Food is life. Whether as physical nourishment that sustains our bodies or the unseen force binding us to other bodies in table fellowship, food is part of what priest and chef Robert Farrar Capon calls “the gorgeous mystery of our being.” Food is also a sacramental vehicle, through the bread and wine (or grape juice if you’re Baptist), that brings God’s boundless grace into our bodies and nourishes us to be God’s grace for a hungry world.
Whether it’s the Lord’s Supper or the Last Supper, the grand Messianic feast or a simple breakfast of fish on the lakeshore, food has long been a central metaphor of the Christian faith, and for centuries the festal meal we celebrate in the Eucharist hasn’t much changed. Within the past five years in American Christianity, however, people are finding a renewed interest in ferial meals, those everyday affairs that are part of life’s routine. Suddenly Christians are rethinking not only what we eat, but how our food is grown, who we eat with (or don’t), who harvested our food, and how agriculture contributes to climate change. Food is now a problem. Can it also be a solution, a blessing, a gift? We will consider these seemingly mundane questions as a set of practical and spiritual challenges to our current way of life, questions that go straight to the heart of our identity as the people of God.
In this class we will think about food through scriptural and theological lenses. We will learn to recognize the difference between healthy and destructive farming practices. We will look at the rise of faith-based food ministries in America and around the world. We will look at why hunger and obesity are flip sides of the same coin, and how the church might respond to them. In addition to discussing readings together, we will visit farms and community gardens. And naturally, we will eat together.
Required Reading
- Food & Faith, Norman Wirzba, Cambridge, 2011.
- Scripture, Culture, Agriculture: An Agrarian Reading of the Bible, Ellen F. Davis, Cambridge, 2009.
- In Defense of Food, Michael Pollan, Penguin 2008
- Take This Bread, Sara Miles, Ballantine Books, 2008
- The Supper of the Lamb, Robert Farrar Capon, Modern Library, 2002
- Selected articles and book chapters on reserve in the library.
Recommended Reading
- The Sabbath, Abraham Joshua Heschel.
- For the Life of the World, Alexander Schmemann
- The Art of the Commonplace, Wendell Berry
- The Comforting Whirlwind, Bill McKibben