Born Again Bodies and Christian Weight-Loss

In recent decades, many Christians have tried to make sense of the tension between our bodies and spirits by swinging to the opposite pole. Instead of saying, “The body doesn’t matter,” they have said, “The body matters—in fact—what happens in your body corresponds exactly to what’s going on in your spirit.” Take evangelical fitness and diet culture, which anthropologist R. Marie Griffith documents in Born Again Bodies. Beginning in the 1950s, books like I Prayed Myself Slim and Pray Your Weight Away inaugurated a wave of Christian self-help literature on weight loss.

One author…