Philipp Öhlmann

Abstract: African Initiated Churches (AICs) are not yet recognised as relevant actors of community development interventions. While it has been acknowledged that many of them provide coping mechanisms in adverse environments, support in social transformation and social capital, little information is available on their role as development actors. In this article, we evaluate the potential of AICs as partners of international development agencies for community development. We draw on interviews and focus group discussions with leaders of various AICs conducted in South Africa in February and March 2016. In particular, we examine the churches’ understanding of development, their view on the separation of spiritual and development activities and their priorities. Moreover, we outline the development activities which they are currently engaged in and analyse the structures they have in place to do so. Our findings indicate that AICs are increasingly active in community development and offer various entry points for possible cooperation.

Abstract: Literature analysing the interrelation of religion and economic performance suggests religion to explain differences in household income. Religious communities foster economically conducive attitud...

Abstract: Development policy and research increasingly recognize the potential contribution of religious communities to sustainable development. The emerging discourse on religion and development, however, is contingent on Western discursive contexts that operate on the basis of a “secular distinction” between the religious and the secular. Development is located in the secular sphere and the resultant approach to religion is functional. We show this for the case of German development policy by investigating key policy documents on religion and development. The secular notion of development stands in contrast to the perspective of development by religious communities in “developing countries”, which we highlight using the example of African Initiated Churches. In these churches’ view, people’s spiritual and material needs are intertwined, and sustainable development as outlined in the Sustainable Development Goals cannot be separated from religious dimensions of life. Notions of development, we hence argue, constitute forms of situated knowledge dependent on their discursive contexts. If development cooperation is to engage with religious communities at the level of values, ideas and beliefs, it must also engage with their notions of development as ends of mutual partnership.

Abstract: The Spirit of Development: Protestant NGOs, Morality, and Economics in Zimbabwe. Erica Bornstein. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005. 213 pp.

Abstract: Traite de sociologie religieuse publie une premiere fois en 1906 puis dans le 1er vol. des "Gesammelte Aufsatze Zur Religionssoziologie"