‘You can vote with your feet if you want’. Users’ responses to religious services in the context of food charity in a Finnish city

Abstract

Drawing on an ethnographic study of the food charity venues in a Finnish city, the article explores how food assistance recipients respond to the religious services they are presented with when seeking material assistance from a religious organization. The study shows that the religious services integrated into the food delivery system are rarely directly criticized, but rather responded to favourably. Any criticism of them is expressed through tacit resistance. The reciprocal relationship between receiving food and participating in religious practice remains mostly implicit, the food recipients’ responses to the religious services being framed by the notion of choice, which undermines the possibility of open criticism of the integration of religious services into the food delivery programmes.

Introduction

Religion has the capacity to promote altruism and motivate action towards positive changes in society and the lives of deprived people. However, regarding the social programmes of churches and other actors with religious ties, religion can also be a source of conflict (e.g. Cadge et al., 2011; Pessi, 2009). The position of religion is especially complex in the context of the assistance work targeted at people in vulnerable positions in society and in contexts characterized by voluntary benevolence. In contemporary society, where everyday practices and routines are to a large extent mediated by a consumer culture that emphasizes the value of freedom and the centrality of choice, and where religion has moved into the realm of individual choice, people are considered to be entitled to decide whether, where and to what degree they want to be exposed to religious content and take part in religious practices (Gauthier et al., 2013; Pessi, 2013; Sassatelli, 2001). Everyday choices entail challenges for people with restricted resources (Bauman, 1998; Lorenz, 2015; Wilska, 2001). Such challenges experienced by people living in weak social and economic situations have been mainly studied in relation to their material consumption and consumer restrictions (e.g. Hill and Gaines, 2007; Riches and Silvasti, 2014; Salonen, 2014; Tarasuk and Eakin, 2005). Less attention has been paid to their use of intangible goods, such as religious services.

This study explores how the users of charitable food assistance respond to the religious services they are offered when they seek food from a religious organization.

Since the early 1990s, Finland has witnessed the proliferation of food assistance across the country (Silvasti and Karjalainen, 2014). From the beginning, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland (ELCF) has been both a major distributer of food assistance and a participant in public debates on poverty and social exclusion. In addition, numerous smaller religious organizations, churches and parishes have taken up food assistance as part of their social and charitable programmes (Hiilamo, 2012; Ohisalo et al., 2014; Salonen, 2014; Silvasti and Karjalainen, 2014). However, little is known about the religious content of these programmes and how the users of the assistance respond to them.

In Finland, despite the country’s relatively high church membership rate (77% of the population were members of the ELCF in 2011), active religious participation and attendance at worship services is relatively uncommon. The general attitude towards religion can be described as moderate: the majority define themselves as somewhat religious or neither religious nor non-religious. For many, the work of the church in helping the disadvantaged and defending the poor and the marginalized is an important reason for church membership (Church Research Institute, 2013: 40–41, 52). However, studies from Nordic countries suggest that while the participation of churches and other religious organizations in welfare provision is appreciated, integrating religious elements into social programmes is not without problems, and religious organizations may well be expected to keep their religious identity in the background (Angell, 2010; Edgardh and Petersson, 2010; Lehtinen, 2013).

In contrast to the institutionalized food charity systems in many other countries, the Finnish field of food charity is scattered and publicly uncoordinated, and cooperation with public actors is uncommon (Ohisalo et al., 2014). The food assistance organizations are free to decide how to organize their work, including whether and how they present their religious identity in the assistance programmes. In contrast, due to their economic predicament, food charity recipients have a more limited ability to choose whether or not to obtain food assistance (Ohisalo and Laihiala, 2014: 101; Siiki, 2008: 156). The disproportion of power between the givers and recipients of food charity makes the integration of religious elements into these programmes potentially problematic.

