Attend a Baptist Wednesday night supper, a Methodist potluck or a Lutheran fellowship, and you'll get food that's "in this world but not of this world," to borrow a phrase that Christians apply to themselves. Church food is food apart, dishes you'll rarely be served in this day and age outside of a hospital cafeteria. Custom, rather than doctrine, dictates the recipes and it nearly always calls for comfort food: Jell-O salads, casseroles, chocolate cakes with bizarre names (the aforementioned Mississippi mud is one, Coca-Cola cake another), lemon pies, macaroni salad, fried chicken. Sauces? Have some gravy. There's the ketchup.
People who grew up in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints talk with longing--or horror--about memories of funeral potatoes, hash browns mixed with mushroom soup, and a peculiar casserole of hamburger meat and green beans. But they are also proud of their socio-culinary proclivities. The first commemorative pin issued by the Salt Lake City 2002 Winter Olympic Committee was an image of "green"-that is, lime--Jell-O. More of the clean-cut gelatin is eaten in Mormon Utah than any other state in the union.
Church foods are modest. Americans would never dream of bringing caviar or beef Wellington or a mousse to the fellowship hall or annual dinner-on-the ground. Their food says, "We're down-home, easy-going, family people. Nothing fancy about us. Everybody's welcome."
Bible scholar Marcus Borg finds this food-borne message at the very heart of Christianity. Jesus, he says, broke down Jewish dietary laws because they had become too rigid and were separating people from one another. Jesus ate with sinners, drank wine at parties and talked a lot about food because he wanted to emphasize that God's love was for everyone, says Borg. What you did or didn't eat wouldn't please God nearly as much as how you treated other people. Food, so to speak, is agape.
Today, food does more. It helps people affirm their identity as members of a given faith. It says "we belong." Greek Orthodox church festivals are famous for the baklava and souvlaki. Pancake breakfasts, usually cooked by the men of the church for some good cause, say, "Let's start the day by thinking of each other." In Judaism, nearly everything that passes the lips gets its own blessing, and its food traditions-bagels, cream cheese and lox, to begin with--have become American staples. No matter what language they are spoken in, no matter what kind of faith inspires them, the words, "Come to the table. Sit and eat with us," are always spiritual.
What we put into our mouths has always mattered. Greatly. Soulfully. Even eternally.
Nobody has made that point more strongly than Joseph Campbell, the renowned scholar of world mythology. He believed eating was at the heart of the human urge to repent. People are forever guilty, Campbell said, because they must kill to survive. British playwright George Bernard Shaw targeted that tension when he wrote: "A man of my spiritual intensity does not eat corpses." But plants are alive, too, Campbell points out. And so even vegetarians are caught in the central, terrible truth of all animal existence: we live only because of death.
Religion is sensitive to this paradox, sometimes painfully so. Some Jains are so intent on preserving sentient life they wear masks for fear of inhaling an insect. Reincarnation figures into this thinking, since they believe individuals return in other forms. Native Americans traditionally evoke animal spirits, giving thanks to the animals that have willingly sacrificed their lives. Traditional Jewish laws set out exactly how animals must be killed so that they feel the least amount of fear and pain.
Sheep sacrificed during Eid Aladha, the Muslim holiday to commemorate Ibrahim's (or Abraham's) readiness to sacrifice his son to God, are revered as the creature of God that gives its life for a higher purpose. These sheep will take the believer across the "hair-thin and razor-sharp bridge" to heaven on Judgment Day, according to tradition.
