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Sacred Correspondences
Practices

Fasting

Ascetic Practices

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Origin No datable origin

Voluntary abstention from food and drink, in whole or in part, for a set time, practiced across religions for purification, penance, discipline, mourning, or solidarity with the poor. Forms differ widely: Muslims fast dawn to sunset through Ramadan; Jews keep full-day fasts such as Yom Kippur; Christians fast in Lent and on other days; Hindus, Buddhists, and others fast on holy days or as vows. A fast may be total or a restricted diet. By denying bodily appetite it is held to sharpen prayer, subdue the passions, focus the spirit, and express repentance. It also fosters gratitude and compassion by giving a taste of hunger.

Facts
Practice
Category of Practice
Fasting, the voluntary abstention from food, drink or specific pleasures for a set period, appears across traditions as a means of purification, penitence, spiritual discipline or solidarity with the poor. 1
Who Performs It
All adherents of the tradition 1
Obligation
Obligatory 2Tradition: Islam
Obligation
Recommended and meritorious, not required 3Tradition: Christianity
Cadence DetailSourced to the subject's own account
Cadence varies widely by tradition: Eastern Orthodox Christians fast on most Wednesdays and Fridays through the year, Latter Day Saint members abstain from two consecutive meals on the first Sunday of each month, Muslims fast the full lunar month of Ramadan each year, Baha'is keep a Nineteen Day Fast each March, and Jewish practice keeps a mix of the twenty five hour fast of Yom Kippur alongside several shorter occasional fasts. 4
Solitary or Communal
Performed alone or together 1
Status
Status Within the Tradition
Denying bodily appetite is held across traditions to sharpen prayer, subdue the passions, focus the spirit and express repentance, with the felt experience of hunger itself credited with fostering gratitude and compassion for the poor. 1
Status Today
Living tradition, practised today 1
Scholarship and Forensics
Scholarly Note
By denying bodily appetite, fasting is held to sharpen prayer, subdue the passions, focus the spirit and express repentance, and it is credited with fostering gratitude and compassion by giving a taste of hunger. 1
Origins
Origin Period
No datable origin 1
Origin Period
Ritual abstention from food is attested independently in the ancient Near East, India and the Mediterranean 1
Evidence
Basis of the EvidenceSourced to the subject's own account
A 2021 review found moderate alternate-day fasting over two to six months associated with reductions in body weight and cardiometabolic risk factors comparable to ordinary calorie restriction; the same literature is explicit that no sound clinical evidence shows fasting extends human lifespan. 4
Learn More
What Is Actually Given Up

Fasts differ so much in their rules that treating them as one practice can mislead. What varies is the substance, the duration, the intensity and who is excused.

Ramadan is a daytime fast: no food, no drink of any kind including water, no smoking and no sexual activity from first light to sunset, for a lunar month, broken each evening and resumed before dawn. Because the Islamic calendar is lunar, Ramadan moves through the seasons, so a summer Ramadan at high latitude can mean nineteen hours without water. The exempt are named rather than left to conscience: the ill, the travelling, the pregnant, the nursing, the menstruating, the elderly and the young, with make-up days later or a payment for the poor instead.

Yom Kippur is a full twenty-five hours without food or water, and adds prohibitions on washing, anointing, leather shoes and sex. Judaism keeps several other fast days, most of them from dawn to nightfall only.

Christian fasting has become the loosest of the major forms. The Lenten discipline of the Latin church now amounts to abstaining from meat on Fridays and two days of reduced eating, a very considerable relaxation from the medieval rule. Orthodox fasting is far more demanding and is mainly a matter of exclusion rather than quantity: no meat, dairy, eggs, fish, oil or wine on the strictest days, across something approaching half the year.

Indian traditions more often restrict category than amount: a vow to take one meal only, or fruit only, or nothing grown underground, kept on named days of the lunar month. The Buddhist monastic rule against eating after midday is a permanent low-grade fast rather than a seasonal one, and it changes the shape of a life more than an annual month does.

Four Reasons, Not One

The reasons traditions give for fasting sort into a small number of arguments, and they do not sit comfortably together.

The penitential argument treats hunger as a payment, or as the outward sign of sorrow. It runs strongly through Christian and Jewish practice, where fasting attaches to atonement and to mourning, and it is the reading most exposed to the objection that it makes God someone who requires suffering.

The ascetic argument treats appetite itself as the thing to be trained. If the will can refuse food, which is the least negotiable of wants, it can refuse anything. This is the argument of monastic Christianity, of Jain and Hindu asceticism, and of the Buddhist rule on eating hours.

