Liturgical Spirituality in the Kitchen: Glimpsing Domestic Churches through Books with Recipes for Food Practices to Celebrate the Church Year

The concept of the domestic church has been receiving attention in academic discussion in recent years. The scholarly discussion takes a top-down perspective viewing domestic churches as imitations (miniature versions) or extensions of institutional churches.The discussion centers on grounding domestic churches in a religious sacrament.This view limits the constituents, the formation, and the ecclesial activity of domestic churches.It also limits the idea of the domestic church both in terms of ecumenical applicability and in terms of potential theological contribution to the institutional church and to the church universal.

This research forms a picture of domestic churches from a bottom-up perspective through the study of books with recipes that connect domestic food practice to liturgical time (the church year).It examines demographic elements, recipe texts, and author comments, employing both quantitative and qualitative methods of analysis.

The sources indicate a degree of independent flexibility inherent in domestic church food practice.The sources also cite instances of bi-directional influence between domestic churches and institutional churches, indicating that domestic churches are not only receivers of, but also contributors to liturgical tradition.Digging deeper I find that domestic church food practice through its facilitation of multi-sensory memory-making can effectively transmit religious beliefs in a mode that differs from that of institutional churches.

These findings depict domestic churches as vital and inclusive, promoting both dynamic engagement with and transmission of religious belief systems. The independent flexibility, bi-directional influence, and differing modes of transmitting religious belief systems argue against a view of domestic churches as mere imitations of institutional churches.Instead, they suggest that the relation between domestic churches and institutional churches is one of nourishing complementarity.

Additionally, this research acknowledges that the transmission of religious beliefs through domestic food practice is not the property of one denomination, or even of one faith, evidencing that grounding the domestic church in one denomination, or in a religious sacrament is both limiting and unnecessarily divisive.I assert that food practice, as other activities of domestic churches, represents both a matter of further theological inquiry and a point of potential ecumenical and interfaith dialogue.