Recovering the Love Feast: Broadening Our Eucharistic Celebrations

What is a Love Feast? How did the early church celebrate the Love Feast? How might Christians today celebrate the Love Feast? In Recovering the Love Feast Paul Stutzman addresses these questions offering a unique blend of liturgical history and practical theology. Part I outlines the history of the Love Feast noting its prevalence in early church worship its gradual decline and its reemergence in the practices of several Pietist groups (e.g. the Moravians Methodists and Brethren). Particular focus is given to five elements of the celebration that is: eucharistic preparation feetwashing the fellowship meal the holy kiss and the Eucharist proper. In Part II Stutzman argues that the Love Feast is a valuable Christian practice and a celebration worth recovering in those traditions that may have forgotten the feast. Rather than prescribing a specific method for celebrating the Love Feast Stutzman proposes that there are five key disciplines that todays Love Feasts should embody: submission love confession reconciliation and thanksgiving. This book encourages Christians from a range of traditions to experiment with reclaiming the Love Feast with the hope that each celebration serves as an act of worship to God and an authentic expression of Christian discipleship. As a young scholar Paul Fike Stutzman offers careful exegesis of scripture and historical and theological texts on the Love Feast and Eucharist traces the varieties of beliefs and practices associated with the Love Feast across the centuries and invites readers--those familiar with the Love Feast as well as the uninitiated--into a provocative reconsideration of its significance for the postmodern church seeking to embody the gospel in a hungry world. --Ruthann Knechel Johansen author of The Narrative Secret of Flannery OConnor: The Trickster As Interpreter Rather than treat the Love Feast as a static artifact like an insect in amber he envisions a future in which the rite becomes an active innovative and integral part of the life of confession reconciliation and thanksgiving in the church. Paul Stutzmans book should go a long way towards recovering the inclusive celebration of the Love Feast for the people of God. Those who take Jesus seriously will give serious consideration to this book. --Frank Ramirez author of The Love Feast In a book world teeming with Christian inspirational and practical treatises Paul Fike Stutzman offers something rare. Recovering the Love Feast anchors a fresh vision of the practical disciplines of Christian living in a sweeping history of Love Feast practices. Historical liturgical and pastoral sensibilities rarely intersect so well. --Carl Desportes Bowman author of Brethren Society: The Cultural Transformation of a Peculiar People Using a theological and historical-theological approach Paul Stutzmans Recovering the Love Feast invites readers to reconsider the ancient evidence for the Christian Love Feast and accompanying practices of feetwashing and the holy kiss. Stutzman adds a creative exploration of new interpretations in an effort to find meaning for these Christian practices in the present. --Jeff Bach Director of the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies Elizabethtown College Paul Fike Stutzman is the Pastor of Fraternity Church of the Brethren in Winston-Salem North Carolina where he lives with his wife and two children. He received an MA in Religion from Eastern Mennonite Seminary in Harrisonburg Virginia.