The solidarity argument is prominent in modern Muslim and Christian teaching: the fast gives the comfortable a short taste of what the poor experience without choosing it. Ramadan is bound to a sharp annual rise in charitable giving, which makes the connection concrete rather than rhetorical.

The clarifying argument holds that a lightened body sharpens prayer and perception, and it recurs in mystical writing across traditions with little regard for what else those traditions believe.

These are different claims and they imply different practices. A fast undertaken for solidarity has no reason to be hidden and every reason to be visible. A fast undertaken as discipline has good reason to be concealed, and several traditions instruct exactly that: the gospel injunction to wash the face and anoint the head so that the fasting is not seen is a direct attack on fasting as display, and the fact that it needed saying tells you what was happening.

Harm, Health and the Limit Case

Fasting has real physiological consequences, and the traditions are less naive about this than outsiders often assume.

Every large tradition excuses the vulnerable, and not grudgingly. Islamic law treats fasting while ill or pregnant as wrong rather than merely permitted. Jewish law requires eating on the Day of Atonement where life is at risk, and a rabbi will rule on it if asked. The clinical literature on Ramadan is substantial and largely reassuring for healthy adults, while identifying genuine risks for people with diabetes, for those on medication schedules that assume regular food, and for outdoor workers in heat. Medical bodies in Muslim-majority countries publish guidance jointly with religious authorities, which is a useful instance of the two operating together rather than against one another.

The genuinely difficult cases sit at the end of life. The Jain vow of sallekhana ends in death by design, and is defended by its practitioners as the opposite of suicide precisely because it excludes despair and appetite; Indian courts have suspended a ruling against it and never resolved the question. Christian ascetic tradition contains extreme fasting, and historians of late medieval women's piety have argued at length over how far the recorded cases overlap with what would now be diagnosed as an eating disorder. That argument cannot be settled from the sources, and it should not be closed in either direction by assertion, neither by pathologising the women involved nor by refusing to consider it.

There is also a secular inheritance. Intermittent fasting and extended water fasts are now marketed as health protocols with the religious frame removed. They are not the same practice. The traditional forms are communal, calendrical and bounded by rules somebody else wrote, and that changes both their psychology and their risks.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Belongs to Tradition

Kept in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first denomination in the United States founded by Black people. Fasting is one of the means of grace, and Wesley kept the Friday fast himself and pressed it on the societies.

Kept in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. Fasting is one of the means of grace, and Wesley kept the Friday fast himself and pressed it on the societies.

Aladura, Denominations

Fasting accompanies prayer, and extended fasts are undertaken for particular petitions.

Fasting is appointed by a congregation as occasion requires rather than by a calendar.

Kept across the provinces of the Anglican Communion. The Prayer Book sets out a table of the fasts of the church: Ash Wednesday, the forty days of Lent, the ember days, the rogation days and the Fridays of the year.

The Prayer Book sets out a table of the fasts of the church: Ash Wednesday, the forty days of Lent, the ember days, the rogation days and the Fridays of the year.

Source The Book of Common PrayerChurch of England; ed. Brian Cummings

Kept in the Armenian Apostolic Church. The Coptic and Ethiopian churches keep the longest fasts in Christendom, well over two hundred days a year of vegan abstinence, with nothing eaten until afternoon on fast days, and it is the laity who keep this and not only the clergy.

The fasting calendar includes the Fast of the Ninevites, kept before the Great Fast and found in no Western church.

Baptist, Denominations

Fasting is practised without a calendar, appointed by a congregation or undertaken privately.

Fasting is extensive in this community and includes fasts kept by no other Jewish body.

Kept in Breslov Hasidism. The public fasts of the calendar are kept, the two full fasts from sunset to nightfall and the four minor fasts from dawn.

Buddhism, Religions
Source The Qur'an

Solemn fastings are named in the Westminster Confession as a part of religious worship, kept on particular occasions rather than by a fixed calendar.

Source The Westminster Confession of FaithWestminster Assemblythe holders' own account

Kept in Chabad-Lubavitch. The public fasts of the calendar are kept, the two full fasts from sunset to nightfall and the four minor fasts from dawn.

Kept in the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church. Fasting is one of the means of grace, and Wesley kept the Friday fast himself and pressed it on the societies.

Source The Qur'an

Kept in the Church of Cyprus, autocephalous since the Council of Ephesus in 431. Orthodox fasting means abstinence rather than hunger: no meat, dairy, eggs, fish with backbones, wine or oil on the strictest days, kept through Great Lent and three further fasting seasons and on most Wednesdays and Fridays, which is roughly half the year.

Kept in the Church of England, the province from which the Prayer Book tradition comes. The Prayer Book sets out a table of the fasts of the church: Ash Wednesday, the forty days of Lent, the ember days, the rogation days and the Fridays of the year.

