The heart (and soul?) of international development: The role of faith in global poverty reduction

With prognosis bleak in most countries for meeting the MDGs by 2015, development approaches are being scrutinised in an effort to identify gaps and opportunities in policy and practice. Can faith fill some of the current gaps or will it merely get in the way of the (mainly secular) development agenda? This article reviews four books on the subject and focuses on their underlying themes: the linkages between faith and development and how faith-based communities can make a positive contribution to the reduction of global poverty. Despite growing acknowledgement by the secular development community that issues of faith may be more relevant than previously recognised, many of the tensions that have polarised the faith and development worlds for so long still abound. These books highlight that a just world should not merely be considered a singular aim of both the development and faith communities, but needs to be understood as a shared aim. Copyright (c) 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.