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This is an archived USAID document retained on this web site as a matter of public record.
DIALOGUE
In this section:
Boston University Project Debates Religion's
Role in Peace and Democracy
First Person: Ann Slavtova
Mission of the Month: El Salvador
Boston University Project Debates Religion's Role in Peace and Democracy
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The skyline of Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina,
has minarets and church towers built by the Muslims and Christians,
who coexisted there for hundreds of years until sectarian fighting
erupted in the 1990s, leaving hundreds of thousands dead in the country.
Kristina Stefanova/USAID |
Religion is a major source of conflict today but it also can be a source of peace and tolerance according to a recent
project at Boston University's Institute on Culture, Religion and World Affairs (CURA).
Since 1997, with help from Ford Foundation and the Pew Trust,
CURA's Tolerance Project has explored and now advances the
proposition that if religion is properly engaged, it can frequently
find within itself a theological rationale which encourages
tolerance, civil society, and democracy.
On September 20, Dr. Adam Seligman, principal researcher
on the project, summarized its results for Administrator Andrew
Natsios and other USAID officials.
The interaction was enlightening, with major implications
for how the State Department and USAID engage religious communities
to advance the foreign policy goals of promoting peace, democracy,
and civil society. USAID will be supporting some follow-up
to the Tolerance Project in Bosnia and Albania.
Dr. Kent R. Hill, Assistant Administrator for Europe and
Eurasia, posed some further questions to Dr. Seligman.
Q: Dr. Seligman, some scholars, like Doug Johnston,
have argued that Western government officials have often significantly
underestimated the importance of religion in international
relations and have not interacted in effective ways with religious
communities. Do you agree and, if so, why?
A: It is very difficult for many people in the West
to "take religion seriously" in the public realm.
Religion, in most Western societies is a private matter, not
a public one. Disestablishment is the rule, not the exception.
Western Europe is, in many ways, the secular anomaly in a
world of people with overwhelming religious commitments (and
I include here the U.S.A.).
There is little in the most recent experiences of such officials
in their own countries to sensitize them to the role of religion
in other lands and among other people.
Q: You assert that it is not possible to "export"
democracy from the West to non-democratic countries, and yet
you clearly support tolerance and civil society abroad as
hallmarks of a full democracy. How do you propose that we
promote democracy in settings where there are strong religious
communities and strife if we cannot "export" it?
A: I would prefer to address the issue of American
civil culture, which, I do maintain, cannot be exported.
The particular American terms of civic culture (what some
would call its civil society) include a secularized public
sphere, the privatization of religion, the notion of the individual
as a morally autonomous individual and, in essence, the liberal
idea of a politics of rights rather than of "the good."
It is the above, as the uniquely American terms of civic culture,
that are, I claim, not exportable.
The reasons, I believe, are rooted in the particularities
of American history, especially the influence of non-separating
Congregational Puritanism in the 17th and early 18th century
and, in essence, the uniquely religious arguments of separation
and disestablishment that defined political culture at the
founding of our country.These are what we cannot export.
Certain forms of the Protestant faith have what the great
sociologist Max Weber would have termed an "elective
affinity" with Church-State separation and the principle
of disestablishment.
But that is not an argument for wanting the whole world to
share in those religious assumptions that support this political
option.
What is necessary is the rather long and laborious work of
making similar arguments (similar mind you, not identical)
from within the grammar of other religious traditions.
Where the understandings of the workings of salvation are
public and not—as in American Protestantism—private,
it is necessary to develop other arguments for the respect
of personal dignity, the protection of personal freedoms,
and social and political enfranchisement.
These can and are being developed. Slowly, hesitantly, and
with much back and forth, much negotiation, and not a few
mistakes.
It is important, however, to support such efforts and recognize
that the arguments that will be adduced to support minority
"rights" in Israel, or Iran for that matter, may
end up being of a very different nature than those developed,
say, in the Netherlands.
Q: Clearly, you believe that there are within Judaism,
Islam, and Christianity, as well as within other religions,
sacred texts and traditions which can be used to support "tolerance."
But how do you encourage these religious communities to deal
with other texts and traditions which do not support "tolerance"?
A: There is little doubt that every tradition and every sacred
text or corpus contains both passages and perspectives that
encourage tolerance and mutual acceptance and those that encourage
hatred, intolerance, and denial of the other.
This is why The Tolerance Project has never been about "cherry-picking"
the textual traditions for quotes to support this, that, or
the other position. This is an easy, but pointless exercise.
For one can find exactly what one wants in all traditions.
Here, perhaps, I should add that the premise of most inter-religious
dialogue groups is learning about the other. While this is
no doubt crucial, our goal is to learn about one's own tradition
through meetings with the other and, indeed, through wrestling
with the texts—often difficult and troubling texts—of
one's own tradition.
Texts and traditions must be grappled with, wrestled with—not
swept under the rug and denied. We must be honest with ourselves
and honest with others, subject our own beliefs and histories
and commitments to the light of reasoned reflection, in a
community of diverse opinions and practices.
This is precisely what is done with Muslim, Christian, and
Jewish schoolteachers in the programs we work with in Israel.
Q: Can you provide some practical examples of how
The Tolerance Project has successfully worked with religious
communities to support "tolerance"?
A: Perhaps our most successful projects have been in the
field of curricula development and its implementation.
