The Perils of Entanglement: Bilateral Donors, Faith-Based Organizations and International Development

The faith and development interface has become a significant feature of development discourse and policy over the last fifteen years. While much recent literature treats it as a welcome and positive development, leading to productive engagement between donors and faith communities, the new interface has also proved challenging for donors and faith leaders alike. This article explores recent initiatives among European bilateral donors to engage with faith based organizations (FBOs), and at efforts by faith communities to create conditions for productive engagement. It also looks at some of the controversies that result, and suggests that donors and FBOs alike have some distance to travel in creating the conditions and mechanisms that enable them to work together to combat poverty and social exclusion