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Fasting, Piety, and Political Anxiety among French Reformed Protestants
Abstract
Fasting has an ancient and revered place in the many religious traditions that human communities have fostered throughout history and across the globe. In India, to take a modern example, Hindu women commonly carry out ritual fasts or vrats. Fasting, particularly in its collective forms, is also frequent and widespread among western groups that scholars have sometimes described as Abrahamic religions. Muslims annually observe Ramadan, a month of fasting, prayer, and celebration. Jews customarily fast, taking no food or drink from sunup to sundown, several days each year and, most notably, on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. For medieval Christians, preparation for the holy feasts of Christmas and Easter meant substantial periods of religious preparation, the well-known Advent and Lenten periods complete with fasting and abstinence from certain foods. In contemporary Christian circles, fasting may be less widely practiced, yet it retains an important place among Roman Catholics and members of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints, to cite but two better-known cases. In short, the utilization of food for purposes of religious devotion and piety, whether through fasting or feasting, has been a long-standing custom within and without western religious culture.
... Instead, bitter wild greens could have become more crucial when Neolithic dietary systems, which moved westward across the Mediterranean basin a few thousand years BC, were influenced by Hebrew food perceptions and, later, by the spread of Christianity and its fasting prescriptions during Lent. In fact, early Christian communities strictly observed fasting as a common religious practice [97], which is believed to have originated from Jewish religious culture [98]. The practice of abstaining from certain foods or drinks, however, was already present in late antiquity [99], although it did not spread consistently [100]. ...
The current study reports an ethnobotanical field investigation of traditionally gathered and consumed wild greens (Chorta) in one of the five so-called Blue Zones in the world: Ikaria Isle, Greece. Through 31 semi-structured interviews, a total of 56 wild green plants were documented along with their culinary uses, linguistic labels, and locally perceived tastes. Most of the gathered greens were described as bitter and associated with members of Asteraceae and Brassicaceae botanical families (31%), while among the top-quoted wild greens, species belonging to these two plant families accounted for 50% of the wild vegetables, which were consumed mostly cooked. Cross-cultural comparison with foraging in other areas of the central-eastern Mediterranean and the Near East demonstrated a remarkable overlapping of Ikarian greens with Cretan and Sicilian, as well as in the prevalence of bitter-tasting botanical genera. Important differences with other wild greens-related food heritage were found, most notably with the Armenian and Kurdish ones, which do not commonly feature many bitter greens. The proven role of extra-oral bitter taste receptors in the modulation of gastric emptying, glucose absorption and crosstalk with microbiota opens new ways of looking at these differences, in particular with regard to possible health implications. The present study is also an important attempt to preserve and document the bio-cultural gastronomic heritage of Chorta as a quintessential part of the Mediterranean diet. The study recommends that nutritionists, food scientists, and historians, as well as policymakers and practitioners, pay the required attention to traditional rural dietary systems as models of sustainable health.
In the article, the author examines the role of the institution of fasting as a means of constructing political and confessional identity within the context of the Tudor Church of England. The source base of the study comprises a range of documents, including doctrinal texts, theological works, authorised homilies, royal proclamations, and Acts of Parliament. The author examines the role of fasting in the mytho-ritual systems of both the Catholic Church and the major sixteenthcentury Reformation movements, namely Lutheran, Reformed, and English. Moreover, he elucidates the commonalities and distinctive tenets associated with Catholicism’s and Reformation’s approaches to fasting. In the first part of the article below, the author assesses the role of ritual within the context of institutional theory of identity, its significance and function in the Middle Ages, and its evolution across various Reformation traditions. The author concludes that the institution of fasting, which provided both horizontal (communal) and vertical (politicoreligious) types of loyalty, was an important instrument of social change through the transformation of its very nature during the English Reformation.
This paper seeks to challenge scholarly assumptions over the role that Reformed religion played in the first 50 years of the Cape colony. Rather than rooted in a doctrine of external holiness, it is argued the practice of baptism reflected a covenantal framework that served as a theological basis for ordering and demarcating an increasingly diversified community while maintaining strict social hierarchies. In so doing, the VOC created a community defined by covenantal inclusion and exclusion. While this radically changed over time, the early policy should be understood in its context.
