The Separation of Church and State

December 15, 2024

We have often heard it said that Religion is a personal or internal matter. In fact the Merriam Webster dictionary defines religion as follows: : ”a personal set or institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices, or the service and worship of God or the supernatural commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance”

 

Clearly then, for many, religion is meant to be something only between God and individual human beings, with the religious institutions only offering guidelines and systems that make such a personal relationship possible.  And this understanding of religion is encouraged and fostered in many religions, including in Christianity.

 

And this is why so many of us,  in all religions, seem to be quite satisfied with fulfilling our ‘religious duties’ - praying, offering tithes or donations, going on pilgrimmages, fulfilling stipulated religious practices, fasting, sacrificing etc - and believe that this is what religion is all about.  

 

But today’s Gospel reading challenges this understanding of religion. John the Baptist’s teaching is clearly saying that a religion which does not ‘spill over’into daily living is not true repentance at all, and by implication is not true religion at all.  And so when they ask him how to translate their repentance into practice, he offers advice to tax collectiors, to soldiers, and to every person who has more than what s/he needs, teaching them that true religion involves actions in all these matters. As the well-known passage from the Old Testament teaches:  “Sacrifices and burnt offerings I do not want, but let justice flow down like the river.” (psalm 40:6 and Hebrews 10:5ff). So in opposition to the Western idea of secularism, today’s Gospel reading tells us clearly that religion must intrude into our secular spaces. This is not to say that secularism is not a good idea. But maybe the Indian idea of secularism which does not exclude religion from civil society, but is based on equal acceptance and respect of all religions without giving any particular religion preference, could be another way to understand this term.  

 

Of course, there is a downside to this understanding that religion should intrude into our daily world, because we live in a world where there are so many who do not share our own religious convictions, and so it would be an injustice to them if ‘our’ religion and its practices were pushed down their throats. And in our own world history,  especially in the history of Christianty and Islam, the sword has surely been used to force people to convert to the religion of those in power. But such attempts are not just a story of the past.  Today we have right-wing Catholics voting in the USA to prevent abortion to all, or wanting to legislate that the right to marry should be refused to LGBTQ persons. In the same way, we have right-wing Hindutva adherents who refuse to allow meat (especially beef) to be eaten on certain days (e.g. on special Jain festival days) or in certain areas in India (e.g.in the  neighbourhood of some temples). And we have Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia where till just a few months ago, even taking  a Bible into the country was proscribed. And this enforcing of one’s beliefs on all in society is also reflected in other non-religious ideologies.

 

So while it is important that we realise that religion, as John the Baptist taught, is not just between God and us, and that it should flow into every aspect of our lives, we must also remember that we live shared lives. We share our lives with those who have their own insights or who may even have what seem like contradictory insights. And while our religion should flow into every aspect of our lives, it may not and does not have to flow through every aspect of another’s life. When my daughter was young she used to get into arguments with her friends about right and wrong. And when her friends asked her why she thought a particular action was wrong, she would say “because my daddy said so”. And her friends would obviously respond, ‘but my daddy did not say so’. In religion we sometimes behave exactly like my young daughter. Our religion (or even non-religious ideology) brings us an insight that we have every right to share with the world and we should. But our insight should not have to be accepted because the Bible, or Koran or Gita or Das Kapital said so. It should be accepted because in today’s world it is a valuable insight. And while we may find it easy to accept the value of our own insight, we cannot demand that others blindly accept it.

And so, countries around the world struggled, especially after the two World Wars, to find a value system that would be acceptable to all and finally came up in 1948 with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR),  and over the next many decades, with all the Covenants and Conventions that have since been signed and ratified by a large proportion of all the countries in the world. Many of the principles in these covenants were based on insights from various ideologies - both religious and a-religious.  But they were accepted as universal principles based on the values that were meaningful to us today. These were difficult journeys, and despite these international agreements, these journeys are not over, which is why each of the Covenants and Conventions offered the option to individual countries to say that they would not or could not accept particular clauses even as they accepted all the others.  We will never get  universal and blind acceptance, precisely because as human beings we all have our own insights, based on the stories and ideologies each of us has been exposed to.  As members of this common human society we can justifiably try and make others see the value of our own insights, but we must also be open to learning from the insights that they offer, so that  together we can come up with new insights and new ideas to make this world a better place.  Pope Francis’s recent controversial (for conservative Christians) statement, that “every religion is a way to arrive at God” seems to espouse this very idea.

 

And fortunately for us as a human race, even as we have struggled, stumbled, fallen down and gotten up again, as we walked this path of trying to discover what is best for our human race, and even though we still have a long way to go - whether it is in regards to human rights, women’s rights, race equality, or rejection of caste, and so much else  -  we can see, through the lens of space and time, that we have often moved in the figure of a dance of hope. 

But as I have said before, such a pilgrimmage is never easy, and often involves many detours and many mistakes.  It is this reality of our journey as a human race that is reflected in Katsushika Hokusai’s haiku:

                                              

                                              I write, erase, rewrite,

                                              Erase again, and then,

                                              A poppy blooms.

First Reading: Zephaniah 3: 14-18a

Sing, Daughter Zion;  shout aloud, Israel!
Be glad and rejoice with all your heart, Daughter Jerusalem!
The Lord has taken away your punishment, he has turned back your enemy.
The Lord, the King of Israel, is with you;  never again will you fear any harm.

On that day they will say to Jerusalem, “Do not fear, Zion;  do not let your hands hang limp.
The Lord your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves.
He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.”

I will remove from you all who mourn over the loss of your appointed festivals, which is a burden and reproach for you.

Second Reading: Philippians 4: 4-7
 
Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

 
Gospel: Luke 3: 10-18

“What should we do then?” the crowd asked. John answered, “Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same.” Even tax collectors came to be baptized. “Teacher,” they asked, “what should we do?” “Don’t collect any more than you are required to,” he told them. Then some soldiers asked him, “And what should we do?” He replied, “Don’t extort money and don’t accuse people falsely—be content with your pay.” The people were waiting expectantly and were all wondering in their hearts if John might possibly be the Messiah. John answered them all, “I baptize you with water. But one who is more powerful than I will come, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.  His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” And with many other words John exhorted the people and proclaimed the good news to them.