International Monetary Fund

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is an organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., whose purpose is to ensure international monetary cooperation, promote the growth of international trade, ensure the stability of financial exchange, provide assistance for countries in debt, and ultimately advance global financial stability. It monitors the economic progress of countries and provides technological assistance and training. In 2010, 187 nations belonged to this organization. The ways in which people practice and understand religion can transform as a result of changing economic circumstances. The policies of the IMF, which have a deep impact on the developing world, should also be understood as a causal force of religious change.

In 1944, delegates from 44 nations convened in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, to put together agreements that would finance Europe's reconstruction and prevent future global economic depressions. The United States and most of the world had been ravaged by the Great Depression of the 1930s. Europe had recently suffered two world wars. Those present felt that global collective action was necessary to safeguard the worlds' economies. Both the IMF and the World Bank were founded at this conference with that aim.

Critics of the IMF have argued that its policies further Western corporate interests and elites of the developing world at the expense of the poor. Despite the fact that most member countries are from the developing world, the United States and Europe wield the most voting power at the IMF, pointing to a power imbalance inherent in its structure. While earlier IMF policies reflected the view that expansionist government policies would encourage economic growth, currently, IMF policies reflect neoliberal ideology. The IMF's lending policies have been widely criticized as creating and sustaining relationships of dependency, in which developing countries, in no position to protest against IMF policies, have to accept belt-tightening austerity measures in order to qualify for aid.

In the global era, IMF policies and the speedy pace of globalization have created rapid social change and instability in many parts of the developing world. Contemporary movements of religious revivalism can be understood, in part, as a response to these changes. From the 1990s onward, the IMF's policies in the Middle East have been blamed for the higher levels of unemployment, worsening poverty, and ensuing anti-Western sentiment. Islamic political groups have consolidated around these issues. Theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether has argued that the rise of religious revivalism, corresponding to widening poverty, has also led to neopatriarchy movements in which women's roles and rights are limited.