Faith-based Foreign Aid - History

History

For a long time running, most religious organizations have had a tendency to support like-minded or related groups in need. A central tenet to many religions is offering a portion of one’s money to the social institution. For example, members of Christian churches offer part of their income, called a tithe. Likewise, one of the five pillars of Islam, called the Zakat, is the offering of a percentage of one’s income. America has been fairly generous in giving to faith-based organizations; in 2004, gifts to religious causes made by Americans totaled $88.3 billion. A mission of many of these religions is to spread their message to countries all over the world in hopes of converting or dileberately changing religious beliefs of as many people as possible. This mission to the world combined with other types of emigration has placed members of many religions all over the planet. Because the social institutions want to support their outreaching branches, many of them contribute time and money to these branches.

This is often the motivation behind much of today’s faith-based foreign aid. Alternatively, many countries all over the world are in need of money or the assistance of an external pool of labor. In response, many religious institutions in middle to high-income nations are willing to allocate resources to similar religious social institutions in poor or developing nations. Aside from supporting the spread of their own beliefs and philosophies across the world, many motivations exist for wealthy countries to contribute to poor countries. These motivations will be explained in detail in the positive effects section of this article.