EDINBURGH, Scotland (LifeSiteNews) – There has been some hue and cry here in Britain over public recognition of Ramadan, the Islamic month of daytime fasting. Writing for The Spectator, Melanie McDonagh reports that her local Sainsbury’s has a poster asking shoppers if they are “Ramadan-ready.” She received an email from a London hair salon offering post-Iftar (the daily fast-breaking evening meal) services. The iconic Harrod’s department store is advertising a takeaway “Iftar feast” on its website. There are Ramadan lights up in London. London schools have been advised how to help students fast, and naturally politicians have wished their constituents a Happy Ramadan. McDonagh acknowledges that 15% of Londoners are Muslim but says “it’s still oddly unsettling that Islam is now the default ‘us.’”
“I’d be less conscious of it if it weren’t that the Christian equivalent, happening at the same time, is so very much off the radar,” she writes.
But who’s to blame? We are. McDonagh states that unless “Christians, including those calling themselves cultural Christians … actually make a big deal about our feasts and fasts, we can’t expect others to take them seriously.”
Although I do agree with McDonagh’s conclusion (more on that below), I take issue with her (and Cardinal Timothy Dolan’s) idea that Lent is the Christian equivalent to Ramadan. Ramadan (which post-dates Lent by hundreds of years) is a month of charitable giving and self-restraint, punctuated by special pre-dawn and post-dusk meals, whereas Lent is a penitential season, with breaks for only such celebrations that fall on important feast days, like St. Patrick’s, St. Joseph’s, and the Annunciation. Lent is also observed in imitation (however poor) of Christ’s 40-day fast in the desert. Mindful of Our Lord’s example, the early Christians fasted very seriously, allowing themselves only one meal — and that mostly bread and vegetables — a day.
There are still Christians who fast seriously in Lent: Eastern Catholics and the Orthodox churches. Contemporary Latin Catholics are merely asked to abstain from meat on Ash Wednesday and all the Fridays in Lent, and to eat only one big meal and two snacks on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. In contrast, many Eastern Christians don’t eat meat, dairy products, or fish with backbones for all of Lent, and they fast every day. Their use of wine and olive oil is restricted. Meanwhile, Latin Catholics are invited to choose their own personal penances in place of their ancestral traditions, as individuals, whereas Eastern Christians do the same traditional penance together as a community. And because they abstain and fast as a community, they feed their identity as a community.
Much ink has been spilled over the Roman Catholic bishops’ psychological and sociological error in making traditional Friday abstinence from meat optional. In Britain, where Catholics have been a small minority since the Protestant Reformation, the communal meatless Fridays served not only as a penance but as a way of expressing and nourishing Catholic identity and as a witness to the faith. That is why, in 2011, the Catholic Bishops of England and Wales re-established meatless Fridays. However, it may have been like closing the barn door after the horse has fled: Today, only 27.5% of Catholics in those countries go to Mass every Sunday.
We are what we eat and what we don’t eat. The same principle works for other communities. Observant Jews famously keep kosher and have two 24-hour fasts a year. Strict Muslims do not eat pork, and they eat only meat that is “halal,” that is, slaughtered according to their religious laws. And, of course, they do not consume even water between dawn and dusk during Ramadan: a difficult discipline indeed in hot countries or when the season falls in summer.
It takes determination to deny oneself food and drink, and it also takes determination to persist as a minority religious community — or, indeed, to be a good Christian, even in countries that might still reasonably be considered Christian. Traditionally, Lenten fasting, prayer and almsgiving were seen as a fight against the “world, the flesh, and the devil.” I’m not sure just giving up meat on Fridays and maybe a TV show or chocolate for all of Lent will make the devil shake in his shoes. It also doesn’t serve as much of a witness to the Roman Catholic faith when our Eastern Catholic and Orthodox brothers and sisters are undergoing real privations — joyfully and as communities.
Thus, I have a challenge for Western Christian adults, be they Roman Catholics, Lutherans or others in the Reformed traditions, or those who consider themselves “cultural Christians”: Why not adopt the Lenten fasting and abstinence of one of the Eastern Christian churches? Although they are not as rigorous as the one-vegan-meal-a-day practice of our shared Christian ancestors, they are certainly serious business. They are, in fact, “the big deal” McDonagh called for in her essay in The Spectator.
Today, even famous atheists like Richard Dawkins are concerned about the erosion of Christian identity in their countries. Obviously, the calorific celebration of Christmas and the chocolate-laden acknowledgement of Easter doesn’t cut it in Great Britain. Perhaps some serious fasting will help make our countries Christian again.
Nota bene: I was not eating when I wrote this.
