ISBN: 0520242408 9780520242401

Category: BODY, MIND & SPIRIT / Sacred Sexuality

Page count: 323

"Fat People Don't Go to Heaven!" screamed a headline in the tabloid <i>Globe </i>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 <i>Larry King Live </i>to the <i>New Yorker. </i>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 <i>What Would Jesus Eat? </i>and <i>Fit for God. </i>Written with style and wit, far ranging in its implications, and rich with the stories of real people, <i>Born Again Bodies </i>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.<br><br>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.