The global humanitarian movement, which originated within Western religious organizations in the early nineteenth century, has been of most important forces in world politics in advancing both human rights and human welfare. While the religious groups that founded the movement originally focused on conversion, in time more secular concerns came to dominate. By the end of the nineteenth century, increasingly professionalized yet nominally religious organization shifted from reliance on the good book to the public health manual. Over the course of the twentieth century, the secularization of humanitarianism only increased, and by the 1970s the movement's religious inspiration, generally speaking, was marginal to its agenda. However, beginning in the 1980s, religiously inspired humanitarian movements experienced a major revival, and today they are virtual equals of their secular brethren.

From church-sponsored AIDS prevention campaigns in Africa to Muslim charity efforts in flood-stricken Pakistan to Hindu charities in India, religious groups have altered the character of the global humanitarian movement. Moreover, even secular groups now gesture toward religious inspiration in their work. Clearly, the broad, inexorable march toward secularism predicted by so many Westerners has halted, which is especially intriguing with regard to humanitarianism. Not only was it a highly secularized movement just forty years ago, but its principles were based on those we associate with "rational" modernity: cosmopolitan one-worldism and material (as opposed to spiritual) progress. How and why did this happen, and what does it mean for humanitarianism writ large? That is the question that the eminent scholars Michael Barnett and Janice Stein pose in Sacred Aid, and for answers they have gathered chapters from leading scholars that focus on the relationship between secularism and religion in contemporary humanitarianism throughout the developing world. Collectively, the chapters in this volume comprise an original and authoritative account of religion has reshaped the global humanitarian movement in recent times.

Michael Barnett's profile page

Janice Gross Stein is the Belzberg Professor of Conflict Management in the Department of Political Science and the Director of the Munk Centre for International Studies at the University of Toronto. Her most recent publications include The Cult of Efficiency (2001), Canada by Mondrian (2006), and The Unexpected War: Canada in Kandahar which won the 2007 Writers’ Trust of Canada’s Shaughnessy Cohen Award for Political Writing.

David Robertson Cameron is the chair of the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He has divided his time between public service (in Ottawa and at Queen’s Park) and academic life.

John Ibbitson is the political affairs columnist for The Globe and Mail and author of several works on public policy.

Will Kymlicka holds the Canada Research Chair in Political Philosophy at Queen’s University. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and his works have been translated into thirty languages.

John Meisel is the Sir Edward Peacock Professor of Political Science Emeritus at Queen’s University and past president of the Royal Society of Canada. He has been a frequent media commentator and lectures widely in Canada, the United States, and Europe.

Haroon Siddiqui is a columnist for the Toronto Star. A former president of PEN Canada, he is a member of the Order of Canada and winner of numerous professional honours.

Michael Valpy is a senior writer for The Globe and Mail and writes frequently on public policy, religion, spirituality, and ethics. He has won three National Newspaper Awards, and in 1997 Trent University awarded him an honorary doctorate for his journalism. He is currently a senior resident at the University of Toronto’s Massey College.

Janice Stein's profile page