Food, Memory, & Communion with Hugh Hollowell
About this episode
Andrew Camp interviews Hugh Hollowell about the connections between food, memory, and communion, exploring themes of community and political resistance through the lens of Southern foodways.
Host Andrew Camp interviews Hugh Hollowell, pastor of Open Door Mennonite Church in Jackson, Mississippi and author of the memoir-essay collection Food Is Love, about how food and tables reveal God’s love, shape memory, and build connection. Hollowell calls the Last Supper his most compelling Christian story, arguing meals are intimate, mnemonic, and inherently communal, and that communion is scandalous because it includes people who fail us. He discusses Southern foodways, the Great Migration’s use of cooking to preserve home, and a long conversation about sweet potatoes with Senator Roger Wicker as an example of food humanizing opponents. They critique privileged food moralism amid Jackson’s food deserts and poverty, describe how “bad” celebratory foods and enslaved people’s ingenuity became valued cuisines, and frame cooking and writing about food as acts of care and political resistance. They close with reflections on church as support for weekday discipleship, lingering meals as welcome, and Hollowell’s favorite foods and stories. Hugh Hollowell is a sixth generation Mississippian and is the pastor of Open Door Mennonite Church in Jackson, MS – a multiracial peace church…
More episodes of The Biggest Table
Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the The Biggest Table podcast page.