Food charity: an overview of previous research

Recent decades have witnessed the proliferation of food assistance in many affluent societies, and recent transnational research comparisons have demonstrated an ever-increasing supply of and demand for food charity worldwide (Caraher and Cavicchi, 2014; Silvasti and Riches, 2014). Since the seminal works of Riches (1986) and Poppendieck (1998), food assistance has been studied abundantly, especially in its relation to welfare policies, the human right to food and household food insecurity (e.g. Loopstra and Tarasuk, 2012; Rideout et al., 2007; Tarasuk et al., 2014). Further, the institutionalization of food assistance has raised critical questions concerning the food system (e.g. Lorenz, 2012; Salonen, 2014; Tarasuk et al., 2014).

In Finland, the rise and persistence of food charity has been considered an illustration of the disconnection of Finnish society from the Nordic ideal of the universal welfare state and as an indication that general economic improvement does not protect all members of society from poverty (Hiilamo, 2012; Silvasti and Karjalainen, 2014). The deep economic crisis of the early 1990s led to a neo-liberal turn in welfare policies and increased participation from the churches in the provision of welfare (Gauthier et al., 2011: 293; Kuivalainen and Niemelä, 2010). Currently, hundreds of places throughout Finland provide food assistance for over 20,000 people on a weekly basis (Ohisalo et al., 2014).

Even though food assistance has a considerable impact on the individual lives of its recipients, little research has been conducted on the subjective views and experiences of food recipients (Caraher and Cavicchi, 2014). What we do know is that many food assistance recipients live in poverty and that for most of them food assistance is necessary for subsistence (Ohisalo and Laihiala, 2014: 101). In addition, for some clients, food banks provide a social space in which they can spend time and meet other people (Lorenz, 2012; Siiki, 2008). Food assistance use is also an emotional issue (Siiki, 2008; Tarasuk and Eakin, 2005). A study by Van der Horst et al. (2014) found that gratitude was an expected emotion in the food charity context. However, the most prominent emotion expressed by the receivers of food assistance was shame, which was related to the assistance context and their interaction with the food providers, as well as to their understanding of their position in the social hierarchy.

The religious dimension of the assistance can be considered part of the social and emotional fabric of food charity. However, despite the strong presence of religious organizations in the field, research on the experiences of food assistance users has hardly touched upon the subject. An exception is a study of the food aid programmes for homeless people in Tucson, Arizona (Sager and Stephens, 2005; Sager, 2011), which found that the service organizations integrated various religious elements into their programmes. The users of these services, however, were mostly concerned about fulfilling their immediate material needs. Two-thirds of the respondents reacted negatively to the sermons that were integrated into the food aid programmes and considered them coercive and condescending. The clients valued respect and choice with regard to both food and religion. These findings underscore the problematic nature of integrating religious practices into food aid programmes. However, they are restricted to a particular US context and the topic merits further study in other settings. As a religiously homogeneous yet secularized Nordic country, where welfare provision is generally seen as a secular sphere and religion as a private matter, Finland provides an interesting point of comparison.

The research setting, data and analysis

The study is based on data from ethnographic research on food assistance organizations in the city of Tampere. With some 220,000 inhabitants, Tampere is one of the biggest cities in Finland and the largest inland city in the Nordic countries. Like Finland in general, the city is religiously relatively homogeneous: 77% of the population within the diocese of Tampere were members of the ELCF in 2011. Tampere has suffered more from the latest economic crisis than Finnish cities on average. The unemployment rate, income inequality and the proportion of low-income people have remained high, and the number of people applying for income support has increased in recent years (Roivainen et al., 2011: 11). The ELCF parishes in the city were among the first in Finland to deliver emergency food to people in need, and diverse non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have carried out food deliveries since the mid-1990s. According to a recent survey conducted in the city, most food assistance users obtain food on a regular basis, at least once a month. A typical food assistance user is unemployed or a pensioner and is middle-aged or elderly. The majority live alone, and most of the families with children are households with a single adult. Low income is a severe problem among recipients of food assistance, and many of them regularly use social work services (Koivula et al., 2013; Salonen, 2014: 5–6).

