Faith as Equity Infrastructure: Public Religion, Human Flourishing, and the Church-NGO Partnership in Central America

• In Event: Development Beyond Aid: Civil Society Actors in the Global South

Abstract

Development sociology has long treated religion as a residual variable or an obstacle to modernization. Building on Casanova’s (1994) theory of public religion, this paper argues that Protestant and Catholic churches in Central America function as equity infrastructure: primary institutional sites where equity work is conducted, shaped by a vision of human wellbeing that integrates spiritual, material, and relational dimensions. In practice, this vision predates and often exceeds what the NGO partner brings to the table.
We draw on a mixed-methods study of the partnership between an international Christian NGO and local churches implementing a project focused on children’s wellbeing and spiritual development across Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua. The pilot phase included 35 qualitative interviews across 18 churches and 26 questionnaire responses; the main study has expanded the quantitative sample to 280 churches across all four countries, drawn from a population of over 1,600 partner congregations.
The data point to three recurring patterns. Faith leaders bring a holistic development model to the partnership that predates NGO involvement and draws on theological traditions of human flourishing (Volf and Croasmun 2019; Sen 1999). Across multiple sites, 70 percent or more of children served come from non-member families, which suggests these churches are stepping into institutional gaps left by weak or inconsistent state provision (Casanova 1994; Levine 2012). Roughly 78 percent of main-study respondents named spiritual growth as children’s top need, while over half identified communication frequency as the NGO’s main shortcoming, a gap with direct implications for program design.
The study was conducted in direct partnership with the NGO’s five-year planning cycle. We argue that recognizing churches as equity infrastructure would require rethinking prevailing assumptions in development sociology about who does equity work, and how. Documenting that shift is exactly the kind of engaged sociology the field needs.

Authors

• Alonso Aravena, Baylor University

• Carson Mencken, Baylor University