“Edible Theology” with Kendall Vanderslice

Show Notes:

You might need a snack for today’s episode.

We welcome Kendall Vanderslice, baker, author, and theologian to The Weight for a discussion about the intersection of food--specifically, bread--and worship. Kendall explores the dichotomy of the simplicity and complexity of making bread and how it connects to the simplicity and complexity of a life of faith.

Kendall is the author of By Bread Alone: A Baker’s Reflections on Hunger, Longing, and the Goodness of God. She is also the founder of the Edible Theology Project, a nonprofit that creates resources for churches, families, and individuals to help you connect the meal shared at the Communion table to other meals you share. She is a graduate of Wheaton College with a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology, a graduate of Boston University with a Masters of Liberal Arts in Gastronomy, and a graduate of Duke University with a Masters of Theological Studies.  In 2018, Kendall was named the James Beard Foundation National Scholar for her work on food and religion.

Resources:

Find Kendall on Facebook and Instagram

Listen to her podcast, Kitchen Meditations

Learn more about the Edible Theology Project

Follow Edible Theology on Instagram

Purchase By Bread Alone

Transcript:

Chris McAlilly 00:00 I'm Chris McAlilly.

Eddie Rester 00:02
And I'm Eddie Rester. Welcome to The Weight.

Chris McAlilly 00:04

Today we're talking to Kendall Vanderslice, who is a very interesting person. She's a culinary artist, a chef. She's also a theologian. She studied at the intersection of questions of food and faith. And we get into all of that today on the podcast.

Eddie Rester 00:24

She's written a book called "By Bread Alone: A Baker's Reflections on Hunger, Longing, and the Goodness of God." And we spend a lot of our time just talking about how important it is that we as humans gather to eat together. I think it's a gift. And we talk about this a little bit. I feel like it's a gift that we miss, sometimes. I miss, to be honest, I miss sitting at my table with my daughters, the four of us together, laughing and telling the stories--mainly then mocking me at the table--but just that time of togetherness.

Chris McAlilly 01:02

Yeah, we explore the loneliness, not Eddie's loneliness here. But the loneliness that we all kind of experience, both through COVID and then at times, just in our lives--we feel kind of isolated-- and the way in which food can bring us together. We talk about the social dynamics of eating. We talk about the memories that come out of that. And what's fascinating is that she's very practical about the mundane realities of food, its simplicity and complexity. But she also, I mean, she's pretty low-key, but she was named, in 2018, the James Beard Foundation National Scholar for Food and Religion. Come on. I mean, she's...

Eddie Rester 01:41 Yeah.

Chris McAlilly 01:41

She's, she knows what she's talking about. And she's a delightful person. She started this nonprofit, Edible Theology. It's fascinating. The projects that are emerging in a culture that's polarized, and in which we are oftentimes divided, these little bitty, I guess, micro projects all over the country, of which Kendall's is one, they give me hope, frankly,

Eddie Rester 02:10

Absolutely. And a reminder of some of the ways the church can do a better job, lean in to creating community around the table. And some of that is simply a deeper understanding of what we do when we come to the table to take communion. It's not just a drive by, catch a piece of bread. There's something significant, and she has a beautiful way of talking about that that I think you're going to enjoy as you listen to that today.

Chris McAlilly 02:38

We also talk about the complexity of food as a reality. You know, there's hunger, there's shame. People have complex relationships with food. We get into that a little bit as well, and frame it up in a very hopeful and awesome way. It was a great conversation.

Eddie Rester 02:54

You're gonna enjoy this one. I wasn't sure what I would do with a conversation about bread, but my goodness, the time flew. So make sure you listen to it, share it with a friend. If you've got somebody in your life who loves to bake, they should probably listen to this episode, about how important it is, what they're doing. But, share it. Leave us a review. We thank you, thank you, thank you for listening each and every week, and making this podcast possible.

Chris McAlilly 03:22

[INTRO] Life can be heavy. So heavy, in fact that the weight we carry can sometimes cause us to lose hope.

Eddie Rester 03:30
But we've all come across those people in life who seem to be experiencing the same world we live in, except they maintain a great depth of joy and hope.

Chris McAlilly 03:39
A former generation called this gravitas. It was their description of a soul that had gained enough weightiness to be attractive, like all things with a gravitational pull.

Eddie Rester 03:50
Those are the people we want to talk to. On this podcast, we talk to pastors, entrepreneurs, artists, mental health experts, and many others.

Chris McAlilly 04:00
We will create space for heavy topics, but we'll be listening for a quality of soul that could be called gravitas.

