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"Bread for the World"

Most Americans have taken a hit in this economy, and a lot of people are struggling even to put food on the table. I want to explain why I’m hopeful about reducing hunger, talk about changing the politics of hunger, and then talk about God and hunger.

One in five children in this country lives in a household that runs out of food. Worldwide, the number of people who are undernourished has surged to almost one billion. But it’s important to know that the world has made tremendous progress against hunger and poverty over the last several decades. Countries as different as Bangladesh, Brazil, and Great Britain have reduced poverty.

I recently visited Bangladesh, and I got to go back to the little village called Goreya where I worked thirty years ago. People are still really poor, but I saw a lot of improvement: better roads, better houses, more foods in the markets. The children are clearly better nourished, and the women are not as confined as they were thirty years ago.  Back then, I lived in a thatched house with the local schoolteacher, Mr. Bari.  But there’s been lots of construction in Goreya, and I couldn’t even find the house. 

Finally, a young woman who used to be Mr. Bari’s student told us where to look, and I spotted him walking along the road.  I jumped out of our van, and he recognized me right away. Mr. Bari’s life has turned out better than he ever expected. For example, he’s been able to fill in the ditch next to his house, where mosquitoes used to breed when I lived there.  He rightly thanks God for the progress that Bangladesh has made against poverty.

In our own country, we have been able to make progress against poverty when we tried.  In the late 1990s, the economy was strong, Congress made some good decisions, and we cut poverty by one-third.  In the 1960s and early 70s, the economy was strong, we made a national effort during both the Johnson and Nixon administrations, and we cut poverty by half.

But we haven’t made the sustained progress against poverty that many other countries have made, mainly because we haven’t made a sustained effort. No president since Lyndon Johnson has made reducing poverty one of his top five priorities. No U.S. president has ever made reducing world hunger and poverty one of his top twenty priorities.

And this brings me to the politics of hunger.

Virtually every religious congregation in the country supports food charities and food banks. That’s important.  It’s the right thing to do.  But let’s be clear: We cannot “food-bank” our way to the end of hunger.  All the food that people in need get from all the food charities across the country amounts to 6% of the food they receive from the federal food programs, mainly food stamps and school lunches.  6%!  The House of Representatives recently voted to make deep cuts in the food stamp program. If their proposal becomes law, poor people will lose three times as much food as they receive from all the food banks and food charities in the country.

The House of Representatives has also voted to cut international food aid by one-third this year. We’re watching a terrible famine unfold in East Africa. But if the House’s proposal becomes law, 14 million of the most desperate people in the world will lose emergency food aid.

Our elected leaders need to reduce the federal deficit, but it’s not necessary—and it’s not right—to reduce the deficit on the backs of poor people.  Bread for the World is organizing people of faith and religious communities across the country to insist on a circle of protection for funding for hungry and poor people in our country and around the world. Bread for the World is a grassroots movement, and our experience is that elected leaders are responsive to what active voters back home want them to do.  So one powerful way for you to help change the politics of hunger is to become part of Bread for the World.  Go to our web site. It’s www.bread.org.  You can write to your members of Congress from bread.org, and you can also sign up to be part of Bread for the World’s ongoing advocacy for hungry people.

Bread for the World is a Christian organization. We are grounded in our experience of God’s love and forgiveness. God loves me and you and everybody, and God is especially concerned about people in need. The grace of God that I experience as a Christian moves me to help people in need, also to push for changes in laws and systems to provide help and opportunity on a large scale.

Bread for the World’s work for laws that help poor people is Biblical. God didn’t send Moses to Pharaoh’s court to take up a collection of canned goods, but rather to insist on political change; that Pharaoh let those slaves go free. The Lord then gave the people a code of law through Moses, and the Mosaic law includes all sorts of protections for poor and vulnerable people.

Whatever your faith persuasion, we all know that you can’t be close to God if you turn your back on hungry people. And God has made it possible in our time to reduce—maybe even end—the kind of hunger that we have come to take for granted. But we won’t make the progress against hunger that is now so clearly feasible unless many people are moved by their faith to help get our country to get more serious about hunger and poverty than it has ever been.

