Do We Laugh or Cry?
Chicago - (AP) A public Christmas festival is no place for the Christmas story, the city says. Officials have asked organizers of a downtown Christmas festival, the German Christkindlmarket, to reconsider using a movie studio as a sponsor because it is worried ads for its film "The Nativity Story" might offend non-Christians. The rest of the story is here.Here is yet another news item in the continuing grotesque misinterpretation of the "Separation of Church and State." I wonder if the American public will ever have a chance to better understand that the founders of this country were against the idea of the federal government giving preferential treatment and tax advantages to ONE denomination over others, as was the situation throughout western Europe at the time of this nation's independence? They were NOT opposed to the unlimited public involvement of any and all religious activity in American public life! Why are officials at nearly all levels of judicial practice in modern America unwilling to acknowledge this historic fact? Why does Thomas Jefferson's one, isolated, caution (in the form of an unofficial personal opinion) about the federal government avoiding the perception of religious preference (i.e. the phrase about a separation between church and state) continue to be treated as if it is written into the Constitution itself?
We do well as a society to be sensitive to, and tolerate of, our neighbors of non-Christian traditions - regardless of what we do or do not believe ourselves. But, no matter how few people in modern America are truly Christ-followers, the broad themes and traditions of the Bible and it's Christmas stories are deeply woven into the American culture and pretending otherwise for the sake of political correctness is stupid and ought to be embarrassing.
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posted by TheOldMan @ 2:41 AM
