Worship in the Midst of Hardship and Change: The Reformed Practice of Communal Fasting

For many Protestants, fasting for religious reasons is unfamiliar, or is commonly associated with other churches' practices, such as Roman Catholic fasting during Lent or abstaining from meat on Fridays. Yet we ignore the riches of the Reformed tradition when we fail to realize that fasting was a regular worship practice of Reformed congregations in the early modern era.

This fasting was communal in nature, and centered on days of prayer and repentance, usually called for by religious and/or political authorities during times of turmoil, war, plague, or natural calamities. Reformed communities across Europe held fasting days throughout the 16th and 17th centuries to plead for God's mercy, often when trouble threatened either locally or in the wider Reformed community. A deep concern for brothers and sisters in the faith beyond their own borders encouraged Reformed believers to turn to God, even when their local community was not in jeopardy.

These early modern Christians experienced hardship and change – like us, they felt anxious and unsettled, wondering what might happen next. Their practice of gathering the community for a time of fasting, prayer, lament, and reflection in the midst of turmoil is one to remember and to consider reviving.

So how did it work? Here are a few examples.

Geneva, 1578

In Geneva in 1578, there was anxiety in the city over Catholic advances in the Southern Netherlands. Therefore, a general fast was called for in Geneva for May 15, 1578, even though the trouble in the Southern Netherlands was four hundred miles away. The authorities put down in writing the reason for the gathering: "So that God may be willing to turn away his wrath from our sins, and through his grace, defeat the undertakings of our enemies, who do their utmost to plot against this church." The fast started first thing in the morning and went until three in the afternoon, with no food consumption allowed during this time. While fasting, the community gathered for city-wide worship services, hearing a number of sermons and prayers, and then listening to extended Scripture readings from Isaiah 58 and 59, Esther 4, and Joel 1 and 2, alternating with sung verses from Psalm 69. In the afternoon, they heard more sermons, "based on a relevant passage from the prophets, leading to appropriate humility and then to finding comfort in the grace and truth of our Lord."[1]

Scotland's Annual Fast

Meanwhile, similar practices took root in other Reformed communities. In Scotland, for instance, which officially became Reformed in 1560, the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland put forth an order for an annual general fast beginning in 1565. This time of repentance and prayer was to stretch over two consecutive weekends in late February and early March. The fast went from eight in the evening on Saturday to noon on Sunday – only bread and water was allowed, if needed. No games or other forms of recreation were to be played before or after (on the Saturday or the Sunday). Humble clothing was to be worn for the entire week between the two Sundays of the fast.

During this time, special worship services were organized on the Sunday of the fast for three hours before noon and two hours in the afternoon. The Scripture text recommendations in the Scottish instructions were very similar to the Genevan practice: they included readings from Joel and Jeremiah, but also from Luke 13. The time of communal worship also included a lengthy prayer of confession, which took place before the Ten Commandments were read during the service. After the reading from Deuteronomy, the instructions noted, "the minister shall wish every man to reflect inwardly, to examine his own conscience, to acknowledge his own guilt before God. The minister himself, with the people, shall prostrate themselves, and remain in private meditation in a reasonable space, for a quarter hour or more." In the countryside, the special services were on the two Sundays, but in towns and cities, the weekdays in between also featured special services, for an hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon. Thus the Scottish version of the annual communal fast involved a very intensive time of self-examination, repentance, and prayer.[2]

The Takeaway

So what is the takeaway here? First off, times of turmoil, hardship, and change have occurred throughout the history of the church – we are not undergoing unheard-of challenges. Second, we can learn from past generations about how congregations and church leaders can approach these challenging times – not by discounting the difficulties or avoiding the issues, but by gathering before the face of God for sustained periods of repentance and prayer. It is seductively easy to assign blame for hardships to one's opponents, but it is a lot harder to take the time to sit together as a community of faith and reflect on our own sin.

In the end, while we may not be ready to implement Genevan or Scottish-style regular worship days of prayer and fasting, we could learn a great deal from early Reformed communities' willingness to confront their own culpability and from their deep desire to turn to God for help and comfort in their time of tribulation.

Notes:

[1] The Genevan example comes from Olivier Fatio, "Le jeûne genevois: réalité et mythes," Bulletin de la Société d'Histoire et d'Archéologie de Genève 14 (1971): 391–425.

[2] The full text of the 1565 order for a general fast, included in The Book of Common Order, commonly known as John Knox's Liturgy (Edinburgh: Blackwood and Sons, 1868), can be found here beginning on p. 150: https://dn720209.ca.archive.org/0/items/comorde00chur/comorde00chur.pdf