Let me close by telling you about St. Raphael Catholic Church in Naperville, Illinois. They are one of thousands of churches that take up offerings for Bread for the World—not offerings of money, but of letters to Congress on issues that are important to hungry people. On the day of the offering, many people stay in their pews after mass, they get clipboards, and then they write letters to Congress.  Children draw pictures that go to Congress with the letters. And Mike Huck is the volunteer who organizes the whole thing. It makes a difference.

A few years ago, they wrote letters to Representative Judy Biggert about needed changes in the farm bill that would be good for hungry and poor people. On the day of the vote, Mike called her office. Her staffer said, “She’s voting the way you suggested. Actually, a couple lobbyists visited her the other day, and she turned them down, saying, “a church in my district just sent me 500 letters on this issue and I have to go with my constituents.”

Mike Huck says, Mike Huck, “For me, advocacy for hungry people is a direct response to the Gospel.”

And to that I say, Amen!

Conversation with David Beckmann

Daniel Pawlus: If you’d like a printed transcript, CD or DVD of the talk you just heard from David Beckmann, we’ll tell you how to place an order at the end of the program. Or you can visit our website at 30goodminutes.org to watch the video again or read the text anytime.

Now, let’s talk with David Beckmann. David, thank you so much for being here with us. We’re really grateful to have you.

David Beckmann: Thank you.

Daniel Pawlus: There are so many insightful things you said in your message. I don’t want us to lose sight of the spiritual aspect to this, certainly. You said getting food to the hungry is sacred work. But I want to get to some of the details, as well, starting with those numbers that are very stark. One in five children, a billion people. Why is this not more of a presidential priority?

David Beckmann: Well, it comes back to us. It’s got to be a priority for us.

Daniel Pawlus: Right.

David Beckmann: I see our elected leaders. I think, on both sides of the aisle, these are good people but they are very responsive to what the voters want and I don’t think hungry people are really a priority to active voters. They’re hearing cut taxes, get taxes lower. They’re hearing don’t cut programs from the middle-class. Then right now every lobbyist in the world has descended on Washington to try to influence the decisions over the next few months. People like us need to say, “Look, hungry and poor people are important to me. Don’t take it out on them.”

Lillian Daniel: I think one of the issues about identifying hunger in America is that a lot of voters look around and they say, “I don’t see hungry people. I see an obesity problem. I see other issues. I can’t believe that one in five households are hungry.” Can you unpack that for us?

David Beckmann: The incidence of obesity is actually higher among low-income people and it’s often the same folks. So for people in our country, the kind of hunger that’s very widespread is intermittent hunger. People eat cheap food if they don’t have much money and then at the end of the month they run out. So especially moms, they may protect their kids so they may go for days without virtually any food. When they get food, then they may binge eat. And little kids who don’t get enough food have their metabolism messed up for the rest of their lives, so that they are likely to get obese. There is a lot of hunger in our country and, ironically, it’s sometimes the people who look fat.

Lillian Daniel: And is there also the issue of food deserts, that there are certain urban areas, for example, that don’t have a grocery store where you can get nutritious food? How does that play into it?

David Beckmann: Yes, that’s part of it. But the main thing is people don’t have money. If people in those neighborhoods had money, the grocery stores would go there. That’s the problem. People run out of money and if you run out of money. . .you’ve got to pay your rent; if you’ve got a cell phone, you’ve got to keep the cell phone. You can skimp on food for four, five or six days.

Daniel Pawlus: The point that Lillian is making is interesting to me. You and I were talking about this briefly before. It feels a little abstract, okay? The work you do is so important on the front lines in Washington, D.C. And I know you’re asking all of us.  The story about Mike Huck was fantastic on a local level. Why is this still so difficult to get and jump on board with? You on the front lines of the Washington process, writing letters to Congressmen, can you help me understand and make that more personal because it seems like a wonderful intellectual thing to do, but just hard to get to.

David Beckmann: I do think that’s part of the problem. People would like to go to the soup kitchen and ladle soup to somebody that they see. But, in fact, advocacy affects hungry people by the millions. It was brought home to me a few years ago. I have two adopted sons and when my older boy searched for his birth mother, she right away joined Bread for the World. I was thinking, what’s this about? Well, she Googled us and she saw that Bread for the World members fight for the national nutrition programs. When she was pregnant with Andrew she didn’t have very much money and she used one of the national nutrition programs to provide nutritious food for the baby who became my son. So if anybody wants to see a real person who benefited from advocacy for hungry people, here I am. My son is wonderfully bright and creative and healthy. He might not be quite as bright if she hadn’t been able to use the national nutrition program.

