Born again bodies : flesh and spirit in American Christianity / R. Marie Griffith.

ISBN:

9780520938113

Title:

Author:

Griffith, R. Marie (Ruth Marie), 1967- author.

Personal Author:

Griffith, R. Marie (Ruth Marie), 1967- author.

Publication Information:

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiv, 323 pages) : illustrations.

Series:

California studies in food and culture ; 12

Contents:

1. Gluttons for regimen: Anglo-Protestant culture and the reorientation of appetite -- The diet of angels: fasting in early modern Anglo-American Protestanism -- Gospels of physick: 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 -- Femal 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 Protestanism -- 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?

Local Note:

eBooks on EBSCOhost

Subject Term:

Human body -- Religious aspects -- Christianity -- History of doctrines.

Human body -- Social aspects -- United States -- History.

Protestantism -- United States -- History.

Geographic Term:

United States -- Religious life and customs.

Format:

Electronic Resources

Electronic Access:

Click here to view

Publication Date:

2004

Publication Information:

Available:*

Shelf Number	Material Type	Copy	Shelf Location	Status
233.5 22	1:E-BOOK	1	1:ONLINE	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

"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.

Author Notes

Griffith R. Marie :

R. Marie Griffith is Associate Professor of Religion at Princeton University and author of God's Daughters: Evangelical Women and the Power of Submission (California, 1997).

Reviews (2)

Publisher's Weekly Review

This wide-ranging examination of body obsession and American religion reads like two separate but excellent books. The first half explores phrenology and New Thought, considering sects and writers prominent during the 19th and early 20th centuries and documenting their attempts to control their bodies in an effort to achieve physical and spiritual perfection. Griffith offers fascinating analyses of the writing and work of dozens of both famous and completely unknown practitioners. For example, Mary Baker Eddy receives ample treatment, then, as an added bonus, Griffith introduces Hattie Harlow, an ordinary woman whose unpublished accounts of her own phrenological initiatives yield insight into the ways Eddy's movement seeped into the popular imagination. The second half of the book is an ethnography of contemporary Christian approaches to weight loss in America. Griffith continues with her fine analyses of books and movements-most notably Gwen Shamblin's Weigh Down-and also includes excerpts from her interviews with authors of Christian weight loss books and participants in Christian diet programs. While Griffith's attitude toward the subjects of the first half of her book is that of a dispassionate academic, she is critical of the perspectives of contemporary Christian weight loss gurus, pointing out their insistence upon seeing fatness in psychological rather than historical, racial or socioeconomic terms. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Choice Review

In an engaging and persuasive study, Griffith (Princeton) argues that religion "has been central to the historical creation of American bodies." Contesting previous scholarship that ignores religion's influence on modern American views of and obsessions with the body, Griffith examines religious conceptions of the corporeal body, ranging from those of early-modern-era Puritans to contemporary devotional diet literature. Griffith argues for the influence of New Thought and evangelical Protestantism, suggesting that religious fascination with the body has not been one of repulsion, as some previous studies have asserted, but rather a fascination with regenerative possibilities. Making one's body new (or "born again") correlates with the belief that physical bodies mirror the state and true character of one's soul. The connection of inner character and external appearance, Griffith notes, makes the body a historically contested site in which white, male, middle-class physiques have been promoted by some as the ideal and declared by others--such as Elijah Muhammad's Nation of Islam--as inferior. Focusing on religious attitudes and conceptions of the physical body, Born Again Bodies offers readers a promising new direction in the study of American religion. ^BSumming Up: Highly recommended. Lower-level undergraduates and above; general readers. S. McCloud University of North Carolina at Charlotte