So Sunday July 5 was supposed to be (that is, was decreed by LDS leadership to be) a fast for religious freedom. As far as I can tell, it turned out to be a big nothingburger, which might signal that the membership is now just tuning out additional messaging on the subject. What if you throw a party and no one comes? What if you decree a fast and … everyone decides to just eat, drink, and be merry in celebration of the Fourth of July?
I was prepared to write a longer post on religious freedom, but I’ve sort of covered that in prior posts:
The crux of this planned post was going to be: What exactly does LDS leadership think it is advocating under the vague banner “religious freedom”? They talk about it like it is under threat, as if there is some looming danger hanging over the LDS Church and its beliefs/practices. Except for a few looney MAGA Mormons, pretty much none of the membership feels that way. So the whole recent initiative to once again push “religious freedom” just seems misguided. I’ve got pretty much all the religious freedom I need, and I think the vast majority of LDS — in the US at least — feel the same way.
So instead of that post, let’s do a simpler exercise. Let’s come up with some other things the Church as a whole or you individually might fast for next month and in future months instead of religious freedom. I’ll offer a few. Y’all can chime in with a few more suggestions. And don’t be shy about it. Next month you should go up to the podium microphone and boldly proclaim your fasting target. Such as:
- “I am fasting for world peace.” Like who can object to this?
- “Today I am fasting for taller temple steeples around the world. With bigger Moronis on top that glow at night.” This will signal to your local leaders that you are taking the religious freedom ball and running with it. Expect a calling upgrade in the near future.
- “I am fasting for more reverence in our future sacrament meetings.” Met with puzzled looks. Because reverence is a good thing, but actually telling people to shut up and be more reverent is generally frowned upon.
- “I didn’t fast at all, but I’ll still kick in a few extra bucks to the fasting fund the next time I pay tithing.” This probably makes the stake financial clerk happy, but I imagine the bishop will tell you: “That’s nice, but we’re happier about your financial contribution if you also don’t eat.”
- “I am fasting to lose a pound or two. That’s it.” Oops, expect a calling downgrade for pointing out the natural physiological effect of skipping a couple of meals and all the intervening snacks. This kind of cause-and-effect thinking governs most of our choices, of course. You lift weights to get in shape, not for greater LDS missionary success. You balance your checkbook so you don’t bounce your next check, not for increased religious freedom. But somehow fasting must connect to some greater goal, not to just losing a pound or two. “Fasting is more than just not eating,” they say (and you’re supposed to say, too).
So what do you think of this monthly LDS fasting thing? Do you like it, or not? Have you ever felt edified or blessed from participating in LDS religious fasting (a sincere question)? How often does your local leadership decree a specific fasting target, as opposed to the “do your own fasting thing” that is the default approach? If you disagree with the target leadership announces, would 24 hours of gluttony be a reasonable exercise of your free agency in opposition? Do you engage in non-religious fasting and why?
And, of course, add your suggestion for alternative LDS fasting targets.
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Wheat & Tares 
In Church parlance, “religious freedom” is code for “the freedom to crap on gay people without consequence.”
I’ve never liked fasting, and it was never because of the not eating. My earliest theological issues with fasting developed on my mission, which is really the first time I’d fasted seriously. Mormonism has a strange relationship with the “vending machine God” who doles out blessings if you just pray hard enough, and fasting just turns that up another notch. Somehow if I don’t eat or drink, but still walk around all day on a hot summer day God will make sure someone says ‘yes’ when I knock on their door. Or God will direct me to the right door. (As if in the next life God will tell someone that they could have joined the church decades earlier, but Elder DaveW didn’t fast for the full 24 hours so He just couldn’t send me to the right door.) But still, I fasted for decades.
I recently quit fasting, for two primary reasons. The first is that I don’t have a single edifying experience from fasting in my entire life. I’ve fasted nearly every month for decades, with varying levels of sincerity. And after literally hundreds of fasts, I look back and don’t see any value. Either I’m doing it wrong, or it doesn’t work, but I finally reached the point that I decided to pull the plug on this particular experiment on the word. (I will say that the fast offering program is one of my favorite in the church, and something I still support. I know money is fungible and I don’t really trust the church to not use whatever funds are donated for whatever purpose they choose, but I like the idea of my contribution helping people locally with immediate needs.)
