A new article in THE CONVERSATION suggests rather provocatively and with a headline that might be read as assertively secularist and anti Christian in tone.

Christian food aid could be excluding those from other religions in need of help

Click the link to read it:

http://theconversation.com/christian-food-aid-could-be-excluding-those-from-other-religions-in-need-of-help-72626

The longer academic version of the research paper is published in Journal of Social Policy and can be accessed here

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-social-policy/article/div-classtitleall-in-it-together-community-food-aid-in-a-multi-ethnic-contextdiv/1350E18E88FFBFB3035A149CC25724D4/core-reader

In summary it finds

Few Muslims going to Christian food banks

During six months in 2015, we spoke to 27 people working to help provide food aid and combat food poverty in Bradford. The people we spoke to were either directly managing a food bank, or held positions of responsibility to try and prevent food poverty, including in local government.

Despite the generosity of many of those involved, we found that some food aid was being dispersed in a way that could potentially be exclusive. In Bradford, faith-based food aid was common, but most faith-based providers were Christian, with very little Muslim provision. Of the 67 community food aid providers, 35 were secular, 24 Christian and seven Muslim. Secular provision is largely run by charities, a minority of which are funded by the local authorities.

For example, most secular and Christian organisations were unable to cater for cultural diets, and did not provide halal meals.

A manager of a Christian food bank told us that faith-based food aid could be considered an opportunity for preaching to or praying with clients, at times with the objective of religious conversion:

The other thing which some people find difficult but which we do offer, we make it clear that we are a group of churches running it and that we are a Christian organisation. We believe in the power of prayer and we offer to pray with people.

This raises some important questions for those of us working or volunteering in food projects in multi-faith areas such as Lancashire. However as the authors state they have only been studying the situation in one city – on the wrong side of the Pennines – and Bradford is a particularly unusual city with a high degree of residential segregation between predominantly poor white and poor almost exclusively Pakistani Muslim neighbourhoods.

The authors hint at some factors which might explain the pattern of provision and take up of charitable food provision though some of them need to be questioned and analysed in greater depth before accepting the suggestion that there is systematic, albeit unintentional, exclusion of minority faith people in need of food.

Culturally and Religiously restricted diets – halal food :

• It's probably true some food banks and open kitchens haven't even thought about this, probably on the basis they think there is no demand, but it should be fairly easy to ensure there is a choice of vegetarian food which is usually acceptable in most of the faith communities.

Geographical distribution of services...

• Providing free food is usually a very localised service, but it does often depend on the location of available and suitable premises. Inevitably there is a postcode lottery in food provision, depending on where relatively thriving churches, temples, mosques and community sectors are to be found.. and whether the people who manage them have a vision for setting up and sustaining a food project. The critique here should be addressed to politicians who have over recent years dismantled many aspects of the welfare state, made receipt of benefits highly conditional, and been content to scrounge off churches and charities to plug the holes of provision for destitute and vulnerable people.

What proportion of Pakistani Muslims in Bradford are in need of food aid?

• The researchers tentatively suggest "some ethnic minority groups, despite often being in a low socio-economic position, have better health outcomes than expected due to support within their social networks …. Lower levels of food insecurity among Pakistani Muslims would be in keeping with this." It does seem plausible that a high proportion of white people who attend food banks are isolated individuals, suffering from what CUF calls in its web of poverty, poverty of relationships. However, there is no evidence presented, (and it would be very difficult to gather it) as to whether this is the case. It is also plausible as the researchers point out that help is found through the existence of alternative, hidden forms of food assistance among the Pakistani Muslim community surrounding mosques. Or it may be that family and biradari networks are sufficient to make sure no one goes hungry for long.

The shame factor

• One concept that is totally missing from the research paper is that of "shame". In every faith and ethnic group it is not easy to admit that you cannot feed yourself and your household. Visiting a food bank which inevitably is a public act, and often needs formal referral interviews is emotionally difficult for most people. In a close community where everybody knows everybody else's business it is doubly so. And since most Muslim communities, and Pakistani ones in particular have highly developed notions of izzat (honour) and shame that redound on the whole family it is likely to be extremely difficult to ask for help with food. It is also conceivable that many would prefer to ask the council or a Christian food provider before risking an approach to their local neighbourhood mosque.

The religious ethos...

