Born Again Bodies: Flesh and Spirit in American Christianity (California Studies in Food and Culture, 12) (Paperback)

~ (Author) "Monks wasting away in the desert, saints beating their bodies and sleeping on nails, apostles renouncing all pleasures and subsisting on the charity of benefactors,..." (more)
Key Phrases: fasting masters, diet writers, diet literature, Minding the Body, Pray the Weight Away, Sculptors of Our Own Exterior (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

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Eddy receives ample treatment, then, as an added bonus, Griffith introduces Hattie Harlow, an ordinary woman whose unpublished accounts of her own phrenological initiatives yield insight into the ways Eddy's movement seeped into the popular imagination.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.
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Product 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.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 337 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press; 1 edition (October 4, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520242408
• ISBN-13: 978-0520242401
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #260,054 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars this is an academic book, September 9, 2007

By	annie blakeney - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

if you are interested in a scholarly approach to Christian fitness, this is the best book out there.

0 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Terrible, March 8, 2007

By	Jimi L. Varner - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Simply terrible. A complete waste of money as I felt the author was just trying to talk over my head, and she succeeded.

Don't waste your money