Category: Poverty

Food has been an essential part of Christian culture since Jesus shared a last meal with his Apostles in Jerusalem before his crucifixion. So it’s not surprising that Christians — especially young Christians in urban areas — are the epicurean hobby culture of “foodies.” But as Erik Bonkovsky, a pastor in Richmond, Virginia, says, a truly great and thoroughly Christian food scene is one that blesses the privileged and under-privileged alike:

Foodie culture—particularly with a local and healthy dimension—is now ubiquitous in every major city. Farmers markets, local-sourced menus, and farm-to-table operations have proliferated. However, many of these increased food options are limited to the well-resourced. ‘Foodie culture’ has become one more way to cultivate a lifestyle-based identity. One wonders, “If I cook local-grazed free-range pork without posting it on Instagram, did I really eat it?”

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Television evangelist Pat Robertson is certainly known for saying provocative things, and he’s done it again.

When Robertson’s co-host, Wendy Griffith, said not all families could afford to have multiple children, Robertson replied, ‘That’s the big problem, especially in Appalachia. They don’t know about birth control. They just keep having babies.’

‘You see a string of all these little ragamuffins, and not enough food to eat and so on,’ he said, and it’s desperate poverty.’

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In an interview with Forbes‘ Jerry Bower, Peter Greer, president and CEO of the the Hope International, explains why church foreign aid programs often hurts those its meant to help:

Greer: There’s an entrepreneur named Jeff Rutt, and after the fall of the Soviet Union he had a desire to go over with his church and help. So, initially they did what people so often do, which is see that people don’t have food and then send over food, and see that people don’t have adequate clothes for the harsh Ukrainian winter and then go in their closets and send things over. And all of that is good, all of that is appropriate, all of that is needed in response to a crisis. But as Jeff did that, after a couple of years it was the team in Ukraine that eventually said—“

Bower: “Your help is hurting.”

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Cheryl Miller, Executive Director of Perpetual Help Home (a PovertyCure partner) offers insight to poverty in America in this new video. Miller, an Acton University alumnus, focuses on the dignity of the human being.

The combination of poverty, sexual trafficking, and technology has given rise to a new form of slavery: cyber-sex trafficking. As CNN explains, anyone who has a computer, internet, a Web cam, and an exploited woman or child can be in business:

Andrea was 14 years old the first time a voice over the Internet told her to take off her clothes.

“I was so embarrassed because I don’t want others to see my private parts,” she said. “The customer told me to remove my blouse and to show him my breasts.”

She was in a home in Negros Oriental, a province known for its scenic beaches, tourism and diving. But she would know none of that beauty. Nor would she know the life she’d been promised.

Andrea, which is not her real name, said she had been lured away from her rural, mountain village in the Philippines by a cousin who said he would give her a well-paid job as a babysitter in the city. She thought she was leaving her impoverished life for an opportunity to earn money to finish high school. Instead, she became another victim caught up in the newest but no less sinister world of sexual exploitation — cyber-sex trafficking.

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Paychecks are the vehicle for upward mobility, wealth and personal fulfillment in life, says Mike Varney. So why aren’t we doing everything in our power to create more of the jobs that are the source of those paychecks?

It’s all very simple. Companies create jobs. Jobs are what create paychecks. Paychecks are what gives individuals and families purchasing power and choice in their lives. Jobs and paychecks create futures and give humans a sense of purpose, contribution and connection. Jobs are the ticket that enable people to climb from survival to self-actualization on psychologist Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

Joblessness creates the opposite effect: a downward spiral from hope to despair. Aspiration to desperation. In speaking with many of our local non-profit leaders, I have developed a real appreciation for the link between joblessness and insidious societal problems such as domestic abuse, drug and alcohol abuse, child abuse, homelessness and destruction of the human spirit. Societal ills are generally reported to increase and decrease in direct correlation to employment. Poverty and joblessness have no place to take root in a society where opportunity abounds and where people have a strong work ethic.

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“We see poverty in the developing world and we ask—what can I do?” says Michael Matheson Miller, Research Fellow at the Acton Institute and the Director of Poverty Cure, “But what if the question that animates our activity is the wrong one?”

What if instead of asking how we can alleviate poverty, we asked, “How do people in the developing world create prosperity for their families and their communities?” This sounds like a simple shift, but it can transform the way we think about poverty and the poorest among us because it takes the focus off ourselves and puts it where it belongs. People in need are not objects of our charity, they are subjects, and should be seen as the protagonists of their own development. Changing the question helps lead to an inter-subjective relationship.

Ask people in the developing world what they want most, and they don’t mention more aid or charity. They want jobs; they want the opportunity to build businesses; they want access to markets, to broader circles of exchange so they can provide for their families. As Ghanaian entrepreneur Herman Chinery-Hesse told me, “The people here are not stupid. They’re just disconnected from global trade.”

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Depressing statistic of the week:

The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that a total of 101,000,000 people currently participate in at least one of the 15 food programs offered by the agency, at a cost of $114 billion in fiscal year 2012.

That means the number of Americans receiving food assistance has surpassed the number of private sector workers in the U.S.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), there were 97,180,000 full-time private sector workers in 2012.

The population of the U.S. is 316.2 million people, meaning nearly a third of Americans receive food aid from the government.

One of the consistent themes in Christian social teaching is the recognition that this world has both material and spiritual realities. As such, it is not only important that we think about the moral, political, and economic structures that contribute to set the stage for human flourishing but that we also pray for those who are suffering that they would be free to live out their callings as human persons made in God’s image.

The Friday weekly intercessory prayer from the The Book of Common Prayer from the Church of Ireland directs our attention to these populations.

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I recently wrote on the implications of “pathological altruism,” a term coined by Oakland University’s Barbara Oakley to categorize altruism in which “attempts to promote the welfare of others instead result in unanticipated harm.”

In a segment from the PovertyCure series, HOPE International’s Peter Greer offers a good example of how this can play out, particularly in and through various outreaches of the church:

Oakley’s paradigm depends on whether such harm can be “reasonably anticipated,” and as Greer’s story indicates, far too often the church isn’t anticipating much at all. Ship the stuff, check the box, and sing our merry songs. (more…)