On May 24, 1921, Wonder Bread debuted in Indianapolis, Indiana. To make these fluffy loaves, the Taggart company utilized white flour that had been over-milled and bleached with chlorine. During this process, all bran and germ were stripped from the wheat, leaving a cloud-like flour devoid of original nutritional value but shelf-stable. While wheat germ is nutritionally dense and the means by which the plant reproduces, it contains oil that can cause flour to quickly go rancid. Wonder Bread was by no means the first bread to use stripped, bleached flour for a longer-lasting product, but it was one of the first that was mass-produced. By 1930, with the invention of pre-sliced loaves, the brand became ubiquitous as a staple of the American diet—the average American ate 7-8 slices of bread each day.

Throughout the 1930s, as industry boomed and mechanistic advances were made, the sterility of a product was especially prized. One of the taglines popular with factory-made bread at the time touted, “Know where your bread comes from—no hands touched this bread.” These advertising campaigns highlighted cleanliness and purity as the ultimate litmus test for value, rather than the quality of the ingredients. 

While antiquated to our modern understanding of caloric value, this perspective is somewhat understandable given that local bakeries had been known to cut their dough with sawdust to stretch ingredients and cut costs, resulting in widespread disease. However, the racial undertones that undergirded these campaigns were also not by accident, with advertisers and bread companies drawing on surging anti-immigrant sentiments to sell “pure white” bread.

As factory-made bread sales skyrocketed, American doctors noticed an increase in beriberi and pellagra, two diseases brought on by vitamin deficiency. It took time but eventually, the connection was made between outbreaks of beriberi and pellagra and the American diet, including the consumption of nutrient-stripped flour and degerminated corn-based food, particularly prominent in the rural south.

Enter the 1940 “flour hearings.” Led by the Food and Drug Administration, these congressional hearings studied the problem and made recommendations for enriching flour by adding vitamins and nutrients back into flour. In May of the following year, alarmed by the poor health of newly-enlisted men about to be sent to the battlegrounds of WWII, the National Nutrition Conference for Defense was convened, eventually leading to the voluntary cooperation of the baking industry. Wheat would continue to be processed in much the same way, removing bran and germ during milling and refining, but vitamins such as thiamine, riboflavin, and nicotinic acid would be added to the flour before being sold. By 1942, 75% of all white bread sold in the United States was baked using enriched flour.

This optimization of bread—from expedient milling process to mass nutrient provider—is never more obvious than when I take communion. A small white slip of nothingness dissolves on my tongue, a Jesus so safe he’s devoid of meaning.

As a missionary kid and former church employee, I was not particularly surprised to find that it’s around the same time Wonder Bread takes off that the evangelical, non-denominational church rises in popularity.

At the turn of the 20th century, the western church was at war with itself. Global intellectual movements and scientific discoveries such as evolution had led to confusion and theological insecurity within the church. For over fifty years a social gospel had flourished, a theologically liberal strain of Christianity occupied with applying the principles of Jesus to social reform. Organizations like the Salvation Army and the YMCA were formed to care for those most oppressed by the new societal structures of the industrial revolution, offering a hopeful vision of a spiritual kingdom on earth. In the 1920s and 30s, concerned with the social gospel’s loose interpretation of scripture and aided by the societal disillusionment left in the wake of World War I, a strain of Christian fundamentalism began to gain traction in the U.S. Fundamentalism was reactionary, and emphasized biblical literalism and holy separation. Tension between the socially enmeshed modernists and the orthodox fundamentalist movement resulted in ongoing denominational fracturing. Unity was needed and a shake-up was in order.

In an effort to salvage Christendom from the wreckage of these schisms, the modern American evangelical movement was formed, solidifying in 1942 with the founding of the National Association for Evangelicals. The movement drew on many of the fundamentalist beliefs but rejected some of its more extreme positions, such as cultural isolation. Rightly so, the modern American evangelical movement sought to eject itself from the baggage and divisiveness of previous church traditions, emphasizing a return to basics and a focus on Jesus. In the broadcasts of Billy Graham and the founding of parachurch organizations such as Campus Crusade for Christ and Navigators, there was a particular renewed interest in the Great Commission: How might gospel preaching be optimized to reach more people in a modern era of global connection?

However, no longer tied to the bureaucracy of denominational leadership and set governance, churches began to intertwine the ancient call to “go and make disciples” with the modern metric of success in mass growth. As culture pivoted towards optimization for mass consumption, the church followed suit.

The unintended consequences resulted in an ecumenical no-place, a theological mishmash. Without grounding or context, the church looked externally for affirmation, to mass consumption of its teaching and the desire to franchise its model. Paralleling capitalism, the megachurch or church planting network became the ultimate form of validity. And the best way to ensure growth? Make sure the message goes down easy. Downplay the sacrifice, the humility, the messiness of a diverse body, the call to be with the poor and the oppressed. Take out the germ and the bran.

