Christians in a Hungry World

The ethics of food distribution.

Endangered Species, by James M. Dunn, Ben Loring, Jr., and Phil Strickland (Broadman, 1976, 153pp., $2.50pb); Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, by Ronald J. Sider (InterVarsity, 1977, 249 pp., $4.95 pb); Stones into Bread?, by Owen D. Owens (Judson, 1977, 124 pp., $3.95 pb); Peace on Earth Handbook, by Loren E. Halvorson (Augsburg, 1976, 128 pp., $3.50 pb); Christian Responsibility in a Hungry World, by C. Dean Fruedenberger and Paul M. Minus (Abingdon, 1976, 127 pp., $2.50 pb); Finite Resources and the Human Future, edited by Ian G. Barbour (Augsburg, 1976, 192 pp., $4.75 pb).

A “grin and Bear It” cartoon that appeared in many newspapers last October shows a grocer ringing up the price of a loaf of bread for a woman at the checkout counter. Apparently answering her complaint about price, he says, “It’s simple economics, madam … Wheat goes up, bread goes up. Wheat comes down, bread stays up.”

American consumers feel the pinch of that marketing reality. But what we feel is nothing compared to what one-and-a-half billion other “consumers” (mostly would-be consumers) experience. In January The New York Times carried this report from Rome:

“The world’s major food agency has just completed a lengthy self-examination and come up with a gloomy conclusion on the way its war against hunger is going. The agency, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, is confident that it is using the best possible methods to combat starvation among the world’s poor. But the F.A.O.’s three-week biennial conference ended here with warnings that little or no progress had been made in the last three years toward eradicating hunger and malnutrition.”

For more details on the evidence on which reports like those in the Times are based see an excellent compilation edited by E. R. Duncan and published by the Iowa State University Press: Dimensions of World Food Problems. Theology and ethics are missing, but it is a veritable one-volume encyclopedia of scientific solutions to world hunger. Although somewhat technical, this volume is a valuable reference tool for seminary, college, and certain church libraries.

Who’s to blame for world hunger? Most books from a religious perspective, including some of the six titles from 1976 and 1977 that are reviewed in this article, too easily chastise America and other industrialized nations for political or economic policies that directly or indirectly deny millions the opportunity to obtain enough food. That charge is too pat for the complexities involved. Yet the books are worth reading to see what can be done by concerned individuals and groups.

Endangered Species concentrates on the theological aspect of world hunger. Featuring such chapter titles as “What Does Theology Have to Do With Bloated Bellies?”, the book communicates profound theological principles in deliberately unsophisticated vocabulary. The three Texas Baptist authors cite both Old Testament and New Testament data. They present a wholistic concept of biblical anthropology, a Christian world view, and the ethical dimensions of the evangelical faith. The book includes an elementary theology of both global and local ecology in such chapters as “The Earth Is the Lord’s—Or Is It?” A short appendix, “Answers to [Eleven] Objections,” provides a remarkably concise rationale for newcomers to the subject.

Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger is more sophisticated. Here Messiah College professor Ronald Sider devotes part two of his three-part book to a theological treatise that he calls “A Biblical Perspective on the Poor and Possessions.” Quoting Moses, David, Solomon, and six Old Testament prophets as well as Jesus and four apostles, Sider develops a doctrine of judgment and of God’s call to repentance. And he names works befitting our profession of discipleship.

This leads to a section on implementation. Critics have questioned the feasibility of some of Sider’s ideas of implementation, and some have found fault with his theological premises. But there is widespread agreement that his work contributes significantly to current Christian concern about the attitude of God toward oppressed people. His integration of redemptive theology with sociology and ecology holds particular value for collegians, seminarians, and other future-minded thinkers. Sider also argues, not necessarily convincingly, that the highly industrialized nations are to blame for the world food problem. In two chapters, “Structural Evil and World Hunger” and “The Affluent Minority,” he documents his charges.

Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger has practical suggestions. Its final section includes chapters on simpler lifestyles scaled by the “graduated tithe,” communal sharing, and broader structural change. If a study group is mature enough to survive the debates generated by some of Sider’s proposals, members can realistically experience at least some of the involvement Sider suggests.

