RELIGION as OBSERVANCE — the outward practice of worship: ritual, ceremony, cult, the visible acts of devotion (with the adjective thrēskos, 'religious', at James 1:26). ⚠ James does something startling with the word at 1:27: he does not abolish 'religion' but REDEFINES it, moving it off ceremony and onto mercy — 'pure and undefiled thrēskeia before God is this: to look after orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world'. It is the same prophetic move as Isaiah 1 and Micah 6:8, worship relocated from the altar to the care of the helpless. The word is otherwise rare in the New Testament (Acts 26:5, of strict Pharisaism; Colossians 2:18, of 'the worship of angels'). → first discussed at James 1:26