The Bishop of Oxford, John Pritchard, on why he is fasting

I’ve never been great on fasting. Oh, I’ve had my moments. Two days and nights fasting in a High Street shack in Christian Aid Week. The 5 plus 2 diet last year which got rid of a few pounds.

Five days living on £1 a day a couple of years ago (low point: hosting a smart dinner in Christ Church while eating dahl and drinking water).

But generally fasting has seemed to be an exercise in self-denial which I’ve convinced myself is not my calling. Hair-shirt theology has its place, I’ve thought — in somebody else’s life. But then Lent pops up again and reminds me that some things make fasting worth the minor misery. Then fasting gets linked to a specific cause, something I want to focus my attention on and maybe draw to the attention of others.

That’s what’s happened this year with End Hunger Fast. It’s a national fast that lots of bishops and others are taking on to draw attention to the facts about relative hunger and poverty in this country. Half a million people have used food banks in the last year and the numbers are rising.

Three-and-a-half million children live in poverty in one of the most prosperous countries in the world. One in five mothers have regularly gone without a meal in order to make sure their children have enough. Food prices have gone up 30 per cent in five years while wages have stayed flat.

Something must be wrong.

Of course, if you dare to point out such things as a representative of the Church you get those wearingly familiar bite-backs that the Church should keep out of politics. As if Jesus or the Old Testament prophets kept out of politics when they hammered a society that forgot the poor.

Or as if Wilberforce or Shaftesbury kept out of politics when they drove through radical social reform in the 19th century. Or as if Martin Luther King or Desmond Tutu kept out of politics when they faced down deep-rooted racial inequality in the United States and South Africa.

All healthy religion is about human flourishing. The Church in this country is connected to the on-the-ground realities as no other organisation. The clergy know what’s going on. And 80 per cent of our churches are in some way or other involved in food banks.

All I and others are saying is that something must be wrong. I’m not a politician and it isn’t up to me to bang any party or policy drum. But is it up to people like me to say that there’s a problem

And it’s proper to point out some of the areas that need attention. The welfare system may need some adjusting but we need to be sure that it provides a robust last line of defence against hunger. We need work that pays enough for the low paid to provide properly for their families — a living wage. We need food markets that function, promoting long-term sustainable and healthy diets.

It isn’t enough to say that food banks are used so much now just because they’re there in greater numbers. They’re there in greater numbers because people at the grass roots saw they were needed. And I’m pleased that those people have often been from the churches.

So all four of us bishops in the Diocese of Oxford will be fasting together on March 19. It’s not a spectacular action, but it will remind us, and any others who notice, that we have a problem here. Too many of our own citizens don’t get enough good food to eat. But together we could fix it.