The study was carried out in places that distribute free food to people living in poor economic and social situations with little or no on-the-spot eligibility assessment. At the time of the study, four such places were in operation. All of them were affiliated with Christian parishes, organizations or individuals. The role of religion in the food assistance practices in the four venues – in the representations of the organizers and from the point of view of the assistance recipients – is presented in more detail in a separate article (Salonen, forthcoming). That study revealed that the most important thing for the food recipients was the material aid. Yet when seeking material assistance from a charity food provider, the recipient was likely to encounter situations where there was an opportunity to take part in religious services. These results yielded the further question of how the food charity users responded to the religious elements that they encounter.

Three of the four organizations provided religious services for the food recipients, either occasionally or frequently. These services included, for example, prayers, religious songs, readings from the Bible and testimonies, and they lasted from fifteen minutes to one hour. At one place, the religious service was held only occasionally. The clients were invited to participate, but they were also allowed to wait in another room or outside, or arrive later. In this place, there was no specific time for receiving the assistance, but whenever there was food available it was placed on the tables of a drop-in centre so that the clients could take what they wanted and needed. Thus, the system encouraged the clients to spend time at the venue. At another place, a religious service was always held before the food delivery. Participation was voluntary, but those who attended the service received the food first. In this place the clients could choose what they wanted and needed from the food items available. Thus, participation in the religious service was related to the material benefit, as those who attended could choose first from a wider variety of food. Finally, at one place, the religious service was an integral part of the assistance program, and in principle, all the clients were expected to participate in a religious service in order to receive the assistance. People were required to arrive at a certain time, and a one-hour religious service took place before the food delivery.

The data consists of participant observation and interviews with the food assistance recipients. Between the spring of 2012 and the spring of 2013, I observed the four places on a regular basis. My position as a researcher was that of an observer as participant (Hammersley and Atkinson, 2007: 86). I observed the food deliveries from the perspective of the food recipients, concentrating on those occasions and places where the food recipients were present. I made my position as a researcher clear to the participants and emphasized that I did not represent any food assistance organization, any religious organization or any other authority. The observational notes (ca. 230 pages) comprise more than 250 hours of observation from around 100 food assistance occasions. To understand the food recipients’ experiences of the assistance, during the period of observation I interviewed 25 food assistance users. Eight of them were women and 13 men, their ages varied between 30 and 80, and they had varying backgrounds, such as being unemployed or homeless or being a pensioner. I interviewed people from all four places, and most of them had received food from more than one of these places.

The purpose of this study is to analyse the food recipients’ responses to the religious services. By ‘response’ I refer to an act of responding, verbal or behavioural, which conveys a reaction, attitude or outlook towards an issue. Attitudes in this study are not seen as personality features or individual properties but social, situational and constructed in interaction. Using both observational and interview data allowed me to take into account the situational nature of the ways people adhere to the social world and respond to what they encounter (Vesala and Rantanen, 2007). My prolonged presence in the research field enabled me to establish sound and trusting relationships with the informants and to unveil continuities and discrepancies between their publicly expressed attitudes and their everyday behaviour (Utriainen, 2002: 176, 185).

I analysed the data using interpretive, inductive methods, including content analysis and grounded theory. First, I explored what the food assistance users said about the religious services in the interviews and how they talked about them. Nine of the 25 interviewees took up religious themes unprompted. In the other interviews the theme was introduced by asking whether the interviewee had noticed the presence of any religious elements in these places and enquiring about their reflections on these elements and their own religious background and affiliations. The interview data contained 75 sections in which the interviewees expressed views concerning religious services. These were analysed using qualitative content analysis.