Eddie Rester 04:07

Welcome to The Weight. [END INTRO] We're here today with Kendall Vanderslice. She's got a book coming out to help us think about baking and bread and the role of bread and the story of God but also in our story. So welcome to the podcast, Kendall.

Kendall Vanderslice 04:22
Thank you so much for having me. It's a joy to be here.

Chris McAlilly 04:24
Where are you, Kendall? Where do you live, and kind of what's your context?

Kendall Vanderslice 04:28
I live in Durham, North Carolina.

Chris McAlilly 04:29
That's awesome. Have you been there, are you a native of North Carolina or?

Kendall Vanderslice 04:33
I'm not, no. I moved here about six years ago to attend Duke Divinity and then just liked it and stuck around.

Chris McAlilly 04:39
What is your, tell us about kind of your role, your work, kind of what you do when you're not writing or baking?

Kendall Vanderslice 04:48

Well, that's what I'm doing, I would say the majority of the time is writing and baking. But I run an organization called the Edible Theology Project and we are an educational nonprofit that builds resources for churches and families to connect the communion table to the kitchen table. So our goal is to help you think about how does this meal, this bread that we share every Sunday, connect to the food that we eat all throughout the week?

Chris McAlilly 05:14
That sounds amazing. How did you find your way there? Or did you... Are you the creator of this? Or you were... Did you found this project?

Kendall Vanderslice 05:22

I am. Yes. So I founded this organization. And it's been a very circuitous journey to get here. But we officially, I officially founded it in 2021, January of 2021. And we became a nonprofit in 2022. And now we are slowly building these resources and getting them in churches.

Eddie Rester 05:45
Awesome. So I want to get to the book and you've got it, you open with this great story about stealing communion. I want to get to that in just a second.

Kendall Vanderslice 05:50 Yes.

Eddie Rester 05:50
But where did your love for baking come from? When did you start baking?

Kendall Vanderslice 05:58

You know, I have loved baking as long as I can remember. I had a lot of anxiety as a child, and especially in my middle school and high school years. And so baking was always kind of my balm in those moments. I would make bread. I would make cupcakes. I would mix together whatever I could, and kind of getting my hands in that dough is part of how I stilled my mind, or at least kind of gave my body something to do while my mind was working through all of the things that I was thinking about. So it really has been, I'd say, a lifelong love affair with bread.

Eddie Rester 06:35
My daughter learned to bake when she was probably in middle school, high school. And there's a lot you can do when you show up with a plate of cookies or a cake.

Kendall Vanderslice 06:44

Oh, man, it is like the way to make friends. I mean, I think really what made me want to bake professionally and what really sort of drove that love in high school was that I was kind of a socially awkward kid, like didn't quite know how to make friends in high school. And I realized that if you show up with baked goods, you will draw in a lot of friends. Now whether or not those are good, lasting friendships is another story. But it's a great way to start connecting with people.

Eddie Rester 07:13

Absolutely. Yeah. I shared with you before we got on, started recording. Yeah, my daughter, even in college people, "Hey, can you make cookies? Can you make bread? Can you make a cake for me?" So it really does open a lot of doors.

Kendall Vanderslice 07:29

Yeah. And it's just such a great way to show people that you love them. You know, it's like I have made it a rule, I only make wedding cakes for close friends. And as a result, it means that every wedding cake I've ever made has been incredibly special to me, a way of close connection with the people that I love. And it's just a really cool way to be involved in people's lives and to sort of deepen those relationships in a really tangible way.

Chris McAlilly 07:54

When did you realize the connection? So food is kind of a, I mean, it's a central, basic, human practice and reality, and kind of at the intersection of health and culture and all of these things. But then the other side of it is that it's central to kind of faith, religion, etc. When did you get interested in that intersection between food and religion and religious practice?

