THANKSGIVING Gluttony debate is food for thought

Is the holiday feast an overindulgence? People of varying faiths disagree.
DALLAS MORNING NEWS
DALLAS -- It's Sunday morning, and Baptists are congregating in Prestonwood, the stadium-sized Plano, Texas, church with a big new cafe.
In the worship hall, the preacher serves up an inspirational story about Jesus. In the dining hall, they're dishing out chocolate-chip pancakes, hash browns, bacon, sausages, biscuits and gravy.
With a fork in one hand and a Bible in the other, some choose to eat while catching worship on the cafe's big screen.
The disconnection between food and spirituality, some people of faith say, is never more poignant than at Thanksgiving -- America's gorgefest.
Buddhists call it a lack of mindfulness. Early Christians called it gluttony -- the most likely of the seven deadly sins to cause heart disease. For centuries, the world's religions identified undisciplined eating as a spiritual problem.
Today, 63 percent of the population is overweight. For millions of believers, overeating is not a sin, but the American way of life.
"Pastors don't preach on this because they're not living it," said Lisa Young, who developed the Walking with Weights exercise program and "Body for God Cookbook" sold at Fellowship Church in Grapevine, Texas, where her husband, Ed, is pastor.
Less gratitude, more food
Turkey, mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie have become year-round staples. There's a reason they call it stuffing. Thanksgiving, in particular, has become a day of gluttony and less a day of giving thanks, said Stephen Webb, a religion scholar who has written about food and the Bible.
"The pilgrims at Thanksgiving were grateful to God for having enough to eat," said Webb, of Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Ind. "They would not have been eating more than they needed because they had to stretch their food reserves."
But Americans need not feel guilty about overindulging on Thanksgiving, said Michael Patella, a New Testament scholar, priest and monk from Minnesota.
"God wants us to go overboard," said Father Patella, who teaches at St. John's School of Theology. "It's a day to rejoice in creation, to realize that it's a gift from God. If we can't be generous with ourselves, we can't be generous with others."
Thanksgiving has long been linked to Americans' sense of abundance. Early settlers often boasted of their good fortune to be in a country with more resources than they'd imagined.
"I don't want to be seen as praising overindulgence, but we need to be cautious about denying God's gifts by not using them," said Daniel Sack, author of "Whitebread Protestants: Food and Religion in Mainline American Culture." Even Jesus said he came to bring abundant life, Sack noted.
Abundance anywhere
But when the link between spirituality and food is strong, abundance is experienced from within, said Deborah Kesten, columnist for Spirituality & amp; Health magazine and author of "Feeding the Body, Nourishing the Soul."
"It's a quality or way of intention towards a meal that predisposes you to find abundance no matter what is presented in front of you," she said.
Every religion has that kind of communal sharing, Kesten said.
"That's how memorable meals are done. The food is eaten with gratitude and shared with love. They're not jamming it down their throats."
Breaking the fast
Some Muslims admit struggling against gaining weight during Ramadan, the month they fast during daylight hours. It's tempting to overeat after fasting all day, they said.
"Clearly, gluttony is not the desired practice," said Andrew Rippin, a professor of Islamic history at the University of Victoria in British Columbia. "Nothing in the Koran prohibits overeating, but no Muslim would think that was the right thing."
Gluttony isn't an issue in the Hebrew Bible either, said Diane Sharon, who teaches at Jewish Theological Seminary.
"Famine is an issue. Fasting is an issue. Starvation is an issue," she said.
But the Old Testament is also rich in verses about feasting.
American prosperity skews that biblical sense of feasting by treating every day as a holiday, said Donald Wuerl, the Catholic bishop of Pittsburgh.
"Because in this land we have so much food and abundance, we don't often appreciate it and overindulge," he said.