing Technologies
8. Michael Barnett: Faith in the Machine? Humanitarianism in an Age of Bureaucratization
9. Andrea Paras and Janice Gross Stein: Bridging the Sacred and the Profane in Humanitarian
Life
Notes
Bibliography
About the Contributors
Index
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Michael Barnett is University Professor of International Affairs and Political Science at George Washington University. Janice Stein is Belzberg Professor of Conflict Management and Political Science and Director of the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto.
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