My second reason to quit fasting was to replace it with something better. My son is no longer invited to fully participate in church, and, shockingly, doesn’t have any interest in participating as a third-class citizen. Rather than fasting, we have Sunday brunch each week. My son does most of the cooking and is learning cooking skills and confidence that will hopefully keep him from starving when he moves out for college in a few weeks. We eat as a family and talk. This is our family activity each Sunday now that we don’t all do church. The positive results from family brunch are far more apparent than from fasting. And it tastes better, too.
The idea of a Christian Nationalist state does threaten religious freedom. Don’t think Mormons are considered Christian by Christian Nationalists.
Someone should fast for a return to three hour meeting blocks, home teaching and visiting teaching, missionary calls to home only on Christmas and Mother’s Day, a one year waiting period for a sealing after a civil marriage, and long garments. Time to retrench.
In answer to the OP’s question about what the church is advocating for under the vague banner of “religious freedom,” just replace the term “religious freedom” with “we’re worried we might lose our tax exempt status because we’re acting more like an investment firm than a church,” and it might make more sense.
Dave writes:
“Mormonism has a strange relationship with the “vending machine God” who doles out blessings if you just pray hard enough, and fasting just turns that up another notch. ”
Perfectly said.
I also cannot identify any consistent blessing from Fasting. I am happy to use “Fast Sunday” as a reason to make a donation (although I am less eager to do this given my understanding the money is simply swept up by the Corporation). I appreciate there is a scriptural basis for Fasting and I do not discredit anyone who finds spiritual strength from Fasting. But Dave is correct in pointing out that the LDS framing of Fasting adds to the “hierarchy of self-righteousness” that so strongly defines the LDS religious experience.
How about holding a monetary-linked church-wide fast (like we did for Ethiopia in 1985) on behalf of all the children who are suffering and dying due to the decimation of USAID programs in many nations thanks to the Trump/Musk/Rubio misinformed and very misguided leadership back in 2025. My hunch is that the we as members (not needing any help from Ensign Peak Advisors) could pull together enough funds in one weekend to far surpass the current LDS humanitarian record of 100.1 million dollars (set back in 2024) that the church pulled together for various NGO efforts around the globe.
The 11 million dollar fasts we did back in 1985 under President Kimball’s administration (one in the early months and one later that fall), when calculated using inflation rates and church membership growth adjustments would equate to roughly 93 million in today’s dollars. So that’s why I’m being realistic that we could blow away our humanitarian record in this effort.
By the way, the last time we were collectively challenged to put our money where our fasting mouths exist was just after the Indian Ocean tsunami in the Christmas season of 2004 and, in the spirit of non-transparency, were never told how much we actually raised. I think it’s time to get our Christ-centered focus on the most vulnerable among us on this planet and stop fretting so much about religious freedom. But that’s just me.
There have been numerous General Conference talks pushing back against a transactional view of God and the so-called “prosperity gospel.” But if God is not a vending machine—if blessings are not dispensed in exchange for righteous behavior, sufficient faith, or enough fasting—where does that leave religion?
If religious practices are not mechanisms for securing desired outcomes, what are they for? What remains when prayer, fasting, obedience, and covenants are no longer understood as ways to influence God’s decisions, but as practices that shape the people who engage in them?
I’m less irritated by fasting than I am by Christian nationalism. When I hear that Oaks continues to beat the drum of so-called religious freedom, I honestly do not understand any good faith argument that can justify a focus on that in our current climate. What exactly do religions need or want to do that they are not able to do already? It always seems to come back to having full power to run the government and beat down on their ideological opponents, curttail the rights of women, queer people and minorities (which power is unchecked WITHIN the church already), and be admired for it. Good luck with that. I, as one of the oppressed categories I just listed, am never going to thank them for the privilege of being treated as less than or thank them for telling my kid that they need an escort to pee in a Mormon church while they use their vast resources to protect the church from liability against victims of actual pedophiles. Christian Nationalism, which Oaks is apparently fully on board with, is truly a leopards eating face situation. The LDS church is allied with other religious groups that can’t wait to turn around and strip the Church of its own rights: voting, political influence, etc. These WCN racist a-holes already cannibalized their own ability to win elections because they refused to vote for a Mormon so they got the one thing that’s almost as bad to them: a black man. Any Mormon who thinks they will not be barred from the club they’ve voted into power are irredeemably delusional.