Second, the analysis of the observational data focused on what happened before, during and after the religious services, and how the food recipients related to these events. I compared and contrasted different people and different incidents, the same individuals with themselves on different occasions, and finally the ideas elicited in the different sources of data (Charmaz, 2000: 515). The analysis revealed discrepancies in the food assistance recipients’ responses to the religious services between the observational and interview data. This led to further analysis of the frames that governed the food charity users’ responses to the religious services. The findings of the analysis are presented in the subsequent sections.

Findings

The interviewees’ responses to religious services

The religious underpinning of the assistance was not a surprise to the food recipients. All the interviewees were aware that the agencies had religious affiliations. ‘It is all marked clearly on that door’, one interviewee summarized. Some of the interviewees described how religion was present in the food assistance places as a certain atmosphere generated by the workers. The religiousness of the place was not always considered visible, yet, as one interviewee stated, it could be sensed or felt. Religion was an evident part of the social space of the food assistance, and its presence was recognized by the clients.

For the interviewees, the religious services that took place in three of the four food assistance places were the most distinct manifestations of religion, and the services were well known to the food assistance users. Only four of the 25 interviewees had never participated in a religious service in relation to obtaining food assistance, and even these interviewees knew that these events existed and had visited a food assistance place where they could have attended a religious service. However, for the food recipients interviewed in this study, the most important reason for visiting the place was the material assistance, and the food bank was considered first and foremost an assistance place at which religious elements were only a background to the material aid. Only five of the interviewees explicitly stated that the religious content, such as religious songs or sermons, was a reason for their visits.

Although only a minority of the interviewees mentioned the religious content as an important reason for their visits, the majority considered that it was good in general for the food banks to arrange religious services alongside the food deliveries. Twenty interviewees expressed a positive attitude towards the religious services. One interviewee, for example, stated that besides food ‘you get to hear the word of God also – which is good; it calms the mind.’

Five of the interviewees based their positive attitudes on their religious upbringing at home or in school or on their personal religious convictions. For these respondents, participating in the religious services felt familiar, and the services served to support their existing beliefs and identities. One interviewee responded that she favoured the religious content because she considered herself ‘deep down a religious person’. Another interviewee explained how she longed for the religious songs and lessons which she had been used to as a child.

However, those participants who did not consider themselves to be personally religious and did not regard the religious services as an important part of the food provision activity also tended to respond to the services favourably. One interviewee described himself as ‘hard-headed’ when it came to religion. Nevertheless, he explained that it was still nice sometimes to listen to the religious services, ‘even though I told you that I’m not fully a believer’. A personal religious background or conviction was not a prerequisite for regarding the religious services positively, but those food charity users who did not consider themselves to be religious also appreciated the religious services as a meaningful social activity.

The interviewees further highlighted their positive attitude towards the religious services by distancing themselves from unappreciative views. One way to express a favourable attitude was to say that one was not bothered by or had nothing against the religious services. One interviewee said that he had ‘nothing against that, quite the opposite’. Similarly, another responded that ‘it doesn’t bother me’. In these examples, the interviewees highlighted their positive or neutral attitude towards the religious services by distancing themselves from any unappreciative views. Nevertheless, the latter example suggests that others might respond negatively to the services.

None of the interviewees expressed a completely negative attitude towards the religious services. However, five of the interviewees had had a negative experience of a specific aspect of the services or of the way religion was emphasized. For example, one interviewee had this to say about the style of some of the preachers:

What I dislike is that it is almost like they’re complaining how bad things used to be before: ‘I was a drunkard and my dad and mum used to bully me, and then I got religion and then everything is fine’. I mean, a bit like trying to get you to pity them, not to put too fine a point on it. Some of them, not all.

The interviewee targeted the criticism at particular situations and speakers, not to the presence of the religious services per se, and distinguished these experiences from his generally neutral view of the services by stating that it was ‘okay to listen to those things when it’s not bigoted or anything’. Another interviewee framed his negative attitude in the past tense. He described his first impression of one of the assistance providers as a ‘straight-laced sect’. However, he was quick to confirm that his views had changed since then. Such descriptions of past prejudices about the religious aspirations of the assistance places and explanations of how these biases have faded away over time do not challenge but rather underline the generally positive attitude towards the religious dimension of the activity.

