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Frequencies
Frequencies
There are 2,780 occurrences of faith in the HE Corpus. In addition, 951 occurrences of faith-based were found and are considered for the purposes of this analysis.
Distribution by Region
Distribution by Region
Distribution by Organisation Type, Document Type, Region and Year
Distribution by Organisation Type, Document Type, Region and Year
Click here to enlarge and for more details
Refresh the website if the graphics are not shownFaith occurs mostly in documents published in Europe, followed by North America, Asia and Africa with comparatively smaller contributions. Overall, the top five contributors in terms of occurrences are NGO_Fed, NGO, RC, IGO and WHS organisations.
NGO_Fed documents provide the greatest number of occurrences, primarily from activity reports published in North America followed by Europe. Occurrences from NGO were mostly obtained from activity reports from Europe and North America.
Occurrences from RC were mostly found in European and Asian activity reports. Lastly, WHS also generates a considerable yet minor set of occurrences from North American general documents.
Definition
Definition
Summary of Definitional Elements
Summary of Definitional Elements
Abstracted from definitions and related concepts. Please scroll down for more details.
Faith...
Faith...
is a
a reason to act, a driver for action, a driving force
a positive transformative element for humanity and human development
an element of people's identity
a fundamental right
a reason for many disasters caused by people
consists of values, tenets and beliefs
plays a role in humanitarian action through faith-based organisations (FBOs)
brings people together in faith-based communities
in which faith leaders have a great influence
who may be targeted by humanitarians in order to
access populations
promote advocacy
further human development
Definitional Contexts
Definitional Contexts
In humanitarian discourse, faith has three meanings: religion, intention and trust.
In general, faith is mostly used as a synonym for religion or the set of beliefs and values that underpin religions. In fact, the HE Corpus contains 24 occurrences of the expression religious faith.
Additionally, faith is also found as synonymous with intention. This is evidenced by 76 occurrences of good faith and 4 occurrences of bad faith.
Good faith
Good faith
Employees who make reports in good faith are guaranteed confidentiality and their position shall not be disadvantaged as a result .
Activity_Report, Europe, NGO_Fed, NGO_Fed_IA, 2017, AR-163
Bad faith
Bad faith
In the letter, Adalah argued that the filing of the evacuation lawsuits was done in bad faith, without examining relevant facts and without considering the alternative option of affording the village recognition.
Activity_Report, MENA, NGO, NGO_Reg, 2005, AR-582
To a lesser extent, faith is used in its more literal sense, i.e. complete trust or confidence in an idea, a project, a person, an organisation, etc.
Faith in a project
Faith in a project
Substitution of beneficiaries occurs when an original member of the organization cannot/refuses to fulfil his duties to the association and decides to forfeit his access rights to the CMP project. Reasons include death, migration, inability to pay or loss of faith in the project.
General_Document, Africa, IGO, UN_OPA, 2005, GD-241
Faith as religion
Faith as religion
The HE Corpus contains no explicit definitions for the concept faith. However, a selection of 25 contexts provides enough information to piece together the conceptualisation of faith in the humanitarian domain.
A Driver for Action
A Driver for Action
Faith is conceptualised as a driver for people to engage in certain activities, i.e. humanitarian action in this case. Parent concept describing of faith include:
an inspiration;
a reason to act;
a key driver for people regardless of religion;
what drives an organisation into action; and
a driving force.
Its Transformative Role
Its Transformative Role
Since people are prompted to act driven by their faith, they generally do so with the intention to change things for the better. Faith-motivated actions are set out for improvement and described as having a transforming effect in areas like human development. The following descriptions of faith highlight its positive and transformative nature:
is a bridge to be built to overcome evil and welcome good;
is a benefit to society and individuals;
brings a vision of transformation for people and social harmony;
is preventative and has healing role in relief and development work;
entails a deep desire to change the word, transmit values, to leave the Earth somehow better than we found it;
brings profound healing and reconciliation;
has a transforming effect in development;
entails a deep desire to change the world, to transmit values, to leave this Earth better that we found it; and
prompts compassion and a justice-seeking.
Being a driving force with a transforming potential, some humanitarian actors go as far as to emphasise that faith has to be put into action, instead of remaining a purely abstract notion. The following descriptions highlight this aspect:
is not only informative but performative; and
has to be put into action;
Components of Faith
Components of Faith
Some definitional contexts for faith mention its constituent elements, namely values, beliefs and tenets.
contains the core value of welcoming the stranger, the refugee and the internally displaces;
contains tenets (simplicity, peace and integrity); and
is formed by beliefs.
