Food for Life
Food for Life draws on L. Shannon Jung’s gifts as theologian, ethicist, pastor, and eater extraordinaire. In this deeply thoughtful but very lively book, he encourages us to see our humdrum habits of eating and drinking as a spiritual practice that can renew and transform us and our world. In a fascinating sequence that takes us from the personal to the global, Jung establishes the religious meaning of eating and shows how it dictates a healthy order of eating. He exposes Christians’ complicity in the face of widespread eating disorders we experience personally, culturally, and globally, and he argues that these disorders can be reversed through faith, Christian practices, attention to habitual activities like cooking and gardening, the church’s ministry, and transforming our cultural policies about food.
Product Details
Paperback: 184 pages
Publisher: Augsburg Fortress Publishers (May 1, 2004)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0800636422
ISBN-13: 978-0800636425
About the Author
L. Shannon Jung – director of the Center for Theology and Land, a joint project of the Wartburg and University of Dubuque Theological Seminaries in Iowa.
Surprisingly Relevant
By Pay It Forward on July 9, 2009
L. Shannon Jung provokes a searching awareness of our attitudes toward food, distribution ethics, and a different context for eating disorders that is surprisingly relevant for our time, in Food for Life. Though dealing with important and often sobering realities, Jung’s writing is easily followed and engaging. No idealist, nor “preacher,” Jung leads us through a valuable reflection of our neglect of the whole self while feeding our bodies through unconscious consumption. Highly recommend this book for insights on more intentional and interconnected living…it was not what I expected.
Food for Life is Powerful!
By walt sears on July 4, 2012
Format: Paperback
First, to clear up any misconception, let me be clear. Far from being a self-help book for weight loss or eating disorders, Food for Life, is theology and religious philosophy. L. Shannon Jung’s book is a treatise on food and the physical and spiritual hungers that drive our interactions with God, one another and the world around us. It is a powerful commentary on the social, institutional and systemic ills that pervert our attitudes toward the food we eat and how we can begin to return to a place of moral, spiritual and physical health. Jung tempers his critiques with a pervasive joy of food and eating, and what he insists should be the celebration of God and creation. Jung is a Christian theologian and Food for Life is clearly written from that perspective, but the insights he offers are universal and, in my opinion, provide a welcome companion to important other topical works such as; Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma and Weber’s Food Inc.