What are the links between people's beliefs and the foods they choose to eat? In the modern Western world, dietary choices are a topic of ethical and political debate, but how can centuries of Christian thought and practice also inform them? And how do reasons for abstaining from particular foods in the modern world compare with earlier ones? This book will shed new light on modern vegetarianism and related forms of dietary choice by situating them in the context of historic Christian practice. It will show how the theological significance of embodied practice may be retrieved and reconceived...

Since the middle of the twentieth century, theologians have tended to regard the eucharist in communitarian terms as the means by which the worshipping community unites into one body. The eucharist, in this interpretation, both signifies and builds church community. This focus was encouraged by the Second Vatican Council and has been central to the renewal of eucharistic participation in various Christian denominations, among Catholics in the work of Henri de Lubac and Anglicans in that of A. G. Hebert. In recent theology there has been interest in semiotic/epistemological interpretations of...

Material Eucharist interprets the Eucharist through its material elements of bread and wine. Drawing upon a rich variety of biblical, patristic, medieval, and modern texts and traditions, David Grumett brings together theological reflection and liturgical action and shows their mutual dependence. For both theologians and liturgists, a central concern is the matter out of which the created order has been made, from which issues of community and social justice are inseparable. The ingredients of bread and wine anticipate, in their harvesting and manufacture, the formal church liturgy,...