This handbook is the first comprehensive volume to feature multi-religious, cross-cultural and multidisciplinary perspectives on the intersections of religion and food. It highlights recent trends and methodologies in religious studies and food studies from the humanities and the social sciences. A team of international scholars provide theoretical frameworks presenting food as integral to the materiality of religions and religions’ functions in daily life, with studies drawing upon teachings from the Abrahamic religions, Asian religions, and indigenous
religions as represented in a diverse body of sacred literature, historical sources, and personal narratives.
The volume features debates on moral questions and ethical principles related to food sources and food consumption, the nexus of ritual and theology, violence against and treatment of animals and the environment, animal rights, industrialization, racialization, gender, hunger, poverty, hospitality, and contemporary movements working towards social justice, eco-spirituality, and sustainability. Topics include the rhythms of feasting and fasting; notions of purity; forbidden foods;
and rituals such as sacrifices. Authors in this volume contribute to the psychology and sociology of food as an essential factor in the construction of individual and group identity, new religions, and to the growing practice of food as a tool in interreligious dialogue.
List of Contributors Introduction, Yudit Kornberg Greenberg (Rollins College, USA) and Benjamin E. Zeller (Lake Forest College, USA) Part I: Religion and the Food Cycle 1. Farming: Religion and Sustainable Agriculture, Todd LeVasseur (College of Charleston, USA) 2. Gathering: Nourishing a Local Movement for Justice at The Gainesville Catholic Worker, Victoria Machado (Rollins College, USA) 3. Cooking: “Traditions Reborn”: Practising Everyday Hinduism through the Cooking and Documenting of Hindu Vrata Recipes on the Internet, Sucharita Sarkar (D.T.S.S College of Commerce, Mumbai, India) 4. Nurturing: Faiz al-Mawaid al-Burhaniyah and the Dawoodi Bohra Community, Arwa Hussain (Concordia University, Montreal) and Dawood Mirza (Aljamea tus Saifiyah, Pakistan) 5. Contaminating: Don’t Touch the Water: Women’s Labor and Presence in Tibetan Monastic Kitchens, Kati Fitzgerald (Wittenberg University, Germany) 6. Deciding: Decision-making Avenues on Cultured Meat in the Jain, Hindu and Jewish Traditions, Melanie Barbato (Pacific Theological College, USA) and Arvin Gouw Part II: Food, Ritual, and Practice 7. Communicating: Interspecies Communication and Mnemonics of Sacred Bodily Eating Practice in Candomblé, Scott Alves Barton (Notre Dame University, USA) 8. Slaughtering: Shechita (Jewish Ritual Slaughter), the Kosher Dietary Laws, the Meat Industry, and the Question of Humane Slaughter in the United States, Adrienne Krone (Allegheny College, USA) 9. Communing: The Eucharist and Feminist Theology, Beth Ritter-Conn (Belmont University, USA) 10. Welcoming: Food, Hospitality, and Ritual in the Jewish Tradition, Yudit Kronberg Greenberg (Rollins College, USA) 11. Tasting: Networks of Foods, Peoples, and Religions, Benjamin E. Zeller (Lake Forest College, USA) 12. Eating: Feasting with the Deities: African Foodscapes and Ritual Imagination, Afe Adogame (Princeton Seminary, USA) 13. Transforming: Ritual Cultivation of Food Security in Jewish Temple Traditions, Goran Zivkovic (Friedensau University, Germany) 14. Storytelling: The Hungry Goddess: Food, Consumption, and Liberation in Tantric Kali Narratives, Sundari Johansen Hurwitt (California Institute of Integral Studies) Part III: Food and Ethics 15. Consuming: Religion and Vegetarianism, Allison van Tilborgh (Independent Scholar, USA) 16. Abstaining: Buddhist Vegetarianism, Marielle Harrison (University of Chicago, USA) 17. Interpreting: Jain Veganism in Dialogue with Jain Vegetarianism: Instrumentalizing Jain Scriptures in Global Debates, Christopher Jain Miller (Arihanta Institute, USA) 18. Valuing: Ahimsa, Animals, and Vegetarianism in Hindu Literature, Cogen Bohanec (Arihanta Institute, USA) 19. Savoring: Sikh Scripture: A Platter of Food, Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh (Colby College, USA) 20. Discerning: Food for Non-Thought: The Role of Diet in Yoga Texts as an Aid to Stilling the Mind, Zoë