Whitebread Protestants: Food and Religion in American Culture [Hardcover]

Prof. Daniel Sack (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 11, 2000

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This toothsome debut by religious historian Sack examines the "whitebread" mainline Protestant food culture he grew up in, featuring untold potluck Jell-O salads and volunteer hours in church soup kitchens. If the second chapter (on coffee klatches and church suppers) is more compelling than the others (which address Protestant responses to hunger, and 19th and 20th-century changes in Communion), this only underscores Sack's own point: church food represents community, and that, more than theology or politics, is of primary concern to American Protestants. He discusses many Protestants' discomfort with their abundance of food and wealth, especially when the "lifestyle" movement of the 1970s encouraged many churchgoers to abstain from meat and materialism. (Coffee-hour Kool-Aid and cookies were sometimes replaced by herbal teas and vegetable sticks, much to the consternation of the old guard.) Sack sometimes misses opportunities to develop specific points; he refers in passing to the postwar boom in church kitchen construction, but fails to offer examples aside from one in-depth case study. That case studyAof a Chicago congregation's transformation from an ethnic neighborhood church to a justice-oriented outreach ministryAcould have been balanced by a parallel case study of a rural church. These quibbles aside, Sack has assembled a feast of understudied topics here, seasoned by the emerging fields of food studies and the material history of religion. Its accessible prose and universal topic will make it of interest to anyone who has ever been sustained by green bean casserole. (Nov.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Sack offers less a sustained argument than a series of anecdotes concerned with five topics: liturgical food, social food, emergency food, global food, and moral food. Sack maintains that food and religion have been intricately related in the construction of mainstream Protestantism in the U.S., and the chapters built around each of his five themes offer popularly accessible evidence to support that claim. Although the category mainstream Protestantism raises serious questions about theological and liturgical self-identification, the casserole, the potluck, the coffee hour, and emergency food programs are as familiar as the cross to a large variety of U.S. Protestants. Sack draws particularly on material-culture studies, and his tendency to sometimes separate theology from practice can be puzzling. But if we are indeed what we eat, and if what we believe is most effectively observed in what we do, readers stand to learn a great deal from Sacks about the "we" he identifies as "whitebread Protestants." Steven Schroeder
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan; 1st edition (November 11, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312217315
• ISBN-13: 978-0312217310
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,289,612 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fun, thoughtful, unexpected, December 19, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Whitebread Protestants: Food and Religion in American Culture (Hardcover)

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.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good descriptions, not very enlightening, September 14, 2004

By 

Richard R. Wilk (Bloomington, IN United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Whitebread Protestants: Food and Religion in American Culture (Paperback)

The title of this book led me to think it would be about religion and consumption, and would have some connection to the growing literature on food and society, food history, and the origins of American food traditions. Instead the book is very narrow - it deals mainly with the tradition of Protestant potluck suppers, and reaches the not-very-surprising conclusion that they were important in building social networks and holding congregations together. And that's pretty much it. You have to provide the analysis and wider context yourself.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Helpful - at times a bit tedious - but overall quite good, May 28, 2009

By 

ANDREW MCHENRY (Emporia, KS) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Whitebread Protestants: Food and Religion in American Culture (Paperback)

_Whitebread Protestants_ explores the relationship with food and the culture in mainline Protestantism. Author Daniel Sack begins by looking at historical controversies with the Lord's Supper - including the influences of the temperance movement and the challenge of germ theory. He then covers food as a basis for social gatherings, followed by the soup kitchen movement and mainline responses to global hunger after World War II. He concludes with a history of two healthful living movements.
Good: The book is well-researched and at times is very interesting. The chapter on the history of communion changes was historically enlightening - containing information that most Christians probably aren't aware of. The material on Christian responses to hunger makes for good contemporary apologetics (in an age of heightened church criticism). And the accounts of the maverick diet movements were fascinating.
Bad: Some of the material is tedious, particularly the detailed information on hunger education curriculums from the 1970s. Also, the author's writing style is mildly annoying. He ends each paragraph with a cheezy summary of what he just said. It gets old.
Opinion: In spite of its weaknesses, _Whitebread Protestants_ was a worthwhile read on the whole. The first chapter on the history of American communion controversy was particularly helpful. There are roots to modern-day worship practices that I was unaware of. The book also helped me to see the big picture of some of the food movements in our history.
Rating: 3.5 Stars
Best Quote: "A second-grade class was doing a project in comparative religions; each child was asked to say something about his or her faith and bring in a symbol of their belief. On the day of the assignment, the first child stood up and said, 'My name is Joshua. I go to Beth Shalom. I am Jewish, and this is a Star of David.' The second child stood up and said, 'My name is Marguerite. I go to St. Mary's. I am Catholic, and this is a crucifix.' The third child stood up and said, 'My name is Fred. I go to Grace Church. I am Protestant, and this is a casserole.'"