When I was in 3rd grade, we moved from rural PA to rural TX. It was the first time I saw what blurring church & state actually looked like. The two black students in my class were made to enter after everyone else and leave the room last, and they were never called on–while that may be pure racism and not specifically religious, it was definitely a sign of the callous disregard for the laws of the land that I witnessed in that school. There was a class prayer every day before lunch that was not one that was familiar to my LDS ears. I was shocked at both these things because I had always been told (and this was a year after the bicentennial, mind you, so there was a lot of talk about the founding story, even in elementary school) that there was total separation of church & state which meant no religion in school. Those classroom lunch prayers were definitely favoring a specific religion, 100%. I had always believed that was illegal, but there it was. I also thought it seemed hinky that Utah public schools allowed the church access to seminary classroom time during school, but at least that was nowhere near on par with what I saw in TX. UT and Mormons in general seemed to be much more respectful of the law, and the limits on religious freedom that exist in a pluralistic society. So what exactly are they trying for here? Is it really just that bigots really really hate to be called bigots?
It just adds the feeling that leaders are very out of touch.
* Young people should be focused on their responsibility to get married and have children (despite unprecedented financial challenges)
* Fast and pray for religious freedom (despite the fact that the church is under no threat in the US or most other countries)
* Only talk with believing members when your struggling with your testimony (which means people shouldn’t talk with those struggling with their testimony, isolating them further).
I’d have more respect for leaders trying listen to and help those in our communities who are suffering, rather than focusing on talking points that feel largely irrelevant.
I am PIMO and my recommend is about to expire (forever) but I could not bear the silence in our testimony meeting two days ago. Lots of people out of town probably. So I stood up to share my thoughts on religious freedom as follows:
-Served a mission in W. Europe during the Gulf War/ Desert Storm – it seemed to curious to remove our name tags but everything else was normal including continuing to teach people of all faiths
-Previously lived in New Hampshire where the state motto is “Live Free or Die”
-Shared this quote from the late, great Joseph B. Wirthlin which I hope upset some MAGA people in the ward:
“The Lord did not people the earth with a vibrant orchestra of personalities only to value the piccolos of the world. Every instrument is precious and adds to the complex beauty of the symphony. All of Heavenly Father’s children are different in some degree, yet each has his own beautiful sound that adds depth and richness to the whole.”
I must admit I rolled my eyes when the invitation was extended … as I thought about different ways to look at it, though, besides the classical “how do I fast for my religious freedom,” it occurred to me that I can and should be fasting for the religious freedom of others. Especially as at least one other commenter has noted, with the push of WCNs into government, those of other religious minorities could face even more discrimination again than they already do (to what they faced in decades past, if not worse). And that is just in the US of A.
From that perspective, fasting for religious freedom could be coupled with trying to help those of religious minorities right here at home – completely independent of expecting them to join our church. If we truly believed in religious freedom, then we can and should be willing to accept that many will not join this church but will continue to try and live their best lives to the best of their conscience – and that God will work with them, where THEY are like we (mainstream mormons) believe God works with us, to draw them back to Him. Fasting for that freedom does not have to always be navel-gazing, though that is the knee-jerk reaction of most of us (believers or not) when we hear the invitation to fast for religious freedom. I know it was at least for me.
It also occurred to me that it could be for those in nations where they are harshly persecuted for their religion (not excluding the US in that category), and where religious freedom is stringently curtailed.
I have no insight into whether the centralized call for fasting was US-centric in worldview, but I cannot exclude the possibility that the centralized call at least could have been considering these other viewpoints as well (or even exclusively – though rhetoric does tend to often come back to a US-centric view by default, so there’s that).
Lemonade out of lemons?
Adam F, Yes, the centralized call for fasting was US-centric in worldview. The direction to participate was only for units in the U.S.
I like having fast Sundays. I don’t think the prayer or „special purpose” is a very important part of it: Fasting puts us in the place of the poor the fast offerings are supposed to help. It’s humbling. We experience, a small small part of the suffering of the hungry.
I also think it’s great for developing discipline. I know I am going to feel grumpy, so I can brace for it, and try build my patience „muscles”. If you can resist eating, maybe you can resist temptation, or make a sacrifice to bless others.
