The Big Picture Magazine 7 (2023) on Food and Place

The seventh issue of The Big Picture, a magazine produced by the Kirby Laing Centre, has recently been made available.

Among other items, this issue devotes several articles to the theme of food and place.

More information is available here, and the issue can be downloaded as a pdf here.

Online versions of the previous issues of the magazine are available from here.

Centre for Public Christianity (December 2021)

Among other items, the Centre for Public Christianity has this month posted a ‘Life and Faith’ podcast (here) with the team talking about Christmas – ‘the food, the gifts, the traditions, the family time – and what any of it has to do with the original story’.

Also posted (here) is an interview with theologian Sarah Coakley on ‘the problem of desire’, or ‘our relationship to sex, food, money, the body, and God’.

Ruth Valerio on Just Living

Ruth Valerio, Just Living: Faith and Community in an Age of Consumerism (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2016).

I wrote the following mini review for EG, the quarterly magazine produced by the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

Ruth Valerio is as much at ease discussing sociologist Zygmunt Bauman and theologian Thomas Aquinas as she is about her exploits in keeping chickens and setting up a pig cooperative! It gives this book a wonderfully distinctive flavour, as Ruth joins the dots between our cultural context, our faith, and our lifestyle.

It matters that life is lived well, and the book ends with a series of recommended practices related to social concern, ecological concern, money, material goods, food, and more. But we do so in full awareness of the globalised world and consumerist society in which we live, and we do so in the light of the rich resources offered to us in Scripture and Christian tradition. Here especially, the book helps us navigate between therapeutic narcissism and world-denying asceticism to a way of life which appreciates what it means to use pleasurable things rightly and for good ends, bound up with justice and the welfare of others.

Word & World 33, 4 (2013) on Bread

The latest issue of Word & World is devoted to ‘Bread’. The content (with main articles and abstracts as below) is available from here.

Editorial

Frederick J. Gaiser

On Eating

Articles

Jeff Wild

Anniversary Bread

David Beckmann

Bread for the World: What Pastors and Christians Need to Know about Hunger Today

Worldwide, hunger is retreating. Still, a staggering number of people live in perpetual hunger. Jesus and the prophets call us to respond, and together we can make a difference. But concerted action is required. Donating one can of food at a time, be it ever so useful, will not be sufficient to meet the crisis.

Rebecca P. Judge and Charles Taliaferro

Companionable Bread

Do U.S. trade and agricultural policies promote “companionship” (the “sharing of bread”) with other nations and peoples, or are they ways to exercise control over the bread supply to the detriment of others? The question does not permit an easy answer, but even raising it is important in our consideration of our role in an imperfect world.

Peter Speiser

Farm, Bakery, Table: Reflections on a Path of Daily Bread around the Globe

Participating in the production of our “daily bread” – whether rice in Japan, baguettes in South Africa, or lavash in Armenia – produces not only social and economic insights but theological ones as well. God provides for our physical needs, and Jesus, as the “bread of life,” satisfies even more than the rumbling of our stomachs.

Walter Brueggemann

Food Fight

The “food fight” extends throughout the Bible – the struggle for food between those who have much and those who have little. The fight betrays two contrasting ideologies or theologies about food: the conviction that the world is a closed system of limited resources versus the view that the creation is a process open to the continued gifts of a God who is anything but parsimonious.

Pamela Fickenscher

From Catherine to Katniss: Disordered Eating, Resistance, and the Eucharist

In a culture of bread and circuses, when some are obsessed with food and bodies but seldom name God as the source of nourishment and growth, the Christian community has the opportunity to celebrate and proclaim Holy Communion – the “body of Christ” – in life-giving ways that resist the reduction of food and bodies to market consumption.

Susan E. Hylen

Seeing Jesus John’s Way: Manna from Heaven

By using manna as a metaphor for Jesus, John points backwards to understand Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection as part of the Jewish story that begins with the exodus; John also points forward to the Eucharist, allowing those who partake of Jesus as manna to walk as Israelites and disciples whom God feeds with the bread of life.

Bryce Johnson

The Bread of Life

A community bread oven can be a way to gather members of a congregation and the broader community. In the oven, people bake the “bread of life” – both for their own use and the Eucharist – and they become the body of Christ in a new way.

