Anglican Spirituality: Fasting

By Robin G. Jordan

When some folks hear a reference to the Anglican Way, they may envision souring cathedrals, the majestic sound of an organ, stately hymns, the eloquent language of the classical Prayer Book, and a choir of men and boys singing Evensong under the vaulted roof of a cathedral. I have a homelier view of the Anglican Way.

I see in my mind’s eye a country lane meandering among the fields and lined with hedgerows. Small birds chirp among the branches of the shrubs and trees and small animals peek shyly from the shelter of the underbrush. Cows and sheep graze in the fields beyond the hedgerows. A farm horse hangs his head over a gate and nickers at me as I pass by.

I turn a corner and behold the lichgate of a village church, the leaded roof of the church drenched in sunlight and the tombs of the graveyard overgrown with moss. A gravel path leads to the church porch. The door of the church is open, a rare thing these days, and the nave within is quiet and still.

The sunlight shining through the stained glass windows paints rainbow colors on the nave’s white walls. A hand-printed sign bids the visitor to linger awhile and pray. I slide into one of the pews, its wood polished from much use. And sit, a solitary wayfarer drawn to the silence of a building hallowed by centuries of prayer.

It was in such a church that I may have experienced the first stirrings of faith—a small boy whose Jesus was the holy child and gentle shepherd of Joan Dale Thomas’ picture books and who opened the heavy door of an empty village church and stepped into the quietness and the stillness on a bright summer day.

I was drawn in part by curiosity and in part by an intangible something that I came seeking, not knowing what is was. Maybe in my child’s heart I was looking for God.

The interior of the church was very peaceful while at the same time inexplicably frightening. When I left the church, the world outside its walls looked brighter than before—suffused with light. That day has left an impression on my mind that has not faded with time.

Later I would to learn a word for such an experience—numinous. But that lay many years in the future when I was no longer a boy. Later in life I was sad to hear that the church that I visited had been desecrated by Satanists, was cleaned and re-consecrated, and now is kept locked.

I am inclined to think of the Anglican Way as pilgrimage in which Christ sets our feet upon the path, is our companion in the way, and our final destination at the end of our journey. He is the lodestone that draws us, the road that upholds, the star that guides us, and the hearth fire that beckons to us at journey’s end.

This description fits other ways of following Jesus Christ but it particularly fits the Anglican Way.

The Anglican Church has its roots in the indigenous Celtic church that was founded in the British Isles not long after our Lord’s death and resurrection. It also has its roots in the Anglo-Saxon church that eventually supplanted the Celtic Church and in which the Church of Rome was a strong influence, and in the Norman Church that in turn supplanted the Anglo-Saxon church.

The British Isles has seen several invasions in its history—the Angles, the Saxons, the Jutes, and the Frisians; the Danes; and the Normans. The Angles, the Saxons, the Jutes, the Frisians, and Danes were pagans who would convert to Christianity after they came to the British Isles. The Normans were Christians and brought their own clergy and customs with them.

The Protestant Reformation that swept Western Europe in the sixteenth century would not leave the English Church untouched. It would experience a brief reformation during the reign of Edward VI and a much longer reformation during the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I. The reign of Charles I was marked by what is sometimes called the Catholic Reaction—a reaction to the more extreme forms of Puritanism and Calvinism. The Interregnum saw the abolition of The Book of Common Prayer and episcopacy. The Restoration brought the restoration of monarchy and with its restoration the restoration of the Prayer Book and episcopacy.

The Evangelical Revival lefts its mark on the English Church in the eighteenth century and the Catholic Revival and the Broad Church Movement on the English Church and its daughter churches in the nineteenth century. The Charismatic Renewal Movement would leave its mark on these churches in the twentieth century, which also saw the same churches divided into competing liberal and conservative wings. A number of Anglicans broke with the American Church and other daughter churches over issues such as women’s ordination and Prayer Book revision and formed their own jurisdictions dedicated to the preservation of their understanding of the Anglican Way.

These jurisdictions and more recently established conservative jurisdictions have experienced something of what may be described as a Catholic Resurgence. While this development has been characterized by its proponents as a convergence of theological streams in Anglicanism, the Catholic theological stream has tended to dominate and redefine the other theological streams that are supposed to form this convergence. Hence a Catholic Resurgence may be the more accurate description of this development.

