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"religious fasting"
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Christian fasting
Through the lens of social-scientific criticism, Christian Fasting: Biblical and EvangelicalPerspectives explores the social, cultural, and religious significance of fasting in the first-century Mediterranean world. Old Testament precedents, as well as Mesopotamian, Greek, and Roman influences are examined to form the backdrop for a detailed interpretation of each fasting text in the New Testament. Contemporary evangelical fasting literature is also discussed and analyzed. Finally, H.S. Mathews proposes a solution for reconciling a biblical interpretation of fasting with contemporary evangelical practice.
eBook
Commitment through Sacrifice
Religions seem to defy the law-of-demand, which suggests that all else equal, an increase in the cost of an activity will induce individuals to decrease the resources they spend on that activity. Rather than weakening religious organizations, evidence shows that the sacrifices exacted by religious practices are positively associated with the success of those organizations. We present the first strong evidence that this association is neither spurious nor endogenous. We use a natural experiment that rests on a peculiar time-shifting feature of Ramadan that makes the fasting duration—our measure of sacrifice—vary not just by latitude but from year-to-year. We find that a half-hour increase in fasting time during the median Ramadan day increases the vote shares of Islamist political parties by 11 percent in Turkey’s parliamentary elections between 1973 and 2018, and results in one additional attendee per 1,000 inhabitants for voluntary Quran courses. We further investigate two mechanisms, screening and commitment, that could explain the effects we find. By testing their divergent implications, we infer that commitment is the mechanism triggered by sacrifice, which drives up the intensity of religious beliefs and participation that in turn bolster the success of religious organizations.
Journal Article
The wonder : a novel
\"A village in 1850s Ireland is baffled by Anna O'Donnell's fast. The little girl appears to be thriving after months without food, and the story of this 'wonder\" has reached fever pitch. Tourists flock to the O'Donnell family's cabin, and an international journalist is sent to cover the sensational story. Enter Lib, an English nurse trained by Florence Nightingale, who is hired to keep watch for two weeks and determine whether or not Anna is a fraud. As Anna deteriorates, Lib finds herself responsible not just for the care of a child, but for getting to the root of why the child may actually be the victim of murder in slow motion. The Wonder works beautifully on many levels -- as a simple tale of two strangers who will transform each other's lives, as a powerful psychological thriller, and as a story of love pitted against evil in its many masks.\"
Book
Unraveling the metabolic health benefits of fasting related to religious beliefs: A narrative review
Periodic fasting, under a religious aspect, has been adopted by humans for centuries as a crucial pathway of spiritual purification. Caloric restriction, with or without exclusion of certain types of food, is often a key component. Fasting varies significantly among different populations according to cultural habits and local climate conditions. Religious fasting in terms of patterns (continuous versus intermittent) and duration can vary from 1 to 200 d; thus, the positive and negative impact on health can be considerable. Advantages of religious fasting are claimed by many but have been explored mainly by a limited number of studies conducted in Buddhist, Christian, or Muslim populations. These trials indicate that religious fasting has beneficial effects on body weight and glycemia, cardiometabolic risk markers, and oxidative stress parameters. Animals exposed to a diet mimicking fasting have demonstrated weight loss as well as lowered plasma levels of glucose, triacylglycerols, and insulin growth factor-1, although lean body mass remained stable. Diabetic mice on repeated intermittent fasting had less insulin resistance that mice fed ad libitum. The long-term significance of such changes on global health remains to be explored. This review summarizes the data available with regard to benefits of fasting followed for religious reasons on human health, body anthropometry, and cardio-metabolic risk markers; aims to bridge the current knowledge gap on available evidence and suggests considerations for the future research agenda. Future studies should explore every type of religious fasting, as well as their consequences in subpopulations such as children, pregnant women, and the elderly, or patients with chronic metabolic diseases.
•Religious fasting reflects dietary habits of millions of believers.•Health impact of religious fasting has been documented among Buddhists, Christians, and Muslims.•Energy and/or food item restrictions are key components of religious fasting.•Religious fasting has potential benefits on energy balance, dyslipidemia and oxidative stress.•Religious fasting could be integrated into health management for diseases prevention.
Journal Article
Foreigners and their food
Foreigners and Their Food explores how Jews, Christians, and Muslims conceptualize \"us\" and \"them\" through rules about the preparation of food by adherents of other religions and the act of eating with such outsiders. David M. Freidenreich analyzes the significance of food to religious formation, elucidating the ways ancient and medieval scholars use food restrictions to think about the \"other.\" Freidenreich illuminates the subtly different ways Jews, Christians, and Muslims perceive themselves, and he demonstrates how these distinctive self-conceptions shape ideas about religious foreigners and communal boundaries. This work, the first to analyze change over time across the legal literatures of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, makes pathbreaking contributions to the history of interreligious intolerance and to the comparative study of religion.
eBook
Twenty-Four Hour Glucose Profiles and Glycemic Variability during Intermittent Religious Dry Fasting and Time-Restricted Eating in Subjects without Diabetes: A Preliminary Study
Intermittent religious fasting increases the risk of hypo- and hyperglycemia in individuals with diabetes, but its impact on those without diabetes has been poorly investigated. The aim of this preliminary study was to examine the effects of religious Bahá’í fasting (BF) on glycemic control and variability and compare these effects with time-restricted eating (TRE). In a three-arm randomized controlled trial, 16 subjects without diabetes were assigned to a BF, TRE, or control group. Continuous glucose monitoring and food intake documentation were conducted before and during the 19 days of the intervention, and the 24 h mean glucose and glycemic variability indices were assessed. The BF and TRE groups, but not the control group, markedly reduced the daily eating window while maintaining macronutrient composition. Only the BF group decreased caloric intake (−677.8 ± 357.6 kcal, p = 0.013), body weight (−1.92 ± 0.95 kg, p = 0.011), and BMI (−0.65 ± 0.28 kg, p = 0.006). Higher maximum glucose values were observed during BF in the within-group (+1.41 ± 1.04, p = 0.039) and between-group comparisons (BF vs. control: p = 0.010; TRE vs. BF: p = 0.022). However, there were no alterations of the 24 h mean glucose, intra- and inter-day glycemic variability indices in any group. The proportions of time above and below the range (70–180 mg/dL) remained unchanged. BF and TRE do not exhibit negative effects on glycemic control and variability in subjects without diabetes.
Journal Article