In Israel, we have worked closely with educators and others
connected to Yesodot Center for Torah and democracy and the
Prophetic Traditional Helpers Association (religious Jewish
and Muslim groups) to develop curricula to teach tolerance
to religious students, in religious schools, from religious
texts and principles. Developed over three years through the
collaborative efforts of deeply observant Jews, Muslims, Christians,
and Druze, the curricula is currently being tested in two
pilot projects.
A similar curricula project developed in Bosnia and Herzegovina
is currently being readied for a pilot in that country.
At the same time, for two years now through the International
Summer School for Religion and Public Life, I have brought
together educators, religious leaders, journalists, academics,
and policymakers from over a dozen countries to discuss the
complicated and not always peaceful manner in which religious
beliefs and commitments influence the public sphere in different
parts of the world.
These meetings have been intense intellectual and emotional
encounters that, in some cases, have resulted in new projects
and initiatives on the return of the school fellows to their
home countries.
In one case, Jewish and Muslim fellows from Israel were so
influenced by the school that, on their return, they instituted
a program of having (religious) Jewish and Arab (Muslim and
Christian) high school teachers develop joint programs between
their respective high schools.
In another case, a joint Hebrew/Arabic radio program is being
initiated. Moslem fellows have, partially in response to the
summer program, organized politically and established a series
of networks and frameworks for meeting with and joining Jewish
and Christian colleagues, and have organized conferences and
workshops.
In Bosnia and elsewhere in the Balkans, local participation
in the summer school provided a crucial arena where new behaviors
and attitudes towards the other could be modeled.
FIRST PERSON
Ann Slavtova
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Anna Slavtova
Operations Director, Classic Inc. Ukraine.
Steve Rynecki, National Telecommunications
Association |
"In the early days of our operation, the Business Internet
Center [BIC] really helped us to improve our image and our
management. We really couldn't have grown as quickly without
the services of the BIC."
The popularity and use of the internet in Ukrainian cities
is quickly growing as new computer training centers and cybercafés
open their doors. But in the rural regions of Ukraine, connectivity
is poor. To change that, USAID helped five BICs across the
countryside to open up, introducing basic business management
training and high-speed internet access to rural and disadvantaged
communities. Each office has at least five computer workstations.
They serve commercial clients such as Classic Inc., a cabinetmaking
company that has used the center to conduct market research,
set up email accounts, design a website, and improve its marketing
plan through training.
MISSION OF THE MONTH
El Salvador
The Challenge
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Thousands of people helped build their own homes
under the USAID-funded earthquake reconstruction program in El Salvador.
The program covered the costs of construction and used the help of
citizens, NGOs, and local government agencies to erect the homes.
Rosa Maura de Mayorga, USAID/El Salvador |
El Salvador was struck by two powerful earthquakes—in
January and February 2001— that killed 1,100 people.
The quakes destroyed more than 166,000 homes and caused about
$1.8 billion in damage.
Together, they affected one in five people in El Salvador,
a nation that only nine years earlier emerged from a long
civil war and was still recovering from Hurricane Mitch, which
cost 374 lives and $600 million in property damage in 1998.
Innovative USAID Response
After leading the emergency earthquake disaster response,
the San Salvador mission spent $170 million on reconstruction
programs that built new homes and schools, repaired roads
and sewage systems, prepared communities for future natural
disasters, and boosted economic activity.
Working with the Salvadoran government, local communities,
and 40 other partners, the U.S.-funded program focused on
hard-hit regions and people living below the poverty line.
It also rebuilt structures to resist future earthquakes.
A major challenge was helping people prove land ownership,
so one of the first steps USAID/El Salvador took was to work
with the government to speed up the land titling process for
earthquake victims.
It can take anywhere from a year to a decade to get a land
title processed in El Salvador. But when the earthquake hit,
USAID worked with the Vice Ministry of Housing to reduce the
waiting period for obtaining a land title and provided lawyers
to help follow up on people's land title claims. As a result,
families were rapidly approved for the USAID housing program.
Results
As the reconstruction program wraps up in December 2004,
its most visible result has been more than 26,000 new homes
built across half the country.
USAID paid about $3,200 for each home—the full cost
of construction. The work was done by the El Salvador government
agency that subsidizes housing and several NGOs. In most cases,
the soon-to-be homeowners also helped with construction.
New houses were designed to meet earthquake-resistant standards
and were evaluated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for
soundness of construction.
Previously, homes were built of adobe, with tile roofs. The
new homes are built with concrete blocks and their roofs are
made of sheet metal or synthetic fiber sheet.
To help prepare for future disasters, the program installed
three flood monitoring gauges; provided assistance to the
country's Earth Sciences Agency in seismic, hydrological,
and volcanic monitoring programs; and did four flood hazard
site assessments. Disaster preparation activities were also
carried out in 47 high-risk municipalities and Geographic
Information System databases were created for five municipalities.
The program also helped build or refurbish 50 schools, 60
rural childcare centers, healthcare facilities, municipal
offices, and markets. Since water is scarce, USAID also provided
145,400 people with drinking water systems.
In Santiago de Maria in the department of Usulután,
for instance, USAID helped build more than 400 homes, a municipal
office building, a town market, a community health center,
and a preschool. It also funded the reconstruction of a clean
water system for a small village near the town.
The program also worked with small farmers in rural and remote
regions. By introducing them to crop diversification—switching
from one crop to another that is more profitable —USAID
helped some 1,000 small farmers sell $6.53 million in agricultural
products.
To further revitalize the economy, the reconstruction program
included a $1.1 million program that assisted 2,521 micro
and small businesses, most of which were women-owned.
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