• In my view the researchers comments on the religious ethos of food provision is not based on a high level of religious literacy or close observation of everyday interaction in multi-faith communities. It is the case that some Christian churches, and indeed mosques and other faith based organisations, may be clumsy and insensitive in expressing their beliefs and may indeed have inappropriate priorities about the call to conversion. The reality however is that when asked about faith and values, people of faith cannot be expected to keep silent. Personal experience over many years in East London and Lancashire suggests that few people of minority faith are offended by the articulation of Christian belief, and vice versa. Indeed many expect and prefer people to be up front about faith rather than rely on a cold secular an bureaucratic organisation. Indeed many Muslims are happy to attend church schools, children's clubs and family activities such as Messy Church. It may of course be different in some highly segregated and polarised cities such as Bradford, and at highly politicised moments, such as the Iraq war and the current post-Brexit. However it would be wrong to assume that religious ethos in itself is a driver of religious discrimination in service delivery.

I am interested to receive feedback from people in the Together Lancashire and wider Together Network as to whether the picture painted for Bradford rings true for your work.

My impression of food project work in Lancashire towns suggests a different story. There are a number of Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh and secular food provider services, and many of these work happily together in providing help to anyone in need. The varied geography and demography of the county means that some local providers may rarely if ever expect to see a Muslim, while others have a mixed clientele.

However, it is really important that we all keep examining ourselves to make sure our services are high quality and open to all, and that if we ever talk about our faith, or offer to pray with or for our service users, we do that in a sensitive way which respects their integrity and personal religious views.

Please do respond.. and lets have a discussion about the best way forward.

Some ideas about issues to work on in 2017..

I jotted down these ideas as a possible agenda for Lancashire Citizens in 2017..Though I'm not going to be so directly involved in development of the organisation form now on I thought about some issues that might be worth listening out for to see if they could be the basis of some campaigning.

 

1. Refugees and asylum seekers.. At the national level Citizens UK have taken this up and there is a shameful reluctance on the part of UK govrnment to accept more than a token number or refugees, and in particular unaccompanied children. And it is clear that government is committed to providing a "hostile environment" for most migrants and asylum seekers and especially those who are determined to be illegally present.   However, in Preston we do have an immense amount of goodwill and activity in the faith and community sector, and supported by the local authorities which is now coalescing around the City of Sanctuary group. Therefore it may be that this does not need to be a priority for Citizens.

 

2. Welfare Reform and benefits sanctions   One of the most common issues I hear from social action projects in Lancashire is about the devastating effects of welfare entitlements which drive people further into poverty and destitution. Bedroom Tax, reduced disability benefits, health and fitness assessments the role out of universal credits and the shear incompetence and suspicion within the complexatic system that causes huge delays in payments (and must cost the taxpayer a fortune).  Worst of all is the regime of sanctions for job seekers which is arbitrary, draconian, shockingly bad value for money and drives people into destitution and towards reliance on food banks and similar charitable projects. The Joint public issues team has done some good research and advocacy work on these issues https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/dec/09/the-unaffordable-cost-of-benefits-sanctions

 

http://www.jointpublicissues.org.uk/issues/social-justice/poverty-and-inequality/   Maybe there could be enough concern in the Lancashire Citizens network to delve deeper and build a local campaign.

 

3. Lousy Employment practice Linked with the welfare benefits and job centre regimes for unemployed people I've become aware that in Preston and suurounding areas there are many employers locally who are using a range of bad practices to minimise their wage bill. Despite some progress in promoting the real living wage in Preston we still have employers who find loopholes that mean that jobs are below the minimum wage..I think we need to do more research on this but I'm already aware of call centres, takeaway food chains, numerous car wash firms, and supermarkets serving specialist minority communities which should be investigated. There are issues around agency working, employing migrants who may have no right to work and others on a cash in hand basis at below minimum wage rates, bogus self employment status, zero hours and variable hour contracts, unsocial hours that don't attract additional pay, avoidance of paid holiday entitlements and expectation that staff should turn up half an hour early to do preparatory work or stay around later without this time being counted as paid hours. And because of the benefits sanctions regime unemployed job seekers have no alternative other than to accept job offers from such firms.. event though in some cases it might well reduce their actuall or disposable income.  This would be a classic case where a citizens oraganizing type campaign could challenge some of the worst employers..

