Wife Fasting 43 Days to Get Husband to Go To Church

1920

Fasting Wife Gets His Proxy Prayer

Danville, Ill., Jan. 10 — When his wife fasts and prays because Ernest Harrington will not join her church the husband today and yesterday prayed for her by proxy. The Rev. Henry Green, an itinerant negro preacher, knelt down with Harrington in his yard and uttered a prayer. On each occasion the preacher made a dollar "touch" for his services.

While the husband was praying for his wife outside, her friends of the Pentecostal Church of God, which she wants him to join, also prayed and sang inside. Mrs. Harrington began her hunger strike forty-three days ago, but her husband apparently is no nearer becoming a church member now than he was then.

"She is like the man who caught the bear by the tail," said Harrington today. "She can't let loose now. She has lost seventy-five pounds, but is still going strong, although I believe she is sorry she started the thing. As for me, I am still standing pat: I believe my life is my own to live as I see fit and I do not intend to have any person force me to do a thing I feel is wrong. She will soon give it up. I have lived with her for 19 years and I never knew her to complete anything she undertook yet."

The Harrington home is guarded to prevent newspaper correspondents and moving picture operators from seeing the fasting woman, who has shrunk from 210 to 135 pounds, it is said.

Hundreds of letters and telegrams urging both to hold out are received everyday. Religious fanatics implore the woman not to interrupt her fast, because the right must prevail, although one cynic wonders why if the Lord told her to begin her fast He doesn't tell her that it is time to quit, because it is of no use.

—Bedford Gazette, Bedford, Pennsylvania, January 9, 1920, page 2.