Abstract
In what follows, I bring to life the elements which I have mentioned in the condensed summary given in the introduction (Chap. 1). I elaborate on the connection of God and the believers’ body, the central topic of devotional fitness, because devotional fitness as a system of communications and embodiments revolves around the motif of the body as God’s temple. I also explain how exercise routines are perceived as enactments of God’s will, which is essential to devotional fitness. The sections in this chapter shed light on devotional fitness from different analytic angles, trying to understand its inner relations and implicit semiotic and semantic structures.
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Notes
- 1.
100 Huntley Street is a Canadian talk show broadcasting daily from Crossroads Christian Communications. David Mainse created the show over 40 years ago; Ron and Ann Mainse host it today (Brown 2011).
- 2.
Full Circle launched in January 2006 as a Friday edition of 100 Huntley Street and has run daily since January 2011 (Mainse et al. 2011a). It is broadcast by the Crossroads Television System.
- 3.
The Harvest Show is broadcast from Southbend, Indiana, and serves as outreach for the Lester Sumrall Evangelistic Association (LeSEA Broadcasting 2012).
- 4.
- 5.
The Good Life is the “flagship program” for The Christian Television Network which produces Christian Fitness TV. The network’s president and his wife host the show (Christian Television Network 2010).
- 6.
The View, launched in 1997, broadcasts weekdays from New York City. In August 2009, the show received a Daytime Emmy Award for outstanding talk show hosts. In May 2009, the hosts were named among the “100 Most Influential People in the World” by Time. In July 2009, Forbes ranked the hosts number eleven among the “30 of the Most Influential Women in Media” (ABC 2012).
- 7.
Isherwood, not revealing her sources, estimates that, in 2000, the overall market of Christian diet products amounted to 77 billion dollars (Isherwood 2008, 75)—a figure that seems biased given that the entire US weight-loss market was not as huge 10 years later.
- 8.
As of September 2011, Walking the Walk: Getting Fit With Faith (Leslie Sansone and Rowan Jacobsen 2007) was ranked as #41 in “Health, Mind & Body > Exercise & Fitness > Walking” (#204,172 in books). Fasting for Spiritual Breakthrough: A Guide to Nine Biblical Fasts (Elmar L. Towns 1996) made ranking #51 in “Religion & Spirituality > Spirituality > Prayer” (#26,145 in books). Made to Crave: Satisfying Your Deepest Desire With God, not Food (Lysa TerKeurst 2010) even made it to #1 in “Religion & Spirituality > Religious Studies > Theology,” and number #36 in “Religion & Spirituality > Christianity > Christian Living” (#632 in books). Made to Crave also appeared on the New York Times bestseller list (Kennedy 2012). Body by God (Lerner 2003) reached #13 on that list only a month after its release (Business Editors 2003).
- 9.
Gerber’s analysis of the former organization Exodus International in Seeking the Straight and Narrow (Gerber 2012a) demonstrates their unwillingness to accept homosexuality. However, according to recent research by Jeremy N. Thomas and Daniel V. A. Olson published in Sociology of Religion, evangelical elites, while still showing opposition to homosexuality in their majority, have changed their attitude slightly over the past decades. Based on their analysis of the magazine Christianity Today, the authors observe that evangelical elites, mirroring laymen’s slowly liberalizing attitudes, have started to evoke new sources of moral authority and thus to take up alternate positions on homosexuality (Thomas and Olson 2012).
- 10.
See, e.g., on the same subject, Mintle’s Guide to Help Overweight Kids (2005).
- 11.
Romans 12:2: “Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind” (New International Version 1984).
- 12.
The recent version of 3D is an important exception. Due to the founder’s own troubles with reaching long-term success (page 112 ff), she does not measure success in pounds anymore (Showalter and Davis [2002] 2007, 279).
- 13.
The Quest Study Bible is a widespread annotated edition of the New International Version and, for the purpose of this study, serves to compare interpretations in devotional fitness with more commonly accepted readings of the respective passages—bearing in mind, of course, that there is no generally accepted interpretation of the bible at all.
