A Silent Tsunami: The Global Food Crisis
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Date: 3 July 2008
A Moral Emergency
Every major faith tradition in the world tells its followers they have a moral obligation to "feed the hungry." But with food prices continuing to skyrocket, that imperative has been tough to follow. The spikes have set off protests from Haiti to Indonesia, and the poorest of the poor –those billion or so people who have trouble filling their stomachs even in normal times – are getting desperate.
David Beckman and Marie Dennis tell us what people of faith need to do to combat this crisis that the UN has called a “silent tsunami.”
David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World
Marie Dennis, director of the Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns
Commentary: I Can Eat Chocolate For Breakfast
Begins at 22:50
Jessica Swift reflects on the sacredness of food and her privilege as someone who isn't hungry.
Jessica Swift, Vermont-based writer and editor
I Can Eat Chocolate For Breakfast appears in a new collection of essays on food and spirituality, Bread Body Spirit: Finding the Sacred in Food, edited by Alice Peck.
God in the White House
Begins at 25:37
From John F. Kennedy's declaration that a President's religion is "his own private affair" to George W. Bush's remark that "God wants me to be president," Presidents have long made pronouncements about personal faith. Randall Balmer explains why voters expect their commander-in-chiefs to wear their religion on their sleeves.
Randall Balmer, author of God in the White House: A History, and professor of religious history at Barnard College
It All Started With An Apple...
Begins at 40:03
Perhaps no Christian doctrine is more contentious than original sin. The idea that humans are fundamentally awry has been questioned by theologians for centuries, and some Christian groups deny it altogether. Alan Jacobs traces the history of the so-called "inherited curse" and finds that it has shaped the politics and culture of the last two thousand years.
