Food and Faith in Christian Culture by Eden Trudy Albala Ken

Author:Eden, Trudy, Albala, Ken
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2011-08-14T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 7

COMMENSALITY AND LOVE FEAST

THE AGAPE MEAL IN THE

LATE NINETEENTH-AND EARLY

TWENTIETH-CENTURY BRETHREN IN CHRIST CHURCH

Heidi Oberholtzer Lee

From its salted pickles to its red beets and snitz pie, the love feast, or agape, of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Brethren in Christ Church represented for this religious community a central moment and site of pious practice, sacred eating, theological wrangling, and evangelization by gastronomy. The love feast had been a characteristic and distinctive practice of the church from its emergence in 1780 among the rural German-speaking population of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.1 It continued in popularity and practice through the nineteenth century and still exists in many Brethren in Christ congregations today. Other now extinct denominations, such as the German Seventh Day Baptist Church, which reached its height in the mid eighteenth century, as well as the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Glasites or Sandemanians, also practiced the love feast. The historic and contemporary congregations of the Moravians, Primitive Methodists and United Methodists, Old Order River Brethren, Church of the Brethren, Catholic Neocatechumenal Way, Mennonites, and some Masonic traditions, likewise, in many cases, maintain a tradition of some form of love feast. For the Brethren in Christ in particular, the love feast, with its tradition of congregational feet washing, fellowship meal, and communion meal, once required of each of its host churches many months of planning, food enough for two days of feasting by hundreds of (or even one thousand) church members and visitors, and overnight housing. The typical event included a time of personal testimonies for most of a Saturday; Saturday evening with a feet washing ceremony, fellowship dinner, and subsequent sharing of a communion (Eucharistic) meal; Sunday morning with a church service and afternoon with sharing, preaching, and religious instruction.2 The order of service varied, though, from one congregation to the next or from one region to the next.3 Congregations sometimes held the services and meals in barns, church buildings, and homes, and occasionally even outdoors. In the late 1800s and early 1900s it was not unusual for a congregation to hold at least two love feasts per year, one in the spring and one in the fall, sometimes intentionally planned to coincide with the full moon so that congregants would have sufficient light by which to travel home on Sunday.4 Today most Brethren in Christ and Brethren love feasts consist primarily of feet washing and one potluck meal for local congregants and generally include a time of sharing, church services, and sometimes baptisms as well.5

This chapter focuses particularly on late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century lay and clerical narratives and remembrances of the significance of the love feast. In the church’s history, at the turn of the century, the love feast served as a notably pivotal ceremony by which church members could assert their sect’s distinctiveness even while gesturing toward an ecumenical welcome and gentle embrace of those not a part of the church.6 The Brethren in Christ traditionally thought themselves called to be “a peculiar people,” to be “separate from

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