Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-20T08:52:43.308Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

How Could We Break the Lord's Bread in a Foreign Land? The Eucharist in “Diet America”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 September 2014

Patrick T. McCormick*
Affiliation:
Gonzaga University

Abstract

Understanding and celebrating the Eucharist does not take place in a vacuum, but depends at least in part on our ability to grasp and be moved by the fundamental symbols of food, body, and table. And yet in contemporary America we increasingly find ourselves in a culture characterized by distorted experiences and notions of all three of these. How, then, does our growing obsession with dieting, nutrition, and efficiency, as well as the increasing disparity of our national and global tables, challenge or undermine our experience of breaking, sharing, and eating the Body and Blood of Christ? And how does the Eucharist speak to and challenge some of the distortions of “Diet America” regarding the humanizing characteristics of food, the importance of embodiment, and the demands of table fellowship?

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The College Theology Society 1998

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Hamlin, Suzanne, “Le Grand Excès Spices Love Poems to Food,” New York Times, 07 31, 1994, H20.Google Scholar

2 Levinson's 1990 film, Avalon, makes this point quite starkly, using the shift from a large family banquet to individual TV trays as a metaphor for the Americanization of a Russian Jewish family.

3 Stacey, Michelle, Consumed: Why Americans Love, Hate, and Fear Food (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994).Google Scholar Also of interest is Levenstein's, HarveyParadox of Plenty: A Social History of Eating in Modern America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).Google Scholar

4 Stacey, , Consumed, 199.Google Scholar

5 Ibid., 10, 207.

6 Ibid, 178-79. See also Miller, Annetta, “Diets Incorporated,” Newsweek, 09 11, 1989, 5660.Google Scholar

7 Stacey, , Consumed, 172.Google ScholarO'Neill, Molly makes a number of the same points in “The Morality of Fat,” New York Times Magazine, 03 10, 1996, 3739.Google Scholar

8 Goleman, Daniel, “Eating Disorder Rates Surprise the Fat Experts,” New York Times, 10 4, 1995, C11.Google Scholar See also O'Neill, , “Morality of Fat,” 3839.Google Scholar

9 Editorial, Hungrier in America,” America, 05 18, 1996, 3;Google ScholarPubMed and Seligman, Jean, “Let Them Eat Cake,” Newsweek, 08 17, 1992, 57.Google Scholar

10 Francis, David R., “New Figures Show Wider Gap between Rich and Poor,” Christian Science Monitor, 04 21, 1995, 1;Google ScholarSilverstein, Stuart, “Study Finds Gap Growing between Rich and Poor in U.S.,” Los Angeles Times, 03 20, 1996, A1;Google Scholar and Duff, Christina, “Better Census Data Show Income Gap Widening Fast,” Wall Street Journal, 06 21, 1996, B7.Google Scholar

11 Lasch, Christopher, “The Revolt of the Elites: Have They Canceled Their Allegiance to America?Harper's, 11 1994, 3949Google Scholar, and Lind, Michael, “To Have and Have Not: Notes on the Progress of the American Class War,” Harper's, 06 1995, 3547.Google Scholar See also Lasch, Christopher, The Revolt of the Elites and the Betrayal of Democracy (New York: Norton, 1995).Google Scholar

12 Ibid., 47, and Lind, , “To Have and Have Not,” 4647.Google ScholarPubMed For other treatments of the widening gap between rich and poor in America, see Frank, Robert H. and Cook, Philip J., The Winner-Take-All-Society: Why the Few at the Top Get So Much More than the Rest of Us (New York: Penguin, 1995)Google Scholar, and Hacker, Andrew, Money: Who Has How Much and Why (New York: Scribner's, 1997).Google Scholar

13 Crossette, Barbara, “U.N. Survey Finds World Rich-Poor Gap Widening,” New York Times, 07 15, 1996, A3.Google Scholar

14 Sheehey, E. J., “The Growing Gap between Rich and Poor Countries: A Proposed Explanation,” World Development, 08 1996, 1397;Google ScholarMeisler, Stanley, “Wide Gap Persists between Rich and Poor Nations,” Los Angeles Times, 12 31, 1995, A4;Google Scholar and Thompson, Larry, “Real Solutions to World Hunger,” Christian Science Monitor, 07 8, 1996, 20.Google Scholar