Negative Aspects of Faith
Negative Aspects of Faith
While most descriptions of faith centre on its positive and transformative nature, two negative descriptions were also extracted. Many unethical undertakings have been carried out in the name of a religion. It is no surprise that this is mentioned in the HE Corpus. The following descriptions of faith highlight this aspect:
is reported reason for many disasters caused by people; and
is accused of inciting hurt and anguish.
A Fundamental Right & Identity
A Fundamental Right & Identity
Lastly, a small selection of contexts provide conceptualisations based on the notions of human identity and human rights. Faith is described as a part of people identity. It is also understood as a fundamental right, i.e. everyone should be free to practice a faith (religious freedom).
Related Concepts
Related Concepts
Types of Faith
Types of Faith
based on religious beliefs:
Christian faith
Islamic faith
Catholic faith
Muslim faith
religious faith
faith in Jesus Christ
based on non-religious ideas:
faith in fundamental human rights
based on otherness:
other faith
different faith
other religious faith
diverse faith
based perspective:
own faith
personal faith
shared faith
based on location:
local faith
global faith
based on the size of a group of people:
major faith
minority faith
based on trueness
authentic faith
Key Compound Concepts
Key Compound Concepts
Faith Compounds
Faith Compounds
Faith is basic concept with a great combinatorial potential, which means that it rarely occurs on its own. Out of a total of 2,780 occurrences, faith was found in 2048 cases as a constituent of many multi-word expressions such as faith actor, faith leader and faith identity, to mention but a few. In contrast, faith only appears on its own in 732 occurrences.
The concept of faith gives rise to many other compound concepts, i.e. concepts formed by combining 2 or more concepts. It is therefore necessary to look at the nature of these combinations to understand the role of faith in humanitarian discourse.
A total of 37 conceptual combinations with faith was extracted. These were classified into three broad conceptual categories:
collectives;
individuals; and
abstract concepts (i.e. those referring to abstract notions instead of concrete people or groups of people)
The conceptual categories for collectives and individuals include a subcategory for those multi-word expressions containing adjectives like other and different. These indicate mentions that refer to collectives or individuals of different faiths.
Below is an interactive visualisation that allows you to explore the 37 conceptual combinations. Use the top buttons to navigate between categories and subcategories levels as well exploring individual concepts. You can also use the filter option on the right to focus on a specific conceptual category.
Most conceptual combinations describe collectives of people who have a religious faith in common: communities, actors, agencies, organisations, groups, etc. With a total of 22 compound concepts, it is the most relevant conceptual category. This suggests that humanitarians are particularly concerned with groups of people who practice the same religion.
In second place comes the conceptual category individuals with only 4 concepts: faith leader, local faith leader, faith healer and other faith leader. However, faith leader is the conceptual combination that registers the highest frequency across all combinations analysed with a total of 267 occurrences.
Lastly, abstract concepts is a category that contains 11 compound non-concrete concepts, namely:
faith tradition
faith perspective
faith formation
faith identity
role of faith leaders
faith background
faith based health
faith boundary
faith voice
faith development
faith commitment
In humanitarian discourse, faith is mostly associated with groups of people who share the same religious beliefs and as well as associated sets of values. In addition, the figure of faith leader appears to be of special interests to humanitarians. Interestingly, the role of faith leaders is a frequent multi-word expression, which indicates that humanitarians are interested in individuals who lead religious groups.
Faith-based Compounds
Faith-based Compounds
The HE Corpus contains 951 occurrences of faith-based, an adjective which naturally forms many compounds. As with faith, compound concepts can be classified into collectives (27 concepts), individuals (2) and abstract concepts (26).
Mentions of faith-based collectives account for 760 occurrences. This conceptual category is dominated by faith-based organisation with 429 occurrences. Other relevant faith-based collectives include faith-based actor, faith-based group and faith-based partner, to mention but a few.
Abstract concepts formed by faith-based come second in terms of occurrences. The expression role of faith-based organisations obtains the highest number of occurrences with 12 occurrences. Other abstract conceptual compounds include faith-based development, faith-based framework, among others.