Frederick J. Gaiser

Which Bethlehem? A Tale of Two Cities

Two stories of Bethlehem (the “house of bread”), back to back in our present Bibles, contrast the ugly consequences of hospitality denied (the Outrage at Gibeah) and the delightful consequences of hospitality given (Ruth). The hospitality granted Ruth leads even to the messianic line of Jesus – a remarkable promise to us and a lesson for our own behavior.

Face to Face

Christian Scharen

Vocational Formation for Ministry: The Need for Contextual Reflection

Walter Sundberg

Vocational Formation for Ministry: The Need for the Classical Disciplines

Texts in Context

Shauna K. Hannan

When Scripture Speaks out of Both Sides of Its Mouth: Dueling Preachers on a Faithful Food Ethic

So which is it? Do we, with Scripture, enjoy the abundance God has provided? Or do we, with Scripture, practice care for those who suffer hunger? Before we get to a too-easy “both,” we should think more deeply and theologically about the implications of each.

Reviews

Centre for Public Christianity (October 2013)

Among other items, the latest newsletter from the Centre for Public Christianity contains a link to an audio conversation in which Justine Toh talks to Ruth Dearnley (World Vision Australia’s campaign leader for child protection and trafficking) and Ruth Padilla DeBorst (World Vision International’s director of Christian Formation and Leadership Development) about the ethical dimensions of our eating.

The Bible in Transmission (Summer 2013) on Food

The latest issue of the excellent publication, The Bible in Transmission, from Bible Society, is available online here, offering a collection of articles on ‘Food Matters’.

Matthew van Duyvenbode

Editorial

Norman Wirzba

Thinking Theologically About Food

In our modern consumer-orientated world, food has become little more than a commodity that we mindlessly consume. We fail to perceive the mystery of food. Here are some theological insights to help us receive food as a precious gift and sign of God’s sustaining care.

Ángel Méndez-Montoya

Eating and the Eucharist: A Transformation of Desire

Food is important and eating implies transformation at multiple levels. In this article Ángel Méndez-Montoya considers some of the transformations we meet in the Eucharist, where God’s love becomes food to eat and share with others.

Nathan MacDonald

Food and Identity: An Old Testament Perspective

An outline of the deep-seated relationship between food and identity in the Old Testament. Food has a central role in ancient Jewish identity and is frequently mentioned in the Hebrew scriptures.

Hannah Bacon

God and Thinness: Is Christian Theology Feeding the Secular Commercial Weight Loss Industry?

A discussion of how one UK secular commercial slimming group has been resourced in various ways and to various degrees by Christian motifs and theological logic.

Colin Tudge

The Church, the Bible and Enlightened Agriculture

Inappropriate modern industrial agriculture practices are failing us. We ought to be able to feed everyone and look after the Earth, but we’re not. Christianity has a powerful agrarian tradition and moral framework that can help reform farming and help us overcome the major problems the world is facing.

Gordon Gatward

Food for Thought

Gordon Gatward offers some scientific and biblical insights on the sustainability of farming and food production today.

Pascale Palmer

Hungry for Change

The food system is failing the poorest people: the balance of power is tipped towards global companies – rather than families trying to put food on the table.

Chris Sunderland

Bristol: The Sustainable Food City

Chris Sunderland briefly outlines some of the ways Bristol is responding to the challenge of providing an adequate and secure food supply across the city.

David Spriggs

Universities and Colleges

Ben Witherington III on Everyday Life from a Kingdom Perspective

Christianity Today carries an interview with Ben Witherington III about his latest book, The Rest of Life: Rest, Play, Eating, Studying, Sex from a Kingdom Perspective (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012). There is also a review of it on the EerdWord blog, along with a brief summary post from Witherington himself.

The book effectively provides a final a volume in his ‘Kingdom Perspectives’ series, having previously published on worship, work, and the kingdom of God. In this one, Witherington offers theological reflection on aspects of ordinary, everyday life. 

As he summarises:

‘What we are, and what we do in life, is tremendously important to God, to the kingdom of God, and to ourselves. When we think about our Christian faith and how we spend our work week, faith should not be something that we do on Sunday, but something that shapes our worldview and how we live.’

Jamison Galt on Church Practices in Public Life: Food

Jamison Galt, ‘Church Practices in Public Life: A Global Feast’, Cardus (25 June 2012).

Cardus have started a new series on ‘Church Practices and Public Life’, which looks like it could be worth checking out as entries appear.

