Food & Faith in Christian CultureKen Albala, Trudy Eden Without a uniform dietary code, Christians around the world used food in strikingly different ways, developing widely divergent practices that spread, nurtured, and strengthened their religious beliefs and communities. Featuring never-before published essays, this anthology follows the intersection of food and faith from the fourteenth to the twenty-first century, charting the complex relationship among religious eating habits and politics, culture, and social structure. Theoretically rich and full of engaging portraits, essays consider the rise of food buying and consumerism in the fourteenth century, the Reformation ideology of fasting and its resulting sanctions against sumptuous eating, the gender and racial politics of sacramental food production in colonial America, and the struggle to define "enlightened" Lenten dietary restrictions in early modern France. Essays on the nineteenth century explore the religious implications of wheat growing and breadmaking among New Zealand's Maori population and the revival of the Agape meal, or love feast, among American brethren in Christ Church. Twentieth-century topics include the metaphysical significance of vegetarianism, the function of diet in Greek Orthodoxy, American Christian weight loss programs, and the practice of silent eating rituals among English Benedictine monks. Two introductory essays detail the key themes tying these essays together and survey food's role in developing and disseminating the teachings of Christianity, not to mention providing a tangible experience of faith. |
Contents
Historical Background to Food and Christianity | 7 |
Shopping and Consumption | 21 |
The Ideology of Fasting in | 41 |
Sumptuary Prohibitions | 59 |
Bread Maize Women | 83 |
Religious Conviction | 105 |
Missionaries | 125 |
Meal in the Late Nineteenth and Early | 147 |
Why Food | 171 |
Fasting and Food Habits in the Eastern | 189 |
A Cultural Analysis | 205 |
Eating in Silence in an English Benedictine | 221 |
| 239 | |
| 253 | |
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abstinence Albala Andry animal argued banquets believed Benedict Benzoni blood bread and wine Brethren in Christ Catholic celebrations Charles Fillmore Christian diet Christian identity Christian weight loss church commensality congregants consumed consumption cooked Culinary Culture dietary digestion early modern eaten eating English Benedictine Eucharist Evangelical Visitor example excess farms fat body feet washing Fillmore fish flesh Florence flour France French fruits Galenic gluttony God’s Greek habits Hallelujah Diet halvas History Holy human Ibid important indigenous Americans indigenous bread individual Lent Lery living love feast luxury maize Maori meat medieval Messiah College missionaries monastery monastery’s monastic monks Musumeci native nonfasting olive oil one’s period physical practice Protestant purchased refectory Reformation religion religious Renaissance restrictions ritual Rule sacrament Saint salvation secular Showalter sixteenth century social soul Spanish spiritual sumptuary laws sumptuary legislation tapu taste tion traditional urban vegetables Vegetarian Weekly Unity wheat women Zealand