I doubt fasting once a month does anything for weight loss though.
Saturday night waiting for fireworks that would start an hour later, sitting around talking, enjoying being together, conversation with my sister-in-law turned to her son’s call to be a missionary in the Czech Republic. It turned my mind to a woman from Czechoslovakia I met in ’93. That year started my four years in Baltimore. My bishop there had joined the church as a teen-ager in Korea, served a mission in his native country, and when his family was young moved them to the United States so he wouldn’t have to work on Sundays. The ward mission leader was from Trinidad, and I got to spend a bunch of time with him as a stake missionary. The ward executive secretary told me of his compelling first encounter with the Book of Mormon in his native Ghana. For a year and a half in 1989 and 1990, recent times when I met him, Ghana’s government expelled the missionaries and locked up the meetinghouses.
The Relief Society president was from Czechoslovakia. She said that sometimes people would correct her. “You mean you are from the Czech Republic?” “No, my country doesn’t exist anymore.” Her story of how she encountered in 1980 the gospel as taught and lived by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been repeated in print a number of times, so I did a web search: Olga, Czechoslovakia, and LDS. The first link took me to a history of the church in Czechoslovakia in the Gospel Library. A portion of it is also found in Saints vol. 4, chapter 21. The setting was good so I read aloud to the family her experience from 1980 through 1989 when communist rule ended and the church could function openly, four years before I met her and shared a ward in Baltimore. Like my great-great-great-grandmother in Sweden, Olga was baptized at night to avoid police scrutiny. The book repeated something I heard from Olga’s own mouth a few times: she grew up in a society where joy and hope were alien. Encountering the last man baptized in her country before World War II introduced her to joy and hope, and his teachings led her to experience that too as a latter-day saint disciple of Jesus Christ.
When I finished reading, my sister-in-law said, “That was a great story to hear on the Fourth of July.” The next day, rehearing Olga’s story stayed with me and added great meaning as I fasted with the church for religious liberty.
Recently in the US, I heard talk of making certain religious wear illegal. Some Moslem kids were graduating kindergarten and MAGA was horrified, the five year old girls were wearing scarves over their hair along with their graduation gowns. Horrors, some kids had their hair covered. And in the name of their Christian God, they wanted to make that horrible kind of modesty illegal. Meanwhile another girl got sent home from a dance somewhere because her clothing was not modest enough for their religious sensibilities.
Recently my daughter was mocked for her nonChristian religion, told it wasn’t a religion, but just a silly fad that college kids are doing. She isn’t a college kid and has been pagan for 30 years now. She has also been told that it is devil worship and should be illegal.
So, yeah, there is a need for protecting the religious rights for the nonChristians. But the so called Christians need a good slapping down, even those unchristian Mormons need a good slapping down. They are getting so arrogant as to say they are the only ones with *the* truth and calling other religions an abomination. (Oaks at a training for new mission presidents just a few weeks ago.) They need a good lesson in respecting other religions and people who are different. They really need to be told they are no better than anyone else and that when they learn to respect others, then others will respect them, but respect is earned and they do not get to demand respect just because they think they are God’s favorite.
So, along those lines, I will be praying that the bigoted Christians & Mormons learn some respect for the religious rights of others.
Anna,
Do you have a link or source for your Oaks reference?
Thanks.
Thanks for the comments, everyone.
Anon, see link:
https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/president-oaks-says-soon-there-will-be-more-missionaries-than-ever
I rolled my eyes about this one too. |
But then I remember rolling my eyes about the fast for a missing LDS girl from SLC many years ago, and I was COMPLETELY wrong to do so. I will spend the rest of my life regretting not participating in that fast. So, I have double-checked myself several times about this fast.
At the same time, in neither instance did I feel that the facts were communicated to me clearly. In the cast of the missing girl, I didn’t know whether it was an official fast from the church, or whether it was just a rumor. And there were key missing details, which may have been withheld to protect the search.
And today, who knows what’s happening in the closed rooms in the church office building, or in DC, or in meetings between the two. I support religious liberty as a principle, but I struggle with making it the focus right now. With so many people facing immediate harm, from humanitarian crises BY our government to threats to democratic norms, it feels like plugging a small hole in a dam while the foundation is cracking. I don’t see evidence that religious liberty is the most urgent problem today, nor how emphasizing it so heavily meaningfully helps those who are suffering the most. It feels more focused on protecting LDS.inc than addressing the needs of vulnerable people, whether the most desperate or even the rank and file and church employees.
