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History: Puritan fasts

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In their introduction to The Culture of English Puritanism,1560-1700 (Themes in Focus), Christopher Durston and Jacqueline Eales spend several pages discussing the role of fasting in Puritanism. The begin with Patrick Collinson’s remark that “an anthropologist wanting to describe puritan culture . . . should be led without further delay to teh puritan fast.” Fasting of course was common, and regularized into a schedule, during the medieval period, and though the Reformers “objected to the routinized nature of these Catholic fasts,” they still “continued to regard fast-days organized for specific purposes as legitimate and valuable.” the Elizabethan church “made provision for the holding of occasional public fast-days at times of particular crisis.”

But the Puritans “showed the most enthusiasm for public fasting and indulged in the practice most frequently, by supplementing the rare opportunities for government-sponsored fasting with their own unauthorized days. . . .

“During Elizabeth’s reign the holding of such unsanctioned fast-days became an important feature of religious life in many puritan communities. They normally took the form of a day devoted entirely to a round of sermons, prayers and psalm-singing, often concluding with s simple, shared meal.”

Puritans resisted Laud’s advocacy of Lent, but on the other side they also resisted Laud’s efforts to close down the unauthorized fast days. In 1637, Charles Chauncey was summoned to the High Commission “for presiding at a fast at Marston St Lawrence in Northamtonshire, at which he had preached for six hours to an audience of 60 local puritans.”

For Puritans, fasting “was to inculcate an individual and collective sense of ‘humiliation’ by providing puritans with an ideal opportunity for length meditation upon the insignificance and depravity of humankind and the power and justice of God . . . . Puritans also saw fasting as a particularly effective means of assuaging or diverting God’s wrath.” At the same time, a fast day was “an important social occasion.” As Collinson says, the fast days were “the exact counterpart, antitype, and even parody of the festive day, and particularly of the wake, or church ale.”

posted by Peter J. Leithart on Saturday, February 18, 2012 at 1:27 pm

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History: Puritan fasts

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