Whitebread Protestants: Food and Religion in American Culture

By Daniel Sack

Book Overview

At the beginning of Whitebread Protestants, Daniel Sack writes "When I was young, church meant food. Decades later, it's hard to point to particular events, but there are lots of tastes, smells, and memories such as the taste of dry cookies and punch from coffee hour - or that strange orange drink from vacation Bible school." And so he begins this fascinating look at the role food has played in the daily life of the white Protestant community in the United States. He looks at coffee hours, potluck dinners, ladies' afternoon teas, soup kitchens, communion elements, and a variety of other things. A blend of popular culture, religious history and the growing field of food studies, the book will reveal both conflict and vitality in unexpected places in American religious life.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312294425
• ISBN13: 9780312294427
• Release Date: February 2002
• Publisher: Palgrave MacMillan
• Length: 262 Pages
• Weight: 0.74 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.6" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Fun, thoughtful, unexpected

That bread and wine are at the center of most Christian religious services is not news. But taking that seriously -- the centrality of food in worship, in the communal experience of faith -- gives Sack's book a window into the what we want from our churches and how our churches our drawn into the rest of our lives.Five chapters, each in a somewhat different voice, look at the way food functions in mainline Protestant churches. It reaches back into the 1800's, at the fierce battles by those who argued that Jesus must have been a temperance crusader who never would let alcohol cross His lips. It moves through the details of Atlanta's current church-based efforts to feed the hungry, and the tension between working to feed the hungry and working to end hunger. It stops by the suburbs of Chicago, to churches where professional cafeterias have replaced potluck dinners. Along the way, you get great anecdotes, solid writing, and a lot to think about.The simple strength of the narrative alone makes the book worth buying. But the insights you pick up along the way are what will fuel your dinner conversations for some time afterwards.