Fasting as Political Theater

Protestors carrying a banner reading A Virginia group has announced a 40-day fast in support of the state’s constitutional ban on gay marriage. Members of the Family Foundation will go without food for 40 days, and will encourage other Virginia churches to do the same, publishing “talking points, sermon outlines, bulletin inserts, video clips and other resources” for congregations that want to join in.

This isn’t the first fast against gay marriage. A Utah man fasted 15 days hoping to get the Utah court to overturn its decision in favor of gay marriage. (It didn’t work, and he said next time he’ll try giving up football.)

And gay marriage isn’t the only issue attracting this kind of attention. The Fast for Families on the Washington Mall last year attracted quite a bit of media attention to their push for immigration reform, with the fasters receiving visits from “President Obama and the First Lady, Vice President Joe Biden, President Obama’s Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett, Secretary of Labor Tom Perez, Secretary Tom Vilsack, former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, former NAACP President Ben Jealous, Reverend Jesse Jackson and several members of Congress.” When they didn’t meet their goal of getting immigration reform brought to vote in the House, they set off on a bus tour to specific congressional districts, where the fasters took the role of community organizers to put pressure on specific congressmen. Their website provides scripts for calling members of congress and sample community meeting agendas, but only after prayers, scriptures, and fact sheets on the theology of fasting.

So what on earth is going on with all this?

Fasting isn’t completely unheard of in American politics; for example, Lincoln called for a national fast day, “to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.” And fasting has a secular equivalent in the hunger strike, a recognized political tool for shaming people who otherwise wouldn’t listen to you into doing so.

I think the decision to call these events fasts instead of hunger strikes is significant; there’s a religious element that’s being pushed to the forefront. What I see in these campaigns is the sense that secular arguments have failed. That’s not to say that it’s only an effort to promote policy based on religious ideas – for example Fast for Families campaign provided secular talking points for their favored policies, and encouraged more traditional activism like calling one’s congressman. The goal of adding the very religiously loaded act of fasting seemed to be to call attention to the moral dimension and urgency of the issue; secular arguments for and against immigration aside, failure to act causes people to suffer unjustly and therefore must be dealt with. The anti-gay-marriage fast had a similar sense that secular arguments had failed; they tried talking about protecting children and all that, but the courts ruled against them anyway, so now they’re circling the wagons around the “God’s will” argument and trying to fire up their church base in the face of what seems like a lost cause.

(A bit more cynically perhaps, using fasting seems like a great way to get church members involved in your politics and encourage a high level of commitment to the cause.)

I’m not sure how effective fasting is, but I’ll be interested to see how these campaigns unfold and if they have any success at creating a sense of moral urgency around political issues. In our super-polarized system, the rational secular debate we like to aim for doesn’t seem to get very far, so it makes sense to look for a new way to get the message across.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Social Media Icons Powered by Acurax Social Profile Design Experts