Faith Works 1-5-24

Faith Works 1-5-24
Jeff Gill

Not to create a theological controversy
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Rarely do I venture into the murky and deep waters of theological debate in this column.

The goal, as always, is to seek unity and shared understandings among those open to a faith based perspective, not to defend certain religious traditions or particular church structures.

Yet I've been intrigued recently by a subject which is on the teetering precipice of sectarian dispute. I've wondered about this for some time, and have never quite had the nerve to write about the subject. Here we are at the outset of a new year, and perhaps this is the time.

I'm talking about shredded chicken sandwiches.

Moving here from central Indiana in the fall of 1989, I'd never had them. Then I went to an early craft show that year, and the cafe to one side of the Christmas decor and other sale tables included "Shredded Chicken." It was a dollar, and fit both my budget and my current cash situation, and I was hungry. But what was it?

"Oh, everyone makes this around here." I was shown a can of Sweet Sue boneless chicken, and told you simply heated it up with crumbled saltine crackers and some pepper. I ate of it, and it was good.

But this was only the beginning. As the years scrolled by, I would sample shredded chicken sandwiches in a variety of homely settings: church basements, after funerals, at football games and basketball tournaments, in snack bars set up for choir and band contests. And I developed a cook's interest in asking when I could "how do you make it?"

This is where you get the second of the two interesting but fraught questions around the dreaded shredded (as some would say). The first is the boundary of the sandwich's domain — it's not everywhere, but it is everyone around here, if you can figure out where here is. Let's say from Urbana in the west to Mansfield in the north, and down to Portsmouth and over to somewhere this side of Steubenville and Martin's Ferry, but shredded chicken has made inroads up to the Ohio in a few points around past Marietta. This field needs further research.

The second and more truly theological question is what makes "true" shredded chicken. I learned early on that some will say "not saltines, but Ritz crackers." You get a buttery taste, 'tis true. Yet the saltine true believers hold Ritz to be an external imposition on the one true shredded chicken.

Adding to the denominational complexity: adding soup. There is a reformation of shredded chicken cooking which breaks out into many traditions, each certain of their own rightness. The mainstream is a can of cream of chicken to a much larger can of boneless chicken into the roasting pan. Others say the chicken on chicken effect is not useful, and prefer cream of celery; there are a few obscure sectarians who assert the ideal of a can of cream of mushroom (this may be a Great Lakes Lutheran influence, I don't know, again worth scholarly study).

Atop the soup/no soup distinction, there are the modifications of soup (but which one) plus crackers (saltine or Ritz, or even Club), plus I have had a perfectly satisfying shredded chicken sandwich which I learned had breadcrumbs added in, not crushed crackers.

Finally, in a liturgical flourish, there's the question of if the vat or roaster of shredded chicken should have pepper added, lightly or not at all, versus leaving the pepper quotient to the one stacking up their sandwich.

In central Ohio, these are existential questions. Where does your faith stand?


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's eaten many shredded chicken sandwiches. What's your preferred recipe? Tell him at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.