Book Review

Mainline Protestantism has historically urged its members to order their lives in a God-centered fashion. As Daniel Sack so imaginatively demonstrates, this effort extends to such simple activities as eating and drinking. Whitebread Protestants examines a variety of church-based contexts that involve food and drink, including communion, church suppers, after-service coffee hours, and campaigns to alleviate global hunger. In a fresh style that is alternatively serious and whimsical, Sack alerts us to how such topics as communion cups, grape juice, and soup kitchens provide fascinating new perspectives on the moral stances articulated by mainline Protestantism as well as the social tensions they frequently obscure.

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The ritual of communion has been the battleground for two raging disputes concerning the proper connection of food to religion. The first of these is the debate whether the ingestion of wine or of grape juice is more befitting a ceremony intended to honor Christ. This debate partly reflects theological differences. It also reflects social divisions within Protestantism, often pitting those of rural and Anglo-Saxon heritage against urban immigrants. The second debate concerns whether to use individual communion cups or a common cup. Here, too, the debate reveals both theological and sociological tensions in the American Protestant experience. Sack helpfully explains how this dispute reveals the gradual shift of authority in American religious culture away from the clergy and the church's tradition toward the laity and progressive science.

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