Faith and Food - our vision

Food is essential to our lives. Its production and distribution affect us all - often in ways that are unjust as well as detrimental to the environment. But food can also help us express who we are and what we value: it can be the ‘glue’ for relationships and serve as tokens of love. And for Christians a meal – where we share bread and wine – is our central act of worship. Food for us symbolises God’s sustaining love and in the Lord’s prayer we ask God to ‘Give us this day our daily bread’.

Christians have been at the forefront of some of the major debates about food - particularly in relation to fair trade - and have helped develop some of the solutions. But new food problems are coming to the fore - in particular the rising price of food and the increasing costs of producing it, the progressive destruction of the environment due to globalised industrial farming and increasing levels of obesity, even in developing countries. Christians need to think more widely and deeply about food.

For these reasons a group of Christians from different denominations living in Oxford and close by came together to organize a conference on Saturday 28th February 2009

A report of that conference can be found here