Kendall Vanderslice 08:25

Yeah, so I started sort of thinking about making these connections in my sort of, towards the end of my time in college. I went to Wheaton College for my undergrad. So all of kind of our... The philosophy of education, there is a lot of thinking about how the fields that we study are also connected to our faith, how our faith can reflect in those fields and those fields can inform our faith. And so I studied anthropology. And in that year, I was introduced to, in my final year there, I was introduced to the anthropology of food as a field. And as I started digging into that reading, I started to kind of think about how does this connect with my faith? And how does this shape my faith? And through that, I really was enamored with the role of food in Genesis 1-3, and then also connecting that to, you know, it's this meal that is at the heart of Genesis three of the fall. And it's this meal that Christ offers us as this promise for Christ's return. And it is a meal that we see reflected again in Revelation, as this kind of picture of the new creation. And so that was where the fascination with these intersections really began for me. But then, I started really exploring it more deeply a few years later. I was doing a degree in Food Studies at Boston University. And I was working in restaurants at the same time, in bakeries and restaurants. And so my research at BU was on the social dynamics of eating together, on what happens at the table or around a meal that changes the way we interact with one another. And I just realized that Communion or the Eucharist was coming up in every single class that I was taking, in some capacity. And so I started to question, what does this meal that I share on Sundays at church have to do with these meals that I'm studying during the week? And then I would also go to church each Sunday after my shift at the bread bakery, and I would have bread dough stuck to my arms when I would go up to receive Communion. And so I started to question, what does this bread that I'm baking every day have to do with this bread that I'm sharing within my church? And so that sort of confluence of those things all together really made me dive deep into this area.

Chris McAlilly 10:36

That's so fascinating. What an amazing... I think this is so fascinating, just your journey and the way that you've connected these dots. I think a lot of people have thought about these connections, but not the level of depth and with the study that you've done. It just makes... I'm so excited about this work. This is so cool.

Kendall Vanderslice 10:56
You could say I, like, nerded out about it just a little bit.

Eddie Rester 11:00

That's okay. One of the things that I think... There's a church I served early in my ministry, where there was a group of women whose gift to the church was baking bread for communion. They didn't want you to ever buy a loaf of bread, ever. They made small loaves, if you knew you were gonna have a small group for Communion, big loaves for the Sundays we took communion. Now, I want to go back to that story that you open your books with.

Kendall Vanderslice 11:30 Yes, stealing the Communion.

Eddie Rester 11:31

I think it's a good moment. So you tell this story about stealing Communion. And so share a little bit about that, and how that plays into the larger conversation that you want to have in the book.

Kendall Vanderslice 11:46

Yeah, so I grew up, I come from a long line of Baptist ministers, and several of my uncles, cousins, my grandfather were all Baptist ministers. And so in kind of the tradition I was raised in, I was always taught that Communion is something you can take part in once you understand what it means. And so there was kind of that ability to articulate what it means and then that would be sort of, we were allowed to participate at that point. And so this one week, we were at an event. It was kind of a anniversary event for a church that my grandparents had planted. And I was... The room was overflowing, and so me and my cousins were all supposed to be sitting in the aisles, because we were you know, the grandchildren of the founders. We were all there to celebrate, and so we got the worst of the seats. And so I was seated in an aisle next to this box of the little Communion to-go containers, which this is brilliant timing now that this book is finally coming out, because prior to the pandemic, very few people could picture what those are. And I think now a lot of people can picture this little Communion to-go containers: the little shot glass of grape juice with the wafer that's kind of sealed off at the top. And so I was sat next to a box of those Communions to-go, and something about it just fascinated me and beckoned me. And so I stole one of them, and I ate the bread while I was sitting there. I knew I wasn't supposed to. And I was so ashamed afterwards. And I, in part, just love that that is the beginning of sort of my story of this being drawn to bread. I think that it speaks to God's own sense of humor and the ways that God has just been continually drawing me in through bread from the very beginning. And I love that that's sort of the starting point. But also, you know, I want people to see that I don't think I'm the only one that God draws in, in this really deeply compelling way through bread. I know I've heard stories of others. Yeah, you're raising your hand here, Christopher. And also, you know, Sara Miles' book, "Take This Bread" is the same story of something about this bread pulling her in. And so I know I'm not alone in sort of that story of God pulling me in through bread. But I also love, in retrospect, I didn't love in the moment, but, in retrospect, seeing the role that shame played in this and also forgiveness. That there was something about my hunger that I was deeply ashamed of, even when I believe it was this deep hunger for God. And so the story of this book is about those complicated relationships between our relationship to bread and our relationship to our bodies and our relationship to the Bread of Bife and the Body of Christ, to Jesus and to community.

Chris McAlilly 14:26

I'm a preacher's kid, and so I so relate to this story of just being drawn to the bread. You know, if there are any other folks that grew up in the homes of preacher, you just feel comfortable in the sanctuary and particularly, you're hungry because you're hanging out a long time after everybody else leaves and you want your parent to take you to eat and then there's that bread. It's just sitting there and you can... It's so available at the end of the day, you know. And it does feel kind of transgressive. You're in a space that you're not supposed to be. Like, I just so relate to that story. But that is that is the case. You know, food, it embodies this space between personal and cultural realities, between our spiritual and physical hunger. And it's such a fascinating set of dynamics to engage. I guess for you as you continue to go deeper and deeper in the study and in the practice through the nonprofit you've started, what are some of the things that you've continued to learn at the intersection of faith, culture, food, and spirituality?