- 14.
Hunter’s book is the only one I know of in this genre which has been translated to German. I quote from Abnehmen einmal anders: Eine Schlankheitskur mit Gottes Hilfe (1979) which translates to “Reducing Differently: A Slimming Regimen with God’s Help.”
- 15.
Daniel 1:11–16: “Daniel then said to the guard whom the chief official had appointed over Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah, ‘Please test your servants for ten days: Give us nothing but vegetables to eat and water to drink. Then compare our appearance with that of the young men who eat the royal food, and treat your servants in accordance with what you see.’ So he agreed to this and tested them for ten days. At the end of the ten days they looked healthier and better nourished than any of the young men who ate the royal food. So the guard took away their choice food and the wine they were to drink and gave them vegetables instead” (New International Version, 1984).
- 16.
- 17.
Shamblin writes, “The only exercise you require is getting down on your knees to pray and getting the muscle of your will to surrender control of your natural, God-given hunter and fullness guide to the Creator” (quoted in Schrettle 2006, 132).
- 18.
Genesis 2:15: “The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it” (New International Version 1984).
- 19.
Book of Psalms 63:4: “I will praise you as long as I live, and in your name I will lift up my hands” (New International Version 1984). Book of Psalms 119:48: “I lift up my hands to your commands, which I love, and I meditate on your decrees” (New International Version 1984).
- 20.
On the subject, and at the margins of the field of devotional fitness, there are, of course, evangelical dance schools, as, e.g., Wendy Heagy’s Raise Him Up Praise Dance School & Ministry in New York, established in 1997. They seek to “dance the word effectively” and therefore consider it necessary to “study and rightly divide the word of God” (Heagy 2011).
- 21.
See, e.g., Cusic’s Encyclopedia of Contemporary Christian Music (2010), Howard and Streck (1999), and Gersztyn (2012).
- 22.
- 23.
The 25 songs of this session were: (1) Way Beyond Myself (Newsboys), (2) I Will Praise You (Rebecca St. James), (3) Shout For Joy (Lincoln Lee Brewster), (4) All Over The World (The Sonflowerz), (5) So Good (Lincoln Lee Brewster), (6) Go (Hillsong United), (7) Gave It All (Parachute Band), (8) Break Free (Hillsong United), (9) My Destiny (Press Play), (10) Up (Joy Williams), (11) Worth Waiting For (Beckah Shae), (12) This Is The Stuff (Francesca Battistelli), (13) These Days (Mandisa), (14) Strong Enough To Save (Tenth Avenue North), (15) NY2LA (Press Play), (16) Everlasting God (Jeremy Camp), (17) I Refuse (Josh Wilson), (18) Boomin’ (TobyMac), (19) Stronger (Mandisa), (20) My Own Little World (Matthew West), (21) Constant (Francesca Battistelli), (22) Say Goodbye (Mandisa), (23) Surrender (Beckah Shae), (24) Our God (Chris Tomlin), (25) Whom Shall I Fear (Lincoln Lee Brewster).
- 24.
According to Patrik N. Juslin and John A. Sloboda, the term “emotion” is used to “refer to a quite brief but intense affective reaction that usually involves a number of sub-components—subjective feeling, physiological arousal, expression, action tendency, and regulation—that are more or less ‘synchronized.’ Emotions focus on specific ‘objects’ and last minutes to a few hours (e.g. happiness, sadness)” (Juslin and Sloboda 2010, 10).
- 25.
Inken Prohl has demonstrated this in the context of Zazen where participants are, for the duration of the class, released from the need to make decisions (Prohl 2004, 296).
- 26.
Book of Psalms 119:57: “You are my portion, O LORD; I have promised to obey your words” (New International Version 1984).
- 27.
“Beachbody” is a corporation offering weight-loss and fitness products in the United States and internationally. Their products address a ‘secular’ market but they also distribute Donna Richardson Joyner’s Body Gospel workout DVD.