There are two conceptual combinations with faith-based designating individuals, namely faith-based leader and representative of faith-based organisation. It should be noted that their occurrences are negligible compared with other compounds.
In humanitarian discourse, faith-based is also associated with groups of people who share the same religion. However, in comparison with faith compounds, an analysis of faith-based reveals that humanitarians also focus greatly on faith-based organisations (FBOs) and their role in the humanitarian domain.
The Role of Faith
The Role of Faith
A selection of 14 contexts contains the expression the role of faith, which easily allows to see the areas in which it is believed to play a role. Faith is mentioned to have a role in:
development;
overcoming poverty;
peace-building;
promoting peace and diversity;
protecting vulnerable people;
public space/sphere;
shaping social and economic development; and
contributing to universal health coverage in Africa.
The Role of Faith-based Organisations (FBOs)
The Role of Faith-based Organisations (FBOs)
A selection of 19 contexts contains the expression the role of faith-based organisations (FBOs). These contexts include the areas in which FBOs are thought to intervene as well as two parent concept descriptions. FBOs are conceptualised as an actor in social work and civil society actor that play a role in:
consultations;
gender justice;
Sustainable Development Goals;
HIV/AIDS-related activities;
humanitarian aid;
peace-building;
campaigning for disarmament;
fighting against hunger;
responding to migrant and refugee movements;
fighting against poverty;
holding governments accountable;
protecting vulnerable people;
creating change; and
refugee support.
The Role of Faith Leaders
The Role of Faith Leaders
A selection of 8 contexts containing the role of faith leaders was extracted. Humanitarians discuss their implication in the following areas:
health crises;
safe burial;
fighting against human trafficking;
ebola response;
changing social attitudes; and
driving asset-based community development.
Frequent Collocations
Frequent Collocations
Frequent words that accompany a term are known as collocates. A given term and its collocates form collocations. These can be extracted automatically based on statistics and curated manually to explore interactions with concepts.
Comparisons over time between organisation types with the greatest number of hits (NGO_Fed, NGO, RC, IGO and WHS organisations) prove to be meaningful. Below is an histogram for the top yearly collocation for each of the five organisations with the greatest contribution as well as across all organisation types.
Collocates Over Time
Collocates Over Time
Collocates across all 5 analysed organisation types are quite varied. Propagation obtained the highest score in 2017. However, none and tradition were the only collocates that topped different two years. Other top collocates include reaffirm, workplace, prayer, complete, regardless, sacred, interfaith, brethen, good and base. All collocates, except for good, confirm that faith is mostly used as a synonym for religion.
NGO documents contain secular as the top collocate with the highest score, registered in 2017. However, regardless topped three consecutive years with relatively high scores. Other NGO collocates include tradition, Catholic, group, base, JRS (Jesuit Refugee Service), regardless, activist, identity, leader and none.
RE documents generated propagation as top collocate in 2017. Other RE top collocates include our, Christian, love, religious, minority, Christ, deepen, brethen and CWS (Church World Service).
Collocational data from NGO_Fed shows none as top collocate, closely followed by prayer. Other NGO_Fed collocates include Catholic, workplace, Christian, expression, regardless, leader and perspective.
In IGO documents, reaffirm registers the highest score in 2005. However, good dominates as top collocate from 2006 to 2016 with considerably lower scores. This indicates that in IGO documents faith appears to be used more often as a synonym for intention (i.e. in good faith).
Lastly, Net documents only generated collocational data between 2011 and 2018. Practitioner obtained the highest score in 2015, while leader toped two years with lower scores. Other Net collocates only top one year; these include organisation and alliance.
Unique Collocates by Organisation Type
Unique Collocates by Organisation Type
Organisation subcorpora present unique and shared collocations with other organisation types. Unique collocations allow to discover what a particular organisation type says about faith that others do not.
NGO documents feature Sikh, leap, mankind, doubt, FBOs (faith-based organisations), honesty, quaker, LDS (Latter-Day Saint) , popular and courage.
RE unique collocates with the highest scores are propagation, morality, profess, laity, discipleship, brethen, formation, enact, profound and testimony.
Top unique collocates for NGO_Fed include authentic, gospel, confidentiality, healer, prayer, embrace, strength, Islamic, guide and workplace.
Documents from IGO generated the following top unique collocates: ideology, reaffirm, negotiation, municipality, his, various, united and their.
