Fasting in the age of MAGA

Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?  (Isaiah 58:6)

When my friend Bishop Mark Beckwith invited me to join him every Wednesday this Lent in a Sabbath fast from food, finance, and media,1 my first reaction was to flinch. I do not fast casually. I am in long-term recovery from an eating disorder that included long bouts of fasting. I know what it’s like to restrict food in a willful, desperate, and ultimately futile effort to regain control. Fasting to punish myself, to compensate for compulsive binges, or to lose weight gave me no path to freedom – quite the contrary. It only tightened addiction’s grip on my body and spirit.

Nevertheless, the forty days of Lent are traditionally a season for “self-examination and repentance,” “prayer, fasting, and self-denial,” and “reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.” Over decades of recovery I’ve discovered that fasting with a spiritual purpose can be a powerful tool for personal transformation. What’s more, in this nerve-wracking, bone-chilling, heart-breaking era of cruelty and chaos, with no end in sight, it’s time to reclaim the ancient practice of fasting.

I decided to join Bishop Mark this Lent in a weekly fast from eating, engaging in economic activity, and reading, watching, or listening to the news.

Why do I – why do we, why does anyone – carry out such a fast?

We fast to break out of the habits and routines of daily life and to say that something matters more than business as usual. Business as usual must stop.

We fast to break through the paralysis of disengagement and despair.

We fast to awaken from the trance of daily life and to regain our interior lives.

We fast to see through the illusions of an addictive culture inflamed by pleonexia, the Greek word for “a passion for more, an insatiability for more of what I already have.” Even if we hate shopping, it’s easy to be seduced by the notion that if we feel restless or uncomfortable, we should buy something. The purpose of advertising is not only to persuade us to buy one object or another, but also to create a climate of craving. What if we acknowledged the truth of the poet’s cry, “The world is too much with us; late and soon / Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers”?2 What if we refused to let production and consumption define our lives?

We fast to listen closely to ourselves, to drop below the strident commercialism of the mall and the marketplace, below the cash register’s loud ka-ching! and the quiet click of a credit card sliding into place. We fast to listen to the deeper hungers of our hearts.

We fast to step away from the relentless onslaught of news primed to deliver outrage and shock.

We fast to give ourselves space to honor our pain for the world, which, as Joanna Macy has told us time and again, is how we develop compassion, the willingness and capacity to “suffer with.” She writes, “Of all the dangers we face, from climate chaos to nuclear war, none is so great as the deadening of our response.”

We fast to grieve and to mourn, praying our way through our anger, sorrow, and fear. We fast to admit our mortality and vulnerability, and our radical uncertainty about the future.

We fast to recognize our dependence on the grace of God and on the gift of the next breath.

We fast to listen in silence, with full attention. When the clamor of our minds has stilled, might we hear the silent melody of a deeper, subtler and more enduring song, a love song between God and the whole created order, between God and the soul?

We fast to attune ourselves to the love that wants to be the center of our lives.

We fast to purify ourselves. We fast to express repentance and remorse for the ways we have participated in, colluded with, and benefited from a system that is killing life.

We fast as an act of protest, longing to express in and through our bodies our grief and moral outrage that corporate and political powers are tearing this country and this planet apart. We fast to protest systems that privilege billionaires, crush the poor, and devour the Earth and all her communities. Many social-justice Christians have signed a pledge circulated by Faithful America to join a Lenten fast from pro-Trump corporations. We refuse to buy anything from corporations that have allied with Trump “through political contributions, removing Diversity, Equity and Inclusion policies, or placing their CEOs in powerful positions of government.” (You can find more information here.)

We fast to proclaim that another world is possible. We fast to share in the yearning of the whole Creation for redemption and restoration (Romans 8:22).

We fast to stand with everyone who is hungry, especially those whose stomachs are empty because of poverty, injustice, or a changing climate, where drought or heat have withered crops or where extreme storms and rising seas have destroyed homes.

We join our hunger to the hunger of every living being, human and more-than-human, that hungers for life and a healthy, peaceful, and habitable planet.

Our hunger pangs invite us to hunger for what really matters.

We fast to prepare ourselves for the work that lies ahead.

We fast because, as Karl Barth once said, “The contemplative who can stand back from a situation and see it for what it is, is more threatening to an unjust social system than the frenzied activist who is so involved in the situation that he [she] cannot see clearly at all.”

What would lead you to fast?

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

  1. See Bishop Mark Beckwith, “Proposing a Sabbath Fast from Food, Finance and Media” (https://www.markbeckwith.net/2025/02/24/proposing-a-sabbath-fast-from-food-finance-and-media/) and “Guidelines for Wednesday Vigils and for Sabbath Fast” (https://www.markbeckwith.net/2025/03/03/guidelines-for-wednesday-vigils-and-for-sabbath-fast/).
  2. William Wordsworth, “The World Is Too Much with Us”

Leave a Reply