US bishop will preach for Harry and Meghan then march against Trump
Cleric chosen for wedding sermon says President is un-Christian
THE American bishop chosen to give the sermon at the royal wedding on Saturday is not a man to mince his words.
And Bishop Michael Curry has little time for the view that politics has no place in religion.
In fact, less than five days after the wedding, he will be leading a march on the White House to protest against President Donald Trump, a man he has denounced as un-Christian, dangerous, authoritarian and dishonest.
The 65-year-old Chicago-born cleric is the first black presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, the US branch of the Anglican Union.
Usually, the cleric asked to give a royal wedding sermon has some personal connection – Richard Chartres, Bishop of London, who did the honours at the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, is an old friend of Prince Charles.
Given neither bride nor groom know Bishop Curry, one can only conclude they chose him because of what he represents.
And this, increasingly, is a trenchant and highly politicised Left-wing Christianity which some might feel sits uneasily with the Royal Family’s duty to stay out of politics.
The bishop is the most prominent church leader to have come out against the Trump administration. He has in fact has been clashing with conservatives for years, championing social issues such as transgender rights and gay marriage, but also more political ones such as immigration. He was among the first group of bishops to allow samesex marriages to be performed in the diocese he led.
As the bishop of North Carolina, he participated in ‘ Moral Mondays’ demonstrations in Raleigh, the state capital, which aim to fight conservative policies that critics say hurt the poor and marginalised. And while many clerics prefer not to share their opinions of the President, positive or negative, the same cannot be said for Bishop Curry.
He has made it clear he believes that anyone who continues to support Mr Trump, such as the millions of Bible Belt evangelicals who helped put him in the White House, cannot call themselves proper Christians.
In January 2017, he issued a trenchant attack on Mr Trump’s immigration ban on those from largely Muslim countries. More dramatically, in an unprece-through dented move in April this year, he and 22 other Christian leaders issued a manifesto titled Reclaiming Jesus, A Confession Of Faith In A Time Of Crisis. It argues that Trump-supporting Christians aren’t authentic exponents of the teachings of Jesus.
The treatise condemns Mr Trump’s tax cuts for the rich, his healthcare reforms and the crackdown on immigrants and refugees as contrary to Christian teachings. It describes his ‘America First’ foreign policy as a ‘theological heresy for followers of Christ’ and states: ‘We are living perilous and polarising times as a nation, with a dangerous crisis of moral and political leadership at the highest levels of our government and in our churches.’ The group has also decried ‘the regular purveying of falsehoods and consistent lying by the nation’s highest leaders’.
There may be another reason why Bishop Curry, who has two daughters, has been deemed the perfect choice to give the sermon. Just as Miss Markle’s biracial identity has been hailed as a huge advance in making the Royal Family appear more socially inclusive, so too has Bishop Curry’s appointment to run America’s most white and elitist mainstream church.
He was voted in as its new prelate by a landslide majority in 2015. An African-American who traces his family back on both sides to slaves or impoverished sharecropper farmers – as Meghan does on her mother’s side – he’s been hailed as the ideal figurehead for a more inclusive Episcopal Church.
Quite what he will say at the royal wedding this weekend remains to be seen.
But he is famous for his boisterous and energetic sermons – so there may be several members of the Royal Family listening very keenly indeed.
‘Crisis of moral leadership’