My Body is a Testimony: Appearance, Health, and Sin in an Evangelical Weight-loss Program

Christian weight loss programs in the United States are significant sites of evangelical negotiation between cultural distinction and cultural participation. First Place, a Christian weight loss program sponsored in churches across the country, both appropriates dominant American concerns about health and fears of obesity, and reinscribes them in a cultural context that gives religious meaning to this seemingly worldly pursuit. The author, basing herself on qualitative research, examines three critical areas in which First Place distinguishes itself from its secular counterparts and renders weight loss a spiritually significant task: motivation for weight loss, the problem of physical appearance, and the question of sin. The author argues that First Place is an example of both evangelical submission to and cultivation of cultural capital and symbolic power.