Ash Wednesday 2014: History, Dates, Traditions Of Lent's First Day Of Fasting

Ash Wednesday is observed on March 5, in 2014. The Christian holy day marks the beginning of Lent, a 40-day season of fasting that is considered preparation for Holy Week and the celebration of Easter.

Although there is no Biblical reference to Ash Wednesday or Lent, scholars of Christianity date the tradition of a 40-day fasting period back to 325 A.D.

Lent mirrors Jesus’ own 40-day period of fasting, described in the book of Matthew. Observers have ash placed on their foreheads in the shape of the cross as the words from Genesis 3:19 are spoken: “You are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Fasting requirements for Catholics are outlined by the Code of Canon Law, and include eating no meat on the Fridays during Lent, as well as fasting on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. (Fasting in this case refers to eating just one full meal a day.)

Many Christians will make personal vows of abstinence during Lent, which could include anything from refraining from eating candy, meat, vowing not to gossip, or being less selfish. Others will make a vow to do more for others including volunteering and working for social justice. All are expected to spend more time in prayer and reflection as Lent is considered by many to be an opportunity for spiritual transformation.

Lent is the opportunity to change what we ought to change but have not...Lent is about becoming, doing and changing whatever it is that is blocking the fullness of life in us right now... Lent is a summons to live anew...Lent is the time to let life in again, to rebuild the worlds we've allowed to go sterile, to "fast and weep and mourn" for the goods we've foregone. If our own lives are not to die from lack of nourishment, we must sacrifice the pride or the sloth or the listlessness that blocks us from beginning again. Then, as Joel (2:12-18) promises, God will have pity on us and pour into our hearts the life we know down deep that we are lacking.

Evangelicals Battle Over ‘Biblical’ Immigration

One branch of the evangelical Christian community knows what it wants up next on America’s political agenda: comprehensive immigration reform. Another would prefer what it calls “Biblical immigration.” As Congress turns back to the business of governing ahead of the holidays, the two sides are ramping up their rhetoric–and their lobbying–with dueling interpretations of the gospels’ guidance.

For months, some Christian groups have prayed for immigration reform. For eight days in October, over 100,000 Christian backers of the Evangelical Immigration Table have asked God for guidance on the issue through “Pray4Reform” events. Next week, they plan to visit Washington and press Congressional leaders directly about the issue.

The millions of undocumented people that live in the U.S., the Evangelical Immigration Table says, should be treated with charity as the book of Matthew says Jesus was. Leaders cite the gospel passage that quotes Christ saying, “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in.”

“Evangelicals finally realize that how we treat the stranger, these 11 million undocumented people, is how we treat Christ himself,” said Jim Wallis, the president and founder of Sojourners, a Christian social justice organization.

According to Wallis, and the leadership of the Evangelical Immigration Table, which includes the National Association of Evangelicals, and the Ethics and Religious Liberty Convention of the Southern Baptist Convention, the evangelical community has “never been more united on an issue.”

Yet, not everyone in the evangelical community agrees with Wallis. Others on the Christian right dissent, including one group of Christians who call themselves the Evangelicals for Biblical Immigration.

Evangelicals for Biblical Immigration argue that taking care of home should trump what they consider blind acceptance of foreigners. They have been openly critical of the Senate immigration bill that passed the upper chamber in late June. Kelly Kullberg, the leader of what she says is an “ad hoc movement of citizens” behind Evangelicals for Biblical Immigration, says the Senate bill would grant blanket amnesty.

In June, referencing the Book of Timothy’s guidance on how to treat widows, Kullberg wrote in a letter to Congress that similar guidance should be adhered to when it comes to immigrants.

“While the Bible teaches us to be kind to the sojourner or ‘resident alien,’ it also teaches that kindness to the sojourner ought not to be injustice to local citizens and their unique culture,” Kullberg wrote. Over a thousand evangelical Christians signed the letter.

The Bible, the group says, gives more instructions when it comes to the acceptance of immigrants than just “be kind to strangers.”

“Like Ruth and Rahab, many are to be embraced,” Kullberg wrote. “We also find in the books of Nehemiah and Ezra, men who were called to build walls in order to protect, to cultivate the good and to grow a healthy culture.”

In September, Kullberg, on behalf of the Evangelicals for Biblical Immigration, sent another letter to members of the House of Representatives, calling for “biblical balance” when lawmakers consider immigration reform.

A biblical approach to reform, Kullberg says, would mean considering Americans first; securing the borders to keep out criminals, making sure unemployed Americans have access to job opportunities by mandating use of E-verify.

“There is no set view,” says Mark Tooley, the president of the Institute of Religion and Democracy and a signatory of the biblical reform letter. “There are tens of millions of evangelicals and Protestants. There is no consensus on this issue.”

