Unitarian Universalists and Hunger

It’s interesting to me. We say we want to grow as a movement. We know we have a message that is salvific. That is, we believe that our core message – the worth and dignity of each and the interconnectedness of all – can save lives. Yet among the social justice issues that we’ve chosen as priorities for our advocacy, one that effects 49 million people in this country – food insecurity and hunger – is nowhere to be found.

I am personally and professionally grateful that the UUA Stands on the Side of Love when it comes to the concerns of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons. I wouldn’t want that to change. We are the only mainstream (more or less) denomination that is doing that work so boldly and so publicly.

But it does seem to me that if we truly want to grow, then we need to make sure that our actions and advocacy are relevant to a larger pool of people. Okay, yes, immigration is another great issue with which to be concerned. In fact, there’s not an issue that I’d want to remove from our list of priorities.

Still, these are tough economic times. As of 2008, according to the USDA, 49.1 million people in this country were living in food insecure households. This was up from 36.2 million just a year earlier, in 2007. And we can bet the number is even more staggering now. As of 2008, twenty-two and a half percent of all children were living in food insecure homes, and over a quarter of Black and Hispanic households experienced food insecurity.

I hope that one of the outcomes of our current Congregational Study/Action Issue, Ethical Eating: Food and Environmental Justice, will be that hunger gets onto our list of advocacy priorities. But I’m dreaming of something even bigger. I’m wondering why the UUA doesn’t have a program or an office dedicated to hunger-relief and other issues related to food and faith.

The Presbyterians do. The Episcopalians do. The United Methodists do. And then there is Mazon, a Jewish Response to Hunger.

So, why don’t we?

I know, I know. Someone’s going to say, “Hey, other groups are already doing that work. We want to do something that sets us apart.” To which I would reply, “Hey, you know what? You and I both know it's really not about marketing. It’s really about people - in this case, people, including children, who go to bed hungry at night and don't know from where their next meal will come." And, by the way, some of them are already Unitarian Universalists.