Does America Need A Reformation?

[Soph0571]

501 years ago, Martin Luther rocked (and ultimately changed) the Christian world when he pinned his 95 articles of faith to the church door, challenging the established church and its position of power at the very heart of Europe. Let’s face it, the established churches did not exactly shower themselves in glory during those years. The cardinals and the bishops sat at the very heart of the Tudor Court and they clung onto that power with everything they had. Time has moved on of course and the power of the church has diminished considerably. Today, in the UK, we are a diverse community where all the world’s great faiths are represented, 42% of the population say they have no faith and over 50% do not identify as Christian. Within that backdrop we still have 26 Bishops sitting in the House of Lords (our secondary, revising, chamber).

Today, literally today, we see a new era of the religious right taking control in America. In the White House a gabble of evangelists, fundamentalists, young earth creationists, dominionists, end of the world wannabees who want to bring about the end times so they can witness the rapture, are all sitting at the heart of power much in the same way the Church did 500 years ago across the pond. One might ask does America need a reformation of its own? They make our 26 Bishops snoozing on the dusty benches of the House of Lords seem really rather tame.

Of course we all live in liberal democracies (for now at least) and within that framework of governance people are free to believe what they hell they want and people are always going to have a set of religious, or non-religious beliefs that are there to impel them to make moral choices, get involved, lobby and get into the public square and try and change their world around them to meet their own moral and ethical frameworks. This is a good. This is what creates communities and societies. The problem comes when people take religion into government and start legislating based on it. Bringing religion together with power is always a recipe for disaster. Looking at the religious zealots now comfortably ensconced in Trumps White House and we maybe need to consider gathering together a disaster relief team in the form a new reformation. Trumps minions personal faith is their business, as long as they keep it personal to them. That would not be a problem. The concern has to be that they are using law to impose their religious thesis on everyone else. We all know that is their plan of action and life in a theocracy is not pretty.

The juxtaposition between the application of faith and politics in the UK and US is rather interesting. The UK does not have a legal construct of separation of church and state, indeed we have a state religion, however in practice policy development is in no way influenced by faith, thanks in great part to the Reformation. Of course, it is the direct opposite in the states, no state church, but as sure as night follows day during Trumps regime, religion will pervade every aspect of policy decision making. A scary thought indeed for anyone who does not think like them.

I’ll say it again. Reformation anyone?