Polling data is mixed on that score. On one hand, data from the right leaning “immigration reduction” organization, Numbers USA, suggests that 46% of Republican evangelicals say they would deport most undocumented immigrants. Another 32% say they would deport some, but “ensure no jobs or assistance for the rest.”

A Pew Research survey from March 2013 shows, on the other hand, that 62% of white evangelical Protestants say undocumented immigrants should be allowed to stay in the U.S. legally. Forty percent believe they should be able to apply for a path to citizenship, and 35% of those surveyed said those in the U.S. illegally should not be allowed to stay.

“There are people on both sides, Tooley said. “But the people who are speaking up are on the pro-side and those that are skeptical are not represented much at all.”

The skeptics, Galen Carey, the vice president of government relations at the National Association of Evangelicals says, don’t represent as many people within the evangelical community as more conservative groups are suggesting.

“We have a large number of people enrolled in the ‘Pray for Reform’ effort and it keeps growing,” Carey said.

Wallis says one reason for that is the church’s relationship with immigrants, many of whom are evangelicals themselves. “This is a personal issue,” Wallis said. “The undocumented are our brothers and sisters within the church.”

Viewpoint: Judaism is Too Afraid Of Assimilation

Once again, we’re supposed to be wringing our hands. Every decade, another poll comes out showing that American Jews are more likely to “intermarry” and less likely to support controversial Israeli policies. This statistical one-two punch to Jewish preservationists becomes front page news—”Poll Shows Major Shift in Identity of U.S. Jews”—and Jewish philanthropies get the ammunition they need to press the urgency of the crisis: be more Jewish, or your generation will be to blame for extinguishing the everlasting light.

On one level, such crises work. Every convincing threat to Judaism and Israel leads to a strong bump in fundraising for both. But while it may yield more checks from ardent supporters, to the Jews in danger of further assimilation, such messaging begins to sound more like the desperate plea of an obsolete religion and culture than it is a relevant, compelling path to spiritual inquiry and ethical behavior.

A decade ago, when the last poll like this came out, I wrote a book— Nothing Sacred —arguing not to panic: Judaism was becoming an “open source” religion, and rather than moan at our assimilation, we should instead celebrate the incorporation of Jewish ideals into the culture at large. If we want to promote Judaism and its practices, we might need to transcend our rather primitive misconception of Judaism as a race.

It was Pharaoh who first called the Jews a “people”. The notion of a Jewish bloodline didn’t emerge until the Inquisition as a justification for executing even those Jews who had converted. And it was Hitler (repurposing a bit of Jung) who called the Jews a race.

As I look at history and the Torah, Judaism isn’t really a religion at all, but a path beyond religion. It was developed by the equivalent of recovering cult members, as a way beyond the idolatry and death worship of Ancient Egypt. Instead of “believing” things, a disparate amalgam of tribes (those mythic sons of Jacob), developed a living myth together – as well as a system of law that could be amended as civilization evolved. Everything from the Sabbath to the US Constitution came out of these insights and this continuous process of revision and renewal.

By applying the techniques of the census taker to the Jewish people (a practice actually forbidden in Talmud – we’re not allowed to count ourselves) the would-be protectors of Judaism are practicing a dangerous game with diminishing returns. Amazingly, when I suggested as much after the 1999 poll, I was banned from speaking at events funded by the most centrist of Jewish institutional charities.

Yes, the core tenets of Judaism are radical. They suggest that human beings are responsible for this realm. They insist that our racial labels, and even our nation states, are mere social constructions. The principles of Judiasm are as progressive as the ideas of Buddhism or the Tao —systems of thought that have attracted many of the Jews now being blamed for the current exodus.

All Judaism needs to do is bite its tongue and stop putting this frightened, scarcity-based logic at the forefront of its effort to engage its people. Instead, spend as much time just doing and celebrating whatever Judaism means to you. The rest will follow.

Church-Shopping: Why Americans Change Faiths

A new report from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life shows, it is a mistake to conclude that more Americans are rejecting religion. Leaving church, it turns out, doesn't mean losing faith.

When Pew researchers set out last year to map the U.S.'s religious landscape with a groundbreaking survey of more than 35,000 people, they expected fairly straightforward answers to questions about individual religious affiliations. (The survey included more detailed questions about religious beliefs and practices than have been asked in past censuses; the 2010 census will not ask about religion at all.) What the Pew researchers didn't anticipate is that fully 44% of Americans have changed faiths at least once. Some converted from one religion or denomination to another; others grew up with no tradition only to adopt one as an adult; still others left their childhood faith and found themselves with no religious home.

"It was a phenomenon," says Luis Lugo, director of the Pew Forum. "We needed to make greater sense of it." So the researchers followed up with more than 2,800 of the original respondents who had reported changing religious traditions and asked why they had decided to leave and/or join a faith.

