The Interplay of Scientific and Religious Authorities in Mormon and Nation of Islam Fasting Practices

For Mormons and Nation of Islam (NOI) Muslims, fasting represented a confluence of spiritual and temporal concerns. In the 20^th Century, secular and scientific narratives bled into the essentially spiritual act of fasting. The merger of secular or nutrition scientific rhetoric with the language of divinity is typical of the ways categories blur and intertwine in the daily living of religion.

Spiritually, fasting increased the believer’s ability to resist the body’s appetites in favor of otherworldly priorities.  Fasting could also fortify a heavenly petition, improving its chances.  Temporally, fasting promised health to believers, especially NOI Muslims, who did not believe in an afterlife and sought to prolong their time on earth. Both groups also saw fasting as a means to feed the hungry; Mormons donated the money they would have spent on food to a Church fund for poverty relief.

Both Mormons and NOI Muslims prioritized obedience to God’s law regardless of public opinion: they fasted because God told them to fast, not because popular magazines advertised its benefits.  But both groups also celebrated “scientific” evidence suggesting that fasting is good for the body.  Even as they insisted that God was superior to the secular authority of human scientists, both groups appealed to scientific authority as evidence that God was with them, and that God had inspired their founding prophets. By tapping into the objectivity of nutrition science, fasting allowed Mormons and NOI Muslims to demonstrate their status as rational people of God.