Fasting is practised as occasion requires rather than by a calendar.

Kept in the Church of Greece. Orthodox fasting means abstinence rather than hunger: no meat, dairy, eggs, fish with backbones, wine or oil on the strictest days, kept through Great Lent and three further fasting seasons and on most Wednesdays and Fridays, which is roughly half the year.

Kept in the Church of Ireland. The Prayer Book sets out a table of the fasts of the church: Ash Wednesday, the forty days of Lent, the ember days, the rogation days and the Fridays of the year.

Kept in the Church of Scotland, the established Presbyterian church of that country. Solemn fastings are named in the Westminster Confession as a part of religious worship, kept on particular occasions rather than by a fixed calendar.

Kept in the Church of Sweden, which retained the historic episcopate through the Reformation as few Lutheran churches did. Fasting is kept as an outward discipline that prepares a person to receive the sacrament, and is expressly denied any merit before God.

Kept in the Church of the Nazarene, which stands in the Wesleyan holiness line. Fasting is one of the means of grace, and Wesley kept the Friday fast himself and pressed it on the societies.

Kept in the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria. The Coptic and Ethiopian churches keep the longest fasts in Christendom, well over two hundred days a year of vegan abstinence, with nothing eaten until afternoon on fast days, and it is the laity who keep this and not only the clergy.

Kept in the Dutch Reformed tradition, which holds the Heidelberg Catechism among its confessional standards. Solemn fastings are named in the Westminster Confession as a part of religious worship, kept on particular occasions rather than by a fixed calendar.

Orthodox fasting means abstinence rather than hunger: no meat, dairy, eggs, fish with backbones, wine or oil on the strictest days, kept through Great Lent and three further fasting seasons and on most Wednesdays and Fridays, which is roughly half the year.

Source The Qur'an

Kept in the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, the see of first honour among the Orthodox churches. Orthodox fasting means abstinence rather than hunger: no meat, dairy, eggs, fish with backbones, wine or oil on the strictest days, kept through Great Lent and three further fasting seasons and on most Wednesdays and Fridays, which is roughly half the year.

Kept in the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church. The Coptic and Ethiopian churches keep the longest fasts in Christendom, well over two hundred days a year of vegan abstinence, with nothing eaten until afternoon on fast days, and it is the laity who keep this and not only the clergy.

Kept in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. The Coptic and Ethiopian churches keep the longest fasts in Christendom, well over two hundred days a year of vegan abstinence, with nothing eaten until afternoon on fast days, and it is the laity who keep this and not only the clergy.

Kept in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Fasting is kept as an outward discipline that prepares a person to receive the sacrament, and is expressly denied any merit before God.

Kept in the Free Methodist Church. Fasting is one of the means of grace, and Wesley kept the Friday fast himself and pressed it on the societies.

Kept in the Georgian Orthodox Church, which has used its own language and script in worship since the fifth century. Orthodox fasting means abstinence rather than hunger: no meat, dairy, eggs, fish with backbones, wine or oil on the strictest days, kept through Great Lent and three further fasting seasons and on most Wednesdays and Fridays, which is roughly half the year.

Kept in the Global Methodist Church, formed in 2022. Fasting is one of the means of grace, and Wesley kept the Friday fast himself and pressed it on the societies.

Kept in the Greek Orthodox churches. Orthodox fasting means abstinence rather than hunger: no meat, dairy, eggs, fish with backbones, wine or oil on the strictest days, kept through Great Lent and three further fasting seasons and on most Wednesdays and Fridays, which is roughly half the year.

Kept in Haredi Judaism, where the halakhic standard is the strictest and the most stringent opinion is ordinarily followed. The public fasts of the calendar are kept, the two full fasts from sunset to nightfall and the four minor fasts from dawn.

Kept in Hasidic Judaism. The public fasts of the calendar are kept, the two full fasts from sunset to nightfall and the four minor fasts from dawn.

Hinduism, Religions
Source The Qur'an
Islam, Religions
Source The Qur'an
Jainism, Religions
Source The Qur'an
Judaism, Religions
Source The Qur'an

The fasts kept are those scripture names, and the rabbinic fasts are not.

Fasting is kept, and the church has been marked from the beginning by prohibitions on alcohol, tobacco and dancing.

Fasting is kept as an outward discipline that prepares a person to receive the sacrament, and is expressly denied any merit before God.

Source The Augsburg ConfessionPhilipp Melanchthon

Fasting follows the Syriac calendar, with the Great Fast and the Fast of the Nativity.

Fasting is one of the means of grace, and Wesley kept the Friday fast himself and pressed it on the societies.

