If you have eaten bacon and ham all your life and someone has just told you pork is forbidden, you are not in trouble, and neither is anyone who chooses to decline it. Christians who love God have landed in different places on this for two thousand years. A new worry about something familiar is a reason to read, and no reason to feel in trouble.
If you only have a minute
For an uneasy meal
John 14:27, peace handed to you.
Leviticus 11
Food rules spoken to Israel, tied to holiness.
Jesus and the early church
Mark 7, Acts 10 and Romans 14, read differently by different churches.
At the table
Ask what a guest eats, and let anyone decline.
Words for an uneasy meal
John 14:27 comes in one long conversation on the last evening, after a meal and before the arrest, in a frightened room. Jesus says:
Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you; not as the world gives, give I to you. Don’t let your heart be troubled, neither let it be fearful.
The King James Version:
Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.
It gives words for an unsettled moment and peace described as something given rather than produced, which Bible verses for peace of mind reads in full. You can read it once before you sit down and hold one question: what would change if peace were something handed to you rather than something you have to produce?
The table before the meal.
Leviticus 11 in its setting
Leviticus speaks to Moses, Aaron and "the children of Israel" in the wilderness, after the exodus and at Sinai. The pig is named in verse 7: "The pig, because he has a split hoof, and is cloven-footed, but doesn’t chew the cud, he is unclean to you." The reason given is holiness: "Sanctify yourselves therefore, and be holy; for I am holy." Deuteronomy 14 speaks to Israel on the plains of Moab and calls them "a holy people to Yahweh your God." The Hebrew words are tame (unclean) and qadosh (holy, set apart), which Blue Letter Bible's entry on tame lists as status terms, not medical ones.
Chabad says "The pig, which has split hooves but does not chew its cud, and the camel, which chews its cud but has no split hooves, are non-kosher animals." Jewish commentary also keeps symbolic and ethical readings, as Chabad on why Jews do not eat pork shows. Scholars offer competing explanations. Mary Douglas, in *Purity and Danger* (1966), reads the pig as an anomaly in a symbolic classification, and Jacob Milgrom, discussed by the Jewish Theological Seminary, ties the laws to Israel's holiness system and to limiting how many animals are killed for food.
What Jesus and the early church said about food
In Mark 7:1-23, Pharisees and scribes ask why disciples eat with unwashed hands, and Jesus says: "There is nothing from outside of the man, that going into him can defile him; but the things which proceed out of the man are those that defile the man." Verse 19 ends "thus purifying all foods" in the World English Bible and "purging all meats" in the King James. Translators differ on whether that phrase is Jesus speaking or a comment by the writer, and on whether it repeals Leviticus. Got Questions reads it as declaring foods clean, and others stress that the chapter is about handwashing traditions.
In Acts 10:15 a voice says to Peter, "What God has cleansed, you must not call unclean," and in verse 28 Peter explains, "God has shown me that I shouldn’t call any man unholy or unclean." Many readers take the vision as being about people and Gentile inclusion; some see food and people both. The Jerusalem council in Acts 15:20 asked Gentile believers to "abstain from the pollution of idols, from sexual immorality, from what is strangled, and from blood."
Paul's letters treat food as a matter for conscience. Romans 14:2-3 says "One man has faith to eat all things, but he who is weak eats only vegetables. Don’t let him who eats despise him who doesn’t eat. Don’t let him who doesn’t eat judge him who eats, for God has accepted him." 1 Timothy 4:4 calls "every creature of God" good. Romans 14 comes up again on Halloween.
How the traditions differ
- Catholic. The Council of Florence, in *Cantate Domino* (1442), says "the nature of no food, which society admits, is to be condemned," while allowing abstention for "the health of body, for the exercise of virtue, for regular and ecclesiastical discipline." The Catechism (1961 to 1964) places the Old Law's ceremonial rules within salvation history.
- Orthodox. The Orthodox Church in America describes fasting as liturgical and ascetical, and says there has never been "exact uniformity" in its rules.
- Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo. The church's Faith and Order says "With regard to food, there is no prohibition in the Christian law, with the exception of what the Apostles forbade in the book of the Acts," and adds that an older prescription "is still observed in many parts of Ethiopia."
- Seventh-day Adventist. Fundamental Belief 22 asks believers to "abstain from the unclean foods identified in the Scriptures." The encyclopedia also records James White writing in 1850 that pork's "proper use, in the gospel dispensation," is not taught as sinful.
- Reformed and mainline Protestant. The Westminster Confession, chapter 19, calls the ceremonial laws "abrogated," and many mainline churches read the question through Romans 14.
- Messianic Jewish. Congregations range from Torah-observant ones that avoid pork to ones that treat it as optional for Gentile believers.
- Jewish and Muslim. Kashrut covers species, slaughter and preparation, and IFANCA lists pork as haram. Pew's 2014 survey found 57 percent of Jewish and 9 percent of Muslim respondents had ever eaten pork, so practice varies.
Sharing a table
InterfaithFamily advises asking about dietary needs before a shared meal and labeling ingredients. The Orthodox Union notes that kosher is more than pork-free and halal practice also involves ingredients and cross-contact. An Adventist or Ethiopian Orthodox household may skip pork while others at the table do not. Some lines of our own: as a host, "Is there anything you don't eat? I'd like you to have a good meal." As a guest, "Thank you, I'll skip that one, it looks wonderful otherwise."
If a friend keeps different rules, "I'd like to understand how you eat, so you feel at home here" is a line we would use. One poster on Reddit's r/FollowJesusObeyTorah, in a 2023 thread, gave the stricter view in plain words: "Should they? Not according to the God they claim to obey." You are welcome to read the passages for yourself and land where your conscience does.
Dinner on the stove.
Questions people ask
Did Jesus eat pork? The Gospels do not record it. Pigs appear in the exorcism in Mark 5, Matthew 8 and Luke 8, and in the parable in Luke 15, and none of those stories is a meal.
Is pork unclean for health reasons? Tame is a religious status word. Public-health advice is separate: the USDA lists 145 degrees Fahrenheit with a three-minute rest for pork chops and roasts and 160 for ground meats, and the NHS says pork is rich in protein and recommends not eating too much red or processed meat.
Where to go next
At your next meal, read John 14:27 once aloud, and ask one question of one person at your table before assuming anything.
If any night feels too heavy, whatever the reason, please reach a person. In the United States, call or text 988 for the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. In Canada, call or text 9-8-8 at 988.ca. In the United Kingdom and Ireland, Samaritans is on 116 123. In Australia, Lifeline is 13 11 14, and 000 in an emergency. Anywhere else, Find A Helpline lists lines by country.
Bible Nudge gives a person one passage with the story around it, and Find a passage is where to start.
Words that come up here
Tap a term to see what it means.
Tame. The Hebrew word for unclean in Leviticus 11, a religious status and not a medical one.