The existence of these often disparate views has made the task of defining what is the Anglican Way very difficult. From the nineteenth century on several different groups have sought to undertake this task but none of these groups have been able to agree on a common definition.

What I propose to do is to identify some outstanding features of the Anglican Way based on praxis, the spiritual practices and disciplines to which Anglicans have gravitated as followers of Jesus Christ. This will not be an in-depth study.

This way of defining the Anglican Way may not be entirely satisfactory since it does not address the question of doctrine. Anglicans can engage in similar practices and yet have divergent theological views, including views of the practices themselves. But it will give readers some idea of the spiritual practices and disciplines that form what may be loosely described as “Anglican spirituality.”

For the first article in the series I have chosen the topic of fasting. I did not select this topic for any particular reason over the other spiritual practices and disciplines about which I might have written other than I was able to put together an article on this topic fairly easily. I am planning articles on a range of topics including liturgy, sacraments, vestments, bells, incense, church music, preaching, Bible reading, prayer, silence, pilgrimages, meditation, and service to others. I will be tackling these subjects in no particular order.

Some Anglicans have strongly-held opinions on these topics and I will endeavor to be sensitive to such differences of opinion. I have formed my own opinions over the years and have modified them as need arose. I aspire to put into practice the principle that the seventeenth century German Lutheran theologian Rupertus Meldenius articulated—“in essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity.” But I would be the first to confess that what I do in actuality often as not falls short of my aspirations.

The Anglican Way has no season of obligatory fasting like the Eastern Orthodox Churches’ Lent or Islam’s Ramadan. Whether an Anglican fasts during Lent or engage in other acts of self-denial is left to the individual’s discretion. Whether an Anglican fasts at other times such as the traditional fast days of Wednesday and Friday is also up to the individual. Anglicans believe that fasting is more spiritually beneficial if it undertaken freely and not under compulsion.

Anglicans do not see fasting as a good work that earns them merit with God. The value that Anglicans see in the practice of fasting is the act of denying oneself for our Lord’s sake and which is only meaningful if we practice it in other areas of our lives, those areas in which we are prone to running our lives our own way rather than God’s way.

When it accompanies prayer, Anglicans see fasting as a way of conveying to God the seriousness of their petitions. They also see fasting as an expression of repentance but only if it is accompanied by an actual turning away from sin to Christ.

Anglicans heed our Lord’s words that, when we fast, we should not make an ostentatious display of our fasting and draw attention to ourselves so our fellow Christians will think that we are particularly devote. Rather we should wash our faces and remove any other evidence of our fasting.

Anglicans also heed the Apostle Paul’s words that we cannot by our own efforts enter a state of grace, through fasting, abstinence from meat and other types of food, and other ascetical practices. Such practices also do not make us spiritually superior to our fellow Christians who do not engage in these practices.

Anglicans are divided over whether communicants should fast before receiving the Holy Communion. Some Anglicans subscribe to this late medieval practice; others do not.

As Percy Dearmer notes in The Parson’s Handbook the classical Anglican Prayer Book of 1662 and is predecessors ignores the practice of fasting communion, taking as their standard the Bible, the early Church, and the Patristic writers. “The primitive Eucharist,” he writes, “was the culmination of the Agape, and followed it.” The Agape was a common meal that the early Christians shared to express their unity and love for each other. The Apostle Paul refers to the Agape in his first letter to the church at Corinth.

When our Lord instituted the Lord’s Supper, he did so in the context of a meal. Scholars disagree over whether it was a Passover seder. Some believe that the meal was a havurah, a fellowship meal, or even a se'udat-siyum, a banquet of completion which the rabbis of that time shared with their disciples when they had completed the course of study under the rabbi. A se'udat-siyum takes precedence over the Fast of the First Born that precedes the Passover.

The last Supper was shared in the evening. It began with a prayer of thanksgiving over a loaf of bread which was then broken and distributed to those sharing the meal. Toward the end of the meal a second prayer of thanksgiving was said over a cup of wine, which was also shared. The New Testament accounts of the Last Supper are silent on whether the disciples had fasted before the meal. They had eaten, however, when the second thanksgiving was said over the cup of wine.

