"Please sir, may I have some more?"

In an interesting development today, the USDA has chosen to cease use of the word "hunger" in their annual report that details Americans' access to food, choosing instead to replace it with the descriptive phrase "very low food security."

You can read the full story in today's Washington Post.

Though it may be difficult, one might be able to see the reasoning of the USDA concerning the matter. They may have made the change so as to better categorize and inform themselves and the public as to the diversity of poverty levels in our country. It serves a reasonable scientific and academic purpose, in one sense, to cease using a word whose definition has become too vague (according to the USDA's statement), and to thus divide Americans into those with "food security" and "food insecurity," and then those with "food insecurity without hunger" (those that usually end up with some food on the table, though still not at a sustainable level, no matter where it comes from) and "food insecurity with hunger" (those who usually do not end up with food on the table at all). The division, I can fathom, would serve some purposes, at least in that it may give us a better view of where those that are categorically defined as living in poverty and suffering from hunger, but who still get fed on a somewhat-regular basis, are getting their food from (and how they are in fact getting it); and thus show us as well what element is missing for those who are not being fed on a regular basis, or even at all.

On the other hand, it seems possible that the change in vocabulary could easily lead one to innocently and subconsciously disregard the various problems of poverty, specifically the hunger problem that exists throughout America and throughout the world. David Beckmann, of Bread for the World, was quoted in the Washington Post article as saying that even with the change, which may be seen by some as masking the problem, we "cannot hide the reality of hunger among our citizens." Indeed, it should be our hope that the change in vocabulary will not cause the people of the world--especially those who are heavily influenced by such studies, namely our lawmakers in Washington--to become increasingly numbed to the consistent social and economic inequality in our country illuminated by such studies.

Tony Campolo reflects on Homosexuality and the Church

I came upon this interesting comment by Tony Campolo a few days ago, concerning the events over the past few weeks surrounding Ted Haggard, now ex-pastor of New Life Church in Colorado Springs and ex-President of the NAE (National Association of Evangelicals), at the God's Politics blog formed as a joint venture between Sojourners and Beliefnet:

I have heard so many of my colleagues in ministry express deep concerns over what this scandal will do to the image of the evangelical movement, but I have heard little concern among us for how all of this will impact those Christian gays and lesbians that we know. They are in our churches. They teach in our Sunday schools and sing in our choirs. Most of them are closeted brothers and sisters who suffer in ways that are impossible for the rest of us to even imagine. They are good people who do not take drugs or visit prostitutes. Will the ugliness of this sorry mess feed a diabolical stereotype of them, which is too often circulated in our churches by unkind preachers who have little, if any, understanding of homosexuals?

You can read the rest of the post here.

This part of Campolo's post stuck out to me, for a number of reasons. After hitting on a number of tough points in his post--among them, that people of faith must extend grace and compassion not only to Haggard but to his homosexual accuser as well, Greg Jones--Campolo then comes to this quote, focusing the conversation on the massive "elephant in the room" for many Christians today, which is the issue of how one may exactly come to better understand and relate to our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters, both inside and outside the four walls of the church.

The truest and most needed part of Campolo's commentary is his caution against accepting the typical stereotype of people within the gay and lesbian communities as being drug users and sexually promiscuous; a basis for easy bridge-building that some would say needs to be embraced to a far greater degree by many within the evangelical church today, beginning with those who find themselves in the pulpit on Sunday morning making use of such stereotypes in their prophetic oratory.

The more I reflect upon it, I think the love we must show to our most disinherited neighbors, no matter their race, ethnicity, or sexual identity, begins with the compassion that knows one's story; their triumphs and their falls, and the ways in which, as the theologian Howard Thurman once said, their "backs are continually against the wall." I feel like once we begin to develop such an ability in reference to those whom we so often do not associate with because of their perceived place in society, we begin to see the doors of conversation open wide and the facades we often put up begin to crumble mightily, leading the way to the formation of more authentic Christian community.