More sausages anyone?

This week has seen the start of the season of Lent – that period in the lead up to Easter in which many Christians have traditionally fasted from foods as a sign of penitence and to enable prayerful reflection.

But we live in the world of social media. My facebook page was atwitter with declarations from evangelical friends declaring what they were going to give up for Lent – chocolate, coffee, even Facebook itself.

This was a bit strange to me. I’ve grown up in the evangelical world, and Lent has never been a practice that I’ve followed. It has never been something advocated in the churches I’ve been in. It all felt a bit Catholic to me – it smacked of religious practices that tend to (in my mind) distract from the gospel of grace.

Actually, there’s a history with Protestants and Lent. The Swiss Reformation was started in 1522 when the leading pastor Ulrich Zwingli spoke publically in favour of eating sausage during Lent, when people were supposed to be fasting, or at least not eating rich things like sausages to be sure. Read more