ABSTRACT
Introduction The World Bank’s World Faiths Development Dialogue (WFDD) was established in 1998. This relatively recent founding is remarkable in view of the fact that – notwithstanding conventional arguments to the contrary – western development policies have long been framed in and through Christianized forms of schooling.2 Yet the year 1998 was approaching a pivotal time in roughly two decades’ thinking about the place of religion in public life. During these decades, the World Bank and other post-World War II reconstructionist organizations sought to demonstrate greater social and community relevance: there was a “turn to religion,” including channeling the energies of increasingly politicized religious groups into schools and voucher programs. UNESCO’s Association for Interreligious Dialogue, founded in 1997, described itself as promoting discussion “among different religions, spiritual and humanistic traditions”(United Nations n.d.). The World Bank described its mission as alleviating poverty and combating social injustices by working with faith organizations, development institutions, philanthropists, and the private sector (UNESCO n.d.). Together these organizations and others reflected the charitable-religious spirit that – notwithstanding the mid-twentieth-century secularist turn toward thinking about religion as private – continued to inflect education development discourse.
