Over the last few week there was a lot of comment on the Social Media sites about the sermon by the Episcopal (ie Anglican) Bishop of Washington DC about her plea to President Trump for “mercy” on the immigrant, the needy and the like. She was criticised by many for “bringing religion into politics” and these people insisted that Church and State had to be entirely separate.
HOWEVER, “religion” itself is a word of contested origin. It comes from two Latin words, “re” meaning “about, concerning” and “ligio”, meaning “to bind”: hence “religion” meaning “about that which holds things together”. Consider the ligaments, those pieces of biological matter which literally hold your skeleton together and without which you might be a twitching mass on the floor! Therefore “religion” is that system of belief, that moral code, which gives meaning, purpose and direction to your life.
The Bishop of Washington was doing nothing more than giving expression to that moral code, derived from the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth (see “The Sermon on the Mount”) which is incumbent upon all Christians and which is itself derived from the moral code of Judaism, and which provides the basis for action for followers. It challenges the philosophy of “ME at the centre of everything” and refutes the idea that any action, personal or corporate, is based on “what’s in this for me”.
Every religion, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and more, has its moral teaching embedded in the Scriptures of that tradition. That moral teaching is remarkably similar between all the major religions and we can find common purpose as we deal with justice, equity, foreign aid, domestic matters……
AND, if we are to be faithful to our religion, it is incumbent upon us to speak the truth to the public square, which is what the Bishop herself was doing, and which we all must do in our own lives and actions.
(Fr) George Mainprize
