Research project Eat, Drink and Pray: Religious Education Perspectives on Religion and Meals

This project examines the role of meals as pedagogical and formative spaces within religious traditions. Food and drink are fundamental to human survival, but they also serve as important carriers of religious socialization, the transmission of values, and identity formation. As such, meals and food practices constitute important objects of study within religious education.

Meals can be understood as embodied learning spaces in which religious norms, practices, and worldviews are communicated, negotiated, and internalized across generations. Food-related rules and rituals serve not only as markers of group identity but also as a means through which religious communities convey values, ethical ideals, and understandings of the sacred in everyday life.

The project explores questions of what is eaten, drunk, or abstained from, as well as how, when, and with whom these practices take place. The aim is to investigate how religion is taught and learned—both formally and informally—in homes, schools, and religious communities. Food practices thus provide an analytical lens for examining hidden curricula, informal processes of religious learning, and the ways religious identities are formed and negotiated in pluralistic societies.

The project highlights the intersection of food, religion, and religious education across different religious traditions, geographical contexts, and historical periods. Particular attention is given to food-related practices in educational settings, the intergenerational transmission of food habits, the ethical dimensions of food in religious education, and the role of fasting and meals in processes of religious identity formation and change.