Net documents generated practitioner, lead and right as unique collocates.
Shared Collocates by Organisation Type
Shared Collocates by Organisation Type
Shared collocations allow to discover matching elements with organisations who discuss faith. These constitute intersections between subcorpora.
Top collocates shared by 2 organisation types are none (NGO_Fed+NGO), secular (NGO_Fed+NGO), Jesus (RE+NGO), nationality (RE+NGO), Christ (RE+NGO), compassion (RE+NGO_Fed) and deepen (RE+NGO_Fed).
Top collocates shared by 3 organisation types include regardless (RE+NGO_Fed+NGO), tradition (RE+NGO_Fed+NGO), inspire (RE+NGO_Fed+NGO), race (RE+NGO_Fed+NGO), expression (RE+NGO_Fed+NGO), faith (RE+NGO_Fed+NGO), God (RE+NGO_Fed+NGO) and muslim (RE+NGO_Fed+NGO).
Top collocates shared by 4 organisations are Christian (RE+NGO_Fed+NGO+Net), religious (RE+NGO_Fed+NGO+IGO), mobilise, church, actor, different, engage, community, role (RE+NGO_Fed+NGO+Net) and principle (RE+NGO_Fed+NGO+IGO).
Top collates shared by all organisations (RE+NGO_Fed+NGO+Net+IGO) analysed include leader, base, organisation and group.
Frequent Verb Collocates
Frequent Verb Collocates
Verb collocates are useful in determining key relations between concepts. On the left is a diagram that represents verbs of which faith is the subject (in green) and the object (in pink).
At first sight, faith collocates with verbs more frequently as an object than as a subject. This indicates that humanitarian actors mention faith as an object focusing on the following dimensions:
description (have)
restoration (restore)
loss (lose)
experience/believing (live, keep, place)
putting faith into action (put, integrate)
Even though base was detected as a collocating verb, it does not act a such. It was erroneously extracted from non-hyphenated expressions equivalent to faith-based. For this reason, it was excluded from the analysis.
As a subject, faith collocates with comparatively fewer verbs. Humanitarians use faith as subject to focus on the following dimensions:
description (be, have, inform)
propagation (teach)
driver of action (inspire)
Usage Over Time
Usage Over Time
HE Corpus
HE Corpus
The chart below represents the distribution of faith between 2005 and 2019 in terms of the number of occurrences and relative frequency of occurrences. It also allows you to view the distribution across Regions, Organisations and Document types.
What's the relative frequency of a concept?
What's the relative frequency of a concept?
The relative frequency of a concept compares its occurrences in a specific subcorpora (i.e. Year, Region, Organisation Type, Document Type) to its total number of occurrences in the entire HE corpus. This indicates how typical a word is to a specific subcorpus and allows to draw tentative comparisons between subcorpora, e.g. Europe vs Asia or NGO vs IGO. You can read these relative frequencies as follows:
Relative frequency is expressed as a percentage, above or below the total number of occurrences, which are set at 100%. This measure is obtained by dividing the number of occurrences by the relative size of a particular subcorpus.
Under 100%: a word is less frequent in a subcorpus than in the entire corpus. This is means that the word is not typical or specific to a given subcorpus.
100%: a word is as frequent in a subcorpus as it is in the entire corpus.
Over 100%: a word is more frequent in a subcorpus than in the entire corpus. This means that the word in question is typical or specific to a given subcorpus.
As an author, you may be interested in exploring why a concept appears more or less frequently in a given subcorpus. This may be related to the concept's nature, the way humanitarians in a given year, region, organisation type or document type use the concept, or the specific documents in the corpus and subcorpora itself. To manually explore the original corpus data, you can consult each Contexts section where available or the search the corpus itself if needs be.
Occurrences of faith were highest in 2017, which also coincides with the highest relative frequency recorded (140%).
Europe generated the greatest number of occurrences but ranks third in terms of relative frequency with 98%. Oceania obtained the highest relative frequency with 147% with comparatively fewer occurrences.
The top 5 organisation types with the highest relative frequency of faith are RE, Unspecified, NGO_Fed, WHS and NGO.
Activity reports provided the greatest number of occurrences. However, Strategy documents obtained the highest relative frequency with 188%.
