Food

When I teach courses such as “Religion and Food” or “Religion and Sustainability,” the issue of GMOs, or genetically modified organisms, inevitably arises. Most students are curious about GMOs, and they might have learned about GMOs and arguments for and against in other classes, such as anthropology, bio-ethics, or plant sciences. Others have seen the inflated rhetoric about GMOs that appears in the media: “GMOs are the only way to feed the world” or “GMOs are frankenfoods,” to paraphrase some of the more hyperbolic language. Many of my students come to class with strong opinions about GMOs – one way or the other – and the classroom debates become intense because these students deeply care about the issue. Students planning on careers in agriculture, for example, recognize that how we understand and utilize agricultural technologies will shape their future careers and economic futures. Similarly, students concerned about the environment understand these debates as affecting their own health and also that of the earth’s plants, animals, and people. In any course that addresses the intersection of religion, food, and agri-

culture, we could discuss a number of issues, including food ritual practices or how choosing to eat locally resembles religious conversion, as Ben Zeller suggests in “Quasi-Religious American Foodways” (Zeller 2014). I cannot cover all of the possible issues in one chapter, so instead I will use discussions about GMOs as a means of thinking through both the issues of GMOs and the varied positions that people bring to food and food production. Arguments about GMOs are a bellwether of sorts, illustrating the different issues that emerge at the intersection of religion, food, and agriculture and signaling the many relevant theological, social justice, and environmental concerns. My goal here is not to adjudicate every claim, but to disentangle them to demonstrate how the various strands shed light on the different concerns being voiced. In short, discussing GMOs provides opportunities to explore a range of issues related to religion and food. Proponents of these agricultural technologies tend to link critiques of

GMOs together, as though critics speak with one voice. However, critics of GMOs have radically dissimilar rationales for why they object. For example,

some critics have theological concerns about “playing God” or mixing species, and others worry that small-scale farmers will not have access to these expensive and sophisticated bio-technologies, placing their critiques in a socio-economic framework. The statement “politics makes strange bedfellows” seems appropriate here because both opponents and proponents of GMOs include populations, e.g. Evangelicals and environmentalists, who otherwise do not share similar political, religious, and/or environmental views. For example, a 2014 Pew survey showed that 50 percent of white Evangelicals and 68 percent of black Protestants (of whom two-thirds identify as Evangelical) viewed GM foods as unsafe (Funk and Rainie 2015; Zylstra 2015). While they might share this distrust of GM foods with environmentalists, Evangelicals tend not to self-identify as environmentalists, nor do these populations tend to agree on broader social issues. In both land grant universities where I have taught, Iowa State University and the University of Florida, I have heard scientists from the agricultural college argue that the problem is one of communication; that is, if they could simply craft a better message, then the public would accept GMOs. Yet, what message would they craft, and to whom? People debate GMOs using different frameworks, ranging from theology to

health to political economy, and all of these frames shape how we address the topic of GMOs in the context of religious studies. These broad discussions also shape how we approach the study of religion itself. For example, discussions about religion, food, and agriculture help us push beyond ritual and theology to the more holistic and material dimensions of religion so that we might understand how religion, food, and agriculture intersect across the broad spectrum of human and social life. For example, how do our food choices fit into frameworks that include political economy, social justice, and the environment? In what follows, I will begin by discussing the term “GMO” and the role of

GMOs in agriculture and food production. Then, I will explore debates and dialogues that surround GMOs, choosing those discussions that open up important areas of dialogue in the field of religion, food, and agriculture. As above, I do not intend to resolve the contentious issues of GMOs, but instead to expose the different fault lines in how religion, food, and agriculture relate to one another.