Project:
Can Religious Congregations Satisfy Those Who Hunger and Thirst for Justice? An Assessment of Faith-based Food Assistance Programs in Rural Mississippi
Year: 2000
Research Center: Southern Rural Development Center, Mississippi State University
Investigator: Bartkowski, John P., and Helen A. Regis
Institution: Mississippi State University
Project Contact:
John P. Bartkowski
Assistant Professor of Sociology
Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and
Social Work
Mississippi State University
Mississippi State, MS 39762
Phone: 662-325-8621; Fax: 662-325-4564
bartkowski@soc.msstate.edu
Summary:
In the wake of welfare reform, many States have
considered utilizing local religious communities as a
point of social service delivery for relief previously
offered through State entitlement programs.
“Charitable Choice,” Section 104 of the 1996 Personal
Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation
Act, forbids States that contract for social services
with local voluntary associations from discriminating
against faith-based organizations seeking to provide
such services. In this study, Bartkowski and Regis
examine the current food assistance strategies of a
heterogeneous sample of religious communities in
Mississippi’s Golden Triangle Region. Their study
situates rural Mississippi’s faith-based food assistance
efforts within the broader context of congregational
poverty relief programs. Where appropriate, they draw
comparisons between faith-based food assistance and
the service delivery mechanisms utilized in public
assistance programs.
The authors investigate the social processes underlying
faith-based food assistance through their analysis of
over 600 pages of transcribed indepth interviews. These
data, collected from 1997 to 1999, were culled from
religious leaders representing 30 local congregations
in rural northeast Mississippi. The authors also
conducted observational research at a subsample of four
religious congregations and tracked various para-church
food assistance and relief efforts on the local scene.
They set the context for the qualitative investigation by
providing an overview of Charitable Choice legislation
and a summary snapshot of social life in rural
Mississippi. They then analyze four key organizational
strategies through which rural Mississippi congregations
provide food assistance to food-insecure populations.
These congregational relief strategies include:
- intensive food assistance, entailing sustained interpersonal
contact between congregants and local
needy populations (e.g., highly active onsite food
pantries, particularly those complemented by a hot
meal program);
- intermittent direct food assistance, consisting of
congregational programs that foster periodic contact
between churchgoers and the hungry (e.g., holiday
food baskets);
- para-church food initiatives, involving collaboration
among local congregations (e.g., food provided
through interfaith relief agencies); and
- distant missions of food provision, where local
congregations sponsor group mission trips to
severely disadvantaged areas of a State, a region, or
another country (e.g., weeklong food provision and
poverty relief undertaken in the Mississippi Delta,
Appalachia, or Central America).
The authors focus on the distinguishing features of
food assistance strategies and the congregational
contexts in which they are used. They also highlight
congregational motivations for adopting particular
food relief strategies, and evaluate the advantages and
disadvantages of each, as follows:
Intensive food relief, which places the provider and
recipient of relief in a sustained relationship with one
another, often challenges social barriers (e.g., racial
divisions and class-based hierarchies). However, intensive
food relief requires a considerable investment of
time and resources, leading some congregations to
prefer intermittent direct food assistance. Given its
more bounded timeframe, intermittent direct food
assistance can provide short-term relief from episodic
food insecurity. However, this kind of assistance does
not facilitate the same enduring social bonds as intensive
engagement with the poor. Para-church collaborations
can provide food assistance efficiently (i.e., in a
centralized fashion) to local disadvantaged populations—
particularly those facing short-term food insecurity.
Yet if they operate as liaison organizations,
para-church agencies can reinforce social distance
between local congregants and the poor. Distant
missions of food provision give congregants direct
exposure to poverty and hunger and personalize
poverty. However, given their emphasis on geographical
travel and short-term spiritual pilgrimage, distant
missions do not guarantee a transposition of social
action into one’s home community.
The authors argue that if religious communities are to
become more involved in local food assistance efforts,
it is imperative that policymakers understand the range
of food assistance strategies that congregations have
chosen and the social context in which such programs
are undertaken. Government officials and community
development specialists should also be aware of the
cultural meanings that religious communities invest in
food and of the organizational motivation behind the
particular food assistance strategies they adopt.
Bartkowski and Regis conclude that religious communities
can be a valuable ally in society’s effort to
redress food insecurity. At the same time, they urge
that faith-based food assistance initiatives implemented
under Charitable Choice be structured with an
awareness of the opportunities and the limitations
likely to accompany such programs.