Through a focus on urban religious organizations, this course will help students to identify the multiple challenges ministers face (and the approaches they might employ) as they respond to Jesus’ command, “You give them something to eat” (Mk. 6:37).
Jesus said this to his disciples when they became anxious about the hunger of the 5000 people who had gathered to hear Jesus. The disciples are not the first or last folks to be concerned about how to feed large groups who are without access to the food they need. Generals have worried about how to feed armies. People of compassion have agonized about how to provide food for victims of famine or natural disaster. Leaders in urban communities have struggled with the challenges of providing adequate food for the people who have crowded into cities.
“You give them something to eat.” Over the last two centuries, entrepreneurial farmers and merchandisers have taken on the challenge of feeding large populations. Many of the food products we enjoy today are solutions that earlier generations developed, as they wrestled with how to feed urban populations or communities decimated by war or famine. And, many of the food problems we experience today also stem from some of those solutions.
Food, then, provides an interesting and provocative lens through which to examine many of the issues that urban churches engage in everyday life—how can and should churches embody the love of Christ in a world in which food is inequitably accessible, and in which some people starve or are undernourished while others grow unhealthy from excess or poor food supplies? What is the role of the church when a hungry person comes to its door, as one inevitably will? What is the role of the church in engaging systems of food production and distribution? What is the role of the church in responding to more remote situations of injustice, such as world hunger? How can and should churches demonstrate the promises or give people a taste of the commonwealth of God?
“You give them something to eat.” How are we going to do that?
Course Goals:
As participants in this course, students will:
- Use various analytical lenses to reflect on hunger and practices of food production, distribution, sharing, and consumption.
- Experience and evaluate several church-related food ministries in Chicago.
- Examine and analyze educational approaches for sensitizing or involving congregations in food ministries (nutrition, service, and/or advocacy).
- Design a liturgy for World Food Day.
- Identify several specific steps a pastor could take in order to assist hungry individuals or families in Chicago (as appropriate to the churches and neighborhoods with which the student is most familiar).
Required Reading:
Books
Counihan, Carole and Penny Van Esterik, eds. 2012. Food and culture: A reader. Third Edition. New York, NY: Routledge Press. ISBN 0415521041
Note: there are earlier editions of this book, but we will be working with the significantly changed third edition, so be sure to get this one. It is somewhat expensive, but I trust that you can economize on other books.
Fernandoz-Armesto, Felipe. 2002. Near a thousand tables: A history of food. New York: Free Press. ISBN 0743226445
Jung, Shannon D. 2009. Hunger and happiness: Feeding the hungry, nourishing our souls. Minneapolis: Augsburg Press. ISBN 0806670607
Articles or Chapters (These will be available electronically.)
Cronon, William. 1991. Pricing the future: Grain, in Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West, pp. 97-147. New York: WW Norton and Co.
Harris, Maria. 1989. Diakonia: The curriculum of service, in Fashion me a people: Curriculum in the church, pp. 144-166 Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press.
Hefling, Charles. 2012. Who is communion for? The Christian Century. November 19, 2012. http://www.christiancentury.org/article/2012-11/who-communion
Kapp, Deborah. 2012. I’ll think of something: Improvisation in small church service programs. Review of Religious Research 54(2).
Kennedy, William Bean, ed. 1987. Conversations with Paulo Freire on pedagogies for the non-poor, in Pedagogies for the non-poor, A.F. Evans, R.A. Evans, and W.B. Kennedy, eds., pp. 219-231. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books.
Montanari, Massimo. 2004. Eating together, in Food is Culture, translated by Albert Sonnenfeld, pp. 93-98. New York: Columbia University Press.
Sack, Daniel. 2001. Moral food: Eating as a Christian should, in Whitebread Protestants: Food and religion in American culture, pp. 138-184. New York: Palgrave Books.
Nestle, Marion. 2002. From “eat more” to “eat less,” 1900-1990, and Politics vs. science: Opposing the food pyramid, in Food politics: How the food industry influences nutrition and health, pp. 31-66. Berkeley: University of California Press.
This syllabus pertains to when the course was offered in 2013