Fat Church

Book excerpt: Whether your body is small or large, aged or young, disabled or abled, toned or soft, lithe or stiff—or somewhere in-between—anti-fatness affects us all, because it is intended to. Fat Church critiques anti-fat prejudice and the Church’s historic participation in it, calling for a fatphobic reckoning for the sake of God’s gospel of freedom. Pastor and theological educator Anastasia Kidd reviews the history of diet culture, fat studies, beauty, body policing—and the white supremacist machinations underpinning them—in order to work for a society rooted in body liberation for all. Fat Church offers a disruption to social habits of shame and remembers the theology of abundance that calls us all beloved by God.