Over time, mainstream churchgoers became passive consumers of a more easily digestible gospel—a self-serving gospel whose value is found in how many people were interested in consuming it. Increasingly, sermons focused on self-help and prosperity promises over inconvenient compassion, the fluffy flour bleached white and shelf-stable.

Similarly Church-planting networks offered another path towards growth through franchising, a model that could be efficiently replicated hundreds of times over. But often the ingredients lacked substance, and devoid of the context of place, of natural and organic growth, many church plants launched with all the character of a McDonalds—promising creative regeneration but delivering the same mass-produced product that goes down easy.

But the gospel was never meant to be easily digested. It’s inherently complex, because people, real people bringing their whole selves, are complex. Throughout the New Testament, over and over conflict and tension arise when people commit to gather, when a church body looks like an accurate cross section of society in all of their schisms and similarities, sorrows and strengths.

When we homogenize our faith communities for the sake of scale we lose the messy complexity of people, and in doing so, I would argue, we lose the heart of the gospel. By removing conflict, discomfort, pain, we strip the church of its nutritional value, like flour lacking wheat germ we remove the very component that allows us to grow and propagate.

The very elements that make the gospel difficult to digest and almost impossible to mass produce are the very things that nurture and regenerate.

70 years on, as American culture tumbles through a heavy duty wash cycle, what’s being offered is no longer answering the questions that are being asked. Desperate for nutritional value, we deconstruct and overchew, until the communion wafer is ground to dust. What was offered was never going to be enough. Our generation of spiritual nomads wander untethered and disillusioned, bodies aching for sustenance.

But raised on paper wafers and grape juice, many of us find we are incapable of feeding ourselves.

As I search for a new home, I often find myself thinking back to the small American Baptist church I attended as a child. As far as I know there was no major swell of numbers in our congregation, but it reflected its context. As our town became more ethnically and generationally diverse, so too did our church body. As its youth wrestled with addiction during the opioid epidemic, church families collaborated to create havens for recovery. The church deepened and prospered in the soil it was planted. Its message didn’t always go down easy, and at times it needed some serious pruning, but mass production was not its goal, simply a quiet, organic serving of the congregation and the community it was planted in.

Recently I began milling my own flour. As a novice I am still figuring out the right ratios, testing different grains, and adjusting recipes. It takes much more time. I can’t assume that I will just have flour on hand as what I mill is in small batches and keeps for much less time than store-bought flour. It’s inconvenient and I must plan ahead, adjusting expectations for expediency and knowing the baking process will be a venture into the unknown. There are some days when my five-year-old takes a sandwich to school that is near-to inedible. But (when edible) what I bake heals and nurtures.

As I search for a new community of believers, that is the question I find myself asking, do you heal and nurture? Who is your Jesus: a thin white wafer of a man or a robust and hearty spelt-loaf, nutrient-rich and embodying every shade of flesh from porcelain pale to the richest of blacks?

Whether passed out in small bags or tucked under the lid of a plastic juice cup, the communion wafer has been optimized and stripped for a megachurch setting, for moving many people quickly. The opposite of the emotional meal Jesus had with his closest friends on the night he was betrayed, pointing them toward the most ubiquitous and life-sustaining of things: bread.

And herein lies the temptation. It’s quite possible to get more of Jesus in front of more people faster, but would that Jesus, optimized for expediency and growth, not be but a pale, wafer-thin comparison to the robust, controversial, figure he actually was? And would we not then be creating a generation of untethered, shallow-rooted people of faith with little to hold fast to when the world begins to come undone?

Recently, I gathered with a few close friends. Led by an Episcopal priest, we read scripture, prayed, and shared a bit of our lives. There were unrealized dreams and unmet expectations, physical ailments and emotional isolation, and perhaps, above all, gratitude for the circle holding both pain and joy for each other. Afterward, we took communion, dipping a chunk of bread into dark wine. As we reflected in silence, all one could hear was the crunching of their neighbor. As jaws rolled and teeth broke loudly through crust, nervous laughter went through the group. It was awkward, and yet, delightfully human.

As I sat there waiting for my turn, acutely aware of the mastication of my neighbor, for a brief moment I missed the anonymity of the wafer, the quiet dissolving of papery nothingness.

This is the body of Christ, given for you.

And then I thought of Jesus, of dark skin flayed open as an offering. And I thought of those around me, a ragtag mess of chaotic and painful lives, who chose to follow that Jesus over the edge of safe. 

The wine seeped into that brown crust of bread, running through the crevices of flayed flesh, and for one eternal moment, I held Jesus in my hands—fuller and more fulfilling.