The Swiss Federal Fast (Jeûne fédéral) has prompted two markedly different readings of the day's meaning in the canton of Vaud. On one side, Vaudois Christians close to the organisation Prière pour la Suisse invited people to celebrate the Fast at the site of the battle of Grandson, proposing to pray "on the very lands where the Confederates prayed before the confrontation" — and to pray for a return of the country's inhabitants to God, that the country might become "a people who seek you, honour you and serve you".
On the other side, the Vaudois Council of State issued a message for the occasion that took note of how the day has changed: "The dimension of thanksgiving, penitence and prayer attached to this day has faded over the course of time," it observed, proposing to give the Fast a new sense instead — "May this Monday of the Fast be placed under the sign of shared time, an essential element of our social cohesion!" The two texts, published within days of each other, set a traditional reading of the day against an explicitly post-Christian one.
Writing in the free church newspaper LaFree, the publication weighed the two positions. It acknowledged that praying for the inhabitants of the country to take an interest in God belongs to the missionary mandate Jesus gives every Christian — "make disciples of all nations" (Matthew 28:19) — but argued that such prayer should not be framed as nostalgia for a "Christian Switzerland" that, in its words, never really existed. Jesus describes Christians as "the salt of the earth" (Matthew 5:13), it notes: a tiny quantity that gives taste to a society that is not especially Christian. The calling, the paper argues, is not to long for a fantasised golden age but to form a beneficial and challenging minority, so that "your light must shine before all people, that they may see the good you do and give glory to your Father in heaven" (Matthew 5:16).
The article also picks up the Council's own observation that volunteering — including the volunteering carried out in the churches — is an indispensable contribution to social cohesion. If that is so, LaFree asks, what forces actually prompt volunteering, self-giving and shared time? Values, ideals and spirituality, it answers, and above all God himself: the engine of altruism, and something the churches may be better placed than anyone to say to a society that is not fully aware of the spiritual dimension of the human person.
Source: LaFree (Fédération Romande d'Églises Évangéliques) — lafree.ch/un-jeune-federal-plusieurs-visions/
