Evangelical Anorexia Nervosa
Julius H Rubin
Religious Melancholy and Protestant Experience in America January 6, 1994 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780195083019.003.0003 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Historical analysis Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that the "evangelical anoretic" practiced excessive fasting, even unto death, as a directed spiritual exercise within a Protestant mystical theology aimed at purifying sin and progressing through stages toward mystical union. Because the unio mystica experience was evanescent, the author contends that religious life was understood as a continual repetition of these spiritual cycles. |
Abstract
Abstract: The evangelical anoretic was a Protestant whose experience of self, other, and world was informed by the vocabularies of an inner-worldly, mystical, pastoral theology. Those who attempted excessive fasting, or even fasting unto death, did so as part of a directed spiritual exercise that was to purify sin in a moment when God had withdrawn his love. The Protestant mystic fully expected that these obsessive rituals of purification would lead the soul through the inward progression of stages culminating in the state of mystical union. Since the unio mystica experience proved evanescent, the Protestant mystic understood religious life to be a continual repetition of these spiritual cycles. Anne Fremantle describes this experience as a journey from the “… dark nights of the senses, of the soul—the purifications, the progress from petitionary prayer to meditation to contemplation, from contemplation to infused prayer, and thence—for the proficient—to unitive prayer, to the mystic marriage, and finally, to a state of union.”1