fasting

fasting In fasting, individuals or whole communities abstain from food and drink, usually for a specific reason and a specific amount of time. Fasting differs from dieting or avoidance of certain foods, in that it implies complete abstinence from food, with only small modifications such as time limits or subsistence liquids. Documented in a wide array of cultures and throughout history, the motivations for fasting are many. Religious tenets have most commonly instigated fasts, but so have rites of passage, special occasions, political beliefs, and health ideals.

All of the major religions have called for some form of fasting. Though many factors motivate religious fasts, successful fasting demonstrates one's ability to subsume physical needs to spiritual desires, and has been thought to bring the faster closer to the divine. According to Islamic precepts, Moslems undertake Ramadan, a month-long fast (no food until after sundown), as well as other lesser fasts, such as Ashura. Buddhism requires ascetic behaviour, including fasting, by its monks, but not from other followers. Hinduism encourages fasting on the eleventh day after a new moon, after the full moon, and every Monday in November.

Judaism also calls for regular fasting as a part of its doctrine. The major fast, Yom Kippur (Fast of Atonement), the holiest Jewish holiday, falls on the tenth day of the Hebrew month of Tishri. The Old Testament specifies at least six other minor fasts. During all of these except Yom Kippur, which demands abstinence from sunset to sunset, faithful Jews fast from sunrise until the first night stars.

Most sects within Christianity have also advocated periods of fasting. The early Church called for voluntary fasts, but by the fourth century specific fasting practices were enumerated. In the past, the Roman Catholic Church required numerous fasts, including all Sundays during Lent, Easter week, and all Fridays except from Christmas to Epiphany and from Easter to Ascension. Today, the Church recommends only a few fasts. Adults (those over 21) and youths (those over 14) are expected to conduct limited fasts on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, as well as a one hour fast before communion. The Greek Orthodox Church lists over 250 fast days, including the 40 days before Christmas and Easter. The Eastern Orthodox Church proscribes meat during the first week of Lent and then precludes other foods, including fish, cheese, oil, butter, and milk, for the duration.

In all faiths, religious ascetics, especially saints and holy figures, have undertaken extreme fasts as a path to spiritual perfection. Hindu Yogis, Greek priests, and Christian martyrs all fasted. Recently, historians have taken great interest in the fasting practices of medieval women. Rudolph Bell suggests that the fasting rituals of such figures as Catherine of Sienna mirror present-day anorexic behaviour. Others suggest that though the behaviours may appear similar, their meanings, deeply rooted in each era's specific prescriptions about women, food, religion, and the body, make them distinct phenomena. Medieval saints fasted to receive God and to offer service to others, while modern anorexics fast for a complicated set of more individualistic reasons, including a desire for self-control and slenderness.

Many cultures have marked rites of passage and special occasions with fasting. Puberty is often accompanied by fasting, as for example among Sioux boys and some Africans, while Orthodox Jews fast before the marriage ceremony. Initiation in the cults of the ancient Isis and Mithra required fasting, and fasting has commonly accompanied grieving and mourning customs. Certain special occasions, such as celebratory feasts or, on the other hand, crises, provoke fasting — often in order to appease the gods.

Political activists have used fasting or ‘hunger strikes’ to gain attention, dramatize their cause, or force the hand of their opponents. The modern hunger strikers in Ireland protesting against British rule in Northern Ireland were preceded by the tradition of ‘fasting on’ someone to force them to make legal restitution. Mahatma Ghandi made effective use of political fasts, as did the British suffragists, who brought hunger strikes to the American suffrage movement.

Fasting to ‘purify’ health has long historical roots, especially among utopian societies. A number of such nineteenth-century American communities, led by such figures as Sylvester Graham and John Harvey Kellogg, recommended various dietary restrictions, including fasting. The health movement of the 1960s and 1970s, combined with the ‘cult of slenderness’ spawned new fasting fads (juice, liquid formulas, fruit only, etc.), including Alan Cott's Fasting as a Way of Life.

While dieting or abstaining from particular ‘fattening’ foods differs from strict fasting rituals, many who want to lose weight undertake fasts. It is this type of fast that is perhaps most common in modern Western cultures, where, even among the faithful, religious fasts are commonly evaded. Many fast intermittently for aesthetic reasons (to slim the body to fit beauty ideals) without incident, but such rigid weight-loss regimens have also contributed to the increase in eating disorders among young females.

Margaret A. Lowe

Bibliography

Brumberg, J. (1988). Fasting girls: the emergence of anorexia nervosa as a modern disease. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
Bynam, C. W. (1987). Holy feast and holy fast: the religious significance of food to medieval women. University of California Press, Berkeley.

See also dieting; eating disorders; religion and the body; starvation.