You don’t have to be religious to understand the value of peace

Editorial: The big lessons are universal – and the values of peace and forgiveness are a lot harder to relearn once they have been forgotten

We have been lucky, in this country and in much of the world, to live in a long era of comparable peace (AP)

Whenever religion makes its scheduled appearance in the calendars of our increasingly secular lives, it does so to say something boring or worthy that we have all heard a million times before, before disappearing again for a few months.

Charity, forgiveness, peace and goodwill to all men, yada yada yada. Their repetition and their unfashionable nature makes it easy to forget that these were once radical ideas, which undeniably changed human history.

This year, Easter, Passover and Ramadan all coincide, which happens only around three times in a century. Tragically, they do so at a time when their weary messages of peace could not be any less boring.