Bishop Curry: the power of love
One of the terrible mistakes the Royal Family made with Princess Diana was to expect a newcomer to do everything exactly their way, said Sam Leith in the London Evening Standard. If last week’s Royal wedding showed one thing, it is that the Firm is not going to make that mistake again. This extraordinary event managed to fuse the traditional elements of a British Royal wedding with a celebration of the bride’s identity and heritage. There was the mass of black talent in the congregation, the Kingdom Choir singing Stand by Me and – at the centre of proceedings – the Most Rev Michael Curry’s impassioned address. Some in the congregation seemed discomfited, and no wonder: here was a sermon that belonged in a church in North Carolina being delivered with “exceptional authority and verve” in St George’s Chapel, Windsor. It was, in a sense, a breach of decorum – but what a fitting one.
Certainly, Curry’s address was in sharp contrast to the quiet solemnity that preceded it, said Diana Evans in The Guardian. Gesticulating, rocking on his feet, smiling, the 65-year-old head of the Episcopal Church (the US wing of Anglicanism) “preached in the uninhibited, theatrical and emotive style of the traditional African-american church”. He spoke of Jesus of Nazareth and Moses, he quoted Martin Luther King on the redemptive power of love, and he referred to the slaves of America’s antebellum south who, even in the midst of their captivity, recognised in their spirituals that there is “a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole”. After ten minutes, he paused and declared that it was time to wrap it up – “we’ve gotta get you all married!” – but it was a further four minutes before he was done.
The Episcopal Church’s first black leader, Bishop Curry is famous for his stirring sermons, and for his radicalism, said Tara Isabella Burton on Vox. On Saturday, he spoke of love in its romantic sense (“two young people fell in love, and we all showed up”) and of love as a political force, to end poverty and counter oppression. In the “necessarily anodyne” context of a Royal wedding, his sermon, drawing on liberation theology, “was surprisingly political and surprisingly, well, religious”. But his message is that if Christians truly follow Christ, truly love their neighbours, it will put them at odds with social norms. At a time when the Church of England is haemorrhaging members, and 16% of its priests aren’t even sure there is a God, Curry used a global platform to revive an Anglicanism rooted in religious engagement and social justice. “You might say he just made the Anglican Communion great again.”