Eating and Believing: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Vegetarianism and Theology

Description

What are the links between people's beliefs and the foods they choose to eat? In the modern Western world, dietary choices are a topic of ethical and political debate, but how can centuries of Christian thought and practice also inform them? And how do reasons for abstaining from particular foods in the modern world compare with earlier ones? This book will shed new light on modern vegetarianism and related forms of dietary choice by situating them in the context of historic Christian practice. It will show how the theological significance of embodied practice may be retrieved and reconceived in the present day. Food and diet is a neglected area of Christian theology, and Christianity is conspicuous among the modern world's religions in having few dietary rules or customs. Yet historically, food and the practices surrounding it have significantly shaped Christian lives and identities. This collection, prepared collaboratively, includes contributions on the relationship between Christian beliefs and food practices in specific historical contexts. It considers the relationship between eating and believing from non-Christian perspectives that have in turn shaped Christian attitudes and practices. It also examines ethical arguments about vegetarianism and their significance for emerging Christian theologies of food.

Dr David Grumett is Research Fellow in Theology in the University of Exeter, UK. Dr Rachel Muers is Lecturer in Theology in the University of Leeds, UK. She is author of Keeping God's Silence: Towards a Theological Ethics of Communication (Blackwell, 2004).She also edited The Modern Theologians (Blackwells) together with David Ford.

This book raises a series of deeply difficult questions designed to make all of us think much more thoroughly about something we all do more or less daily. And that, I think, makes it a book which deserves to be read. * Regent's Reviews *