Contemplating a Doughnut: Analyzing Current Food Theologies through a Fellowship Hour Treat

The smell of sugar and fried dough wafts through the air. For some, this is an aroma synonymous with church, but should churches serve doughnuts during fellowship time after the worship service? To begin to answer this question, this article will present and analyze three current offerings of food theology: Joel R. Soza’s Food and God (2009), Douglas Wilson’s Confessions of a Food Catholic (2016), and Norman Wirzba’s Food and Faith (2011). It will briefly outline the theological framework each author presents for understanding food and its consumption, and provide subsequent inferences toward the question of doughnuts. The article concludes with a liturgically minded praxis for fellowship-hour food and its connection to God’s wider mission