Marking Lent With Prayers and Fasting

As Catholics and many Protestants today begin Lent, the pre-Easter season of sacrifice, evangelical Christians are preparing for two nationwide fasting observances.

But there has been no mention in the evangelical campaigns of the ancient Lenten tradition of repentant prayer and minimal meals that begins with Ash Wednesday.

In keeping with a long-standing, unspoken avoidance of Catholic and historical Protestant traditions and rites, America’s burgeoning independent evangelical and charismatic churches almost never observe “Lent” or the “Lenten season.”

Yet, some experts say, evangelicals may be backing carefully into the spirit of Lent without actually saying so.

* Officials of World Vision, an evangelical relief agency based in Seattle, expect that more than 600,000 American teens will begin a 30-hour fast Friday to identify with the world’s hungry children. The annual late February event, which last year raised $5.2 million, “was not consciously chosen for Lent but it does happen to fall when we begin the run-up to the events of Easter,” conceded Robert Seiple, president of World Vision Inc.

Teens from San Diego to Long Beach and Glendora to Porter Ranch are among church group members who will go without solid food during the 30-hour period and engage in service projects to aid the poor.

* Evangelical leaders Bill Bright and Pat Robertson are urging Christians to begin 40 days of fasting and prayer for moral and religious revival in America, starting Sunday. The PrayUSA! idea was picked up from the nationwide Mission America coalition headed by the Rev. Paul Cedar of Cathedral City, who said the dates were chosen to fall within Lent--but thought there was no need to mention that publicly.

The 40-day period mimics Lenten tradition, except for the method of counting the days until Easter--which is April 12 this year for Western Christianity.

Catholic and long-established Protestant churches observe Ash Wednesday as the first of 40 days, not counting Sundays, until Easter. The PrayUSA! leaders decided to observe 40 consecutive days of fasting and prayer, starting March 1 and ending April 9--the day before Good Friday, which recalls Jesus’ crucifixion.

Seiple conceded in an interview Tuesday that references to Lent were omitted from the two campaigns because of “a lot of leftover baggage that separates and divides” the older and younger Christian churches.

But Cedar attributed the avoidance of Lenten terms not to an overt anti-Catholic feeling but to a lack of knowledge of historical traditions among evangelicals. Many of the hoped-for 2-million participants in PrayUSA! “are in newer, often independent churches who are not tied to church history,” he said.

Indeed, at two San Fernando Valley churches where youths will participate in this weekend’s 30 Hour Famine, one retiree serving as a volunteer office worker said he thought that Lent was a Jewish holiday and a young organizer at another church said she believed that Lent was “something the Catholics do.”

For many Baptists, Pentecostalists, Adventists and other members of so-called free churches, “Ash Wednesday is only that day when they see Catholics with ashes on their foreheads,” said Mel Robeck of Pasadena’s Fuller Theological Seminary.

“Most free churches would argue that Lent might be hypocritical--that Christians are asked to live a sacrificial life all year long and that setting aside a period of several weeks lets you off the rest of the year,” Robeck said.

Anti-Catholic sentiment in much of U.S. Protestantism from the late 19th century until the 1960s caused many independent churches to distance themselves from rites and observances linked strongly to Catholic origins, he said.

“In Louisiana, for instance, largely Catholic New Orleans celebrates Mardi Gras, but generally Protestant Baton Rouge does not,” Robeck said. Mardi Gras, which ends on Ash Wednesday, is based on the tradition in some Catholic countries of living it up just before Lenten austerity goes into force.

Cultural and religious changes since the 1960s have softened free-church feelings about Catholics, and many of today’s evangelical seminary students are attracted to Catholic-style liturgies, rituals and ancient traditions, he said.

The growing evangelical Christian interest in fasting has been credited in part to the efforts of Bright, who founded Campus Crusade for Christ in 1951 at UCLA and now runs a variety of ministries from Orlando, Fla. Since 1994, Bright has extolled biblical examples of combining prayer with fasting at annual weekend rallies. When he received the $1-million Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion in 1996, he donated the money to the promotion of fasting by organizing such rallies.

For the upcoming 40-day fasting-and-prayer period, Mission America’s Cedar said that “there is a great freedom” to decide on one’s diet. “Some purists say liquids only,” said Cedar, a former Pasadena pastor and ex-president of the Evangelical Free Church in America.

“My wife and I have a ‘Daniel fast’ from meat, strong drink and sweets,” said Cedar, referring to the biblical figure. “We abstain from meat, carbonated drinks--since we don’t drink alcoholic beverages--and desserts.”

Committed U.S. Catholics up to the age of 60 are obliged to fast on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday; fasting is interpreted by the church to mean no more than one full meal each day. In addition, Catholics 14 and older are asked to abstain from meat on Ash Wednesday and on all Fridays during Lent, including Good Friday.

World Vision’s 30-hour fast, now in its sixth year, urges participating teens to drink only water and fruit juices during that time as a way to experience in a mild way the sufferings of the chronically hungry. This concrete focus is different from Lent even though the resulting introspection by teens might be similar, said World Vision’s Seiple.

At the Evangelical Formosan Church of San Fernando Valley in Canoga Park, about 40 church youths and a group from Cleveland High School will begin their annual fast at 1 p.m. Friday. A fund-raising auction, educational programs, services and a project to help with chores at a Salvation Army camp are planned, said organizer Carolyn Chen.

More than 60 youths at Shepherd of the Hills in Porter Ranch will tour poor neighborhoods at the end of their 30 hours, offering prayers or assistance door-to-door as others gather food and clothing for the nondenominational church’s homeless ministry.

“It’s a good eye-opener for kids,” said Brandon Beard, youth pastor at the church.