Kept in Modern Orthodox Judaism, alongside full engagement with secular study and with the state. The public fasts of the calendar are kept, the two full fasts from sunset to nightfall and the four minor fasts from dawn.

Kept in the National Baptist Convention of America International. Fasting is practised without a calendar, appointed by a congregation or undertaken privately.

The Coptic and Ethiopian churches keep the longest fasts in Christendom, well over two hundred days a year of vegan abstinence, with nothing eaten until afternoon on fast days, and it is the laity who keep this and not only the clergy.

Source The Qur'an

The public fasts of the calendar are kept, the two full fasts from sunset to nightfall and the four minor fasts from dawn.

Source Shulchan AruchJoseph Karo

Days of fasting and of thanksgiving are appointed by the church courts as occasions require, and are not fixed in a calendar.

Source The Westminster Confession of FaithWestminster Assemblythe holders' own account

Kept in the Progressive National Baptist Convention. Fasting is practised without a calendar, appointed by a congregation or undertaken privately.

Fasting and abstinence are binding disciplines, kept on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday and, in the traditional form, on the Fridays of Lent.

Source Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd editionHoly Seethe holders' own account

Kept in the Romanian Orthodox Church, the one Orthodox church of the Byzantine tradition whose language is Romance. Orthodox fasting means abstinence rather than hunger: no meat, dairy, eggs, fish with backbones, wine or oil on the strictest days, kept through Great Lent and three further fasting seasons and on most Wednesdays and Fridays, which is roughly half the year.

Kept in the Russian Orthodox Church, in the Slavonic recension of the Byzantine books. Orthodox fasting means abstinence rather than hunger: no meat, dairy, eggs, fish with backbones, wine or oil on the strictest days, kept through Great Lent and three further fasting seasons and on most Wednesdays and Fridays, which is roughly half the year.

The Syriac fasting calendar is kept, with the Great Fast and the Fast of the Nativity.

Kept in the Serbian Orthodox Church. Orthodox fasting means abstinence rather than hunger: no meat, dairy, eggs, fish with backbones, wine or oil on the strictest days, kept through Great Lent and three further fasting seasons and on most Wednesdays and Fridays, which is roughly half the year.

Kept in the Episcopal Church, whose own Prayer Book descends from the Scottish rather than the English line. The Prayer Book sets out a table of the fasts of the church: Ash Wednesday, the forty days of Lent, the ember days, the rogation days and the Fridays of the year.

Kept in the United Methodist Church. Fasting is one of the means of grace, and Wesley kept the Friday fast himself and pressed it on the societies.

Kept in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Orthodox fasting means abstinence rather than hunger: no meat, dairy, eggs, fish with backbones, wine or oil on the strictest days, kept through Great Lent and three further fasting seasons and on most Wednesdays and Fridays, which is roughly half the year.

Kept in the Wesleyan Church. Fasting is one of the means of grace, and Wesley kept the Friday fast himself and pressed it on the societies.

Depicted In

Depicts Christ's own forty day wilderness fast, one of the best known single instances of religious fasting in Christian art, treated by Kramskoi as psychological struggle rather than serene piety.

Source Wikipedia, "Christ in the Desert"Wikipedia contributors

Disciplines That Use This

Fasting, Disciplines

The practice across traditions.

Source AsceticismVincent L. Wimbush and Richard Valantasis (eds.)

Element Of

Held Differently

Bektashi Order, Religious Orders

The fast kept in Bektashi practice is the twelve days of Muharram in mourning for Karbala rather than the month of Ramadan.

Related To

A day-long fast kept until the moon is sighted.

Source The Indian CalendarRobert Sewell and Sankara Balkrishna Dikshit

A fast kept with a thread tied round the banyan.

Source The Indian CalendarRobert Sewell and Sankara Balkrishna Dikshit
Sources
1. Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005View the Source
2. The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition
P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.), Brill, 2005View the Source
3. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised edition
F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.), Oxford University Press, 2005View the Source
4. Fasting (Wikipedia)
Wikipedia contributors, Wikipedia, 2026on the comparative fasting cadence across traditions and the alternate-day fasting research literatureView the Source
Shulchan Aruch
Joseph Karo, 1565View the Source
The Book of Common Prayer
Church of England; ed. Brian Cummings, Oxford University Press (Oxford World's Classics), 2011View the Source
Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd edition
Holy See, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1997the holders' own accountView the Source
The Westminster Confession of Faith
Westminster Assembly, 1646the holders' own accountView the Source
The Augsburg Confession
Philipp Melanchthon, 1530View the Source
The Qur'an
2:183-185, the fast of RamadanView the Source
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