Born Again Bodies
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Born Again Bodies

R. Marie Griffith

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  1. 337 pages
  2. English
  3. PDF
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

Born Again Bodies

R. Marie Griffith

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About This Book

"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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Information

Publisher
University of California Press
Year
2004
ISBN
9780520938113
Edition
1
Topic
Theology & Religion
Subtopic
Christianity
established 
pattern 
of 
Protestant 
male 
fitness 
writers 
convinced 
that 
food
abstinence 
was 
the 
secret 
to 
virility 
and 
a 
key 
to 
the 
regeneration 
of 
the
Anglo-American 
race 
as 
a 
whole.
“Jesus 
was 
no 
ascetic,”
warned 
the 
evan-
gelist 
Billy 
Sunday,
but 
a 
“robust,
red-blooded 
man”;
while 
the 
businessman
Bruce 
Barton 
later 
enthused 
about 
the 
“physically 
powerful 
and 
handsome”
Jesus 
who 
was 
“the 
founder 
of 
modern 
business.”
Unlike 
the 
evangelicals,
however,
this 
innovative 
crop 
of 
New 
Thought 
fitness 
writers 
made 
food
abstinence 
the 
key 
to 
strength 
and 
masculine 
subjectivity.
As 
Upton 
Sinclair
(1878–1968) 
wrote 
in 
the 
first 
of 
two 
books 
devoted 
to 
health 
and 
fasting,
the 
present 
day 
witnessed 
“a 
movement 
of 
moral 
regeneration,”
exemplified
in 
each 
individual’s 
“conscious 
effort
.
.
.
to 
eliminate 
his 
own 
unfitness”
and 
supported 
harmoniously 
by 
Christian 
Science,
New 
Thought,
and 
con-
temporary 
health 
reform.
2
Nearly 
all 
advocates 
of 
fasting 
between 
1890 
and 
1930—Edward 
Hooker
Dewey,
Charles 
Haskell,
Bernarr 
Macfadden,
J.
Austin 
Shaw,
Irving 
James
Eales,
Hereward 
Carrington,
Robert 
Baille 
Pearson,
Edward 
Earle 
Purinton,
Upton 
Sinclair,
Wallace 
D.
Wattles,
and 
Frank 
McCoy,
for 
example—were
male.
3
In 
one 
way 
or 
another,
they 
explicitly 
connected 
their 
own 
experience
112
/
Minding 
the 
Body
5.
Gilman 
Low,
from 
Irving
James 
Eales,
Healthology,
across 
from 
86.
Low 
per-
formed
a
number 
of 
weight-
lifting 
exhibitions 
after 
extended 
fasts.

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