Just as it is a confession to say, “No creed but Christ” so anyone who gathers for worship, no matter how informal the service, no matter whether it is a service where one is allowed to carry a cup of coffee into the auditorium or not, whether one wears Hawaiian shirts or a suit and tie, whatever transpires from the time the minister calls the congregation to order and pronounces the benediction is religion. Those who attend to public worship services every Lord’s Day are unavoidably religious even if only outwardly.

One frequently sees the sentiment “I am not religious, I am a Christian” or something like this. This notion manifests itself in a variety of ways. For example, over the last several years we have seen the gradual abandonment of traditional Christian church names (Trinity, Hope, Grace, Christ, St John’s etc). One local congregation name that has caught my eye is Infusion. It is interesting because it is an RCA congregation. The name has a generic quality. It could be a nightclub or a fitness center. Another local congregation calls itself “The Foundry.” It is an interesting metaphor but is it superior to traditional Christian designations for congregations?

We see a certain antipathy to traditional Christian vocabulary in the self-identity published on social media accounts. Christians now describe themselves as a “disciple of Jesus” or a “Jesus follower” rather than Christian. Of course, in a few years, we shall have to find substitutes for “follower” and “disciple” since all such claims must eventually be defined and defended or abandoned.

This brings me back to the poor, beleaguered noun religion. Is there any more abused and despised little word in the Christian vocabulary today? I should think that were someone to say to a devout evangelical, “I see that you are very religious” an evangelical should feel compelled to deny it categorically: “How dare you sir! I am a Christian. I am not religious.” How did the noun (and its family members) come to have such a terrible reputation? When did it become a sin to be religious?

I suspect the source of the current suspicion of religion may be found in the desire among evangelicals to distinguish themselves from mainline, liberal Christians and from those perceived to belong to “high church” traditions. They, the thinking went, were observing outward rituals but the evangelicals (from the Pietist tradition) had a heart religion, not a merely outward religion.

Here’s one great difficulty with such an understanding of religion: everyone has one. There is a centuries-old debate about the etymology of the word religion but its basic sense in historic Christian usage, including the confessional Protestants, is relatively clear. It simply refers to the practice of the Christian religion. If you are a regular reader of this space you will doubtless know that the HB is devoted to recovering the confessional Reformed theology, piety, and practice (“We’re talking about practice”). If we observe the way the older Christian writers (i.e., before the 1950s) used the word religion it referred to the outward expression of the inward piety. If we substituted the noun religion for the noun practice, we have captured its basic sense. The HB is devoted to the recovery of the Reformed theology, piety, and religion. The Synod of Dort (art. 61) unashamedly restricted holy communion in Reformed congregations to those who profess the “Reformed religion”

After all, it is not as if it is possible to avoid religion.

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