- 28.
Peter G. Stromberg goes even farther than this, suggesting that, on the basis of a constitutive (i.e., non-referential) understanding of language, it is the telling of a conversion experience that makes the conversion (Stromberg 2008, 3). He thus provides further evidence of the importance of studying narratives of conversion simultaneously bemoaning that there are only very little “detailed studies of the conversion narrative as a genre” (Stromberg 2008, 5).
- 29.
The importance of consistently recounting this event is evidenced even for the colonial period when someone wanting to join a Puritan congregation had to tell their conversion story in front of the community (Hochgeschwender 2007, 37). For a comprehensive account on the evangelical conversion narrative in early modern England, see Hindmarsh (2007).
- 30.
2 Timothy 3:16: “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness” (New International Version 1984).
- 31.
Anderson’s websites were not available in November 2015; I quote from the 2011 version.
- 32.
I have mentioned the most important biblical references in those sections where I analyzed the context of their use. Verses associated with eating, e.g., will be found in the section on strategies of dietary change (page 140 ff), etc.
- 33.
In the 1970s, Shedd employed a similar method. “As I studied the Bible for help in my struggle, I focused on words like body, appetite, eating, food, physical. Along with these, I turned to such terms as habit, self-control, dedication, desire” (Shedd [1972] 1984, 114).
- 34.
Matthew 28:19–20: “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. […]” (New International Version 1984).
- 35.
Genesis 3:8: “Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day […]” (New International Version 1984).
- 36.
- 37.
Mayhews website was no longer available in November 2015; I quote from the 2011 version.
- 38.
Amen, physician and psychiatrist, has authored, e.g., Change Your Brain, Change Your Body (2010) and The Amen Solution: The Brain Healthy Way to Get Thinner, Smarter, Happier (Amen 2011). Hyman is a physician and brings forward functional medicine. He has published The Blood Sugar Solution: The Ultrahealthy Program for Losing Weight, Preventing Disease, and Feeling Great Now! (Hyman 2012) and Ultrametabolism: The Simple Plan for Automatic Weight Loss (Hyman 2008). Oz is a cardiothoracic surgeon and hosts a popular TV show (The Dr. Oz Show) currently broadcasted on ABC. He co-authored You: Losing Weight: The Owner’s Manual to Simple and Healthy Weight Loss (Roizen and Oz 2011).
- 39.
As mentioned in footnote 2 (page 8), I use the concept “ideology” in a non-normative way to refer to the ideas and values existing in a society or group.
- 40.
Following Birgit Meyer, I use a broad concept of “medium,” extending to language, the body, books, sculptures, images, etc. The use of something as a medium in religious discourse is subject to processes of authorization and authentication (Meyer 2012, 26).
- 41.
My classification of these relationships is confirmed in a theological article by Valerie J. Gin in the volume The Image of God in the Human Body. Gin describes how, in the world of professional competitive team sports, the relationship to God, others, self, and creation, should be restored. The “curse of sin,” she writes, “destroyed […] our relationship to God, our relationship to ourselves, our relationship to others and our relationship to Creation […].” Christians, however, are supposed to “redeem the world by using prophetic imagination in each of our four restored relationships” (Gin 2008, 261). Theologically arguing, Gin explains how faithful Christians should, through the practice of and presence in sports, restore these relationships. Except for the aspect of creation and the fact that she is dealing with professional competitive team sports rather than body forming fitness, Gin’s structure explicates what I have found to be the implicit basis of many devotional fitness programs.
- 42.
From a sociological perspective, Emile Durkheim has prominently established the notion of the sacred and the profane (Durkheim 1994, 62). On the construction of categories of ‘clean’ and ‘unclean,’ and matters of body pollution and purification see also the groundbreaking work by Mary Douglas (1966).
- 43.
- 44.
1 Corinthians 10:31: “So whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God” (New Living Translation 2007).
- 45.
- 46.
- 47.