Fasting communion did not become fixed practice in the Medieval Church until the thirteenth century, and then may have been a reaction to the excessive drinking and overeating that accompanied the midday meal in medieval times. The practice of fasting before receiving a sacrament was dropped at the Reformation, except in the case of adult baptisms.

Dearmer lays out the case against fasting communion in The Truth about Fasting, which unfortunately is not available in an electronic edition online. A review of The Truth about Fasting was published in The Spectator on April the 21, 1928. As well as concluding that Dearmer builds a strong case against the practice of fasting communion, which included the counsel of post-Reformation High Anglicans favoring freedom in the practice, the review adds some evidence of its own in support of Dearmer’s arguments:

It may be of interest that Archbishop Benson records that he questioned the saintly Bishop King on the subject, and learned from the Bishop himself that on days of necessity— Ordinations, for instance—he broke his fast before Communion. Dr. Dearmer does not mention this, but the example of Bishop King still weighs with High Anglicans.

The review concludes with these words:

The book is worth a very attentive study by church-people and its citations cannot be lightly dismissed.

One of the arguments that proponents of fasting communion mustered in support of the practice at the time of the publication of The Truth about Fasting was Jesus’ fast in the wilderness. The New Testament account of this fast is descriptive. Descriptive passages of the Bible cannot be interpreted as enjoining a practice that is described in the passage unless there is clear evidence that the author intentionally included a description of the practice “as an example or guide to be considered in subsequent similar circumstances.”

This does not appear to be the case in the gospel accounts of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness. While it may be gathered from these accounts that Jesus himself practiced fasting, it is a real stretch to conclude from such accounts that he enjoins his disciples to fast before receiving the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. All we can conclude from the New Testament is that Jesus himself fasted and gave his disciples instructions as to how they should conduct themselves while undertaking a fast and nothing more.

The New Testament does not contain any prescriptive passages prescribing fasting communion or descriptive passages that set a solid precedent for the practice.

The High Anglicans who favored freedom in the practice of fasting communion were applying the normative principle in their interpretation of the Bible. This principle is applied to the elements in worship. It is the theological principle that those elements not prohibited by Scripture may be used.

Whether one should fast before receiving the Holy Communion boils down to a matter of individual conscience.

In connection with this discussion of the practice of fasting, I think that it is appropriate to discuss the practices of vegetarianism and veganism. Vegetarians eat a largely plant based diet which may include dairy products and eggs while vegans eschew all animal-based foods. Vegans also do not use clothing and other products that are made from animals.

Vegetarians and vegans adopt their particular lifestyle for a variety of reasons, which may include spiritual reasons. Christians may practice vegetarianism or veganism but not for spiritual reasons. Unlike Judaism, Christianity does not have any dietary regulations to which Christians must confirm in order to please God. The Scriptures do not prohibit the consumption of animal products nor do they forbid a vegetable-based diet. In the Book of Genesis we are told that humankind’s originally diet was vegetable-based. After the Flood God permitted Noah and his descendants to kill animals and eat their flesh for food.

In his writings the Apostle Paul does not take issue with the practice of eating a plant-based diet but rather the claim that those who abstain from meat and other types of food may attain a state of grace. When he writes that all foods are good and should be received with thanksgiving, he is not referring to the nutritional value of these foods or their healthiness for us. He is referring to the idea that some foods are spiritually harmful to us while others are not. What he is saying is that no food is intrinsically harmful in itself from spiritual perspective. Since God created it, it is good. Avoiding certain foods is not going to benefit our relationship with God in any way and it is certainly not going to make our relationship with God better than the relationship of those who eat these foods. As Jesus himself taught, it is not what we put into ourselves that may make us unclean, or impure, but what comes out of us from an evil heart.

Some Christian monks adopt a plant-based diet as a form of self-denial. Unless this diet serves as a reminder of our need to sacrifice our sinful affections and is accompanied by other forms of “mortifying the flesh,” putting to death our sinful nature, it has no benefit. By itself it has no spiritual value.

I am writing as someone who has been a practicing vegetarian for over thirty-five years and a total vegetarian for the larger part of that time. As a friend of mine who is a former Russian Orthodox priest describes my life, I live in an Eastern Orthodox Lent all year round.