Kendall Vanderslice 15:42

Yeah, I mean, one of the areas that I am continually challenged and just reminded that there is so much more room for further research, is that different... We have so many different food cultures that are present all throughout history and all around the world. And I think these different cultures and relationships to food can reflect something new about God and how God reveals God's self through food. So I'm in sort of a community online of folks who are reading my book together right now. And one of them is Korean. And he was talking about how he was looking back at the Korean Bible that his church used growing up, and everywhere that it talks about Jesus as the bread of life and instead it says the rice cake of life. And again, this question of what is bread? And how do we define bread? And whose culture defines bread? It's kind of an ongoing question. And so that, I think is, to me, absolutely fascinating. There's this really beautiful... I don't think I wrote about it in the book, although I considered it. My very first semester at Duke Divinity, we had an exhibition in Duke Chapel of Sadao Watanabe's art. Sadao Watanabe is a Japanese artist who depicts biblical scenes in Japanese contexts. And the exhibition, the way that they had hung the paintings, they had done two of his last supper paintings alongside two of his Pentecost paintings. And these two last supper paintings are depicted with, instead of bread and wine, using saki and fish. And with that sort of juxtaposition against the Pentecost paintings, it just really fascinated me, this idea that, you know, Pentecost is when we have the language of tongues is all throughout this Pentecost sort of passage, and God communicating in languages that everyone understood and understanding one another's languages. And then questioning, you know, is bread and wine are the sort of language or food language of a particular few cultures. And what does it mean to understand God in the food sort of language of another culture as well? And even though I believe that there's something so important about the particularity of bread and the particularity of wine as these elements that we were given in Communion, and yet, also there are limits to them. And so to me, that's just a fascinating... How do we continue to probe all that we can learn about God and the ways that God reveals God's self through the foods that we are drawn to?

Chris McAlilly 18:23

That reminds me of a story of, I can't remember the culture, but it was an Asian culture, where they talked about the bread of life, and there are different kinds of bread for different socio- economic groups, and the bread that was used in the Bible translation by the missionaries in this particular culture was the bread that was eaten by those on kind of the poor and working poor, rather than the bread that was like the finest you know, and most exalted breads that were eaten by the, you know, the ruling classes. And similarly, I think, I can't remember--I wish I could remember that story, I'll have to go back and try to find--but I found that to be so fascinating, when you think about who it is that Jesus comes to be for the life of the world. Jesus comes to fulfill the the spiritual, bodily hungers of everyone, you know, and from the peasant to the ruler. And that comes through in the translation. So anyway, thank you for sharing about Sadao Watanabe, fascinating. Sorry, sorry to jump in, Eddie. Go for it.

Eddie Rester 19:35

I've just got a lot of things just kind of floating around. And one is, as I was reading part of your book, in thinking about bread, two international trips I took started the same way. I went to Russia, right after the wall fell in the early 90s. And as the Christians there greeted us, they greeted us with salted bread. We were on the bus. We're weary and tired from the journey, and they want us to pass the bread around as a sign of friendship. And when we were in Israel, the same thing happened, they passed bread around. Our Palestinian bus driver past bread around the bus, that we might share the bread of friendship together. And as you think about the importance of bread, particularly for early cultures. I know it was different in different parts of the world, bread was kind of this seminal thing that if you didn't have anything else to eat, you probably had flatbread, and maybe fish, or maybe a vegetable. As you think about the importance of bread in the body, as the Body of Christ in communion, what are the kinds of images for you, that are significant, important for us to hold as we come to receive the bread?

Kendall Vanderslice 20:57

Yeah, so I love that bread is at once incredibly simple. It is made of four basic ingredients: flour, water, salt, and yeast. And it has been the core of the human diet for most humans throughout all of human history. And at the same time, bread is infinitely complex. That in 14,000 plus years of baking, humans are still learning new ways to manipulate the flavor and draw new flavor and texture out of grain. That we have so many different kinds of breads that have developed throughout history and around the world, different kinds of ovens and baking techniques and fermenting techniques and leavening techniques that have created such a huge diversity of kinds of bread. And I think remembering that simultaneous simplicity and complexity is such a beautiful image of our faith, that our faith is at once incredibly simple. We believe that Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. And also our faith is incredibly complex. And we can commit our entire lives to coming to know God more and still have more to learn. And I think there's so much beauty in that simplicity and that complexity, and bread is the same way.

