Fast Sunday

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In The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Fast Sunday is a Sunday (usually the first Sunday of every month) set aside for fasting.

Members are encouraged to fast for twenty-four hours, leaving out two consecutive meals, from the Saturday before this day until Sunday, and to give the money they save by not eating as a fast offering which will be used to help the needy. The Sunday date is in marked contrast to most other Christian denominations that encourage fasting but invariably exempt Sundays.

On Fast Sunday, the regular sacrament meeting is known as fast and testimony meeting, where rather than predetermined speakers on particular subjects, the members are given the chance to voluntarily bear testimony to one another of gospel truths and to share spiritual experiences they have had.

Fast Sunday was not always on the First Sunday of Each Month. Starting in 1896, Fast Day was set to be the first Sunday of the month, instead of the first Thursday. Since then it was commonly referred to as Fast Sunday.

The original fast day was started by Joseph Smith, Jr. as told by Brigham Young:

"You know that the first Thursday of each month we hold as a fast day. How many here know the origin of this day? Before tithing was paid, the poor were supported by donations. They came to Joseph and wanted help in Kirtland, and he said there should be a fast day, which was decided upon. It was to be held once a month, as it is now, and all that would have been eaten that day, of flour, or meat, or butter, or fruit, or anything else was to be carried to the fast meeting and put into the hands of a person selected for the purpose of taking care of it and distributing it among the poor"

- Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, vol. 12, p. 115.

Modern LDS leaders have affirmed the need for a Fast Day, as Gordon B. Hinckley Stated:

"What would happen if the principles of fast day and the fast offering were observed throughout the world[?] The hungry would be fed, the naked clothed, the homeless sheltered. [...] A new measure of concern and unselfishness would grow in the hearts of people everywhere."

- Gordon B. Hinckley "The State of the Church," Ensign, May 1991, 52-53.