A more negative tone appeared when the interviewees talked about how other people responded to these services. Eleven of the interviewees noted that some participants seemed to dislike the religious services. One interviewee said that she had taken food bags to her adult child, who did not want to come to the food bank herself because she did not want to listen to the religious part of the programme. Another commented that many people did not participate in the services: ‘it feels like some people, they always go away’. The negative views of others were carefully disassociated from the interviewee’s own positive outlook. For example, an interviewee pondered whether a nonreligious food bank existed for those people who might become irritated by the religious content, but then hastened to add: ‘of course it doesn’t matter to me, because I myself am happy to come here’.

Of course, not all other people were seen as responding negatively to the religious services, and the interviewees also noted that there were people among the clientele to whom the religious services seemed to be of great importance. Six interviewees noted that people generally responded to the services positively and participated in them actively. Even so, when criticism appeared, it was most often phrased as someone else’s opinion, not the interviewee’s own attitude. The notion of negative responses by others highlighted a positive attitude as the predominant response to the religious services in the food assistance context.

Tacit resistance in everyday occasions

An exploration of the religious services in the food assistance practices revealed both continuities and discrepancies in the way the food assistance recipients expressed their views of these services in the interviews and the way they responded to them in practice. In addition, the observations enabled a wider perspective on how participation in these services was negotiated in everyday occasions. One interviewee described his own observations of the religious services: ‘I always hear this kind of murmur from the crowd. That they’d like to get to eat faster. And they feel that it’s forced’. The participant observation allowed me to notice this ‘murmur’ and the behaviour of those whom the interviewees positioned as having a negative outlook on religious services and from whom they so eagerly distanced themselves.

Importantly, many of the everyday observations in the food assistance places supported the finding from the interviews that, for many, food charity places constituted an important social setting that offered not just food but also a religious or social programme. However, in contrast to the positive attitudes and active participation in the religious services, life in the food assistance places often testified to widespread indifference and disinterest towards these services. Some interviewees who expressed a positive outlook on the services in general hardly ever participated in practice. All in all, even though the general response to the services was positive, for many these services were personally relatively insignificant.

The ways dissent was negotiated in everyday situations echoed the predominance of the positive response towards the services, against which opposing voices had to be restrained. Dissenting opinions were not directly expressed but implied using humour, inattentiveness and, occasionally, tacit protest. The services were referred to by humorous euphemisms, and the negotiations over participation or non-participation in the religious services were framed with jokes that distanced the respondent from the religious activity without the need to voice explicit criticism. For example, one day, in one of the places, a group of men were sitting around a table in the drop-in centre and I heard the following conversation between them:

‘Well, soon it’s time for outdoor activities!’

‘Oh, what do you mean?’

‘Don’t you know? Today? In half an hour?’

The other men still did not seem to understand.

‘Well, the service! Outdoor activities!’

‘But don’t you think we ought to stay in and chant?’

‘No, that is exactly what I’m trying to avoid. I’ll just go before the chant session begins!’ This use of euphemisms and humorous expressions and framings recurred from time to time, and it often conveyed a disapproval of the services. Often, these expressions were ‘understood’, but in the example above, when his companions did not get the hint, the man had to openly state his unwillingness to participate in the religious service.

Besides the negotiations over participation or non-participation in the religious services, the behaviour of the participants during these services conveyed how they felt about them. Again, it should be noted that many of the participants conducted themselves according to general social norms, either by participating actively in the songs and prayers or passively and calmly listening to them. However, some of them, even though present, distinctly abstained from participating in the service in any way. Some brought crossword puzzles and magazines with them to pass the time. One man entertained himself during the religious services by listening to music from his mp3 player. He did so in such a discreet manner that it took me a while to note that his beating time with his feet was not related to the hymns of the service but to the music coming from his earphones.

