Saturday, March 05, 2011

Food and Church

A few months ago, curious to see what would land in my inbox, I set up google alert for the words "church" and "food." Hoping to find churches that were doing innovative programming around food and faith, cull through the links that come in the daily email.



Each day, there are anywhere from 15-30 links to news articles, websites and even blog entries. The one thing that all the links have is that they lead to postings that have both the word church and food in them.



Rarely have I received a link to anything that mentions a church educating members about food policy and/or sustainability! Instead, in my very unscientific analysis, the vast majority of articles are about the what churches are doing to meet the food needs of their communities-- usually in the forms of food pantries, soup kitchens, or food give aways. And then, of course, there are the numerous links that merely are mentioning church events in which food will be served!



Some points to ponder....


  1. Are churches doing programming related to food "issues"? but just not publicizing it-- so it doesn't make it into the web postings?

  2. Are the needs so great in so many of our communities that more and more churches are reaching out with aid in the form of food?

  3. Is it just that this community outreach/charity work is much more "reportable"? Articles about churches offering food aid are more interesting to the general public?
So these are just my beginning questions...

1 comment:

Jason Fowler said...

Hi Rachel,
Great questions. It seems the typical attitude towards food has been similar to the general Christian attitude toward our bodies and the earth - that somehow they are unspiritual and our hope is that someday we will be liberated from them. As far as I can tell this is born out of dualistic Greek philosophy or even a subtle Gnosticism that despises the physical realm- but it is not a Biblical perspective.

I believe this is changing as we return to the reality that Scripture speaks of - that both our bodies and the created order will be resurrected in the Age to Come as Jesus enacts a new order.

More and more churches are returning to the body, the earth and food as realms of expressing the Lordship of Jesus and the holistic goodness of GOD's creativity and provision.

As far as we're concerned part of what we want to accomplish is to get Christians thinking about issues of food, sustainable living, etc- but from a Biblical framework of thought.

Also, try different Google search terms - I believe there is more happening around food and faith than we know.

By the way- we are near Society of St. Andrew headquarters and we love gleaning too!

-shalom!
Jason F
Sustainable Traditions

Twitter.com/sustainabletrad