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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.

Ritual studies is not a school, nor is it a theory or a method; it is a multi- or interdisciplinary platform for the academic, critical, and systematic study of ritual, or in the words of the founding father of ritual studies, Ronald Grimes: it is a field. The platform of ritual studies, which emerged in the mid-1970s, initially combined the fields of religious studies, anthropology, liturgical studies, and theater studies. The emergence of ritual studies as a field of research of its own fits seamlessly into a broader development in academia that took place in three phases. The first phase took place during the second half of the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries, when academic disciplines came into being and formed distinct profiles. The study of ritual plays a prominent role in (comparative) religious studies (Eliade, Otto, Van der Leeuw), in philosophy (ritual and symbol, Ricoeur), in anthropology and sociology (Durkheim, Turner), in psychology (Jung), and in cultural history (Huizinga). There was at this time remarkably little interest in ritual among theologians. It was not until the influence of the Liturgical Movement that a change occurred. The second phase took place during the long decade of the 1960s, which saw the start of a fruitful interdisciplinary phase. Rituals were thought to offer an effective entrance into a culture, allowing one to penetrate it deeply. The liturgical renewal project also took place after Vaticanum II, and it was in this setting that the term “ritual studies” was first used by the American Academy of Religion in 1977. The beginning of the 21st century saw the start of a new phase, during which different disciplines have been connected and integrated into large, multidisciplinary thematic clusters. In this context, the field of ritual studies features in a broad range of studies, including cultural memory studies, media and communication studies, death studies, leisure studies, material religion studies, migration studies, and many others.

In der aktuellen ökonomischen Forschung hebt eine Reihe Studien den Einfluss von Religion auf wirtschaftlichen Erfolg hervor. Zugleich wird in der Religionswissenschaft die These vertreten, dass Pfingstkirchen, eine stark wachsende Bewegung innerhalb des Christentums, ihren Mitgliedern zu wirtschaftlichem Erfolg verhelfen. Die empirischen Studien aus beiden Disziplinen lassen jedoch bislang keine allgemein gültigen Schlüsse zu. Diese Studie untersucht die Auswirkungen von Religiosität auf wirtschaftlichen Erfolg in ländlichen Haushalten im Norden Südafrikas. Sie greift dabei auf die primär qualitative religionswissenschaftliche Forschung zurück und verbindet sie mit Theorie und Methodik der quantitativ orientierten Wirtschaftswissenschaft indem sie Daten aus einer Haushaltsumfrage analysiert. Es wurden 207 Haushalte im Landkreis Fetakgomo befragt, einem ländlichen und von Armut gekennzeichneten Gebiet der Provinz Limpopo. Die Arbeit skizziert ein theoretisches Haushaltsmodell, das Religion im Entscheidungsprozess des Haushalts berücksichtigt. Wirtschaftlicher Erfolg ist als das Haushaltseinkommen operationalisiert, wobei sowohl das explizite monetäre Einkommen als auch das implizite Einkommen durch Subsistenzlandwirtschaft berücksichtigt werden. Die Auswirkungen von Religiosität werden in mehreren Einkommensfunktionen geschätzt. Während allgemeine Kirchenmitgliedschaft keinen signifikanten Effekt auf das Haushaltseinkommen ausübt, zeigt die Analyse einen signifikant positiven Effekt der Zion Christian Church, einer Kirche mit pfingstkirchlichen Charakteristika. Darüber hinaus wird ein signifikant positiver Effekt von traditioneller afrikanischer Religion identifiziert – ein bislang noch nicht dokumentiertes Ergebnis. Es wird die Schlussfolgerung gezogen, dass die spezifische Religiosität der Anhänger der Zion Christian Church und traditioneller afrikanischer Religion sich im südafrikanischen Landkreis Fetakgomo auf wirtschaftlichen Erfolg auswirkt. In recent economic literature, a number of studies argue that religion can be a factor conducive to economic performance. At the same time, it is a widespread conjecture in religious studies research that especially Pentecostal Churches, a fast-growing Christian movement, foster the economic success of their adherents. The results of empirical studies in both disciplines, however, are ambiguous and there are not yet any unanimous conclusions. This study investigates the impact of religiosity as expressed in different Christian denominations and African Traditional Religion among rural households in northern South Africa. It relates the predications of the religious studies research with the theoretic and methodological framework of the economic literature by analyzing data from a household survey specifically conducted for the purpose of this study. The survey of 207 households was conducted in Fetakgomo Municipality, an entirely rural and poverty stricken area of the Limpopo Province. The thesis outlines a theoretic household model that accommodates for religion in the household's decision-making processes. Economic success is operationalized as the household's explicit monetary income and implicit income from subsistence agriculture. The impact of religiosity is estimated in several income equations. While overall church membership does not significantly impact on household income, the analysis shows a significant positive effect of an African Independent Church with Pentecostal characteristics, the Zion Christian Church. Moreover, a significant positive effect of African Traditional Religion is identified, a result previously undocumented. It can be excluded that unobserved factors cause these effects based on a Heckman two-step estimator test for selection bias. It is concluded that the specific religiosity prevalent in the Zion Christian Church and African Traditional Religion does impact on economic success in the South African municipality of Fetakgomo.

ispartof: Secularization Theories, Religious Identity and Practical Theology. Developing International Practical Theology for the 21st Century (International Practical Theology, Volume 7) pages:123-130 ispartof: pages:123-130 status: published