“Why The Religious Right Is Losing The War On Christmas”: The Season Is Not Owned By One Religion, But Rather Everyone
The annual “war on Christmas” took an unexpected twist this holiday season, when the UK-based website the Freethinker published the ironic headline “First known casualty in America’s 2013 ‘War on Xmas’ turns out to be a Salvation Army member“.
A woman attacked a bell ringer in Phoenix, Arizona because she was angry at being wished a “Happy Holidays” instead of honoring Jesus’ birth by saying “Merry Christmas”.
In another act of Christmas violence, unidentified arsonists tried to torch one of the Freedom from Religion Foundation’s billboards that proclaimed “Keep Saturn in Saturnalia” – a reference to an ancient celebration of the Roman god of agriculture.
The Gospel According to Fox News preaches a tale of Christian persecution running rampant through America. While others around the world face imprisonment or even execution for their religious beliefs, Christians in the states suffer the indignity of facing a holiday season sans baby Jesus Christ’s omnipresence in the public square.
Instead of sharing parables of the Beatitudes in practice, Fox’s Meghan Kelly’s chose to push forth the blatantly racist proposition that Jesus and Santa are white; the line between Fox News and the Daily Show’s parodies have now become almost indistinguishable.
Kelly added to her extensive mythmaking repertoire by claiming that the American Humanist Association (AHA) is denying toys to poor children. Roy Speckhardt, executive director of AHA, recounts his televised appearance with Kelly where he tried to discuss how Samaritan Purse’s Operation Christmas Child tries to use public schools as a workforce for their presents for conversions program. He noted:
It’s hard to take seriously a program that expects poor kids to convert just because they receive a Christmas present and a pamphlet about Jesus. If only it were so easy to convert, and de-convert, kids would be getting presents from all sorts of groups.
Fred Edwords, the national director of United Coalition of Reason offered this perspective on the history of the war between evangelical Christians and atheists:
The religious right started this whole “war on Christmas” myth when a few years back they launched their organized attack against calling the trees erected at the capitol and White House “Holiday Trees”. They also boycotted major businesses that said “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas”. As a result, their pressure effected some change, and they gloated on their success. But then humanist and atheist groups decided to launch awareness campaigns during the winter holiday season, reaching out to those who may have felt excluded by all of this nonsense. And the religious right went ballistic. After awhile, however, these campaigns got predictable and became less effective. So fewer of them were launched. But the religious right was still there – never having needed atheists to prompt them in the first place. And this year is making that reality abundantly clear.
Crossing the front lines to the atheist base, one finds a spirit of fun and playfulness seems to have replaced the angry atheist persona of yesteryear. For example, instead of protesting the presence of a nativity scene in the Florida State capitol, an atheist chose to erect a Festivus Pole made from beer cans.
This pole was designed to commemorate the infamous holiday popularized by the television show Seinfeld joins other displays in the rotunda including a nativity scene, posters from atheists, and a crudely-made Flying Spaghetti Monster. (A petition to include a similar satanic display was denied.)
According to David Silverman, president, American Atheists, this shift from activism to pluralistic accommodation “sends the clear message that the season is not owned by one religion, but rather everyone, and reinforces the idea that Christianity is one religion of many. While this is correct, ethical, and American, it’s a clear defeat for those who prefer the old days of inequality.”
A recent survey by the Public Religion Research Group points to a shifting toward such pluralism, with close to half of Americans (49%) surveyed agreeing that stores and businesses should greet their customers with “happy holidays” or “season’s greetings” instead of “merry Christmas”, out of respect for people of different faiths. This number is up from 44% when they conducted this survey in 2010.
Michael Dorian, co-director of the documentary Refusing My Religion notes, “many now understand that most people – whether believers or nonbelievers – can appreciate the holidays and just want to celebrate the season by socializing with friends and family, and that can be easily achieved with or without the trappings of religion”.
As the number of Americans who understand what it means to live in an increasing pluralistic country continues to grow, those faithful to the Fox News brand of Christianity – and its need to be ever dominant and combative around the holidays – will continue to look ever more foolish and out of touch.