 

 

Incidentally there is a good thoughtful piece on Child Poverty from Bishop of Durham, Paul Butler, which touches on some of these issues here

https://bishoppaulbutler.wordpress.com/2017/01/04/child-poverty-2/

 

 

Another blog from me for William Temple foundation..

The survival of the urban church is at stake...

 

http://williamtemplefoundation.org.uk/can-churches-build-resilience-in-inner-urban-communities/

 

Preston people will recognize our parish.

The last Trump - I fear not

My new blog for the William Temple foundation is now live...

 

 

http://williamtemplefoundation.org.uk/the-trump-of-god-should-evangelicals-rejoice/

 

New Blog for William Temple Foundation

 

The following blog post is an edited extract from the newly released e-book, 'The Seven Pillars of Religion in the Public Sphere (or what on earth is religion?)' by Greg Smith. Out now!  

http://williamtemplefoundation.org.uk/it-engages-and-enrages-the-political-agenda-but-what-on-earth-is-religion/

My: Temple Tract now live

 

I'm pleased to say that my new Temple Tract is now live and available to download here: http://amzn.to/2bBg44X

 

 

Out now! 'The Seven Pillars of Religion in the Public Sphere (or what on earth is religion?)' by Greg Smith

 

Synopsis

 

Is God back? Whether one sees religion as declining or experiencing a resurgence, in 2016, questions of religious beliefs and actions are perhaps more present in public life than they have been in recent times. From politicians publicly professing their faith, to France's infamous 'burkini ban', to legal disputes over icing cakes with slogans supporting same-sex marriage, religion is far from a silent elephant in the room.

 

Conversely, at the same time religious literacy appears to be declining. Greg Smith takes up the challenge of explaining 'what on earth is religion' writing specifically from the UK's globalised, post-Christian context. Smith suggests that the best way to understand it is through looking at what he coins as the 'seven pillars of religion', which are distinct yet overlapping in nature. In doing so, Smith highlights and clarifies what this increased visibility of religion in public life might actually mean, both in terms of how we perceive modern society, and how we understand the changing nature of religion within it. 

 

 

 

 

Book review --- Hunger Pains: Life inside Foodbank Britain

Hunger Pains: Life inside Foodbank Britain
By Kayleigh Garthwaite
Policy Press, 176pp, £14.99 and £9.99
ISBN 9781447329114 and 9138 (e-book)
Published 14 June 2016

 

 

This is a worthwhile book from an academic who writes in a simple accessible style. It is the result of a health inequality study during which the writer was a long-term volunteer in a food bank in the North East of England . She has done a good job of serving alongside the people who run and listening to the people who use local food bank, and has set out her findings in the context of wider social policy research.

 

However, those of us who have been involved at any depth in the issues of food poverty or are familiar with the work of the many food banks across the country will learn little that is new. But it is a good book to recommend to people who have little awareness or who are sceptical about the reality of food poverty in Britain today. It gives a sound basic introduction to the statistics on food poverty, although it perhaps relies too heavily on information supplied by the Trussell Trust. While Tussell is the largest coordinated chain of banks in Britain with over 400 branches, and the one with the best monitoring and publicity machine, they account for perhaps only a quareter of the food poverty projects overall. Responses to food poverty extend well beyond the food banking idea, including community cafes, community shops, school breakfast clubs, holiday Make lunch schemes, food growing projects and numerous examples of courses and programmes teaching people to obtain cook and eat nutritious and affordable food. It would be good to have a wider evaluation of the impact of these diverse responses to the scandal of food poverty.

 

Kayleigh Garthwaite used an ethnographic approach to study the work of a local church based food bank in Stockton-on-Tees. Her writing gives due prominence to the voices of those who face day to day struggles to feed themselves and their families. She writes amusingly at times of the practical and ethical dilemmas of a participant observer researcher. Her first session as a volunteer involved her arriving early enough to join in the pre session prayer meeting at the church. As Christian volunteers prayed in turn around the group, she found herself as an unbeliever thinking that she was expected to offer a prayer and ended up mumbling a few words. And yet after a year of volunteering she still does not get that is spiritual capital that motivates the work that goes on in the majority of food banks, or at least she is so embarrassed about it that she dare not mention it in a secular book.

