Faith Communities Respond: Bring Food, Work for Justice

At the most recent meeting of the Greater Philadelphia’s Coalition Against Hunger Interfaith Hunger Group (a coalition of religious denominationally-based organizations involved in hunger issues), the group discussed the book Sweet Charity: Emergency Food and the End of Entitlement by Janet Poppendieck. This somewhat controversial book suggests that the growing endeavor of volunteerism and stopgap charitable feeding efforts may be diverting society from needed political change through a consistent public policy response to the growing problem of hunger and poverty. The following comments reflect our discussion.

Thirty years ago there were no food cupboards in Philadelphia. Our faith-based organizations did not sponsor food drives. Twenty years ago, our nation did not have an army of food banks, soup kitchens, and food pantries dotting the landscape of virtually every community.

Beginning around 1982, several factors converged to create hunger in the US on a massive scale: the sharp recession that had begun in the mid-seventies produced high unemployment, high inflation, and high interest rates. Family farms failed and fundamental changes in the economy led to factory closings, reallocations from urban to suburban communities, and widespread unemployment. As the torrent of economic vulnerability washed down upon American families, the federal government devastated the safety net by instituting the sharpest cutbacks in the modern era.

Here in Philadelphia in 1971, the Archdiocese began food drives to assist 15-20 existing food cupboards. The Ecumenical Caring Coalition opened its first care closet in 1983. The intent of these initial feeding efforts was to respond to emergency situations. Vastly different from today, in these early years nearly all clients used cupboards on an emergency basis, with only 25% repeat usage month after month. Today with several generations of families needing food assistance, the work of our communities of faith no longer matches our original mission.

Faith based organizations have felt obligated to respond to the food needs of our people. In addition, we have facilitated and encouraged the development of non-faith based institution such as SHARE, Philabundance, and the Greater Philadelphia Food Bank. There are differences between our work and the work of these institutions. They are in the business of moving food to those in need. We are in the business of transformation of society and of individuals.

For us, the food is not an end in itself. As one member of the group said, " Our goal is the development of the individual. We want to uplift the poor; help them develop as people; enable them to turn to God and to function within society." Another said, "We work to help people live to their full God-given potential. That’s a theological concept for us." Food is a basic need on the way to self-actualization (Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs).

But, we must question the long-term impact of our current work. What is our future? In 20 years will we still be doing canned food drives? Are we still working and hoping for the elimination of hunger? Are we working to transform our society? Our religious traditions and our history teach us that we will probably never eliminate poverty, but with political will, we could end hunger. We need to be teaching our congregants that along with bringing their can of food, they need to be advocating for social policy change. Our job in the faith community is to advocate for social policy that ends hunger. Bread for the World’s annual "Offering of Letters" is an existing interfaith initiative that involves congregants in the essential work of advocacy.

Some say that we should not work on food issues unless we also work on economic development and job creation. For most of our groups, this component is missing in our work. We must educate our communities of faith to broaden their understandings on the needs of the hungry and the range of approaches necessary to meeting those needs.

We’ve been advocating for food collections and publicizing the amounts of food collected and the number of people served. Our congregants feel good that they are donating food or money. The work of food collection must continue, because hungry people cannot wait for social policy change. But, congregants must also know that they live in a society where there is such hunger is intolerable, disgraceful, a crime against our fellow human beings and a violation of our covenant with the Divine. WE MUST BRING FOOD BUT WORK FOR JUSTICE.

– reprinted from Feedback, The Newsletter of the Greater Philadelphia Coalition Against Hunger, October 1999, Karen Wilson, Editor.