Strategic Religious Engagement in International Development: Building a Basic Baseline

This essay introduces a special, open-access issue of this journal focused on the intersection of religion and relief & development. It describes the discussions—of terminology and tangibility, of perspective and practice—that shaped the research done for the “Evidence-Based Summit on Strategic Religious Engagement,” a conference organized and hosted October 5–8, 2020 by the US Agency for International Development (USAID). This special issue consists of four research papers produced for the Summit, along with four response essays. While the available empirical evidence, expertise, and experience varies across myriad issues involving the nexus of religion and relief & development, these papers do document the tremendous growth of this field in the last 20 years, as well as the enormous opportunity to contribute.