Last week I attended a talk titled “Food and Religious Identity” by Professor David Freidenreich, which was a distillation of his book “Foreigners and Their Food: Constructing Otherness in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic Law”. Professor Freidenreich spoke about how religious communities have used food to create a sense of ‘us and them’ between their adherents and those outside the community. Why use food to do this? Food is an integral mode of fostering community and unity, as people sit around a table, they share life together, speak together, and get to know eachother. Therefore, keeping people from eating together fosters a sense of otherness.

In the Mosaic Law, God made it clear that the Jews were his chosen people, set apart from the nations, so it made sense to have food laws which emphasized this point. Deuteronomy 14:12 reads “you are a people holy to the Lord your God. Out of all the peoples on the face of the earth, the Lord has chosen you to be his treasured possession.” Some foods were clean, and others unclean, just as the Jews were chosen by God and other groups weren’t. That wasn’t the end of the story, though. God promised Abraham, the founding father of the Jews, that “through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.” [Genesis 22:18]. Christians believe that this refers to Jesus of Nazareth, who was God’s son incarnate as a man, and died to take away the sins of the world which separate people from God, thereby restoring people’s broken relationship with God. Christianity is unique in its universality: Jesus’ sacrifice covers the sins of all who believe, and all have equal access to God. To illustrate this, the Apostle Peter received a vision where God commanded Him to eat all types of animals that were unclean by the Jewish Law, thus signifying that salvation was for all people, not just the Jews. Therefore, the early church taught a doctrine of openness and acceptance towards all peoples. In fact, the Apostle Paul wrote to the church in Galatia that “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” [Galatians 3:28]

With this in mind, I found it remarkable that as time went on much of the church began to go back on this core value of openness by trying to create barriers between ‘Christian’ and ‘pagan’ through food. In particular, church authorities portrayed Jews as ‘anti-Christians’, so encouraged the consumption of foods that Jews were forbidden in the Mosaic Law to eat, such as pork. It seems like proponents of these ideals lost touch with some central doctrines of Christianity: that all are saved by grace apart from works, that salvation is for everyone who believes, and that Christians should be living to spread this good news and demonstrate a Christlike love to all who will hear. I find it encouraging that in recent times (particularly after WWII), the church as a whole has opened up to interfaith interaction, and now seeks to share life with those outside of itself. I hope that all embrace the dining table as a place of community in the midst of diversity. Let’s eat together!