Eddie Rester 22:13
I'm teaching confirmation in a couple of weeks about sacraments. And if you want to come to Jackson so they can hear what you just shared.

Chris McAlilly 22:24 [LAUGHTER]

Eddie Rester 22:24

I'll even you buy an airline ticket. I think that's beautiful. And I think that the coming to the table, it's a simple thing for humans to come to the table together. But it's complex as well, because we bring together all that we are and all that we aren't. We bring together the brokenness of relationships. I had, one time several years ago, someone shared that they were serving Communion, and the moment seeing someone in the aisle coming to them that they knew, that heavy disagreements between families, a lot of pain and brokenness, and having to break off a piece of bread and lay it in a hand say,"The body of Christ, broken for you." Very complex and beautiful moment. I was raised Catholic, and so I was raised with this whole... This is the whole meaning of worship, is to get to the table.

Kendall Vanderslice 23:21 Yeah.

Eddie Rester 23:23
And sometimes I think we give it not the weight that it deserves.

Kendall Vanderslice 23:29

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think again, it's this... It is a very weighty thing. And it is a very, I mean... It is so powerful, that we are reminded that we are being made one in the Body of Christ as we share this bread. And that is something that we cannot take lightly. And also how incredible that God's reminder that God is doing this incredible healing and reconciling work through the most mundane thing, which is bread. That we have this incredibly, like eating, eating bread together is so mundane. And that's how God chooses to remind us of this incredibly powerful reality.

Chris McAlilly 24:12
Yeah, I'm just I've got like memory, memory, memory, memory, memory. Because food is so closely tied to memory.

Kendall Vanderslice 24:19 Absolutely.

Chris McAlilly 24:20

[LAUGHTER]

Chris McAlilly 24:20

What I'm thinking about is you're just talking about how food holds us together. I remember when my wife and I were about to get married. I went and saw my grandfather. And my grandfather and my grandmother had been married for 50 years. And I asked him, "How, how can you stay married for 50 years?" And he said, It helps if," you know, this was, in some ways I regret that he said this in this way, but this is my grandfather and he said, "It helps if your wife makes homemade biscuits every morning," so you know, just caveat for his time and place. Nevertheless so I was like, "Wow, my grandmother, just amazing, these homemade biscuits every morning." So I went and, because I wanted to know this, like, magical biscuit. I wanted to know what that was. So, a couple of years later I went asked her, you know, "Granny, would you share this recipe, this magic bread, biscuit recipe?" And she said, "Oh, Chris, I haven't made homemade biscuits in 30 years." She had just gotten them out of the freezer at Kroger, you know, Miss Bea's or whoever. And so my grandfather thought they were homemade. It's just awesome. Anyway.

Kendall Vanderslice 25:36
I love it. But I mean, the memories still connected to it are so powerful that it still holds that same sort of significance, even if they're just from the freezer aisle.

Chris McAlilly 25:47

How do you connect, so the worship life of the church and kind of the Eucharist at the center of it. So we come together. We come to the table. We receive the grace of Christ at the table. And then we go forth into the world, back into our lives. And a lot of this work that you're doing within Edible Theology is about connecting the worship life of the church with family life, individual life, and communal life, beyond the church. Talk a little bit about that work, kind of that... What are some of the things that you guys are doing to try to bridge and connect those realities?

Kendall Vanderslice 26:23

Yeah, so I think first and foremost, we're trying to help people recognize that we worship God in these mundane sort of actions of our lives as well, that we worship God every time we come together with others and eat. That we are worshiping God at our dinner tables, if it is a family dinner, and we are praying and blessing the food, you know, we are worshiping God in this in this gathering. We are worshiping God in our laughter. We are worshiping God in the stories that we're telling. And the same goes when we are having dinner with friends, when we are doing these very mundane things, it is also an opportunity to worship God. We were created as humans with these two basic needs, which is the need for food, the need to draw nutrition and energy out of the things that we eat, and the need for community. When we look at, you know, the story of Genesis 1 and 2, humans could have been created with plenty of other ways to get our nutrients. We could have had root systems to draw it up out of the soil. We could have had chlorophyll that could convert energy from the sun. But we were given tongues, and we were given tastebuds. And we were given food, the ability to really enjoy and find delight in this basic need of eating. But when we look at this creation story, again, we also see that humans were created with this basic need for community, that the only thing that was not called good about creation was a human being alone. And that it was in community with other humans that God was then able to say this creation is very good. And this need for community and this need for food are met at the same time when we gather around the table with others. And so I think when we recognize that all of our opportunities for eating, especially eating in communities, are opportunities to experience God's love present in the community around us. And also to thank God for the gift of food and the gift of community to eat it with. And so our biggest piece is actually seeing these things, these times outside of church as also opportunities for worship. And then I think sort of the way that that shapes our lives just overflows out of that posture.