Lors du règne personnel de Louis XIV et jusqu’à la Révocation (1661–85), dans le contexte d’une répression judiciaire contre la minorité réformée et d’une remise en cause du régime de l’édit de Nantes, les synodes provinciaux représentent de facto les Églises. En leur sein, ce sont des pasteurs, et notamment les modérateurs, qui portent la parole de leurs communautés. La surveillance royale est principalement exercée par des commissaires (y compris des catholiques à partir de 1679) présents dans les synodes. Les échanges entre les modérateurs et les représentants du roi permettent donc de voir comment le discours de soumission à la monarchie est recherché, consigné et valorisé par les commissaires, mais parfois conditionné, voire contesté par les pasteurs, en particulier lorsque la liberté de conscience est remise en cause et que les lois divines semblent entravées par la législation royale.
This article explores the Roman Inquisition’s interest in the dietary practices of suspected heretics throughout the Roman Catholic Mediterranean. In an era marked by rampant religious nomadism and a deep uncertainty about assaying and fixing confessional identity, dietary practices were often used to determine religious belonging. For the Roman Inquisition, non-conforming diets served as a clue to potentially more serious spiritual infractions. In the early modern Mediterranean, what one ate was considered a sign of what one believed.
The presentation is material for the Course of Advanced Study of Christianity, organized by the Center for Religious and Cross-cultural Studies, Universitas Gadjah Mada, Indonesia on 24 April 2020. It meant to be a space of interaction between Muslim tradition of fasting and Christian's version of fasting. As it might be expected, there were many affinities and overlapping concern in this tradition. Christianity is holding huge spectrum of fasting and abstinence traditions
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to explore the possible synergetic effects between food-restricted behaviour (fasting in Orthodox Christianity) and physical and mental health; and second, to ponder on the nature of fasting and to reveal the potentials monastery cuisine has, reaching outside the world of religion and entering the world of consumption.
Design/methodology/approach
A qualitative research approach has been applied in order to investigate the synergetic effects between fasting, well-being and anti-consumption. The analysis is based on in-depth interviews carried out in Orthodox monasteries, in particular, in three monasteries in the territory of Mount Athos and in three monasteries in Northern Greece. Additionally, ten Bulgarians who visited monasteries situated at Mount Athos have been interviewed. In a cultural materialistic perspective, this paper seeks to discuss and reveal food and eating habits patterns. It combines the social anthropology of food with the anthropology of Eastern Orthodox religion.
Findings
The discussed interrelations between fasting, well-being and anti-consumption confirm the synergetic effects, occurring at different points between them. Fasting practices definitely contribute to consumers’ health and well-being. The food-restricted behaviour and the monastery diet are presented as a means of purification not only of the soul but also of the body. Fasting is an intriguing issue that offers many perspectives for people not only within but also without the monastery walls. Food-restricted behaviour as practiced in Orthodox Christianity shall be considered as beneficial for people’s health and as such it can reveal a lot of additional spiritual values for non-believers.
Social implications
Future applications of fasting practices as a non-consumptive behaviour and in view of social movements for healthy nutrition. A possibility for fasting menus as an alternative to fast food menus can be exploited.
Originality/value
The study provides some useful insights into the contemporary practice of Eastern Orthodox fasting and confirms that fasting is a successful means of achieving mental and physical well-being. New perspectives for monastery cuisine as a resource and brand strategy for restaurant business and tourism can be mentioned as well.
The paper seeks to help correct a certain imbalance in the sociological literature on Calvinism and its derivations like Puritanism, neo-Calvinism, etc. This is the literature’s centering on Calvinism’s various social consequences and decentering on its own origins and conditions in society. As a corrective to this asymmetry in the literature, the paper assumes and explores the societal roots and factors of the emergence and early development and expansion of Calvinism. This is done on the grounds that the analysis of the societal determination, i.e., the point of origin of Calvinism, like other religion and ideology, is equally and even more important than that of its social effects or destination. In formal terms, the paper considers Calvinism to be a dependent variable, function of certain societal determinants and settings as the explanatory factor, thus correcting the prevalent treatment of it as the independent variable in the sociological literature. In so doing it adopts and applies the main premises and findings of the sociology of religion and knowledge to Calvinism. Its aim is to contribute to a more complete sociology of the Calvinist religion that explores both its social conditions and its social consequences.