For the record, Richard (mentioned above), David Moore, the dean of BYU Law School, authored portions of the UASID section of Project 2025. And while there isn’t a direct line from dean of BYU’s law school to Oaks, why would our legal eagle President not be concerned/aware of his successors and the highest legal positions in the church? Although Moore has sought to distance himself from Project 2025, the fact remains that it was known BEFORE the hire and is known NOW, is a public scandal (or sorts) and both the Y and Oaks still think that’s totally fine. Sure- put him in charge of molding the minds of ALL future church-developed attorneys, judges, legal politicians, etc. In context of facts like this, I have to take a deep sigh about “religious freedom”.
This is a link to the SL Trib with the facts about Moore’s relationship w Project 2025 and USAID.
https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2024/10/02/byu-law-school-dean-contributed/
Funny… I got a thumbs down for asking for a link and Dave B got a thumbs down for posting it. Someone is against the conveyance of simple information!
I had some good experiences with fasting when I was very faithful and young. Once I had children, I quit fasting because I needed the energy and patience to be a mom. It’s hard to be a good mom to toddlers when you’re hangry. They got older and I realized I didn’t miss fasting at all, so that was the end of it for me.
As for what we should fast for …
How about we fast for secular freedom? The freedom to believe that science and verifiable results should guide national vaccine policy. The freedom to grant women bodily autonomy, complete and unconditional bodily autonomy, just like men get. The freedom to work on correcting society’s mistakes instead of waiting for Jesus to come back and handle it all. The freedom to view sex as just an ordinary behavior and not the sacred procreative process that God micromanages. The freedom to allow people to worship whomever they want to worship, but society’s requirements are secular.
As a female in TX, I don’t have religious freedom to exercise my reproductive rights according to the dictates of my religion.
Yet, my religious leaders are silent and won’t help me or my fellow female church members in states with abortion bans.
So, what should I fast for? For my leaders to care about LDS women in TX?
I simply find it ironic that the Mormon leaders are seeking more and more to align themselves with a group of people who are what can only be described as hysterically Mormon-phobic and won’t even consider Mormons Christians.
There was a massive increase in religious persecution during the Biden administration here in the USA. The Trump administration has reversed some of the most egregious public instances of this persecution, but the latent increase in overall bigotry is still festering.
This was not directed at LDS, and few, if any LDS members were involved, but I am sure that our leaders were horrified at the violence and hate shown.
Hopefully the discerning reader will remember what I am referring to.
el oso: Rather than hoping the discerning reader will remember vague references, go ahead and spell them out.
Dave W,
The increase in religious persecution of Jews after the Hamas attacks on Israel has been a huge religious freedom issue. This has not abated to pre-2023 levels by any measure.
el oso, I have previously shared that I don’t know what is driving Pres. Oaks’ religious freedom message, but somehow I don’t think that’s it.
el oso,
Assume I’m stupid. Name five religious freedoms the Jewish community no longer enjoys since the joint attacks between Israel and Hamas.
While thinking about Jewish religious freedom, it might also be good to consider the basic freedoms, including religious freedom, of the people in Gaza or of immigrants in detention in the US. If we believe in religious freedom for all, that would include religious freedom for populations who have made mistakes, even mistakes considered to be egregious. Religious freedom includes the right to wear clean clothing, have a private place to pray no matter how small, as well as the ability to stop fasting and eat nutritious food long enough to maintain basic health, as well as take the sacrament, or other food based religious rituals. Religious freedom, in a very basic sense, is being trampled in many settings within the US. Our tithing and tax dollars are going towards curtailing the religious freedom of people in countries we don’t agree with leaving people with very very limited religious options as their other resources are devastated by wars we pay for. We continue to increase our investment profits off of investments in defense companies and companies who own detention centers.
I intermittent fast for the purposes of weight loss as directed by my doctor and find it to be very effective. I do send my wishes up into the heavens hoping that the horrible things happening today will mix together like rotten vegetables in compost and make good soil for seeds to sprout in and plants to grow in, in the future.