Faith-based humanitarianism in Lebanon.

Abstract

Despite the secularization and professionalization of the humanitarian sector, religious principles and sensibilities continue to influence the humanitarian aid of faith-based organizations and beyond, even if they are not always visible at the surface and even though they conflict at times with the “secular imperative” of humanitarianism. This thesis is based on ethnographic fieldwork with three Christian organizations providing aid to Syrian refugees, which enabled me to scrutinize in detail the aid worker’s daily processes of meaning-making and distinction. I found that individuals working in faith-based organizations constantly renegotiate the place of religion in their work. They navigate tensions and paradoxes that emerge from the contradiction between religious and secular humanitarian principles by concealing the religious character of the organization or conversely, by attributing religious meaning to the aid. The aid workers reinforce the internal cohesion in the organizations by distinctions on different levels: secularized faith-based organizations distinguish themselves from evangelist organizations and vice versa, and religious aid workers distinguish themselves from non-religious ones and vice versa. This points to the diversity of Christian humanitarian organizations. A final finding is that faith-based organizations rely on networks based on a shared Christian belief, which speaks to the continuous transnational power of Christianity.