The answers were so varied that analysts nearly ran out of codes to categorize them. "The U.S. has an unmatched religious dynamism," explains Lugo. "It's an open religious marketplace as well as a very competitive one. This is the supermarket cereal aisle." Without an established state religion, all faiths can freely exist in the U.S. but must compete for adherents in order to survive.

With all those options, choosing a church (or mosque or synagogue or temple) isn't just a matter of theology for many Americans. They might decide where to worship because they adhere to a broad tradition — like Protestantism — or because they are drawn to a particular denomination, subdenomination or even an individual congregation. Or they might choose based on location or children's activities or the quality of preaching or music or potluck offerings. The concept of church-shopping itself is uniquely American. "'What is your religious preference?' is such an American question," Lugo says. "We can't ask that on surveys in other countries. In most places, religion is an assigned identity. It's part of your family, part of your heritage."

Despite the fluidity of religious affiliation in the U.S., the Pew study discovered some commonalities among those who switch. Former Catholics who either switched to another tradition or became unaffiliated cited unhappiness with church teachings on abortion and homosexuality and disagreements over the role of women in the church. Protestants were more likely to switch because they married someone from another tradition. And if they eventually left religion altogether, they were most likely of all formerly religious adherents to have tried several different traditions before giving up — 38% of unaffiliated former Protestants had switched traditions twice, and 32% had switched three or more times.

But what did Americans mean when they checked the box marked "no affiliation"? Pew researchers found that this category challenges assumptions about those who have "left" religion. In the 2008 survey, 16% of Americans said they had no religious affiliations, but of that group, only 10% identified themselves as atheists and 15% as agnostics. Far from joining in religion-bashing, roughly 4 out of 10 currently unaffiliated said religion is at least somewhat important in their life. And many said they are still hoping to eventually find the right religious home. Among those who were raised Catholic or Protestant, the study says, "1 in 3 say they just have not found the right religion yet."

For the most part, the unaffiliated report deep dissatisfaction with organized religion, believing that it focuses too much on rules and that religious leaders are too concerned with acquiring power and wealth. "In the 2008 survey, when we asked other religion questions — whether they believed in God, how often they prayed or attended religious services — it was clear that 40% of these unaffiliated people are fairly religious," says Lugo. "They are not indifferent or hostile to religion." Indeed, only 32% of the unaffiliated agreed with the statement that religion is superstition, and even fewer (23%) said belief was important in their decision to leave a religious tradition.

Perhaps most surprising to the Pew researchers was that of the 7% of Americans who were raised unaffiliated, only half remained unaffiliated as adults. "Only Jehovah's Witness has a lower retention rate," says Pew analyst Gregory Smith. Unlike the disillusioned Catholics and Protestants who fled organized religion, these new adherents tend to see the positive aspects of being affiliated with a religious institution. When asked for the main reason they joined their current religion, 33% of the formerly unaffiliated cited the benefits of being spiritually and socially connected to a community, and 20% said it was a choice driven by personal spirituality and a sense that something was missing from their life.

These findings won't be music to the ears of Sam Harris or fans of his best seller The End of Faith. But they do confirm that a stubborn, insistent strain of religiosity continues to infuse Americans — even those who claim they've left organized religion behind.

As Egypt’s Islamists Cement Their Rule, Can Secularists Reclaim the Revolution?

Anti-Morsy protesters hold a large Egyptian flag and chant slogans in front of the presidential palace during a demonstration in Cairo, Aug. 24, 2012. 

 

It has not been a very good 18 months for Egypt’s secular revolutionary political forces. After standing at the forefront of an unprecedented and triumphant popular uprising last year, which led to the ousting of longtime dictator Hosni Mubarak, their star rapidly dimmed. In the wake of the revolution, Islamist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood and the even-more-conservative Salafists used their existing grassroots networks to dominate parliamentary elections last winter while post-revolutionary secular parties struggled to catch up. Presidential elections earlier this summer were an even bigger disaster: the  non-Brotherhood pro-revolution camp divisively split itself between multiple candidates, producing a thoroughly Mubarak-era runoff choice between the Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohamed Morsy and Mubarak’s former Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq representing the military-backed deep state.

“What happened in the presidential election was a wakeup call to a lot of the players,” says Hussein Gohar, head of foreign affairs for the Social Democrat Party, one of the main post-revolutionary secularist parties.  “People panicked after Morsy became president and they’re still panicking.”

The Morsy-Shafiq choice left most of the secular revolutionaries out in the cold and thoroughly depressed. For the past several months, they have watched from the sidelines as Morsy and the Brotherhood faced off against the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces or SCAF—impotently hoping for a scenario where both sides lost.

