The Honourable Society of Lincoln’s Inn, one of four Inns of Court to which all English barristers (litigators) must belong, is scrapping its centuries-old tradition of saying grace before meals to be more “inclusive”.
For hundreds of years, judges, lawyers, and law students at the Inn offered the following traditional Christian prayer before meals:
“Lord God, Heavenly Father, bless us and these Thy gifts which we receive from Thy bountiful goodness, through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.”
This will now be replaced with a secular alternative, to appease atheists, Muslims, and other non-Christians:
“In this moment of silence, let us give thanks for all that we are about to receive and for the company of this Honourable Society.”
The 15th-century institution was clear that the change is designed to purge the “explicitly Christian” language of the traditional prayer in favor of “a non-Christian ‘thanks’ because of our diverse range of members with a different range of beliefs.”
England remains a nominally Christian country, with the monarch swearing Christian oaths and the established Church of England sending bishops to the Upper House of Parliament – but it is secular in practice, with Christians being arrested for offending homosexuals and Muslims.