Already in the 1960s, scientific social research confirmed that overweight is often perceived as social deviance; see, e.g., Maddox et al. (1968).
- 48.
Matthew 22:37–40: “[Jesus replied:] ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments” (New International Version 1984).
- 49.
Neva Coyle and Marie Chapian argue along the same lines in Slimming Down & Growing Up (1985).
- 50.
I have presented some reflections on this issue in Radermacher (2013c).
- 51.
To consider the self as being apart from the ‘I’ is not a novel notion, of course. From a philosophical point of view, Paul Ricœur explores the nature of “the self as another” in Das Selbst als ein Anderer (Ricœur 1996) drawing on René Descartes, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Edmund Husserl, and others.
- 52.
There is a vast amount of research on the self from different academic perspectives. From the perspective of social psychology, Baron and Byrne point out that the self-concept “consists of all the knowledge we possess about ourselves” (Baron and Byrne [1974] 1991, 131)—it is not an object but constituted in discursive knowledge. Baumeister assumes three dimensions of the self-concept: reflexive consciousness, interpersonal aspects of selfhood, and executive function (Baumeister 1998, 680). With regard to the popular belief in an ‘inner self,’ he points out the connections to Christian understandings of the self. “People believe that their inner selves contain undiscovered treasures waiting for self-actualization, contain the solutions to their problems and decisions, and so forth. […] It seems likely that our belief in an inner self can be traced to the medieval Christian concept of soul” (Baumeister 1986, 257). In many of the programs researched here, this notion appears too.
- 53.
Theresa Rowe (Shaped by Faith) and Laura Monica (WholyFit) were guests in this show (see also footnote 2, page 130).
- 54.
The physician Charles Freed coined the concept “emotional eating” in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1947. The assumption had already spurred the success of TOPS and spread into the wider diet discourse (Fraser 1997, 151; see also page 76).
- 55.
The notion of the body as a machine was shaped by René Descartes (who is also credited with establishing modern Western mind-body dualism; see, e.g., Vásquez 2011, 36–41). The mechanistic model of the body was taken up in Protestantism and conventional biomedical medicine and considers the body exclusively as a biological organism, not attending to social and emotional spheres of existence. Mirroring technical machines, bodies are understood as automats functioning on the basis of scientific laws (Hülsken-Giesler, 67).
- 56.
Weigh Down Workshop is based on the principle: eat only when your stomach growls, and does not encourage working out; its leader Gwen Shamblin has an important function as a charismatic figure in the movement. First Place 4 Health, on the contrary, does not lay so much emphasis on their leaders but rather on the content, and typically disseminates advice on eating and nutrition that conforms mostly with scientific results (contrary to Shamblin’s controversial principle to eat everything but only as long as you can hear hunger pangs). On the differences between the organizations, see also Gerber (2012a, 231–32).
- 57.
Some stories of conversion have been presented in Sect. 6.2.
- 58.
- 59.
John 10:10: “[Jesus said:] ‘The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full’” (New International Version 2011).
- 60.
Proverbs 23:1–3: “When you sit to dine with a ruler, note well what is before you, and put a knife to your throat if you are given to gluttony. Do not crave his delicacies, for that food is deceptive” (New International Version 1984).
- 61.
Body & Soul Fitness, Christian Fitness TV, ChurchFitness, Devoted Fitness, Faithfully Fit, Fit for Faith, Fit for God, Gospel Fitness Workouts, PrayFit , Spirit and Muscle Fitness, Wholly Fitness, and WholyFit are just some examples.
- 62.
I have used the German translation Individualismus: Zur Ideologie der Moderne (Dumont 1991).
- 63.
On the implicit conflict of individualism vs. collectivism in devotional fitness, see also Radermacher (2013c).
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Radermacher, M. (2017). Devotional Fitness as Discourse and Embodied Practice. In: Devotional Fitness. Popular Culture, Religion and Society. A Social-Scientific Approach, vol 2. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49823-2_6
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