Lillian Daniel: I think that puts a wonderful human face to the political issue, but do you ever run into resistance from religious organizations and faith communities who say, look, we want to collect food, we want to dole out the soup, but writing letters to Congress, that crosses a line into the world of the political? How do answer that?

Daniel Pawlus: Are you talking about the separation of church and state piece here?

Lillian Daniel: Exactly. And asking people to take up an offering of letters to Congress, for example, around a particular farm bill. How do you negotiate that?

David Beckmann: Actually, I think nowadays leaders of faith groups and charities all get, or many of them get, the notion that if we’re serious about helping hungry people you’ve got to speak up for the poor. So food banks and lots of churches are involved in that. I think at the level of the leadership it’s not an issue now. Some other people may be resistant. But then I just think, the logic is clear. For Christians, Muslims and Jews it is biblical. The God of the Bible cares about nations and laws, not just about how we behave as individuals. So if we’re just thinking about, oh, I’m going to help somebody in an individual way, that’s not consistent with an understanding of God who is big, the God of history who judges the nations by how we treat poor and hungry people.

Daniel Pawlus: Can you integrate those two things, David? By that I mean, you’re talking with politicians and lobbyists in Washington, D.C., that have agendas that they are responsible for. In your conversations with these people is there some biblical language, some religious language, that you have with them to discuss the reality of this incredible problem?

David Beckmann: Sure, but it depends on who it is. A group of religious leaders recently met with President Obama for forty minutes.

Daniel Pawlus: Tell us a little bit more about that.

David Beckmann: He’s a man of faith, so we started out by asking if we could pray for him and we ended up with the head of the Lutheran church, who read a passage from the New Testament about not neglecting to do good. So we started and ended with God. In fact, the president himself talked about protecting the “least of these.” I was struck. It just came up as part of the conversation. There is nothing in the Bible about food stamps, but I think there is a lot in the Bible about poor people. There is a short step from what the Bible says about justice for poor people to food stamps or other programs of assistance.

Lillian Daniel: So do you think there is any possibility with everything President Obama faces that perhaps he could be the president who champions this cause and lets it be in his top five?

David Beckmann: I think it depends on us. Right now, obviously, the Republicans control a majority of the House. The president doesn’t run the country by himself. And, wonderfully, we have a democracy where we really do run the country. If people of faith in this country get out of the pew and, in fact, let their elected representatives know that they want to see the progress that’s possible for hungry and poor people, struggling people in our own country and around the world, right now could be the time when we make changes that in five years from now we could have dramatically less hunger in our country. And in ten, fifteen years from now we could have dramatically less hunger in the world.

Daniel Pawlus: I’ll ask you kind of a nuanced question about positioning because I’m sure you think about this all the time. You talk about hunger and then you talk about poverty and they are clearly interrelated, but is there a more effective way to have a conversation with people about this or do you have to talk about both in that connection to really help drive this home?

David Beckmann: It’s kind of the same thing. I tend to talk about both because I think when we hear hunger we think, oh, I’ve got to help. And also for religious people it’s the man in the desert, feeding the five thousand, give us this day our daily bread, so hunger pulls us in. But sometimes when you talk about hunger we think, oh, I’ll give somebody a bowl of soup. But that doesn’t solve the problem for very long. When you talk about poverty, then you know I’ve got to help that guy get a job. That’s the best solution to hunger. So when you talk about hunger and poverty together, I think it brings people in but then focuses on helping people get up on their feet and feed their own kids. That’s what we’ve got to do.

Lillian Daniel: Very briefly, from your own faith background and upbringing, what inspired you to devote your life to this cause?

David Beckmann: Well, I’m a Lutheran. I was baptized as an infant. Really that was true in my day. From before I learned how to speak, I knew that God loved me. I think I’m deeply grounded in God’s love and forgiveness, and I just don’t think you can bathe in the love and forgiveness of God and then not be somewhat responsive when people have trouble.

Lillian Daniel: That’s a beautiful way to close our interview. Thank you.

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