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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
Patrick T. McCormick*
Affiliation:
Gonzaga University
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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
Information
Horizons , Volume 25 , Issue 1 , Spring 1998 , pp. 43 - 57
Copyright
Copyright © The College Theology Society 1998

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