Confessions of a Food Catholic

You can sin with food in many ways: by not sharing it, by eating way too much of it, or by throwing it across the restaurant table, for example. But you do not sin with food by bowing your head over it, saying grace with true gratitude in your heart, and tucking in.

You can sin with food in many ways-by not sharing it, by eating way too much of it, by throwing it across the restaurant table… But you do not sin with food by bowing your head over it, saying grace with true gratitude in your heart, and tucking in. Sharp-edged but humorous, Confessions of a Food Catholic addresses the unscriptural approach to food that many Christians have developed in recent years. (By the way, a “food catholic” is somebody who accepts all eaters of all foods, even if he or she doesn’t actually eat quinoa.) Specifically, the book addresses divisive threats to Christian table fellowship, the know-it-all pride of newfangled “health food” rules, and the dislocated moralism that makes “organic” and “natural” the signs of righteousness while disdaining the brethren who buy their beef at Stuffmart.

“A fabulous primer on how we should think through our meals together.”

-Sheologians

212 pages

View an excerpt of Confessions of a Food Catholic.

“My point is not that sinning with food is impossible. A man can sin by not sharing it, by eating way too much of it, by throwing it across the cafeteria, and so forth. My point is that a man cannot sin by bowing his head over it, saying grace with true gratitude in his heart, and then tucking in-and this truth is not affected by whether what he is about to eat is a chocolate pudding cup from a fast food joint or lots of spinach, rich in iron. So the comparatively new and alarming trend in Christian circles toward the demonization of certain basic foods is the sin I particularly want to address.”

 -From the Introduction