The Return of Fasting

In Naperville, 111., a dozen Methodist teen-agers observe a 36-hour hunger vigil, taking only a single glass of juice to ease their fast. At the University of Notre Dame, 1,100 people sit down to a dinner of rice and tea--and donate more than $1,500 to the hungry. In Needham, Mass., an ecumenical group of 50 families commit themselves to eating three meatless meals together each week for six months.

Exhorted by then-church leaders, prodded by their consciences, painfully aware of the threat of starvation that faces millions round the world, Americans of many faiths are returning to one of religion's most ancient and enduring disciplines: fasting. So ancient is the practice of fasting that its origins are lost in prehistory. Scholars speculate that primitive peoples adopted fasting for various reasons, one being to propitiate the gods. But another theory suggests a reason touchingly close to the purpose of today's fasts: to conserve the scarce supplies of a tribe's food.

However pragmatic the goal, today's calls for fasting from churchmen often pointedly recall the historic religious practice, which Eastern Orthodox Christians still widely observe and Roman Catholics have only recently moved away from. The new fasts, for example, have been called by many churchmen, both Catholic and Protestant, for Wednesdays, a traditional Christian fast day once associated with Judas' plot to betray Christ. The goal is not usually a complete fast but a general cutback in the amount of food eaten. The Union of American Hebrew Congregations will launch an antihunger campaign this month that includes, among other things, a recommendation for "un-dinners," complete with programs and speakers but no food. Perhaps curiously, considering their meatless Friday tradition, the nation's Roman Catholic bishops meeting in Washington last month recommended two days of fasting each week but did not enjoin Catholics to abstain from meat on those days. The reason: they had been reminded by Bishop Edward O'Rourke of Peoria, 111., that the nation's meat producers were themselves in serious economic trouble.

Shared Meat. The plight of the meatmen is just one example of the intricate economics of hunger that nearly all new advocates of fasting recognize. They agree that fasting is of little practical use unless money thus saved is sent to relief agencies or any surpluses created are somehow transferred to the hungry. A cutback in U.S. eating habits, even if sustained, will not automatically put grain on the table in Ethiopia or India. Thus churchmen recommend that Christians also get involved in political action to force increases in Government purchase and shipment of food to hungry countries.

Fasting, however, has its productive personal consequences. One imaginative program, conducted in churches and schools throughout the country by CROP, a division of Church World Service, involves ecumenical groups in a 30-hour fast beginning Friday or Saturday noon. At the end of the fast, the participants are finally served a meal, but at this "Third World banquet" there are wide disparities in what is served. A third of the group, chosen at random, gets the traditional American meat and potatoes. Another third gets a single glass of corn-soya milk, a typical aid-program food. The last third gets a bowl of rice. The effect is unsettling, but after some perplexity, the lucky ones nearly always share some of their meat and potatoes with the others. Says Allen Hengst, organizer of the CROP fasts in Washington, D.C.: "I honestly believe if the American people could see that other person at the end of their own table, they would share. It is just hard to educate people to see it that way."

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