This is a thematic investigation into defamatory practices in the Republic of Letters of the late sixteenth century and first half of the seventeenth century, especially among the humanist networks centring on France and the Low Countries and their contacts in German- or English-speaking regions. Against a background of civil war in either region, scholars of repute or of high public visibility were prone to being vilified in intellectual and personal terms; indeed, they were often themselves no strangers to abusive language. Taking into account both historical and recent studies of polemics and drawing on a variety of humanist writing (emblems, poetry, letters, etc.), the paper reviews how gossip and calumny were conceived of in the period (c. 1560-1650) and what strategies were deployed in dealing with malicious tongues. Most importantly, the present study demonstrates that preserving the memory of such clashes and altercation contributed to the sense of self and community amongst a scholarly elite, not just across borders but also in some cases across generations. The broad range of Early Modern authors taken into consideration includes Hadrianus Junius (1511-1575), Joseph Scaliger (1540-1609), Justus Lipsius (1547-1606), Isaac Casaubon (1559-1614), George Thomson (d. 1616/17), and Jacques Auguste de Thou (1553-1617).
Purpose
– The paper considers whether and how Calvinism as a specific type of religion, ideology, and social system impacts political democracy in modern society. In contrast to the previous sociological and related literature assuming only a positive or negative linear effect, the paper proposes that Calvinism exerts mixed positive-negative and non-linear effects on democracy. The purpose of this paper is to aim at making a contribution to the sociological theory and research on Calvinism and democracy and modern society in general.
Design/methodology/approach
– A combination of comparative and historical sociological methodology.
Findings
– The main proposition and finding is that whether Calvinism is likely to have a positive or negative impact on democracy is the function of its specific position within social structure and its concrete phase of development. Thus, different positions of Calvinism in social structure are linked to its differential consequences in aggregate for democracy, and various stages of its development to time-variable non-linear effects in sequence.
Originality/value
– This is a relatively novel finding innovating and expanding on the literature's assumption that Calvinism has a structurally uniform, either positive or negative, and linear, time-constant effect on democracy.
This paper identifies and addresses a curious and persisting omission in the sociological literature on Calvinism, as specifically expounded in sociological journals. The omission consists in the failure of explicitly specifying or restating what originally Calvinism is from the standpoint of societal origin and framework, that is of which society it is the collective creation, on the implied assumption that this is commonly known and/or irrelevant. Whatever its reasons, the omission tends to make original--as distinguished from subsequent--Calvinism a partial mystery in respect of its specific societal genesis and setting, especially among many sociologists outside the specialty areas of the sociology of religion and historical sociology. The paper intends to correct this omission by reexamining Calvinism in its original societal type and context and its initial historical conjuncture such as a European society at a specific point of history. It aims to contribute to redressing a gap in the sociological literature and increasing the scope of the sociology of Calvinism by adding or making explicit this missing or implied, and yet sociologically relevant element.
In an examination of transatlantic Puritanism from 1570 to 1638, Theodore Dwight Bozeman analyzes the quest for purity through sanctification. The word “Puritan," he says, accurately depicts a major and often obsessive trait of the English late Reformation: a hunger for discipline. The Precisianist Strain clarifies what Puritanism in its disciplinary mode meant for an early modern society struggling with problems of change, order, and identity. Focusing on ascetic teachings and rites, which in their severity fostered the “precisianist strain” prevalent in Puritan thought and devotional practice, Bozeman traces the reactions of believers put under ever more meticulous demands. Sectarian theologies of ease and consolation soon formed in reaction to those demands, Bozeman argues, eventually giving rise to a “first wave” of antinomian revolt, including the American conflicts of 1636-1638. Antinomianism, based on the premise of salvation without strictness and duty, was not so much a radicalization of Puritan content as a backlash against the whole project of disciplinary religion. Its reconceptualization of self and responsibility would affect Anglo-American theology for decades to come. © 2004 The University of North Carolina Press. All rights reserved.
