Humanitarianism Archives | Contending Modernities

Response to Wrestling with God Symposium

Cecelia Lynch
August 19, 2021February 1, 2024

I am convinced (unsurprisingly for anyone who has read the book) that ethical wrestling is both crucial for any kind of meaningful life, and frequently tiring.

Religion, Humanitarianism, and Decolonization

Series: Symposium on Wrestling with God

Emma Tomalin
July 27, 2021

There is a need to broaden approaches to the religion-development nexus and to develop a new conceptual perspective that moves beyond prioritizing the agenda of secular global development institutions and instead critically examines their rhetoric and practices.

Decolonizing the Practices of Religion in International Relations

Series: Symposium on Wrestling with God

Atalia Omer
July 15, 2021February 1, 2024

Lynch shows that the postsecular discovery of religion does not constitute a departure from the symbiosis of Christianity and secular modernity, but rather represents its perpetuation through other idioms and technologies.

Christian Ethics and the Purposes of Modernity

Series: Symposium on Wrestling with God

Michael Barnett
July 7, 2021August 3, 2021

What is the core of Christianity and how far can a Christian venture away from the core without risking being disqualified from participation?

Ethical Precarity and Staying with the Trouble

Series: Symposium on Wrestling with God

Diane L. Moore
June 29, 2021January 27, 2024

Together, Haraway and Lynch invite us into the generative power of confronting and embracing the interdependent dynamism of our existence.

Introduction to Symposium on Wrestling with God

Series: Symposium on Wrestling with God

Joshua S. Lupo
June 29, 2021February 1, 2024

In thinking both critically and constructively with Christian thinkers from both the past and present, Lynch’s book shows how we might employ critical genealogical methods without succumbing to a cynical and/or fatalistic view of the world.

Is Prayer Proselytism? Examining the Ethics of Religious Practices in Transnational Faith-Based Organizations

Series: Prayer and Action

Tanya Schwarz
March 20, 2017May 23, 2017

What constitutes proselytism (or “evangelism”) is contested and debated within and among faith-based organizations. For some, merely living as a “Christian” can constitute “witness” or “lifestyle evangelism.”

Many Humanisms, Many Modernities: Contesting Talal Asad’s Anti-Humanist Critique of Humanitarianism

Slavica Jakelić
May 19, 2016August 14, 2019

Due to his sole preoccupation with a secularized Christian and Western story of human-humanism-humanitarianism, Asad’s genealogy misses ongoing, creative, and complex contemporary engagements with the ethics and practices, promises and ambivalences of all humanistic projects—engagements that can and do inform the ways in which humanitarianism is being envisioned, enacted, and critiqued.

Religious Humanitarians and the Challenges of History

Series: Cecelia Lynch Talk 2016

Atalia Omer
May 6, 2016August 14, 2019

Lynch’s research is to be celebrated for the ways it foregrounds and explicates the importance of interrogating the discursive formations that inform religious ethics and popular casuistry. Her neo-Weberian framing allows for an elastic lens through which to examine the intersections of neoliberal and (African) orientalist discourses in the diffusion and praxis of the technocratic donor-driven apparatus of humanitarianism and development work. Read the full article »

The Popular Casuistry of Religious Humanitarians: Christian and Islamic Ethics in Action

Series: Cecelia Lynch Talk 2016

Cecelia Lynch
May 6, 2016August 14, 2019

Attention to “religion” in the work of humanitarians broadly-conceived (including both development and emergency relief actors) is on the rise, as is interrogating the reasons why humanitarians do what they do, and the role of religious actors in the broader “humanitarian international.” Read the full article »

Articles tagged as "Humanitarianism"