The editor’s note says:

‘We’re accustomed to thinking of the practices of the Christian faith as something that happens within the church, shaping those who engage in them. But we don’t always think about what it looks like when those same practices translate into and affect public life, informing society beyond the church walls. Comment asked some writers to explore this question in reference to a number of the distinctive practices of the Christian faith – like tithing, prayer, preaching, baptism, and singing – and we'll be publishing them in the coming months.’

Jamison Galt kicks off with a piece on food, reflecting on how ‘the history of the world from creation to consummation is enacted in the process of making bread’.

Some excerpts:

‘Food is central to who we are as human beings and communities; our food practices comprehend nearly everything important that we do in life: from the time we nurse as babies until our last meal we will use food to celebrate, to mourn, to court a spouse, to explore other cultures, to pursue health or its opposite, to medicate, to experiment, to delight, to worship. Food is present in most of what we do in life and food both shapes and expresses our personal habits and cultural values.’

‘The Christian story in the Holy Scriptures is where we should start in looking for the meaning of food. Food is central in the first scene of the Bible; it’s central in the last... If we’ll allow this story to shape our personal stories, we’ll find a way forward for feasting as Christians and in the public realm.’

Ecclesia Reformanda 3, 1 (April 2011)

The latest Ecclesia Reformanda arrived this morning, this issue containing the following articles:

Steffen Jenkins

Served to Serve: Why Food is Central to the Anthropology of Creation in Genesis 1-3 and to the Plot of Genesis

The book of Genesis is laden with references to food. Recent scholarship has begun to pay attention to food in the Bible and especially found that it functions as a Leitmotif in the Joseph narrative which concludes Genesis. This article will demonstrate that food is central to the opening three chapters of the book. Creation and the place of people within it cannot be understood without close attention to food, which explains its prominent place and function in the rest of Genesis. We conclude with some reflections on the food imagery of redemption on the lips of Jesus, and by noting the inescapably earthy and physical contribution of food to the future hope held out in the gospel.

Neil G.T. Jeffers

Reformed Defences of God’s Righteousness in Ordaining the Fall. Part Two

This concludes the treatment of Reformed defences of God’s righteousness in ordaining the Fall begun in Ecclesia Reformanda 2.2 (2010): 154-185. The conclusion focuses particularly on the evaluation of divine permission as a defence.

Alastair Roberts

Just Cause Against Same-Sex Marriage: Why We Cannot Hold Our Peace

As the questions raised by same-sex marriage are frequently foreclosed for participants from the various sides of the debate, the particular issues that they highlight are seldom given the sustained and close attention that they merit. Placing the argument against same-sex marriage on a broad foundation, these articles explore the ways in which its legalization would transform the institution, in its relationship to individuals, the genders, marriage partners, children, society, and past and future generations. By emphasizing these distinct matters, Christians will be better equipped to establish points of contact around which meaningful dialogue can be forged.

Book Reviews

Tim Chester on Eating and Drinking with Others

Tim Chester, A Meal with Jesus: Discovering Grace, Community, and Mission around the Table (Wheaton: Crossway, 2011), 144pp., ISBN 9781433521362.

IVP are publishing this in the UK. Meanwhile – to whet the appetite – Crossway make available an excerpt as well as an interview with Tim Chester around the topic of the book. It’s about the significance of eating with others – in the ministry of Jesus (particularly as portrayed in Luke’s gospel) and as part of the shared life and mission of Christian communities today.

Here are some paragraphs from the Introduction:

‘This is a book about meals. But the meals of Jesus are a window into his message of grace and the way it defines his community and its mission. So this book is about grace, church, and mission. But meals are more than metaphor. They embody God’s grace and so give form to community and mission. We can’t get away from meals.

‘If I pull down books on mission and church planting from my shelves, I can read about contextualization, evangelism matrices, postmodern apologetics, and cultural hermeneutics. I can look at diagrams that tell me how people can be converted or discover the steps required to plant a church. It all sounds impressive, cutting edge, and sophisticated. But this is how Luke describes Jesus’s mission strategy: “The Son of Man came eating and drinking.”’

After the Introduction, the book is divided into six chapters, looking at meal scenes in Luke:

1. Meals as Enacted Grace: Luke 5

2. Meals as Enacted Community: Luke 7

3. Meals as Enacted Hope: Luke 9

4. Meals as Enacted Mission: Luke 14

5. Meals as Enacted Salvation: Luke 22

6. Meals as Enacted Promise: Luke 24