Eddie Rester 28:35 A few years ago...

Chris McAlilly 28:36
That was great. Thank you for sharing.

Eddie Rester 28:38

We were doing--Chris and I used to serve the same church--and we were preaching, I think about the power of a meal. And some of the research turned up that the average family spends nine minutes at the dinner table.

Kendall Vanderslice 28:51 Wow.

Eddie Rester 28:52

Nine minutes. And so I timed that I'm own house. It was about eight, because we're overachievers. But what we do is when we come to the table, we come to the table quickly. Our minds are already on the next thing and so thinking about how we can slow that down.

Kendall Vanderslice 29:12 Yeah.

Eddie Rester 29:13
To see every meal a sacramental. Chris, what have you got there?

Chris McAlilly 29:19

I will, you know, I'm thinking about so, you know, there are several things on the other side of the pandemic that haven't worked. We've been trying to get people back together. This year, we've had a little bit more success and it tends not to be programmatic or focused on, you know, a Bible study or whatever. What is working is pulling people together to eat.

Kendall Vanderslice 29:42 Yeah.

Chris McAlilly 29:42

And so we have this this group of retired folks in our church who are coming together for a monthly potluck, and it's like gangbusters. I mean, people are coming out the woodwork to this and it's wonderful and it's a deep connection. But the same thing is happening with a group of guys. So they're gonna get together just for no agenda, you know, brown bag Friday lunch. And I think we underestimate the power of that. We're recording a series of episodes for the season. And one of them that we recorded yesterday was with a guy named Ryan Burge. And so we'll put that out as well. And he's a social scientist who's looking at religion and American life. And one of the things that he noted was, for him, it's the 15 minutes before and after worship that are most important, because you have the social connections being made. But I also think those are things that happen within the context of a meal. Those meals are where those social bonds and social connections happen. And we need to pay attention to that, as you're saying, not as something different than worship, but a place that manifests the presence of God in the community and in communal life together.

Kendall Vanderslice 31:01

And I think so often, we just, we treat eating as kind of this very utilitarian thing. We see that both in kind of how we choose what to eat, but then also how we just approach meals, in our families, in our homes, or in our churches, that this is something we have to do, so we'll fit it in. But it's almost like something we fit in between the programs that actually do the work. But what if this meal together, that's what is kind of the discipleship happens in that context, the community building happens in that context. And it's actually an incredibly simple way to approach things. But it's the model that Christ gave us. It's what Christ did was offer us a meal.

Chris McAlilly 31:43

It occurs to me that this is profoundly countercultural within a culture that's deeply ingrained towards the direction of productivity. And, if you look at all the life hacking, like I think about Tim Ferriss, or like... There are both men and women versions of this, the social influencer. They're teaching you how to be the most, have the happiest and most productive life. And they all tend to think of food as fuel, you know. And that the whole goal of food is to eat as little as possible, so that you can get back to doing whatever you're doing. And it's like, it's this... I don't know. It boils down food into something less than it is, as a cultural reality within our lives. And I think... Go ahead, Eddie what do you think?

Eddie Rester 32:35
I was just going to say I would adust that statement. You said "less than it is." I would say "less than it can be."

Chris McAlilly 32:39 I see, yeah. Yeah.

Kendall Vanderslice 32:41 Yeah. Yeah.

Chris McAlilly 32:42

I think there's... Yeah, there's a counter possibility, I think. It doesn't necessarily mean... And there is, it's complex, right. As you mentioned, people have complex relationships to food. And that comes in different ways and different formats. And so we have to be careful and thoughtful about all those things. But it does seem to me that, you know, the base message is, cook together, eat together, and that leads to communal and social life and health and the fostering of meaningful relationships.

Kendall Vanderslice 33:18 Yeah, absolutely.

Eddie Rester 33:20

So I know part of your story is a seeking deeper community. And so thinking back, you know, if we've got the meal that is our communal meal that Christ gave to us, how did churches fall short in this? Why did churches fall short in this? I mean, this is how we were brought together at the very beginning. We met together, talked about Jesus, learned about Jesus, maybe sing a song, and then we ate.

