Putting Practice on the Table: Food Studies as a Methodological Approach to Lived Religion

The study of religion, particularly the study of religious practice, or \u22lived religion,\u22 creates the challenge of representing the complex networks of history, geography, and culture that converge on a region and an individual to contribute to the formation of religious identity. By applying the study of foodways to Robert Orsi’s definition of lived religion, this thesis demonstrates how the use of a specific commodity can be used to address our subjects with more complexity. Specifically, the language of lived religion and foodways is applied to religious practice in the American South, the commodity of meat and its symbolic and ritual use among male Southern Christians