No Salvation Outside the Body: A Theology of Eating Disorder Recovery

“By challenging the binary of “holy vs. pathological fasting,” this work shows that eating disorders should not be approached as a moral issue, and brings attention to the ways that social injustices impact who defines and experiences recovery. ”

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Kathleen Mroz Emmanuel College Contact Me

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No Salvation Outside the Body queries what salvation might mean to those struggling with an eating disorder. First, it examines how salvation has often been understood as something purely eschatological. It looks to the theology of Edward Schillebeeckx to discuss how salvation must be something we experience now in response to the threatened humanum (what human wholeness entails). Second, it demonstrates how weight stigma is an example of the threatened humanum, and how anti-fat attitudes are perpetuated by Christian theology, and are intertwined with sexism and racism. Third, it examines Catholic teaching on eating disorders and the ways in which eating disorders have been called out as “sins” or “individual moral failings” rather than examples of structural sin. Fourth, it critiques how Christian theologies tend to distinguish between “holy fasting” and “pathological fasting” by looking at the phenomenon of “holy anorexia” in the Middle Ages. Fifth, it asks what salvation means when considering the reality of relapse, and the fact that not everyone “gets better.” It concludes by arguing that the definition of recovery must constantly be expanding as we continue to uncover the ways in which fatphobia, racism, sexism, and ableism have shaped our conception of what healing entails.