Google Ngram Viewer
Google Ngram Viewer
This shows the evolution of faith and in the vast Google Books corpus, which gives you a general idea of the trajectory of the term in English books between 1950 and 2019. Values are expressed as a percentage of the total corpus instead of occurrences.
Please note that this is not a domain-specific corpus. However, it provides a general overview of faith and its evolution across domains.
Faith increased steadily until today, obtaining the highest value in 2017.
Debates & Controversies
Debates & Controversies
This section contains a summary of debates and controversies on faith-related issues. It was abstracted from a total of 25 contexts. These issues were then categorised into the 3 main topical groups, as well as other 7 less relevant areas.
Accessing People
Accessing People
The vast majority of people have a religious faith that shapes their worldview and that without engaging with faith we cannot truly serve the communities we work alongside.
Faith-based organisations usually have access to large constituencies and credibility among the poor and strong links between a local presence in the remotest areas and HQs in the capital whose leadership is trusted and who have access to political leaders. Even in restrictive regimes, religious space is often the last civil space to be shrunk or closed.
Faith actors may use their outreach potential to deliver services to affected people.
Faith & Development
Faith & Development
International development policy has often been dominated by economic and political issues while the critical role of faith in shaping social and economic development has too often been neglected.
Clearly articulating the role of faith in development is an important part of any solution.
Faith-based actors are offered appropriate access for them to play a relevant role in development efforts, they can release the strong, positive potential for change that religion embodies and they often have a comparative advantage through an institutional network for advocacy locally, regionally and globally.
There is increasing evidence that faith is intricately linked to development.
Advocacy through Faith Leaders
Advocacy through Faith Leaders
Faith leaders are generally trusted by their communities and have exercise influence over people. For this reason, humanitarians may target faith leaders to foster community dialogue on controversial topics and ignite change.
Faith actors are also well placed to mobilise other faith actors to address common issues like violence against children and women, injustice and other socio-political issues.
The role of faith leaders in health crisis is vital because they can dispel fear, superstition and misinformation by getting clear messages through on how to prevent pathogenic transmission and how to safely bury the dead.
Faith leaders can play a role in tackling human trafficking.
Faith leaders and organisations may engaged to tackle issues of gender and related social norms (such as gender-based violence and family planning).
Faith communities have an untapped potential, challenges and opportunities to prevent and respond to SGBV.
Faith leaders are trained on challenging gender injustice and child abuse in their communities.
Humanitarians target faith leaders to change attitudes and behaviours on important societal issues, including maternal and child health, child protection, gender, and HIV and AIDS.
Humanitarians develop targeted programmes to engage faith leaders on difficult and controversial topics.
HIV anti-stigma advocacy is an issue within faith communities.
Other Issues
Other Issues
Human rights issues
Human rights issues
Freedom of religion is still disrespected and violent conflict of faith are still a problem.
People may be prevented from wearing their articles of faith in public spaces.
Interfaith issues
Interfaith issues
Dialogue may improve interfaith-related issues.
Interfaith values
Interfaith values
All four major faiths share common ideas – the call to feed the hungry is shared across faiths and offers opportunities for common affirmation and action among religion.
Faith-based action issues
Faith-based action issues
Faith-based action is rightly challenged when faith actors exclude members of other faith backgrounds; when they proselytise and put pressure on people to convert as a pre-condition for support; or when they discriminate against individuals or groups.
The faith-based identity of humanitarian actors may be a disadvantage in some contexts.
Faith as an advantage
Faith as an advantage
People's faith and spiritual resources are seen as key to their resilience.
Faith as an impediment to humanitarian action
Faith as an impediment to humanitarian action
Belief in faith healers may thwart action against malnutrition.
Faith after disasters
Faith after disasters
Disaster-affected people may question their faith and convert to another.
To see all the contexts from which these summaries were abstracted, please click on the button down below.
Synonyms
Synonyms
Synonyms can be identified automatically by looking at the context in which they appear. According to distributional semantics, words that appear to be surrounded by similar collocates are also similar in meaning.
Collocates with faith were compared automatically to collocates of other words. When two words share a considerable percentage of collocations, this means that they are very likely to be synonymous. Faith was found to be synonymous with religion and belief.
The graph below shows 20 words associated with faith. The closer to the centre (and the greener) a bubble is, the more collocates it shares with faith, which means that it is more likely to be a synonym. The size of each bubble represents the number of occurrences of a given word.
Discussion
Discussion
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