Understanding faith-based organizations: How FBOs are contrasted with NGOs in international development literature

Matthew Clarke and Vicki-Anne Ware
Additional contact information
Matthew Clarke: Deakin University, Burwood, Australia
Vicki-Anne Ware: Deakin University, Burwood, Australia

Progress in Development Studies, 2015, vol. 15, issue 1, 37-48

Abstract: Organizations with a faith basis play a prominent, sometimes dominant, role within the development sector. In the latter half of the twentieth century, many faith-based organizations (FBOs) – motivated by their religious faith and beliefs – began to work beyond their own borders to improve the material well-being of the world’s poor. However, despite the significant presence of FBOs within the arena of aid and development, little agreement exists within the development literature as to the similarity or distinction between aid agencies that are faith based and secular non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Drawing on approximately 50 studies, this article reviews the existing literature on FBOs in order to analyze how FBOs are understood in relation to NGOs. This article then suggests a number of different typologies that captures these diverse range of views of how FBOs are understood.

Keywords: faith-based organizations; non-governmental organizations; religion; development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1464993414546979 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:prodev:v:15:y:2015:i:1:p:37-48

DOI: 10.1177/1464993414546979

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Progress in Development Studies
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().