Broad Religious Support for Faith-Based Charities

To the Editor:

Thank you for Paul Demko’s informative article (“Faith-Based Charities to the Rescue?”) and Thomas J. Harvey’s insightful commentary (“Solutions to Poverty Must Be Based on More Than Faith,” My View) in the December 11 issue of The Chronicle.

Our “Waste Not Want Not” research in connection with supplying 50,000 pounds of food per day to 1,000 churches and charity agencies across the western half of Michigan suggests that the distinction between church and “the world” in social services has been badly blurred since well before welfare reform.

Many faith-based food programs have drawn their policies and procedures directly from their area’s welfare programs instead of from Scripture, particularly with respect to how often to provide help to people, how to screen them for eligibility for help, and what and how much help to give them. As a result, those programs are significantly less effective and cost-effective than they easily could become by more closely reflecting their faiths’ teachings in their operations.

To aid groups in evaluating their practices per Scripture, we have assembled and have posted on our Waste Not Want Not Web site (http://www.wmgleaners.org) all that the Jewish Tanakh, Christian Bible, Islamic Koran, and Hindu Upanishads have to say about poverty, hunger, helping, and charity. As we get to it, we will be adding collections from Buddhism, Taoism, and other faiths. We welcome visitors to this information anytime.

John M. Arnold
Executive Director
Second Harvest Gleaners Food Bank of Western Michigan
Grand Rapids, Mich.