"Food for the belly, the belly for food," runs St. Paul's Corinthian mantra. The importance of diet as a cultural dynamic is more pronounced now than any time in recent memory. So what do leaders need to know about the spiritual formation of generation foodie? Aaron Damiani, planting an urban church on Chicago's north side, has a few thoughts. -Paul
Right now, Christians around the world are celebrating Lent, a season of self-denial that anticipates the resurrection of the body. It's a period where worshippers bridle the appetites of the flesh in great hope that they will become like Christ: purified and transformed. Here on the north side of Chicago, such hope-driven asceticism is not limited to the Christian church.
This is nothing less than a transformation of the body; it is a personal, spiritual, communal journey.
Just a few days before Lent began, many of my friends and fellow CrossFitters—few of them religiously affiliated—started a 30 day paleo challenge. This is a young, urban crowd, most of them living in the shadow of Wrigley Field in Chicago's Lakeview neighborhood. With the promise of a renewed body, they will pay top dollar for grass-fed meat and organic vegetables, while eschewing grains, sugar, dairy, corn and legumes of any kind. There are no feast days, no cheating. But I can tell you there is genuine hope and enviable commitment. Paleo recipes, encouragement and testimonies are all traded freely in our community. The price is steep, but the payoff is rich: high energy from dawn to dusk, healthier skin, better performance with a barbell, and—let's be honest now—it makes you sexier.
This is nothing less than a transformation of the body; it is a personal, spiritual, communal journey. Ask anyone who has completed the 30 day paleo challenge and they will tell you, there's no going back. Sure, you make modifications, you go 80/20 or 70/30, but eating clean is its own reward. Despite the intense devotion, I can confirm that this not dour legalism. It is a journey that is full of joy and delight. Since joining this community a year and a half ago, my own diet has tracked discernibly in a paleo direction. I would have joined in the 30 day challenge myself if I had more disposable income and fewer kids.
My friends and I are not alone in our shifting relationship with food. As a young pastor who has served urban congregations in Chicago and Washington D.C., I can tell you that attitudes around food have taken on a moralistic quality. People in my current congregation have chosen, either by necessity or out of conviction, to be gluten free, vegetarian, paleo, or some combination thereof. My wife and many of her friends have removed food coloring, pesticides, and preservatives from our children's diet because of the damage it can do.
There is a growing conviction in urban centers that food intake is not a neutral, amoral choice. Your diet can either be good or bad, loving or unloving—to yourself, to animals, to local farmers, to the environment, or to your loved ones.
It is difficult to see food in the same way after reading Michael Pollen's book The Omnivore's Dilemma, or seeing disturbing footage of the food industry in the documentary Food, Inc, or being exposed to the argument for a plant-based diet in Forks over Knives. There is a growing conviction in urban centers that food intake is not a neutral, amoral choice. Your diet can either be good or bad, loving or unloving—to yourself, to animals, to local farmers, to the environment, or to your loved ones.
Mary Eberstadt, a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, helped make sense of this trend in her essay Is Food the New Sex? Her article helped situate our generation's attitudes towards food by comparing it to our grandparent's attitudes towards sex. The generation that grew up in or shortly after the depression regarded sex as an activity governed by universal laws, not personal preference. This same generation was ambivalent and open-minded about food, as long as you cleaned your plate.
Among the new emerging adults, these attitudes have reversed: now sex between consenting adults is self-evidently a matter of personal preference, while choices about food are not.
Among the new emerging adults, these attitudes have reversed: now sex between consenting adults is self-evidently a matter of personal preference, while choices about food are not. It's no secret that traditional moral boundaries around sex "have rather famously loosed their holds over the contemporary mind." But as Dr. Eberstadt demonstrates with her research the contemporary mind has, at least in certain circles, taken hold of a new set of moral boundaries, a new asceticism, a new urban righteousness. Food is indeed the new sex.
For these young adults affirmation trumps condemnation.
But not everything has carried over. Before the sexual revolution the cultural boundaries around sex were wired with a morally charged electric fence. If you stepped outside the boundaries you were shamed or shunned. Aside from certain pockets of vegan activism, the current generation is not eager to scold others about food. When Millennials talk food restrictions, they do so with an optimistic, positive vision for self-improvement. For these young adults affirmation trumps condemnation.
Laura Murphy, one my CrossFit coaches who has apprenticed many people in changing their diet, puts it this way:
"Honestly, the paleo restrictions are not easy. But if you are willing to stop settling, the community will rally around you because we are striving for the same healthy lifestyle. You share recipes and you share feelings. You endure hardships and you celebrate successes. It is rewarding for me and the other coaches to witness the positive results we experienced ourselves at one point in our life. People stop crashing in the afternoon, they overcome their weight issues and digestive problems, joint pain goes away, and there's a new level of self-respect."
That kind of invitation is hard to resist, and people in every major American city are responding.
Aaron will be discussing the ministry implications of this trend in Part 2 of "Food is the New Sex." Look for it next week.
Aaron Damiani is the pastor of Immanuel Anglican Church in Chicago's Uptown neighborhood. You can find him on Twitter at @aarondamiani.
