ABSTRACT
Throughout this study it has been clear that food is not simply a private matter. All eating affirms and reconfigures human connections with natural and social environments.1 It is therefore unsurprising that Christian debates about food are often linked to discussions about what attitudes to the wider world Christians should express. In this penultimate chapter we shall examine in greater detail some of the ethical, theological and practical implications of attempts by Christian individuals and groups to use food to negotiate the relationships between forms of life which are world-affirming, world-judging and world-transforming. Our focus will remain on practices and their implications, but we shall also consider possible theological frameworks for their interpretation. These are pressing matters in a present-day context in which the social, economic and political impact of food issues is clear. For this reason, the assumption needs to be challenged that, in choices about food, individual choice is sovereign. We shall begin by considering how Christian communities have sought not
only to regulate eating or allow individuals to exclude some foods from their diet, but to remove particular foods from the menu altogether. We shall then assess a range of accusations brought against vegetarians, including Christian vegetarians, that through their abstinence they disdain creation, fear embodiment, desire unattainable purity or flee from death. The theological concerns motivating these accusations will inform a more nuanced evaluation of dietary abstinence.
