Daniel Burke reports for CNN:
Less than a week after his star-making sermon at the British royal wedding, Episcopal [Presiding] Bishop Michael Curry set his sights on American politics, leading a church service against what he and other Christian leaders call “a dangerous crisis of moral and political leadership” in churches and government.
“It’s like somebody woke up Jim Crow,” Curry told CNN in an interview before the Thursday evening service, “and said let’s not just segregate Americans over race, let’s separate people along religious and political and class lines, too.”
Curry said the service and a following candlelight vigil at the White House, along with a statement by Christian leaders, are intended to dig beneath those divisions and remind Christians of Jesus’ core values.
The bishop took pains to describe his activism as non-partisan, declining to criticize President Donald Trump by name. “We are not here to point fingers. We are here to lend a helping hand.”
… The statement, called “Reclaiming Jesus,” is framed as a “confession” in the spiritual sense of the word: a public statement of principles, not an admission of guilt.
… “Reclaiming Jesus” also strongly denounces “America first,” a foreign policy slogan employed by Trump, as “theological heresy” [for Christians]. The religious leaders also condemn “the growing attacks on immigrants and refugees, who are being made into cultural and political targets” and “the practice and pattern of lying that is invading our political and civil life.”
Matthew Townsend is a Halifax-based freelance journalist and volunteer advocate for survivors of sexual misconduct in Anglican settings. He served as editor of the Anglican Journal from 2019 to 2021 and communications missioner for the Anglican Diocese of Quebec from 2019 to 2022. He and his wife recently entered catechism class in the Orthodox Church in America.