By: Becky Garrison, The Guardian, Published in Business Insider, December 24, 2013
Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays: The Snowdog – By Jacquie Lawson
Although we all have our different ideologies, preferences and opinions, we are all part of “America The Beautiful“. There is no place like home. I wish you all the very best in the coming New Year.
The Snowdog – animated Flash ecard by Jacquie Lawson
In Memory of my friend and colleague, John B. Makin, Jr., MD
By: raemd95, Originally Posted December 24, 2009; December 25, 2013
“The Power Of Christmas”: Christian Influence Is Not Expressed In The Grasping Struggle For Legal Rights Or Political Standing
’Tis the season for crèche display controversies and public-school decoration debates and First Amendment argumentation, when all the ideologues get a little extra outrage or victimization in their stockings. The holiday is observed across the nation with injunctions and festive debates on cable television. Little children wait in line at the mall to have their picture taken with Bill O’Reilly or the Rev. Barry Lynn. (That last part, to my knowledge, is not true, but it should be.)
This year’s celebration is all the more poignant in the light of a fallen reality-television star who manufactures duck calls and culture war imbroglios. Some liberals, it turns out, can act with the zeal of theocrats. And some Christians, it seems, hold a faith that more closely resembles the prejudices of Southern, rural culture than the teachings of Christ. (See the contrast — the vast, cosmic contrast — between the patriarch of “Duck Dynasty” and the current Bishop of Rome.)
These debates persist because there are often no easy or final answers. They are conducted on a slippery slope. Some forms of speech are rightly stigmatized. But tolerance is the virtue of permitting room for speech we think is wrong. Some public expressions of religion are inconsistent with pluralism. But true pluralism is a welcoming attitude toward all faiths, not the imposition of a rigid secularization — itself the victory of one, dogmatic faith.
Ultimately all of these disputes resolve into an argument about power: Who has the ability to define and enforce the boundaries of the acceptable? In America, thank God, this is generally a legal and social disagreement. In other places, advocates evangelize with the gun or gallows.
Particularly in this season, what is most conspicuous about these disputes is their disconnection from the actual content of Christmas, which involves an alternative definition of power.
It is easy to downplay or domesticate the Christmas story. The whole thing smacks of squalor and desperation rather than romance — the teen mother, the last-choice accommodations, the company of livestock. Whether the birth was accompanied by angel choirs or not, it was certainly attended by buzzing flies.
If you ascribe eternal significance to these events, they are theologically and socially subversive. Rather than being a timeless Other, God somehow assumed the constraints of poverty and mortality. He was dependent on human care and vulnerable to human violence. The manger implied the beams and the nails. To many in the Roman world — and to many since — this seemed absurd, even blasphemous. Through eyes of faith, it appears differently. Novelist and minister Frederick Buechner sees the “ludicrous depths of self-humiliation [God] will descend in his wild pursuit of mankind.”
In the story, politics plays a marginal but horrifying role. King Herod perceived a vague threat to his power and responded with systematic infanticide.
But the incarnation has unavoidable social implications. If the deity was born as an outcast, it is impossible to view or treat outcasts in quite the same way. A God who fled as a refugee, preferred the company of fishermen and died as an accused criminal will influence our disposition toward refugees, the poor and those in prison. He is, said Dorothy Day, “disguised under every type of humanity that treads the earth.”
This birth and life had an entirely unpredictable historical outcome. The proud, well-armed empire that judicially murdered Jesus of Nazareth exists only as a series of archaeological digs. The man who was born in obscurity and died an apparent failure is viewed as a guide and friend by more than 2 billion people. Our culture — its history, laws and art — is unimaginable without his influence.
Which brings us back to the meaning of power. It is unavoidable for citizens to argue over the definition and limits of religious liberty. But Christian influence is not expressed in the grasping struggle for legal rights or political standing. It is found in demonstrating the radical values of the incarnation: Identifying with the vulnerable and dependent. Living for others. Trusting that hope, in the end, is more powerful than cunning or coercion. The author of this creed sought a different victory than politics brings — the kind that ends all selfish victories.
Or so the story goes. “The night deepens and grows still,” says Buechner, “and maybe the only sound is the birth cry, the little agony of new life coming alive, or maybe there is also the sound of legions of unseen voices raised in joy.”