Kendall Vanderslice 33:47

Yeah. Well, I think so often churches, treat the Sunday morning worship service as kind of the main focus of the church and community is something kind of convenient, maybe a byproduct of that. The community formed out of that worship is great. But that's kind of the extra credit. It's not the reason that we gather. And I would push back against that. I would say, actually, I think that the community is the central piece of it. That community together with fellow believers is how God intends to shape us and grow our faith. And, you know, I love a traditional Sunday service. But I think that if that is done separate from the formation of community, then I don't think we're fully doing what God has called us to do.

Chris McAlilly 34:38

Where do you see this, I guess, in the folks that you work with? Are there examples of churches or communities that use food in the ways that you would hope for? I guess, do you see examples? Can you give me an example of a community where you're like, "Wow, this is amazing."

Kendall Vanderslice 34:56

I started my research by studying this phenomenon of churches called dinner churches. So they were churches that held their entire service over a table. And so I spent a couple of years traveling the country, visiting several different churches that gathered in this way. And so they would have, every single week, their entire worship service happened over the course of a meal. And so for me, my sort of question there was how can these churches, how can understanding these churches and what happens when they eat together as their primary form of worship, how can that inform all of our other churches about how to be more thoughtful and intentional about incorporating meals into the life of the church? So I would say that the most kind of extreme example is make your whole church service meal. But I don't think that that is a viable sort of method for most congregations. But there are so many other ways. I attended a church in Boston for a number of years that ate together every single Sunday after our service. We went straight from the service to a meal. And that was... You know, not everybody stayed, but most people stayed because it was such a significant thing. And it was communicated in the worship service every week that we were moving straight into this next room to eat. And you know, this was in Boston. It was a church, mostly of young professionals and students. Most people didn't have family in the city. And so people were longing for these kinds of meals with others. And then that meal kind of translated into so many other rhythms of the church as well. In Eastertide, the season after Easter, we would have a series of feasts in different homes of folks within the churches. And these Eastertide feasts were significant in that community, again, because it's a community of students. So every year at the end of the academic year, we'd have a big sort of shift of people moving away and new people moving in. And so these meals kind of became a way of marking that time and celebrating the year past, all together. So I mean, that's another example of how it can be worked in. But also just your Wednesday night gatherings or your small groups, if your small groups, if you're already meeting on a weeknight for a small group, then make that small group a meal.

Eddie Rester 37:07

You know, I think one of the things that COVID did for a lot of churches was it stole meals. It stole our time to eat together. And as churches have been, people been slow to come back to church, meals have been slow to return as well, I found. And I think that's... I think Chris and I had this conversation year or so ago that putting people at tables might do a lot of healing for the divisions that we have. And again, I mentioned this a lot. In the early church, people didn't know how to like each other, and yet, they were drawn together to eat together. And yeah.

Kendall Vanderslice 37:49

Yeah. And this is something at Edible Theology we're really focused on is, how do we use telling stories about food around the table as a way into these harder conversations about the topics that are dividing us? You know, we have, there's extensive research right now that the polarization that's kind of driving our country apart is deeply tied to the loneliness crisis, that when we are lonely, when we don't have a sense of belonging in a community, then it actually shifts our brains in a way that we cannot engage in conversations about ideas that are different from our own. And so if these two things are so intimately intertwined, then I believe that we, especially within our churches, this division is especially present within our churches, that we need to be addressing this loneliness crisis, if we want to address this division. And both of those things are done at the same time around the table. That when our basic need for food and community is met, it opens us up to these conversations we otherwise wouldn't want to have. And so I think that absolutely, this gathering around the table is a central piece of how we can move forward in a really divided time.

Chris McAlilly 38:59

Yeah, I love it. It's so, so interesting. Is there something that you would point to, if somebody's interested in the connection between the loneliness crisis and the polarization reality, you're pointing to something. I wonder if is there, are there people that you're reading that you're thinking about that connect the dots there?

Kendall Vanderslice 39:18

Yeah. So two of the books that I've found most fascinating recently would be Amanda Ripley's, book, "High Conflict," and Ezra Klein's "Why We're Polarized." Both of them talk a lot about the role of belonging, of group identity, of loneliness, and also curiosity, and how that plays into things.

Chris McAlilly 39:38
And then you also mentioned Sara Miles. Are there other people that connect food and faith or food and religion in a way that has been meaningful to you?

Kendall Vanderslice 39:49

So if you want to get sort of really theological and get into the academic books, I love Angela Mendez Montoya's book, "Theology of Food." It's a fabulous one. If you want a much more lighthearted fun take, then Robert Farrar Capon's "Supper of the Lamb" is just fabulous. It was written in the 60s. So I think similar to your story about your grandfather, there's a little caveat of just like unawareness, that he's writing about food and who's preparing it in a way that is the norm of his time. But the book is just brilliant. He's an Episcopal priest, and also a food writer, and also a satirical writer. And all of that comes together in a beautiful way in this book.

