Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion

Sara Miles

2007 • 294 pages

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Average rating4.3

Raised as an atheist, Sara Miles lived an enthusiastically secular life. Then early one morning, for no earthly reason, she wandered into a church. "I was certainly not interested in becoming a Christian," she writes, "or, as I thought of it rather less politely, a religious nut." But she ate a piece of bread, took a sip of wine, and found herself radically transformed. The sacrament of communion has sustained Miles ever since, in a faith she'd scorned, in work she'd never imagined. Here she tells how the seeds of her conversion were sown, and what her life has been like since she took that bread: as a lesbian left-wing journalist, religion for her was not about angels or good behavior or piety. She writes about the economy of hunger and the ugly politics of food; the meaning of prayer and the physicality of faith. Here, in this passionate book, is the living communion of Christ.--From publisher description.

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Rumble

An atheist finds God through what she considers to be the essential idea behind the Christian act of communion: feeding the hungry. Really interesting story, if perhaps overlong and a bit humble-braggy at times. What struck me most was her reluctance to tell her family and non-Christian friends about her conversion, and when she finally did, how they pushed back and asked how she could possibly believe in a religion that [insert atrocity here]. By the end of the book it is a question she has to resolve for herself, and comes up with this for an answer: “Christianity wasn't an argument I could win, or even resolve. It wasn't a thesis. It was a mystery that I was finally willing to swallow.” Which is a pretty decent answer.

February 14, 2023

Deb Nance

This is certain to be one of my favorite reads of the year. Sara Miles is a woman who has never visited a church in her life, whose parents are acknowledged atheists. Yet, suddenly and unexpectedly, Miles eats a bite of the Lord's Supper and becomes a Christian. Her life completely changes and she becomes the founder of a food bank at her church. The food bank brings in the poor, the desolate, the sick, the crazed, and these, in turn, become changed and, in addition, act to change those in the church. Delightful.

January 1, 2007