Thought for the Week: End hunger fast
Ian Kirk-Smith reflects on fasting and famine
Quakers throughout Britain took part in a national day of fasting on 4 April. They were supporting the End Hunger Fast campaign, which was launched on Ash Wednesday to draw public attention to the fact that half a million people go hungry in Britain today.
A call for immediate action on welfare, wages and food markets – three of the biggest contributors to the hunger crisis – was made in an open letter published in late February. It was signed by more than twenty-seven Anglican bishops, leaders from the Catholic, United Reformed and Methodist churches and Quakers.
The End Hunger Fast campaign states that hunger is a ‘moral and religious’ question. Friends have thrown their weight behind the concern. They also did so more than one hundred and fifty years ago – in a different situation. The concern was, for Friends then, also a ‘moral and religious’ question.
In Ireland a historic project has just been initiated to commemorate those who came to the assistance of Irish people during the famine of the 1840s.
Jimmy Deenihan, minister of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht in the government of the Republic of Ireland, spoke at the launch of the project: ‘The famine casts a shadow to this day. More than one million people died and one million more emigrated. The population of Ireland, close to 8.5 million in 1845, fell to 6.6 million by 1851.’
Every year thousands attend famine commemorations those who died and emigrated. He added: ‘However, in times of great adversity, we can also find extraordinary acts of generosity or heroism by people who, against all odds, tried to help those who were suffering. It is important that we remember these people, many of who may have been forgotten or overlooked; for this reason, the committee has launched a project called “Heroes of the Great Irish Famine”.’
The first group he mentioned were the Religious Society of Friends: ‘The Quakers – or the Society of Friends – were one such group that did much to help. They established soup kitchens, pioneered farming methods and highlighted the reality on the ground, which encouraged donations nationally and internationally.’
Other groups who contributed were the Native American Choctaw Nation, even though they faced awful challenges. In 1847 the Choctaw Nation collected $170 for Irish famine relief. It was an incredible sum at the time. In 1831 the Choctaws had been forcibly removed from their ancestral lands in Mississippi and faced hunger and death themselves.
The Muslim Abdul Mejid Khan, sultan of the Ottoman Empire, donated £1,000 and sent three ships with food supplies to Drogheda. The Jewish community in New York raised hundreds of dollars for famine relief. The Committee of Coloured Citizens in Philadelphia did likewise. It was delivered to Ireland by Frederick Douglass, the leading anti-slavery campaigner.
Friends, in their relief work during the famine, never tried to convert anyone. Their charity was given with ‘no strings attached’. This is part of the reason their reputation is so high in Ireland today. They saw ‘that of God’ in people. They acted, with others, out of a moral and religious concern and from a non-judgemental position. Some at the time, sadly, did not. The stigmatisation and stereotyping of the poor, highlighted today by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, has a long history.
‘The whole British argument in the famine was that the poor are poor because of a character defect’, Christine Kinealy, a professor of Irish studies and director of Ireland’s Great Hunger Institute at Quinnipiac University, has written. She added: ‘It’s a dangerous, mean-spirited and tired argument.’
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