Sacred Aid

"This marvelous book transgresses many boundaries. It examines foreign aid through the dual optics of sanctification and secularization. Since all humanitarian organizations are faith-based and since efficiency has become perhaps their highest calling, we are left without established categories to make sense of the world. Michael Barnett and Janice Stein force us to think anew. And they have assembled an impressive set of authors who provide the evidence that makes this book's far-reaching claims compelling. Sacred Aid opens entirely new vistas and compels us to reconsider fundamental political issues."--Peter J. Katzenstein, Walter S. Carpenter, Jr. Professor of International Studies, Cornell University
"Everybody now recognizes that the 'faith-based' or 'faith-inspired' NGO is a crucial component of the global architecture of humanitarian relief and economic development. But almost nobody has thought critically about what exactly a 'faith-based' or 'faith-inspired' NGO really is, much less what distinguishes it from its 'secular' counterparts. That is, until now. In Sacred Aid, distinguished international relations scholars Michael Barnett and Janice Stein have brought their characteristic creativity and lucidity to this crucial though neglected thicket of conceptual and practical puzzles. In the process, among the many insights they and their contributors offer is that the boundary between 'sacred' and 'secular' humanitarianism is not nearly so neat as most of us have assumed."--Timothy Samuel Shah, Associate Director of The Religious Freedom Project, Berkley Center For Religion, Peace, and World Affairs
"This volume is a timely response to the challenge of how to think and write about the politics of humanitarianism after the critique of secularism. These essays take us deep inside a diverse series of projects, actors and associations that intervene in the lives of individuals and communities around the world in the name of convictions