Food for Life draws on L. Shannon Jung's gifts as theologian, ethicist, pastor, and eater extraordinaire. In this deeply thoughtful but very lively book, he encourages us to see our humdrum habits of eating and drinking as a spiritual practice that can renew and transform us and our world. In a fascinating sequence that takes us from the personal to the global, Jung establishes the religious meaning of eating and shows how it dictates a healthy order of eating. He exposes Christians' complicity in the face of widespread eating disorders we experience personally, culturally, and globally, and...

Our everyday personal, familial, and communal practices of eating, says Jung, have the potential for making us more attentive to our life purposes, more attuned to our communal identities, and even more mindful of the presence of God. Juxtaposing practices with values, Jung explores how food and eating function culturally today. He explores the larger dimensions of personal and group eating, the great resonance that feasting and food and fasting have within the Christian tradition, and how all this figures very practically in Christian lifestyle. His work culminates in a chapter on the Lord's...

"Hunger and Happiness" exposes the atrocities of a global food system whereby the affluent feed at the expense of others, but then goes on to explore how complicity in the hunger of others contributes to the spiritual malnourishment of those who otherwise are well fed.

About the Contributor(s): Growing up in a rural community, and serving four rural congregations in Iowa, Illinois, Saskatchewan, and South Dakota over nearly four decades as a pastor of Mennonite Church USA and Canada, S. Roy Kaufman personally witnessed the dismantling and disintegration of rural communities and churches. This book is a distillation of forty years of living, preaching, and teaching with these rural congregations. Kaufman lives in his home community, Freeman, South Dakota.