Maybe both?
This week the Utah-based Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced that its members in the United States are invited to observe a nationwide fast connected with the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. In the letter from its First Presidency, members are invited “to participate in a unified fast to express gratitude for religious liberty and to pray that it be strengthened throughout the world.” That is backwards.
In unity, I certainly share the interest in remembering the religious liberty that made the Restoration possible. The church that arose in 1830 was a rebellion against a state religion and an established church; it came from religious itinerants, seekers, revivalists, restorationists, millennialists, and dissenters who at last printed freely. It is precisely that world which for 45 years has driven me to collect our rarest books, early newspapers, lost ephemera, and record books and letters from 1776 to 1876.
For that reason I broadly support the effort to remember and celebrate American independence and the liberties that came with it: religious liberty, certainly; but also economic liberty, a free press, the right to defend one’s family, the right to privacy, the right to keep what one produces, and the general independence of conscience that allows both faith and enterprise to flourish.
That announcement nevertheless caught my attention because the language of Scripture draws a very different distinction between fasting and feasting. In the Bible, fasting accompanies repentance, danger, humiliation, or national calamity. Nineveh fasted when judgment was threatened. Ezra proclaimed a fast when the people faced peril. Joel called the people to fasting when they were summoned to mourning and repentance. The empty table is the sign of lamentation.
Feasting, by contrast, is the sign of gratitude. When God grants deliverance, peace, and abundance, the Scriptures speak not of sackcloth but of tables prepared and cups running over. Ecclesiastes counsels a blessed people to eat their bread with joy and to drink with a merry heart, because God has accepted their works. In the biblical imagination, thanksgiving appears at the full table.
For that reason the announcement sounded inverted to my ear. Independence, liberty, and freedom from tyrants do not resemble the circumstances in which Scripture calls a nation to afflict its soul. They resemble deliverance. They resemble blessing. They resemble the moment when a people stand upright rather than bowed down.
Accordingly, I will not be fasting to commemorate the birth of American independence. The Bible does not teach a people to mourn their deliverance.
For my part, I will commemorate the founding of this nation the way Scripture commemorates blessing: with thanksgiving. Not sackcloth, but the table. Not lamentation, but gratitude.
So break out the grills: the hamburgers and all-beef hot dogs; the Kansas City and Jackson County beef ribs and brisket from the American cattle trails. Let the smoke rise and the tables fill, because liberty is not a national sorrow to be fasted over. It is a blessing to be celebrated with barbecue: the steer and the heifer, the goat and the lamb, the drumsticks and wings of the skies, and the clean fish and scallops of the waters. Smoke it all.
If the occasion marks the birth of freedom and religious liberty, then the fitting response is not the empty stomach of lamentation. It is the feast of thanksgiving. I will post photos in July.
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5 Behold, this is wisdom in me; wherefore, marvel not, for the hour cometh that I will drink of the fruit of the vine with you on the earth, and with Moroni, whom I have sent unto you to reveal the Book of Mormon, containing the fulness of my everlasting gospel, to whom I have committed the keys of the record of the stick of Ephraim;
6 And also with Elias, to whom I have committed the keys of bringing to pass the restoration of all things spoken by the mouth of all the holy prophets since the world began, concerning the last days;
7 And also John the son of Zacharias, which Zacharias he (Elias) visited and gave promise that he should have a son, and his name should be John, and he should be filled with the spirit of Elias;
8 Which John I have sent unto you, my servants, Joseph Smith, Jun., and Oliver Cowdery, to ordain you unto the first priesthood which you have received, that you might be called and ordained even as Aaron;
9 And also Elijah, unto whom I have committed the keys of the power of turning the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to the fathers, that the whole earth may not be smitten with a curse;
10 And also with Joseph and Jacob, and Isaac, and Abraham, your fathers, by whom the promises remain;
11 And also with Michael, or Adam, the father of all, the prince of all, the ancient of days;
12 And also with Peter, and James, and John, whom I have sent unto you, by whom I have ordained you and confirmed you to be apostles, and especial witnesses of my name, and bear the keys of your ministry and of the same things which I revealed unto them;
13 Unto whom I have committed the keys of my kingdom, and a dispensation of the gospel for the last times; and for the fulness of times, in the which I will gather together in one all things, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth;
14 And also with all those whom my Father hath given me out of the world.
15 Wherefore, lift up your hearts and rejoice, and gird up your loins, and take upon you my whole armor, that ye may be able to withstand the evil day, having done all, that ye may be able to stand.
(Doctrine and Covenants 27:5–15)