Now Egypt faces a new crossroads. Morsy is firmly entrenched in the presidential palace; his power struggle with the military ended rather abruptly last month when he succeeded in outmaneuvering the SCAF—sending Mubarak-era Defense Minister Hussein Tantawi and his loyalists into early retirement. Most importantly, there’s a new parliamentary election looming after the previous parliament was dissolved via court order on a technicality. The exact timing of the new elections is uncertain; it’s tied to the ratification of a new constitution, which is still being drafted. Gohar said he expects the elections to come “any time between December and March.”

All of which begs the question: does Egypt’s secular opposition have enough time to make an impact this time around and can they learn from their tactical and organizational mistakes of the previous 18 months?

The looming deadline has touched off a flurry of political activity. The local press is now filled with daily updates on coalition negotiations between a host of post-revolutionary secular parties such as the Social Democrats and the Free Egyptian Party. This week a new political player emerged in the form of former International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohammed ElBaradei, who officially launched his own Constitution Party.
 
“They’re just starting to realize that [elections] are fast approaching,” said secularist writer and analyst Bassem Sabry. “Everyone wants to get into some alliance or another. It’s a question of how and who approaches who and who’s in charge.”

Veteran socialist politician Hamdin Sabbahi–who finished a surprisingly strong third place in the presidential vote—is being courted by multiple parties to join forces. And longtime Egyptian diplomat Amr Moussa, despite a weak fifth place presidential showing, “remains a towering figure” on the secular scene and is being similarly courted, according to Sabry.

Fourth place finisher Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, a former Muslim Brotherhood official who fashioned himself as a progressive  Islamist and an alternative to the Brotherhood, has so far remained distant from the more secular negotiations and is expected to form his own electoral bloc along with other centrist Islamist forces.

“The future of the Egyptian left is not as bleak as people think,” said Wael Nawara, a longtime progressive activist and a member of the Constitution Party. But Nawara acknowledges that whatever secular coalition emerges for the new parliamentary elections will still face an uphill battle to crack the combined Brotherhood-Salafist bloc that captured nearly 75 percent of the People’s Assembly, the lower house of Parliament.

“Financing, for starters, will be an issue. This is an area where the Muslim Brothers already have an advantage,” Nawara said. In addition to their own homegrown financing from disciplined loyalists, the Islamists are widely presumed to be benefiting from a river of overseas funding from Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

“These other parties will just have to rely on local donations—which is just not something people are used to here. They’re at a disadvantage,” Nawara said. There’s also a steep learning curve to be overcome on how to build the kind of grassroots mobilization machine that the Brotherhood spent decades crafting. To help speed that process, Gohar, the Social Democrat official, has turned to his European counterparts for help. A delegation from the Danish Social Democrat Party arrives in mid-September to conduct what Gohar calls “Democracy 101” training sessions, and the British Labor Party is planning to conduct similar training here.

There is, of course, a completely separate secularist opposition to Morsy that has been recently making its presence felt—the pro-military/pro-Shafiq crowd that viscerally hates the Brotherhood, but also deeply distrusts most of the secular revolutionaries.

On August 24, around 2000 people staged a defiant and decidedly angry protest outside the presidential palace, openly calling for a new revolution to purge the Brotherhood from power. The protest was most notable for the sense of pure paranoid rage coursing through the crowd. Several protesters told me that Morsy had stolen the presidential elections with the help of the U.S. government and the biased media. Two different television camera crews were attacked by the protesters.

“I’m here to bring down the Brotherhood. Their presence is illegitimate,” shouted Farida Mansour, a mid-50’s homemaker and one of many women there who wore the tradition Islamic hijab covering her hair. “Ahmed Shafiq won the election. Everybody knows that!”

Shafiq has been overseas, mostly in Dubai, since losing the election; Egyptian prosecutors issued a warrant for his arrest at the end of the last month on corruption charges if he returns. But he remains a polarizing force and focal point for the free-floating anti-Brotherhood anger that simmers in some corners of Egypt’s secular society. If he were to return, or even if he forms a party from de facto exile, it could capture a surprising amount of reactionary protest momentum, buoyed by support from the vestiges of the old Mubarak regime.

Put simply, the pro-Shafiq secularist opposition regards the more revolutionary contingent as dangerous radical hippies, while the revolutionary crowd regards the Shafiq supporters as retrograde counter-revolutionaries who seek to dial back the clock to the Mubarak era. They both share a common enemy, and some politicians have spoken of forging an alliance between the two camps, but other observers find that impossible to imagine. “There are those who are angry and want things to go back to the way they were. For these people Shafiq and company are a natural solution,” says Sabry. “The progressive bloc is unable to reach out to that crowd. There’s too much distrust on both sides.”