15 O'Neill, Molly, “The New Nutrition: Protein on the Side,” New York Times, 11 28, 1990, B1.Google Scholar

16 Hellwig, Monika, The Eucharist and the Hunger of the World, rev. ed. (Kansas City, MO: Sheed & Ward, 1992), 3.Google Scholar

17 McFague, Sallie, The Body of God: An Ecological Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 57–59, 106–7.Google Scholar McFague makes the point that in our global ecosystem higher and more organized forms of life are profoundly dependent upon life forms like plants and bacteria that produce and recycle food, and that nowhere is this dependence clearer than in humans, whom she describes as consumers par excellence.

18 Berry, Wendell, “The Pleasures of Eating” in Halpern, Daniel, ed., Not for Bread Alone (Hopewell, NJ: Ecco, 1993), 17.Google Scholar

19 Ibid.

20 Hilt, Jack, “The Theory of Supermarkets,” New York Times Magazine, 03 10, 1996, 5661.Google Scholar

21 Hellwig, , Eucharist, 3.Google Scholar

22 Oates, Joyce Carol, “Food Mysteries” in Halpern, , ed., Not for Bread Alone, 28.Google Scholar

23 Seasoltz, R. Kevin, “Justice and Eucharist,” Worship 58 (11 1984): 509–11.Google Scholar

24 Sedgwick, Timothy F., Sacramental Ethics: Paschal Identity and the Christian Life (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987), 65.Google Scholar

25 Dussel, Enrique, “The Bread of the Eucharist Celebration as a Sign of Justice in the Community” in Collins, Mary and Power, David, eds., Can We Always Celebrate the Eucharist? Concilium, 152 (New York: Seabury, 1982), 56–65.Google Scholar

26 McFague, , Body of God, 1618.Google Scholar

27 Ibid., 18.

28 Miles, Margaret R., Carnal Knowing: Female Nakedness and Religious Meaning in the Christian West (Boston: Beacon, 1989).Google Scholar

29 McFague, , Body of God, 14Google Scholar, and Ross, Susan, “God's Embodiment and Women” in LaCugna, Catherine Mowry, ed., Freeing Theology: The Essentials of Theology in Feminist Perspective (New York: HarperCollins, 1993), 185209.Google Scholar

30 Stacey, , Consumed, 52.Google Scholar

31 Ibid., 23.

32 Ross, Philip, “Lies, Damned Lies and Medical Statistics,” Forbes, 08 14, 1994, 130.Google Scholar

33 Tisdale, Sallie, “A Weight that Women Carry,” Harper's, 03 1993, 4955.Google Scholar

34 Goleman, , “Eating Disorder Rates Surprise the Experts,” C11.Google Scholar See also O'Neill, , “Morality of Fat,” 3839.Google Scholar

35 Naomi Wolf makes a number of these same points in The Beauty Myth How Images of Beauty Are Used against Women (New York: Morrow, 1991).Google Scholar

36 McFague, , Body of God, 14.Google Scholar

37 Hellwig, , Eucharist, 79.Google Scholar

38 Seasoltz, , “Justice and Eucharist,” 515.Google Scholar

39 Ibid., 521.

40 Gaylin, Willard, On Being and Becoming Human (New York: Penguin, 1990), 121.Google Scholar

41 Jones, Judith B., “A Religious Art” in Halpern, , ed., Not for Bread Alone, 3841.Google Scholar

42 Kate, N. T., “Ethnic Foods on Mainstream Menus,” American Demographics, 04 1992, 18.Google Scholar

43 O'Neill, Molly, “The '90s Woman: How Fat Is Fat?New York Times, 01 2, 1991, B1.Google Scholar

44 O'Neill, , “The Morality of Fat,” 39.Google Scholar

45 Tisdale, , “Weight Women Carry,” 54.Google Scholar

46 Fiorenza, Elisabeth Schüssler, “Tablesharing and the Celebration of the Eucharist” in Collins, and Power, , eds., Can We Always Celebrate the Eucharist? 312.Google Scholar

47 Hellwig, , Eucharist, 18.Google Scholar

48 Seasoltz, , “Justice and Eucharist,” 511.Google Scholar