“Seventy-eight percent of all clergy are either overweight (48 percent) or obese (30 percent).” —Pulpit & Pew Research Project
I was sitting in my usual seat behind the pulpit, famished, thinking, “Will this anthem ever end?” My stomach was growling. Only through heroic spiritual effort was I able to put thoughts of lunch aside and pronounce the benediction.
About ten years ago I started to become vegetarian. But although my menu shifted, my Christian observance continued pretty much the same. A cradle Anglican, I was a graduate student at King’s College, Cambridge. Evensong in chapel was a staple of my spiritual diet, often followed by dinner in the hall. Although physical sustenance came right after spiritual sustenance, I had little sense of a link between the two beyond the notion that sharing food with others was a good thing to do and that one should not take too much food in order to leave plenty for others. As a Christian, I was not unusual in failing to make connections between faith and food.