What anecdotes? The woman who called dozens of churches and only got 3 willing to provide emergency food for a hungry child who had been starving? You can listen to these calls yourself in the video I shared. Notice that I’m not arguing about food pantries, but rather churches not being willing to help adequately.

And still, your emphasis on food pantries is exaggerated. Food pantries were invented in the 1960s and are a distinctly American religious invention, so naturally, they would be primarily religious. What’s more is that your article even mentions the negative effects that these food banks have and their questionable efficacy:

Despite the rise in charitable food, there is a lack of evidence supporting their effectiveness in addressing the main issue of food insecurity. At the individual-level, the charitable food system has been shown to contribute to stigma and shame among patrons [13–15], offer poor nutritional value [11, 16], provide insufficient and inconsistent food supply [11–17], consist of limited food choice and variety [16], and exacerbate pre-existing chronic health conditions [11, 18, 19]. Furthermore, “pantries spring up wherever someone is moved to create them” [20] (p221). In this way, the geographical distribution of food pantries may not follow any systematic pattern or necessarily reflect need. Many food pantries operate out of churches and volunteers are often motivated to volunteer because of their religious commitments. Given these circumstances and undercurrents, faith is an important and dynamic element of the charitable food system. However, faith-based affiliations within the current charitable food system is unknown and likely context-specific.

I also found this:

a study involving case studies in Indonesia, Fiji and Samoa (Thornton, Sakai, and Hassall, 2012) showed that the contribution of religious groups in providing disaster relief and welfare services to their members and advocacy for the poor is often present but not always comprehensive or positive. The influence of religious groups in the public sphere and as institutions can also exacerbate unresolved tensions between different ethnic and secular groups.

www.nature.com/articles/s41599-019-0272-3

Regardless, food pantries and poverty in general are symptoms of great social inequality and of a society that doesn’t prioritize welfare, despite its religious devotion. So why confine ourselves to questionably effective religious-based initiatives? I’d rather compare the overall state of caregiving between religious and secular nations.

I concede that religion is useful for bringing communities together and alleviating the hardships of poverty by providing people a coping mechanism, but it’s by no means a towering force over secular initiatives because the desire to help and contribute to charity is innately human. Religion arguably only serves as a reminder of that with regular church attendance.