Eddie Rester 40:29

As you wrote this book, "By Bread Alone," and it's obvious that you've thought a lot about community and bread and what happens when bread is made, mot not just taken, but made. What did writing the book do for you and your faith? Where did it lead you?

Kendall Vanderslice 40:47

Yeah, I think for me, this, writing this book was an incredibly healing process. So this work, this book has been sort of in my mind for about seven years now. I started thinking about writing a book on bread, that was shaped around kind of these four elements of bread, and the both sort of spiritual parallels and the roles that they play in Scripture and in history. So that kind of structure has been in mind for about seven years. But I signed the contract for this book in March, I think, of 2021. And then I had four months to actually write it. And so there's, in some ways, it's been a very long process. And in other ways, it was a really intense four-month process of writing it. And sitting in kind of these stories for four months, day in and day out, was just really incredible. Seeing kind of so closely together, the ways that God has been present and working in my life over the course of three decades and seeing kind of the various ways that God has woven together this incredible picture. But then also seeing the ways that God has been present throughout history and around the world through bread. Kind of holding all of that together in this intense time of writing the book was just an incredibly healing process for me. And I hope that reading it is a healing journey for those who encounter it as well. I think, you know, we're in this time where so many folks are, their faith has really been sort of rattled over the last few years, within the political climate, within with COVID and sort of isolation and just so many different things that have rattled folks faith. And my hope is that this book is a gentle offering for people who don't quite know what's next or don't quite know how to move forward. That it is a way of seeing the really simple ways that God is present with us, and that God makes God's self known to us.

Chris McAlilly 42:47
That's so great. And I think a great place to maybe set it down for today. What do you think, Eddie? Do you have any other questions?

Eddie Rester 42:55
My only question is, what's next? You've done bread, are you going to do wine? What are you

doing next?

Kendall Vanderslice 43:01

Well, I am not an expert on wine. There is a great book on wine. Gisela Kreglinger is a theologian in Birmingham. I believe she's at UAB, but I could be wrong on that. But she has two really great books on theology of wine. So if you want a wonderful complement to this one, I highly recommend that.

Chris McAlilly 43:20
So what was that? What was her name?

Kendall Vanderslice 43:23
Gisela Kreglinger. K-R-E-G-L-I-N-G-E-R.

Chris McAlilly 43:29 That's fantastic.

Eddie Rester 43:31
Kendall, it's been just, it's been fun.

Kendall Vanderslice 43:34 Good. Good! I've had fun, too.

Chris McAlilly 43:37 It was fantastic.

Eddie Rester 43:38
And blessings. The book is "By Bread Alone." So where can they find the book?

Kendall Vanderslice 43:44
Yeah. So it's available wherever books are sold. And you can preorder it now on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Books-A-Million, bookshop.org. Whatever place you want. It's probably there.

Chris McAlilly 43:57
I didn't know Books-A-Million was still a thing. I really didn't.

Eddie Rester 44:00
There's one around the corner from my house.

Chris McAlilly 44:02 That's fantastic. And then...

Eddie Rester 44:03
You need to come to Jackson.

Chris McAlilly 44:04
I know. I know. Where else, if folks want to explore Edible Theology, where do folks go? And then are there any other places where folks can find your work?

Kendall Vanderslice 44:14

Yeah, so you can learn more about our curriculum at www.edibletheology.com. And you can also follow us on Instagram @edibletheologyproject. And through either of those, you can sign up for our weekly newsletter, and find information about our weekly podcast, Kitchen Meditations. And then you can also follow me on Instagram @knvslice.

Chris McAlilly 44:38
You have a beautiful website, too. I like the simplicity.

Kendall Vanderslice 44:41 Thank you so much.

Chris McAlilly 44:42
So and that's kendallvanderslice.com.

Kendall Vanderslice 44:45 Yes.

It is. Yes.

Chris McAlilly 44:45
We're so glad that you're with us today. Thanks so much for joining us.

Eddie Rester 44:49 Thanks for your gift.

Kendall Vanderslice 44:50
Thank you all so much for having me.

Eddie Rester 44:51
[OUTRO] Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed the podcast, the best way to help us is to like, subscribe, or leave a review

Chris McAlilly 45:00

If you would like to support this work financially or if you have an idea for a future guest you can go to theweightpodcast.com. [END OUTRO]