By: Michael Gerson, Opinion Writer, December 23, 2013
“During The Holidays, Remember Our Least”: Today We Have To Say “Thou Shalt Not” To An Economy Of Exclusion And Inequality
As we celebrate the holiday season, we are instructed by virtually all faiths to turn our thoughts to the “least of these.” January will mark the 50th anniversary of the War on Poverty, but most notable today is how impoverished our discussion of poverty is.
Political leaders in both parties pledge to save the “middle class,” because polls show that most Americans consider themselves part of the broad middle. Democrats tout their “middle out” economics against Republican “trickle-down” economics. Republicans claim to be fighting to save small businesses and middle-class homeowners from the rapacious demands of government. Very little attention is given to the poorest among us.
Perhaps that is because poverty scars this rich nation. A recent report by the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) reveals that among 35 developed nations the United States ranks 34th in childhood poverty, above only Romania, a country several times less wealthy. Worse, we are also next to last in the depth of childhood poverty — the gap between average income of child’s family and that of poverty standard.
There is no argument about the facts. The poor were much more deprived when Lyndon Johnson declared his “war on poverty,” of course, but the percentage in poverty hasn’t changed much . Childhood poverty translates into poor health, poor education, and poor prospects. It isn’t an accident that the country frequently at the top of the international education rankings – Finland — also has the lowest levels of childhood poverty in that U.N. study.
So you’d think Washington would be focused on what to do to reduce the number of children in poverty, to address mass unemployment, declining wages, family distress. Instead, Washington has decided to administer a little “tough love.” Last month, Congress cut food stamps by an average of 7 percent for 48 million Americans . And this week 1.3 million jobless Americans will lose unemployment benefits , with as many as 5 million left in the cold over the course of the coming year .
In his recent “exhortation,” Pope Francis wrote starkly about the moral challenge of poverty:
“We can only praise the steps being taken to improve people’s welfare in areas such as health care, education and communications. At the same time, we have to remember that the majority of our contemporaries are barely living from day to day, with dire consequences. A number of diseases are spreading. The hearts of many people are gripped by fear and desperation, even in the so-called rich countries. . . .[Emphasis added.]
“Just as the commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill’ sets a clear limit in order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say ‘thou shalt not’ to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills. How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure but it is news when the stock market loses two points?”
Here, the Pope was standing firmly in the long tradition of the church’s concern for the poor, but among American conservatives, the response was hysteria. Rush Limbaugh accused him of peddling “pure Marxism.” Louis Woodhill in Forbes scorned him for “Papal Bull” that seemed “copied and pasted out of The Nation or Mother Jones.” (I take that as a compliment.) Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), a pious Catholic, was notably silent.
In a recent speech on inequality, President Obama insisted, “We are a better country than this,” and he made the case for government action. But his agenda was far less impressive than his rhetoric — including lower corporate tax rates, more trade accords, “streamlined” regulations, a “responsible budget” (meaning continued austerity).
The president touted his “race to the top” education program, when, in fact, schools in low-income districts have been forced to fire teachers, leaving classrooms far more crowded. He bragged on his college loan efforts even as reports showed students are graduating even deeper in debt. He did repeat his call for universal preschool and raising the minimum wage, but neither of these has been able even to receive a vote in the Republican-led House.
The reality is that government programs to lift the poor work. Johnson’s War on Poverty brought poverty down dramatically, but that war was lost to the war in Vietnam. Today, the United States does a much better job lifting poor children out of poverty than it did before Johnson pushed through Medicare and Medicaid expansions, child nutrition programs, subsidized school lunches and more. Even so, the United States still does far less than other developed countries. In 2010, for example, Dutch government programs reduced its poverty rate from 25 percent to 7.5 percent , while the United States only reduced its rate from 28 percent to 17 percent .
Two fundamental issues should be at the center of our debate. The first, posed by Pope Francis and Barack Obama, is what must be done to make the economy work for working people? The second is that posed by the president: Are we a better country than this? Do we want to be? We know what works. We can afford it, even more than other industrial countries. But are we prepared to do what needs to be done?