 

The stories and interviews reveal a wide range of people who are more than victims and dependent on charity. Rather they are real human beings facing a variety of struggles, often treated unjustly by the system, sometimes just stressed out by the circumstances of life and its random misfortunes, or overwhelmed by the economic and social changes that have impacted the urban areas of the north of England. While there are a handful who can be described as playing the system, and who might be able to overcome some of their problems buy wiser decision-making and better moral choices, the majority of food bank users only accept a referral from another agency as a last resort. Garthwaite writes with sensitivity about the sense of shame which accompanies each visit to the local food bank.

 

The analysis of food bank usage shows that the major cause of distress is a broken benefits system. Delays and administrative cockups, the punitive nature of the sanctions regime and the sheer meanness of current welfare provision in one of the richest countries of the world account for probably two thirds of food bank referrals. However increasingly our low wage economy and the precarious nature of the flexible labour market mean that more people who are officially seen as employed are faced with choices between feeding themselves and their families, heating their homes or paying bus fares so they can get to their jobs. As chapter 5 of the letter of James says to the plutocrats and tycoons of his time You have hoarded wealth in the last days. ⁴ Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty.

 

Inevitably there are some policy recommendations, most of which are sensible and would be welcome. We would all like to see the government recognise the issue of food poverty and that this is linked with the general issue of low income. It would be good to raise the National Minimum Wage so that it was a truly living wage and it would be more than welcome if we could abolish the punitive and arbitrary benefit sanctions and greatly improve the administrative procedures and empathy levels in the DWP. Sadly the government has little or no interest in doing so, especially as long as the majority of the electorate continue to make the distinction between a deserving and undeserving poor and are taken in by a narrative that divides the population into working families and claimants, strivers and shirkers. Although this storyline has been promoted for many decades by the right wing tabloid press it seems that it is now accepted by most of the mainstream political parties. As a result slightly radical ideas such as a basic citizen's income struggle to get on to the political agenda, being dismissed as entirely implausible.

 

In this context I find it hard to see how we can avoid food banks becoming a permanent institution in the provision of welfare. We really ought to be doing everything we can to do ourselves out of a job. There will be success in the enterprise when the very last food bank is closed. But for that to happen a political analysis and a political campaign is required. As long as the majority of people Christians included, see the main causes of poverty as addiction, poor budgeting and family breakdown, we will fail to address the structural economic and political causes of poverty today.

 

However minor tinkering on the margins of policy we'll never be very much use unless there is a radical reformulation of the whole market economy. Eradicating poverty before Kingdom Come, or a global revolution, is highly unlikely as Jesus himself recognised. But surely there must be some way of reducing inequality by the redistribution of wealth and income, insuring that adequately paid decent employment opportunities are available to everyone who can work, and that those who cannot for whatever reason, are kept from destitution by the sharing of society's resources. A proper listening to the voices of those who are struggling with hardship should convince us that we are all our brother and sister's keeper.

 

 

Overall the scenario for me is not a very hopeful one. But people of faith and Christians in particular, are called the people of hope. Indeed it is they who run and manage the vast majority of food poverty projects in Britain. What then are we called to do at the present time? In the first place we need to keep on keeping on, simply making sure by serving those in need that no one goes hungry. It's possible to do that in more efficient and more effective ways, perhaps by working better together in partnership with other agencies, in sourcing food for our food projects on a more wholesale basis, in ensuring that the food provided is not simply poor food for poor people (think 2000 cans of baked beans!),. We need to be better at signposting and connecting with other projects that can address underlying needs and support people in the wider context of their lives.

 

We can also strive to ensure that the services of our food banks do not operate as patronising charity, but that by listening carefully and building relationships with the people who use these services, we are operating on the basis of gracious human solidarity. In this context there is no "them" ; we are all us. This is perhaps one aspect of the Christian gospel that Garthwaite does fully understand. She speaks of American research which concludes that "social honour accrues to those who volunteer but stigma to those who are clients". This highlights the temptation for many of us Christians that we tend to serve because of our own need to be needed. Lord preserve us from this trap and teach us how to share love - simply because we have been loved.

 

There is another useful review of this book here

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/books/review-hunger-pains-life-inside-foodbank-britain-kayleigh-garthwaite-policy-press

 

Review by Greg Smith, Development Worker, Together Lancashire and co-ordinator of Feeding Lancashire Together Network