Why This Food Bank Would Rather Stay Empty

Alvin Christian has fed up to 800 families a day from God's Store House Food Bank in Bluefield, West Virginia. This month, his freezers sat empty. And not from a supply shortage. Instead, apparently, Christian has been turning away food donations himself, after learning some of the suppliers worked with LGBTQ-affiliated groups.

It raises an old religious question wearing new clothes: does feeding the hungry come with a doctrinal test attached, or is mercy supposed to be unconditional?

What Happened at God's Store House?

Christian founded God's Store House in 2023, and it grew fast. By early this year, the pantry was serving more than 8,000 families a month across four counties in West Virginia and Virginia, growth that pushed Christian to start raising money for a larger building. "It gives me great pleasure to see a smile on somebody's face," he told a local news station in 2023, describing why he took on the work.

That momentum stalled this week. In a video he later deleted, Christian told followers his freezers were bare, and that donors had offered to restock them. He turned the food down anyway, he said, after doing his own research and finding the donors' ties to LGBTQ-affiliated organizations.

While Christian would later delete that video, it was archived by another Facebook user, Hairston Nes. 

In the video, Christian explicitly cites his faith as the motivating factor behind his decision: "As a man-of-God and standing with faith in God, I refuse to receive food from anybody that has anything, is tied into [the gay rights movement]."

Another community member apparently took it upon himself to call Christian and express his feelings about the issue. A recording of that alleged call was also uploaded to Facebook.

For a pantry that had grown into a lifeline across four counties, that meant real families losing a source of groceries they had come to count on. Christian did not respond to a request for comment from Friendly Atheist, who first reported his decision, though he addressed the fallout directly the next morning in a livestream video.

In his response stream, throughout which the camera remains aimed at the floor, Christian seemed to suggest that much of the controversy could be attributed to a misunderstanding. He said that it was not his intention to refuse to accept donated food from groups affiliated with LGBTQ+ groups, and instead clarified that he was refusing to purchase food from vendors who were affiliated with LGBTQ+ groups or causes for fear that some portion of the purchase price could go toward supporting those groups.

That account is difficult to square with his own earlier statement.

He further indicated that he did not maintain a practice of refusing to provide food to individuals who entered his food bank as a result of their characteristics. This pledge that he would not refuse to provide food to particular individuals was repeated across both of the videos.

The response video has received hundreds of comments, and while there are some statements of support for Christian, many of the comments indicate that there is ongoing concern and anger over his practices.

Is This Kind of Rejection Common?

It is more common than it should be. A widely cited 2022 analysis found more than six in ten food pantries across a dozen states are run by churches or other faith-based groups, and a Williams Institute study found 14 percent of LGBTQ+ adults have avoided a faith-based pantry altogether, worried about the reception waiting for them at the door.

The USDA's own nutrition agency has noted that food insufficiency runs roughly three times higher among transgender people than the general population, meaning the group most likely to hesitate at a church food pantry's door is also among the hungriest.

But faith-based charity is not one thing. In Oklahoma City, a pantry at the Church of the Open Arms serves the neighborhood around the city's gay district, led by Laura Choate, who was pushed out of her own family's home at 11 for coming out. Her pantry makes welcome the starting point for every visitor, not a condition to be earned.

"We're very aware that some places aren't as open to everyone," said Lorrie Clevenger, a program director at the hunger-relief group WhyHunger, describing the broader landscape her organization tracks. Feeding America, the country's largest hunger-relief network, works across that same landscape without screening partners by politics or faith. 

Although it is unclear, it appears from his initial video that Feeding America is the food supplier that Christian has taken issue with this week.

Christian's decision fits a pattern this blog has tracked before, institutions treating LGBTQ affiliation as disqualifying even at real cost to their own stated mission. Only 2 percent of the churches contacted during one recent cold-snap survey agreed to open their doors to homeless neighbors overnight, most citing liability fears rather than theology. A Christian radio host was fired last year for voicing support for LGBTQ+ weddings, over the objections of his own listeners.

Supporters of Christian's stance would point to Scripture's warning against being "unequally yoked," a passage some conservative Christians read as barring partnership with groups whose values conflict with their own, even indirectly. A ministry, on that reading, answers to God's standards first, and no law requires Christian to accept help from groups he disagrees with.

But conviction has a cost. Every box of food he refuses is a family that goes without, in a corner of Appalachia already stretched thin by hunger.

Where should the line sit between guarding a ministry's beliefs and feeding the people already standing in front of it? And if you ran a charity forced to choose between the two, which one would you pick?