By: Katrina vanden Heuvel, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, December 24, 2013
“Personal Relationships’ Can Only Go So Far”: No Modern Precedent For Partisan Polarization As Intense As Today’s GOP Status Quo
It’s a fact of contemporary domestic politics that many in Washington resist, but there’s a limit to the power of presidential schmoozing.
The President’s failure to build friendships with lawmakers has damaged his chances of finding bipartisan support for legislation, a senator from his own party said Sunday. “It’s just hard to say no to a friend,” Sen. Joe Manchin, D-West Virginia, said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
“When you build that relationship and that friendship, you’re looking for ways to try to work things out and find a compromise and, you know, that friendship means an awful lot. When you don’t build those personal relationships, it’s pretty easy for a person to say, well, let me talk about it, you know, and not really make, you know, that extra effort.”
I wish this were true, because it would suggest the underlying problem would be fairly easy to solve. If Manchin were right, and President Obama’s “personal relationships” with lawmakers could lead to more responsible governing, a concerted effort could be made to turn the White House into The Friendliest Place on Earth.
Regrettably, though, Manchin’s remedy is deeply flawed.
Let’s put aside, at least for now, the fact that Obama has gone further than any modern president in bringing members of the opposing party into his cabinet and incorporating ideas from the opposing party’s agenda into his own policy plans – only to find that Republicans oppose the very ideas they used to support once they learn the president agrees with them.
Let’s instead focus on this notion of “building personal relationships.” I’m reminded of an anecdote from a year ago, when Obama invited several GOP lawmakers to the White House for a private screening with the stars of the movie “Lincoln.” The president extended the invitation in secret, so congressional Republicans wouldn’t face any lobbying to turn Obama down.
How many of the invited Republicans accepted the invitation? None.
The Beltway seems to accept as fact the notion that an aloof president has made no effort to cultivate friendships with members of Congress, but reality points in a very different direction. It’s not just movie nights, either – Obama has hosted casual “get-to-know-you” gatherings; he’s taken Republicans out to dinner on his dime; he’s taken House Speaker Boehner out golfing; and he’s held Super Bowl and March Madness parties at the White House for lawmakers.
When it comes to “building personal relationships,” we’ve seen the effort. It just doesn’t seem to have paid any dividends.
And why not? Because the importance of presidential schmoozing has been wildly exaggerated, based on an antiquated, romanticized vision. As we’ve discussed before, there have been times at which lawmakers were on the fence before a big vote, and a president could gently apply pressure with a White House dinner invitation and an after-meal chat on the Truman balcony. For those who believe these traditional norms still apply, there’s an assumption that Obama can get his way with Congress if only he engaged more.
But in 2013, those norms have been thrown out the window.
If lack of schmoozing isn’t the problem, what is? As we’ve discussed many times, traditional governing dynamics are largely impossible given that the Republican Party has reached an ideological extreme unseen in modern American history. It’s a quantifiable observation, not a subjective one.
The result is a situation in which GOP lawmakers refuse to compromise or accept concessions, partly due to partisan rigidity, partly out of fear of a primary challenge, and most of the time, both.
Indeed, the parties sharply disagree with one another – there is no modern precedent for partisan polarization as intense as today’s status quo – and presidential outreach won’t change that. Congressional Republicans tend to fundamentally reject just about everything the White House wants, believes, and perceives as true. Presidential friendships change nothing.
Let’s return to the thesis presented last year by Tom Mann and Norm Ornstein: “[W]e have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.”
The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.
When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges.
“Both sides do it” or “There is plenty of blame to go around” are the traditional refuges for an American news media intent on proving its lack of bias, while political scientists prefer generality and neutrality when discussing partisan polarization. Many self-styled bipartisan groups, in their search for common ground, propose solutions that move both sides to the center, a strategy that is simply untenable when one side is so far out of reach.
The notion that schmoozing will lead to progress rests upon the assumption that congressional Republicans are responsible officials, willing to negotiate and work in good faith, and prepared to find common ground with Obama. All they need is some face-time and presidential hand-holding. Once they can get along on a personal level, a constructive process will follow.
It’s a pleasant enough fantasy, and I wish it were true, but everything we’ve seen over the last four years points in the opposite direction.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, December 23, 2013
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