On rare occasions, more manifest protests occurred. During one religious service, the preacher started to explain loudly how bad his life had used to be: he had gambled and drunk and got into debt. His becoming a believer, however, had changed everything. At the beginning of the speech, a man sitting at the same table as me took a small tube from his pocket. Blatantly, he pulled ear plugs from it and put them in his ears. The preacher spoke with enthusiasm, waved his hands around and jumped up and down. The man showed me the ear plug tube: ‘This is exactly why I have these: they always start yelling towards the end’.

During the observation period I came across only two situations in which a food assistance recipient spontaneously expressed disapproval of the linking of material assistance and religious services in the food assistance context. One day before the food delivery, I was talking to a woman who had only recently started to use food assistance. Suffering from a difficult economic situation, she had called a local church and received advice on where to obtain assistance. I asked her whether the place had met her expectations, and she answered: ‘I did not really have any idea about this beforehand. But I’ve learned that there is a certain culture, and there are certain kinds of people’. She then continued: ‘There’s one thing that I have here. Well, I mean, I am a Christian myself; I go to church. But somehow, they use the food to bring out the religion’. She then fell silent, but when I asked her to specify whether she found this a negative aspect of the programme, she nodded.

On the occasion, a man came to talk to me at a drop-in centre. I told him about the study and the places I had observed. As I named the different places, he started smiling: ‘There’s one thing about some of those places that I dislike. That you have to listen to that one-hour sermon to get a bag of food’. The man particularly criticized the timing of the service, where the religious event took place prior to the food delivery. In his view, the food should be served first, and then those who enjoyed religious services could stay and listen to it.

In these examples, the criticism is aimed at the way food assistance is made secondary to the delivery of a religious message. However, in the months of observation I made and the hundreds of encounters with food assistance recipients I had during that time, incidents of open criticism were uncommon. They therefore serve only to highlight the general absence of openly negative responses to the religious services despite the prevalence of these services in daily life at the food banks.

The primacy of choice

My interviews with the food charity recipients suggested that they were largely in favour of the religious services. However, my observations of their everyday behaviour provided a more nuanced picture. The question thus arises why these services were so rarely openly criticized. The notion of choice provides a tool to unlock this puzzle. Choice emerged as a prominent idea within which the food recipients framed their reflections on the religious services.

First, the food recipients valued the right to choose whether or not to participate in a religious service and how to respond to the religious content. They considered the religious services to be acceptable as long as there was no forcible proselytizing. A restrained preaching style and respect for the clients’ own views were valued. According to the interviewees, unacceptable evangelizing rarely occurred. It was pointed out that religious belief was not usually imposed on the food recipients and that people were able to decide for themselves how to feel about the religious message that they heard. As one interviewee put it: ‘It’s not imposed on you. You know in your heart of hearts what the deal is’.

Second, choice was recognized in the liberty of the food assistance providers to organize the food delivery and present their religious identity in whatever way they considered appropriate. The recipients acknowledged that the food assistance providers engaged in the activity on their own terms. One interviewee made this point succinctly: ‘It is a free country; here there is a freedom to get together, with likeminded people. It’s a human right’. Another interviewee reflected further on the issue:

They have their own things that they have, but nobody really imposes it in any way. And it is here. It belongs to here. Well, everybody knows that it’s run by a church. And it is good that it’s here.

This interviewee considered the religiousness as a part of the character of the place. It was perceived as common knowledge and thus did not pose a problem.

Finally, choice featured in the conduct considered appropriate for food charity users when they encountered religious content they disapproved of. A general perception expressed in the interviews was that those who disliked the religious content did not come to that particular place, or came only after the service. ‘They don’t usually come here, since they know that there is that [religious service]. So they stay away, and come afterwards’, one respondent said. Another interviewee noted that she had not encountered any unacceptable religious content, but ‘if I did, I doubt I’d come here’. She went on to make a more general comment on those who disliked the religious services: ‘Well, it’s voluntary. If they’re not able to listen to it, then [they should] stay on the other side of the door’.

