Food and Faith in Christian Culture

Food and Faith in Christian Culture

In: Arts and Traditions of the Table: Perspectives on Culinary History

Edited by: Ken Albala and Trudy Eden

Columbia University Press | 2011

https://doi.org/10.7312/alba14996

Overview
Contents

About this book

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.

Author information

Ken Albala is professor of history at the University of the Pacific. His many books include Eating Right in the Renaissance; The Banquet: Dining in the Great Courts of Late Renaissance Europe; Beans: A History; and The Lost Art of Real Cooking: Rediscovering the Pleasures of Traditional Food One Recipe at a Time. He is also the coeditor of the journal Food Culture and Society, as well as several food series and the Food Cultures of the World Encyclopedia.

Trudy Eden is an associate professor at the University of Northern Iowa and writes about all the many things people do with food. Her other books are The Early American Table: Food and Society in the New World and Cooking in Early America, 1590–1840.

Reviews

Raymond A. Mentzer:
Altogether, the essays are topical, well written, and stimulating. They nicely capture the diversity, nuance, and complexity surrounding the place and role of dietary practices in Christian culture.

Andrew F. Smith:
Ken Albala and Trudy Eden serve a delightful potpourri of thought-provoking and insightful essays. Widely separated in time and space, they are held together by common themes, such as bodily health, fasting, and commensality, and are peopled by a wild array of monks, noblemen, adventurers, bishops, vegetarians, medical professionals, Maoris, and missionaries, to name just a few. This much needed collection deserves to be widely read by anyone interested in food, history, and religion. Well-done!

The Revd Canon Andrew McGowan, Trinity College, The University of Melbourne:
This excellent collection of essays shows the remarkable variety of ways in which food and meals have served to create and express identity for Christians. From the Middle Ages to the present, and from the Reformation to Orthodoxy to evangelicalism, contributors explore the diversity and the ubiquity of food's connection to faith.

Frontmatter Free access PDF PDF	i
Contents Free access PDF PDF	v
Introduction Trudy Eden Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	1
Historical Background to Food and Christianity Ken Albala Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	7
1. The Urban Influence. Shopping and Consumption at the Florentine Monastery of Santa Trinità in the Mid-Fourteenth Century Salvatore D. S. Musumeci Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	21
2. The Ideology of Fasting in the Reformation Era Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	41
3. “The Food Police”: Sumptuary Prohibitions on Food in the Reformation Johanna B. Moyer Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	59
4. Dirty Things: Bread, Maize, Women, and Christian Identity in Sixteenth-Century America Heather Martel Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	83
5. Enlightened Fasting: Religious Conviction, Scientific Inquiry, and Medical Knowledge in Early Modern France Sydney Watts Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	105
6. The Sanctity of Bread: Missionaries and the Promotion of Wheat Growing Among the New Zealand Maori Hazel Petrie Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	125
7. Commensality and Love Feast: The Agape Meal in the Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Brethren in Christ Church Heidi Oberholtzer Lee Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	147
8. Metaphysics and Meatless Meals: Why Food Mattered When the Mind Was Everything Trudy Eden Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	171
9. Fasting and Food Habits in the Eastern Orthodox Church Antonia-Leda Matalas, Eleni Tourlouki and Chrystalleni Lazarou Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	189
10. Divine Dieting: A Cultural Analysis of Christian Weight Loss Programs Samantha Kwan and Christine Sheikh Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	205
11. Eating in Silence in an English Benedictine Monastery Richard D. G. Irvine Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	221
Bibliography Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	239
Index Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	253

Food and Faith in Christian Culture

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