Born again bodies : flesh and spirit in American Christianity
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Born again bodies : flesh and spirit in American Christianity
（California studies in food and culture, 12）
University of California Press, c2004
- : pbk
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Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. 291-302) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
'Fat People Don't Go to Heaven' screamed a headline in the tabloid "Globe" in November 2000. The story recounted the success of the Weigh Down Workshop, the nation's largest Christian diet corporation and the subject of extensive press coverage from Larry King Live to the New Yorker. In the United States today, hundreds of thousands of people are making diet a religious duty by enrolling in Christian diet programs and reading Christian diet literature like "What Would Jesus Eat?" and "Fit for God". Written with style and wit, far ranging in its implications, and rich with the stories of real people, "Born Again Bodies" launches a provocative yet sensitive investigation into Christian fitness and diet culture. Looking closely at both the religious roots of this movement and its present-day incarnations, R. Marie Griffith vividly analyzes Christianity's intricate role in America's obsession with the body, diet, and fitness.
As she traces the underpinning of modern-day beauty and slimness ideals - as well as the bigotry against people who are overweight - Griffith links seemingly disparate groups in American history including seventeenth-century New England Puritans, Progressive Era New Thought adherents, and late-twentieth-century evangelical diet preachers.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction: Perilous Body Gospels A Note on Reading the Images 1. Gluttons for Regimen: Anglo-Protestant Culture and the Reorientation of Appetite The Diet of Angels: Fasting in Early Modern Anglo-American Protestantism Gospels of Physick: Medicine, Methodism, and Mortification Rarefied Flesh: Sexual Regulation, Bodily Pleasure, and Perfection Phrenology and Somatic Authenticity 2. Sculptors of Our Own Exterior: New Thought Physiques "Nothing but a Dense Shadow": The Body as Delusion? Corresponding Bodies Female Sexual Pleasure and Mystical Communion: Reproducing a Civilized Race Regimens Shaping Bodies to Come 3. Minding the Body: Divergent Paths of New Thought Perfectionism Living on Air: Gospels of Fasting, Conquest, and Purgation William Sheldon's Metaphysical Somatotypes God in a Body: Gastronomy and Black Power 4. Pray the Weight Away: Shaping Devotional Fitness Culture Shedd-ing Pounds: Scripture and Devotional Practice in Service to Weight Loss The Burgeoning Christian Diet Culture From Empathy to Authority: Shifting Models of Expertise Religious Devotion to Thinness Outside Mainstream Protestantism 5. "Don't Eat That": Denial, Indulgence, and Exclusion in Christian Diet Culture Poisoned Bodies, Blemished Souls: Food as Taint and Transgression Loved on a Smaller Scale: Women,Weight, and the Divine Lover Above The Power of Perfection: Purified Bodies and Racialized Worlds Epilogue: Bodies in Crisis? Notes Primary Source Bibliography Index
by "Nielsen BookData"
