Born Again Bodies

"Fat People Don't Go to Heaven!" screamed a headline in the tabloidGlobe 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 fromLarry King Live to theNew 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 likeWhat Would Jesus Eat? andFit for God. Written with style and wit, far ranging in its implications, and rich with the stories of real peopleBorn 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.

"Fat People Don't Go to Heaven!" screamed a headline in the tabloidGlobe 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 fromLarry King Live to theNew 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 likeWhat Would Jesus Eat? andFit for God. Written with style and wit, far ranging in its implications, and rich with the stories of real peopleBorn 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.

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments

Introduction: Perilous Body Gospels
A Note on Reading the Images

1. Gluttons for Regimen: Anglo-Protestant Culture and the Reorientation of Appetite
The Diet of Angels: Fasting in Early Modern Anglo-American Protestantism
Gospels of Physick: Medicine, Methodism, and Mortification
Rarefied Flesh: Sexual Regulation, Bodily Pleasure, and Perfection
Phrenology and Somatic Authenticity

2. Sculptors of Our Own Exterior: New Thought Physiques
"Nothing but a Dense Shadow": The Body as Delusion?
Corresponding Bodies
Female Sexual Pleasure and Mystical Communion:
Reproducing a Civilized Race
Regimens Shaping Bodies to Come

3. Minding the Body: Divergent Paths of New Thought Perfectionism
Living on Air: Gospels of Fasting, Conquest, and Purgation
William Sheldon’s Metaphysical Somatotypes
God in a Body: Gastronomy and Black Power

4. Pray the Weight Away: Shaping Devotional Fitness Culture
Shedd-ing Pounds: Scripture and Devotional Practice in Service to Weight Loss
The Burgeoning Christian Diet Culture
From Empathy to Authority: Shifting Models of Expertise
Religious Devotion to Thinness Outside Mainstream Protestantism

5. "Don’t Eat That": Denial, Indulgence, and Exclusion in Christian Diet Culture
Poisoned Bodies, Blemished Souls: Food as Taint and Transgression
Loved on a Smaller Scale: Women,Weight, and the Divine
Lover Above
The Power of Perfection: Purified Bodies and Racialized Worlds

Epilogue: Bodies in Crisis?

Notes
Primary Source Bibliography
Index