These examples illustrate that, on the one hand, choice was referred to in a descriptive sense in that food bank visitors were able to decide whether to listen to the services or not. But references to choice also had a prescriptive dimension. The right to choose obligated the food recipients to stay outside if they disliked the religious content, leaving them little room for criticism. An isolated incident at one of the places further illustrates this point. The incident began when a worker confronted a participant about his inappropriate behaviour. One of the food recipients was restless and was constantly interfering with and disturbing the religious service. The preacher tried unsuccessfully to subdue the man. After a while, another worker intervened. Loudly but calmly he stated: ‘No one makes trouble in here. This is a voluntary activity. You may all think whatever you want from this. And you can vote with your feet if you want’. This unusual interruption of the service underlines the normativity of choice governing the responses to the religious services. Choice above all was present in the freedom of the food assistance providers to organize their charitable work as they saw fit. For the food recipients, in turn, the ability to choose undermined any criticism, as they were expected to vote with their feet if they disapproved of the religious content.

Discussion

Despite an increasing interest in food charity, studies still call for ‘much more representation of the unheard voice of the user’ (Caraher and Cavicchi, 2014). This study answers the call by placing the voices of food charity recipients in the foreground. Its findings are restricted to the Finnish context, where food assistance practices are uncoordinated, and to settings where several sources of food assistance are available. The situation may well be quite different in smaller localities, where there is only one food charity provider. Further, the findings do not capture the experiences of those people who, for one reason or another, do not come to the food assistance places at all (cf. Loopstra and Tarasuk, 2012). Despite these limitations, the findings provide fruitful insights into the lived experiences of users of food charity. They illustrate how food assistance is not just a material, but also a social and emotional issue for its users, and that explicit manifestations of religion in food programmes add a layer to the food recipients’ experiences. To many of the food recipients, the places were predominantly secular. At the same time, these places were paradoxically inescapably religious in that those seeking food assistance were likely to encounter situations where they had to exercise their right to choose in relation to religious participation.

In contrast to the findings of the study by Sager and Stephens on food aid programmes for the homeless in the US (2005; Sager, 2011), the data from the interviews suggests that the religious services did not provoke overt criticism, disapproval or opposition. Instead, the food charity users mainly responded favourably to their presence. Many welcomed the religious services as a pleasant and meaningful social activity, regardless of their personal beliefs or their primary motivations for coming to the places. However, the observational data revealed that not all the users of the charitable assistance favoured the religious services, though their right to choose gave them little room to voice negative views. Thus, in everyday situations, negative responses were expressed through tacit resistance rather than open criticism.

The differences between the findings of this study and those of Sager and Stephens reflect the differences in the two social contexts in relation to both religiosity and welfare provision. In Finland, the norm of privacy with regard to religion can hinder open criticism of the religious beliefs and practices of others. Further, the food recipients’ responses can be seen as reflecting the ‘belonging without believing’ type of religiosity (Davie, 2000), where the general attitude towards religion is positive but does not result in participation in religious practice.

Moreover, the findings of this study underline the different norms applying to charitable assistance and official welfare provision in the Finnish context. In contrast to the cooperation between parishes and public welfare providers, in the context of this study the presence of religion did not come under discussion in the framework of religious neutrality and freedom from religion (Lehtinen, 2013: 80). Rather, the discussion is framed by the issues of voluntariness and choice, as the assistance is available only according to the local practices and terms determined by the charitable giver. Further, in contrast to the public welfare provision, the field of food assistance appears, in the light of these findings, as a charitable sphere where use does not equate to entitlement (Riches and Silvasti, 2014: 9), where assistance is ‘only available for some people somewhere, not for everybody everywhere’, as is implied in the ideals of universal welfare provision (Ohisalo and Saari, 2014: 15–16). As the unofficial assistance is supplementary to the official welfare system, the providers are considered to be entitled to the freedom to engage in the activity as they see fit.

