Over the last few holiday seasons, a city in the state in which I reside has enjoyed (I use the term facetiously) more than its share of media attention, some of it on the national level, as regards its policies and procedures relating to holiday displays. Last year, in fact, this place was used as the centerpiece for Bill O’Reilly (of Fox News) decrying the ongoing war on Christmas.
Some contend that the aforementioned issue of holiday displays in this city started when a local Jewish organization sought to display a menorah as part of the city’s downtown holiday fare. Unfortunately, it was met with resistance due to agreements and conditions in place between development authorities and area business owners. Pure bureaucracy, but anyone could guess where this was going.
Given the sensitivities that exist these days, emotions began to run high, and accusations of religious and ethnic insensitivity materialized. Two years ago, I even became involved in a minor print slugfest with the New York Times writer who opportunistically singled out the community as anti-Semitic. This city became embroiled in a controversy involving “parity” in their holiday displays, where they would be located, how high or low-profile they would be and so forth. In the end, with the whole nation looking on, the city council settled on a multicultural display reflecting various religious and secular winter traditions.
There is nothing this columnist can see wrong with a multicultural display reflecting religious and secular winter traditions – but then, there is nothing this columnist can see wrong with overtly religious displays being permitted on city-owned grounds or at city facilities either. Here, the “church and state” argument so frequently employed was specious, given that the new display featured both Christian and non-Christian themes, rather than the city opting for no display at all.
No doubt the unspoken “slippery slope” many municipalities and businesses perceive pertaining to religious displays is that, having permitted some, they would then be obliged to similarly recognize every high holy day that came across the transom, bulldozed through by minority sects threatening lawsuits if their desires were not met.
Of course, none of these flaps we hear about are really about holiday displays anyway. They are about the anti-religious seeking to promote a morally ambivalent, wholly secular society and a complicit establishment press that aids them in doing so, as well as fomenting discord between religious sects and denominations.
The reader may be aware that in the Washington, D.C., area, print advertising was purchased by atheist group The American Humanist Association, featuring such things as a man dressed as Santa Claus with the legend: “Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness’ sake.”
Certainly, in America, atheists are free to purchase whatever advertising they like. The question, however, is why such people find it necessary to raise the proverbial middle finger toward the religious in such a manner. Would a responsible media provider accept advertising from a Christian group that openly attacked other religions? Of course not. Said media providers, however, are as cowed by atheist groups as businesses and municipalities when it comes to this issue.
The problem – as religious people realize – is that we are not some inherently moral, advanced race from “Star Trek.” Not all individuals are predisposed to “be good for goodness’ sake.” Ideals such as the Golden Rule and concepts of the sanctity of life, for example, are rooted in Judeo-Christian thought and are thoroughly ingrained in Westerners – but not so much in those of other cultures. Left to their own devices, all human beings are capable of some pretty heinous acts when answering only to themselves. The Nazis dispensed with a deity, and we all know the extent of barbarism to which they fell. Many of us are routinely appalled by the heartbreaking and wholesale lack of humanity displayed in certain underdeveloped nations when conflicts arise.
Anyone who does not believe that religion, particularly Christianity, and traditional values in America are under attack is kidding themselves. The war on Christmas, at which folks snicker up their sleeves and throw quotation marks around in print, is but a battle in the war that seeks to win Americans over to a self-seeking, unaccountable mindset and worldview in which they will be controlled by the State rather than guided by God’s laws.
Let’s curb the kangaroo court of anonymous sources
Tim Graham