c. 1998 Religion News Service

UNDATED _ It may seem a hard sell: asking Americans to fast and pray for 40 days, not unlike Jesus in the wilderness.

But Bill Bright, the evangelical Christian leader who founded Campus Crusade for Christ International, believes more than 2 million Americans will do just that beginning next month.

Bright and other evangelical leaders are calling on Christians to “pray America back to God” in a nationwide fast from March 1 to April 9, a period overlapping much of the season of Lent _ the 40-weekday period between Ash Wednesday (Feb. 25) and Easter, and is especially observed in Roman Catholic and mainline Protestant churches.

Bright and other evangelical leaders believe the nation’s moral fabric has all but disintegrated and a major spiritual revival is needed to reverse the decline.

In such a revival, “Churches will be filled, people will begin to experience the love of God in a special way,” said Bright. “When a revival comes, darkness will be dispelled.”

Bright said he sees signs of that revival already.

He cited the Promise Keepers’ success in gathering hundreds of thousands of men in prayer at the massive”Stand in the Gap”rally in Washington, D.C., last year. But he said intensive prayer, repentance and fasting are needed to urge it on.

“Throughout history, whenever there is something really seriously wrong, or a desperate need arises, God seems to raise up people to fast and pray,” Bright said in a recent telephone interview.

Bright likens fasting’s effect on prayer to the atomic bomb’s effect on World War II _ it brings just as dramatic a result, he asserted. “Fasting with prayer opens the floodgates of heaven.”

Pray USA!, the organization coordinating the fast, recently sent letters to 250,000 Christian leaders and pastors exhorting them to promote the fast.

Fasting is more frequently associated with Roman Catholicism, Orthodox Christianity, Judaism and Islam. Its new popularity among evangelicals is due in part to Bright, who has written extensively about his own fasting experiences.

Bright said when he did his first 40-day fast in 1994, “God impressed upon me that our nation was losing its soul. With all our wealth and power, we have become morally and spiritually bankrupt.”

He said God called him to fast at that time for the United States, and for the fulfillment of “the Great Commission,” Christ’s command to take Christianity to all nations. Bright said during his fast, God revealed to him that a great spiritual revival would occur.

Bright said the year 2000 has divine significance and God is preparing to pour out “his spirit on the world in a way that’s never happened before.”

Ted Pulcini, an assistant professor of religion at Dickinson College in central Pennsylvania, said his Eastern Orthodox faith places great emphasis on spiritual fasting. But Pulcini said he thinks “individual transformation is what should be the focus of prayer and fasting.” That transformation is usually missing in a mass movement, he said.

Mara E. Donaldson, associate professor of religion at Dickinson, worried the fast’s aim of “praying America back to God” implies an effort to promote a single, national religion. “If I were a Jew or a Muslim, I would be concerned about this,” she said.

Bright said he views the nationwide fast as an opportunity for Christians to draw closer to “the great heart of God,” to unite in experiencing the most powerful of all the Christian disciplines, to humble themselves before their Creator.

Ken Hepner, pastor of Mechanicsburg (Pa.) Brethren in Christ Church, said he tells congregants fasting can take a variety of forms: abstaining from all food, taking only juices and other liquids, eating just one meal a day, or abstaining from particular foods.

Hepner, who said he did three extended fasts last year, said fasting can be physically grueling. But when you deny your body food, he said, you can feel your hunger for God. And you learn your strength to endure comes not from yourself but from God.

Fasting shows “the spirit of God is really the strength of the Christian,” Hepner said.

DEA END CASSIDY