Over the past 5 or so years there has been a noticeable shift within development policy, practice and research to include religion as a relevant factor. While in practice religious traditions have contributed much to various sorts of 'development' work, until very recently this has tended to be ignored by major international development players. The text will present, explain and critically evaluate different sorts of literature from a range of disciplines that are relevant to thinking about the relationships between religions and development. It provides insight into a comprehensive range of approaches to guide readers through current debates about the role that religions play in development from positive contributions to more complicated and contested notions of impact, for instance, in terms of religiously inspired violence or gender inequality. This text brings together a broad range of relevant literature to locate it within a theoretical context. The pedagogy includes end of chapter questions, identifying areas of debate and interrogating key issues and viewpoints. The book also makes use of 'boxed' text, as a means of pulling out areas that require definition and/or further explanation as well as a method of presenting case studies from different regions and religions