INSPIRING DEVELOPMENT IN FRAGILE STATES

Western development agencies are largely secular. Standard bearers of a rationalist and bureaucratic culture, such institutions see the job of promoting economic and political modernization as one that requires scientific objectivity, dispassionate analysis, and number crunching. Few agencies seriously contemplate the idea that religion-whether in the form of spirituality or of organized religion-could make a positive contribution to such decidedly earthly matters as economic development and state building.