This is illustrated in the tacit resistance observed in everyday situations. The practice of negotiating participation in the religious services, often using humour, implies criticism of these services without challenging the social order of the food banks in any fundamental way. Even rebellious humour has a disciplinary function, as ‘jokes enable those who do not risk rebellion to live with their conscience’ (Billig, 2005: 213). Similarly, the inattentive behaviour of some participants during the religious services did not affect the programme but rather maintained the participants’ personal distance from the activity.

The participation of some of the food charity users in the religious services despite their apparent indifference or disfavour towards them raises a question of the exchange relationship between religion and food. Reciprocity is a pivotal principle in social relations, including social protection and welfare (Adloff, 2006; Caillé, 2000; Mauss, 1990). In charitable contexts, however, the principle of reciprocity can cause tensions. From the perspective of the giver, charitable actions often rely on the altruistic ideal of a pure gift and on the principle of ‘something for nothing’. For the recipients, however, such gifts can invoke a duty to give back (Gouldner, 1973: 276–277). The inability to do so builds hierarchies (Blau, 1964).

In all the food assistance places under study, the food was free of charge, and the recipients were not obligated to reciprocate for what they received. In such a situation, attendance at the religious services may be a way for a food charity user to reciprocate and thus undermine the hierarchy. However, the religious services can themselves reinforce the hierarchy if the participants feel bound to attend them in order to obtain food, to obtain more food or better food or to obtain it faster. The tacit criticism of some of the participants during the religious services suggests that they were willing to tolerate the services in order to receive assistance, even though they were disinterested or even disagreed with some of the content. However, the food assistance users rarely described their attendance in the services in these terms. This corresponds with Bourdieu’s (1998: 97) notion of the shared silence of the truth of exchange: that people tend to act as if there is no norm of reciprocating. The reciprocal relationship between food and religion remained implicit, and the food recipients mostly acted as if there was no connection between the food received and the religious service.

Instead of framing the religious participation in terms of reciprocity, they emphasized the idea of choice. This reflects the prominence given in contemporary society to subjectivity, authenticity and the availability of a variety of options. The rhetoric of choice has infiltrated society, and it can be seen as a frame that defines the local moral norms that determine the value and propriety of everyday practices (Sassatelli, 2001). In such a society, new mechanisms for social exclusion arise. According to Lorenz (2015), charitable food assistance is an example of social exclusion from affluent society, where social divides derive not from low income or resources, but from a lack of choice. While Lorenz refers to the material aspects of food assistance, this study illustrates that choice, and the lack of it, is also central in relation to the social, emotional and symbolic aspects of food assistance, including religion.

The ability to choose requires the availability of options. In the area under study, the food recipients did indeed have the ability to choose from which of the four places to obtain food assistance, and to choose whether or not to participate in religious services in the process. These options were made possible by the low level of institutionalization of the Finnish food charity system, and the availability of options provided a background for the clients to reflect on their responses to the religious services. However, in the context of last resort charitable assistance, the idea of choice remains contentious.

The rule of voting with one’s feet illustrates how having a choice resulted in constraints, rather than in freedom. On the one hand, it limited the food providers’ ability to use charity for proselytizing, as it gave room for the recipients to choose whether to listen to the services or not and how to feel about them. On the other hand, it constrained the food charity users’ ability to express how they felt about the assistance practices. Sassatelli (2001: 94–95) suggests that choice is a normative claim rather than a rationalized practice, and that the freedom to choose not to choose can be regarded as an assurance to individuals that they have free will. However, at the edge of constraint there is room for agency. The ways in which the food recipients controlled their exposure to the religious content illustrate how they were able to demonstrate agency from a materially highly constrained social position and carve out a space for participation in the activity on their own terms – within the rules laid down by the food assistance providers.