Owen D. Owens uses the middle one-third of Stones into Bread to expound his theological position. Asserting that the temptations of Jesus provide warning against seeking ultimate answers in economics, politics, or even religion, he builds a biblical rationale for specific action against hunger as a vital component of obedient faith in God the Creator and Redeemer.

Owens notes that though Jesus fed hungry multitudes, he resisted the temptation to turn stones into bread. He uses a pair of chapters called “God’s No” and “God’s Yes” to explore how the infinite deals with the finite. The first of these two chapters exposes the nature of contemporary idolatry and American Christians’ witting or unwitting oppression of other people. Owen discusses “divine withdrawal” and the possibility that God may impose a no on the Western world’s seemingly insatiable desire for progress. He also shows God’s demand for repentance or judgment. The companion chapter extracts from Scripture some guidelines for obedience to the Creator in relation to creation. Subsequent chapters also deal with the concept of love in action and of “eco-justice,” which the author defines as the joining together of concerns for ecology and justice.

Stones into Bread packages its practical proposals in the chapters called “Survival Ethics: What Shall We Do?”, “Specific Action Strategies,” and “Beginning Where You Are.” The recipe calls for honest repentance and “creative alternatives to policies in which each person, group, and nation looks out only for number one.”

Owens identifies worship, sanctioning, benevolence, and lay ministry as four action possibilities. He declares that “Worship is the one essential means available to us to deal with world hunger, provided we understand that worship means responding to God’s love for us with our entire being—heart, soul, mind and strength” (p. 99).

Sanctioning, says Owens, is the redeemed worshiper’s God-given new ability to say yes and no: “The church of God has an inevitable accountability to affirm that which is good, reject that which is evil, and keep quiet when it is the wrong time to speak or when we can’t tell the difference” (p. 102).

Effective benevolence, which in a market economy is centered so largely on areas of financial stewardship, implies perceptiveness as well as compassion. Owens describes guidelines for benevolent organizations and for their donors.

For him lay ministry means more than people working in religious institutions. He does not prescribe specific activities but stimulates ideas that can result in practical action.

Worth noting by any evangelical who is wrestling with the relationship between Gospel witness and social action is the six-page passage at the end of chapter four of Peace on Earth Handbook. Here Luther Seminary professor Loren Halvorson classifies church groups into four attitudinal categories: critical evangelicals, hopeful activists, critical activists, and hopeful evangelicals.

“These four groups,” he says, “are not to be pitted against one another, but rather to be seen as stages in the full sweep of Christian concern for peace and justice. We need to recognize the different contributions of each group and the different approaches needed to assist each one through its particular stage of development. Each needs to be affirmed but also helped toward an eventual understanding of the positions represented by the other three groups. This approach recognizes not only that there are different positions at any given time, but that there also is a process in development which results from new perspectives and experiences over a period of time” (p. 88).

Peace on Earth Handbook includes a fifteen-point “whole earth confession checklist” and a list of fifteen “models for local action,” with names and addresses of groups worth emulating. Criteria for their selection were the activities’ pertinence, replicability, specificity, manageableness by volunteers, and directness of “people interaction.”

Christian Responsibility in a Hungry World, aimed at “the 100,000,000 Christians in America,” offers little visible theology. A chapter called “God’s Generosity and Our Responsibility” includes some teaching about the human disruption of creation and about Christ as the beginning of the new creation. Although eschatologically ambiguous, it nevertheless gives some useful ideas on the biblical basis for combining temporal ministries with spiritual.

Finite Resources and the Human Future, consisting of eight essays on four panel discussions presented in a Carlton College symposium in 1975, assembles the views of eight leading U.S. scientists, ethicists, and social analysts, not necessarily Christians. Among them are two professors of religion. At certain points, such as when discussing Garrett Hardin’s “lifeboat ethics,” participants take sharp issue with each other’s positions. Only the epilogue has a distinctly religious approach, but considered in relation to the preceding sobering essays, it packs a wallop. Indeed powerful prose is needed to force Christians to evaluate their responsibilities in a hungry world.

D. Bruce Lockerbie is chairman of the Fine Arts department at The Stony Brook School, Stony Brook, New York. This article is taken from his 1976 lectures on Christian Life and Thought, delivered at Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary in Denver, Colorado.

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