Slatoff (Loyola Marymount University, USA) 21. Dieting: The Repurposing of Christian Sin-Talk in Women’s Weight Loss Culture: Feminist theological reflections from the UK, Hannah Bacon (University of Chester, UK) Part IV: Food, Identity, Religious Community 22. Speaking: We Eat to Die and Die to Eat: When Food Speaks a Higher Language than the Ordinary, Benson Ohihon Igboin (Adekunle Ajasin University, Nigeria) 23. Living: Lived Religion and Food, William Schanbacher (University of South Florida, USA) 24. Drinking: Discerning Spirits: Christianity and Alcohol, Kyle Schenkewitz (Mount Saint Joseph University, USA) 25. Ingesting: Pomegranates, Aptitude, and Indigestion in Medieval Islamic Learning, Joseph Leonardo Vignone (Gonzaga University, USA) 26. Identifying: Israeli Food and Ethnic Identity in American Jewry, Ari Ariel (University of Iowa, USA) 27. Sharing: Culinary Diplomacy: Settling Religious Feuds Through Food, Yudit Kornberg Greenberg (Rollins College, USA) and Joseph Pool 28. Delineating: Halal and Tayyib: Exploring the Dimensions of Permissible and Pure Food in Islam, Ossama Addelgawwad (Valparaiso University, USA) Index
Yudit Kornberg Greenberg is the George D. and Harriet W. Cornell Endowed Chair and Professor of Religion and Founding Director of the Jewish Studies Program at Rollins College, USA. Her publications include The Body in Religion: Crosscultural Perspectives (Bloomsbury, 2017), and The Routledge Handbook of Religion and the Body (2023). Greenberg co-chairs the AAR Comparative Studies in Religion unit and serves on the Religion and Food Steering Committee. Benjamin E. Zeller is the Irvin L. & Fern D. Young Presidential Professor of Religion at Lake Forest College, USA. Zeller chaired the Religion and Food AAR program unit, serves as co-general editor of Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions, and his publications include Religion, Food, and Eating in North America (2014) and The Bloomsbury Companion to New Religious Movements (Bloomsbury, 2014).
Reviews for The Bloomsbury Handbook of Religion and Food
From its comprehensive Introduction, through the twenty-eight wide-ranging chapters that follow, this timely Handbook more than delivers on the editors’ goal of providing “a model for interdisciplinary and multi-methodological analysis of religion and food”. The volume’s appealing format invites readers to explore individual case studies while also engaging with grand theory and thereby encourages a comparative perspective on how religion and food regularly intersect and interact in everyday lives, as well as in the arcane worlds of sacred institutions and academia. A major accomplishment! * Fran Markowitz, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel * Finally, a fine, central, interdisciplinary text that lays out key threads in the study of religion and food! This impressive cross-cultural selection of work spans food production, preparation, and ritual consumption, and delves into questions of ethics and identity. Insightful overviews of previous scholarship frame these pieces well, making this valuable for students of religion, food, anthropology, and history. * Peter Harle, University of Minnesota, USA * With an unparalleled geographical, methodological, and temporal scope, this edited volume is poised to become an indispensable resource for the study of religion and food. It is an essential text for both new and experienced educators. * Nora Rubel, University of Rochester, USA * This is an extraordinary lineup of highly specialized research chapters on the history of food and religion. The contributors are leaders in the field, and the volume brings together topics rarely discussed elsewhere. This is a very important work in the field, even groundbreaking. * Ken Albala, University of the Pacific, USA * The first of its kind, this important edited collection draws on a rich and religiously diverse series of well-crafted essays to address the one, often taken for granted, thing that all religions ‘do’: food. United around four main themes - food cycles, rituals and practices, ethics, and identity and community – the book provides an exciting, timely, critical (re-)orientation toward understanding the sensual, food-related realities of religious life. * Amy R. Whitehead, Massey University, New Zealand *