Traditionally, puritanism and culture have been seen as polar opposites, so that an essay on puritan culture might seem to merit no more space than the topic of snakes in that book on Iceland which, according to Dr Samuel Johnson, contained a chapter consisting of the single sentence: ‘There are no snakes to be found anywhere in the island.’ Puritanism, it is assumed, had to do not with culture but with sermons and the sabbath, a bleak day of unalienated religion, punctuating a week otherwise filled by unrelenting toil. On the subject of holy days, or holidays, where Elizabethan culture is mostly to be sought, the puritan ‘Book of Discipline’ of the 1580s did indeed include a chapter of one sentence: ‘Holidays are conveniently to be abolished.’
L'Eglise ecossaise de Rotterdam occupe une place particuliere dans la politique ecclesiastique des Provinces Unies. Les membres du presbytere reforme de Rotterdam choisissent leur ministre et peuvent creer un consistoire. L'A. propose une analyse quantitative des affaires traitees par le consistoire de l'Eglise ecossaise de Rotterdam. Il compare sa situation avec celle d'autres communautes des Pays-Bas dans le cadre general du changement des relations entre l'Eglise et les autorites seculieres en Ecosse
ToddMargo. The Culture of Protestantism in Early Modern Scotland. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. 2002. Pp. xii, 450. $40.00. ISBN 0-300-09234-2. - Volume 36 Issue 2 - Julian Goodare
One of the most important works of modern anthropology. Written against the backdrop of the student uprisings of the late 1960s, the book took seriously the revolutionary fervour of the times, but instead of seeking to destroy the rituals and symbols that can govern and oppress, Mary Douglas saw instead that if transformation were needed, it could only be made possible through better understanding. Expressed with clarity and dynamism, the passionate analysis which follows remains one of the most insightful and rewarding studies of human behaviour ever written.
Because It Gives Me Peace of Mind”: Ritual Fasts in the Religious Lives of
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Sermon de Jean Daillé sur l'Apocalypse, chap. II, vers. 5, prononcé a Charenton le vendredy 19 d&apos
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chapitre III, vers. 22, prononcé à Charenton le vendredy 19 d&apos
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Sermon pour le jusne celebré à Charenton pour la prosperité des armes du Roy
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Sermon prononcé le jour du jeusne celebré à Charenton le jeudy 4 may 1645 sur le 66 chap. d'Esaïe v
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Les deux temples de l'Église Réformée de Paris
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Histoire ecclésiastique des églises réformées au royaume de France
- Reuss Rodolphe
Église Réformée de Sedan de ses origines jusqu'au rattachement de la principauté à la France
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Mémoires sur les guerres de religion à Castres et
- Jacques Gaches
Sermon fait au jour de jusne celebré par les Eglises Reformées de Daufiné le 3e jour de decembre 1662 sur l'Apocalypse, chapit. III
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The Reformation of Ritual
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Les protestants d'autrefois: Vie intérieure des églises. Moeurs et usages: Les temples. Les services religieux: Les actes pastoraux
- Félice Paul De
The Burden of the Flesh: Fasting and Sexuality in Early Christianity
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Association Généalogique de la Charente
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La repentance de l'enfant prodigue ou sermon sur le XV de Saint Luc, depuis le verset 11 jusques au 24, prononcé à Charenton le vendredy 19 avril, jour de la celebration de Jûne
- Charles Drelincourt
Les services religieux à Charenton
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Exhortation à repentance, faite en l'Eglise de Montpellier, pour la sanctification du jeusne, celebré par les Eglises de France, le dixiesme d&apos
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Recueil de réglements extraits des actes des synodes provinciaux tenus dans la province du Bas-Languedoc de 1568 à 1623
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‘Disciplines’ réformées du XVIe siècle français: une découverte faite aux Etats-Unis
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The Life of Robert Blair, Minister of St. Andrews, Containing his Autobiography
- Robert Blair
The Lord's Table: The Meaning of Food in Early Judaism and Christianity
- Gillian Feeley-Harnik
Les débats sur les banes dans les Églises réformées de France
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