A California man is definitely in serious danger of landing on the naughty list.
Ron Lake of Nipomo, Calif., erected a Christmas display that features a statuette of Jesus standing over the lifeless body of Santa Claus with a shotgun. Lake says its a piece of art that comments on the commercialism of Christmas.
Neighbors are not pleased.
“I know it’s freedom of speech,” says neighbor Susana Cruz, “but it’s pretty disturbing and there are lots of children, that’s our main concern.”
Replica of the Loch Ness Monster. Photo by Stara Blazkova
Christmas is such a prickly holiday — at least for politicians. Is it OK to put up a nativity scene on public property? What if you’ve been doing it for a hundred years? What if you display other religious symbols, too? And where should we put the Festivus Tree?
According to the Associated Press, the pols in Kokomo, Ind., decided to bypass all the potential furor and slapped together a holiday display featuring none other than … the Loch Ness Monster. Yes, that slimy Scottish denizen of Christmas cheer, who when the children are all sleeping, wriggles down chimneys and leaves blurry, inconclusive photos of itself underneath the tree. The display also includes a fisherman, marching soldiers, a firetruck and candles.
“We’re following the advice of our attorney,” Dave Trine, president of the Howard County Board of Commissioners, told the Kokomo Tribune.
Can’t get sued over a display like that, can you?
Charles Darwin
And we Christians wonder why sometimes non-Christians don’t trust us very much.
You may have heard that the Christian group Living Waters, led by New Zealand evangelist Charles Comfort, was handing out Charles Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species” on college campuses across the country. Comfort, naturally, wasn’t just interested in commemorating the 150th anniversary of the book: Rather, Comfort served up a nifty little rebuttal of evolution and also pointed out that Darwin’s work has been used to bolster racism. He was, in short, taking the classic tome of evolution and using it against evolutionists.
Turns out, Comfort was also allegedly taking someone else’s introduction.
Stan Guffey, a professor at the University of Tennessee, is a Darwin booster who, in 1997, wrote a three-page biography on Darwin that was handed out on campus and eventually was used on a pro-Darwin Web site. Now, Guffey alleges that Comfort just picked up his biography and used it practically verbatim in Living Water’s introduction to “Origin of Species,” according to Rikki Hall, writing for Metro Pulse.
Comfort put his introduction on the Web months ago, and several bloggers who monitor anti-evolution efforts noted differences in style between the biography and the rest of the introduction. A brief computer search uncovered the source, and they confronted the author and publisher about the apparent plagiarism months before the book was printed. Guffey says he was never contacted for permission to use the biography. Both the author and publisher declined to comment for this story. Contacted by phone, [publisher] Bridge-Logos publicist Shawn Myers said it was the first she had heard of matter, so she was unable to respond.
Now, I’m on record as saying that God and evolution can coexist quite nicely: Evolution doesn’t threaten my faith at all, and frankly, I think there are more pressing matters facing Christians these days.
But, if you’re going to take on the scientific community by utilizing their most “sacred” book, you gotta make sure that your behavior is above reproach. To plagiarize someone else’s work is a fine way to undermine the rest of the project, if you ask me. And it kinda violates the whole “thou shalt not steal” commandment, too.
Really, that whole “living above reproach” thing is a good motto for Christians pert near all the time, don’t you think?
By a 54-45 vote, the Senate rejected language in its health care reform bill that would’ve further prohibited federal funding of abortion. The language, sponsored by Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), was nearly identical to that which was passed by the House of Representatives earlier. But pro-life advocates knew getting passage in the Senate was going to be more difficult, and we’ll likely see much teeth-gnashing as the day wears on today. Though some pro-choice advocates said the language put far tighter restrictions on abortion, Nelson said that wasn’t the case.
“We’re not here to debate for or against abortion,” Nelson said yesterday. “This is a debate about taxpayer money. It’s a debate about whether it’s appropriate for public funds to — for the first time in more than three decades — cover elective abortions. … Most Americans and most of the people in my state would say, ‘No.’”
And he’s right. While pro-choice advocates sometimes believe the country as a whole firmly supports abortion-on-demand, Roe v. Wade has always been incredibly controversial and polarizing. More people believe that there should be some limits placed on abortions (only 22 percent believe it should be legal in all cases). And, as Jennifer Senior notes in a fascinating (pro-life-tilting) story in New York Magazine, the pro-choice contingency is shrinking.
If forced to choose, Americans today are far more eager to label themselves “pro-life” than they were a dozen years ago. The youngest generation of voters—those between the ages of 18 and 29, and therefore most likely to need an abortion—is the most pro-life to come along since the generation born during the Great Depression, according to Michael D. Hais and Morley Winograd, authors of Millennial Makeover, who got granular data on the subject from Pew Research Center. Crisis Pregnancy Centers, dedicated to persuading women to continue their pregnancies, now outnumber the country’s abortion providers, who themselves are a rapidly aging group (two-thirds are over 50, according to a National Abortion Federation study from 2002).
I think it’s only a matter of time before the pro-choice movement becomes an obvious minority. If we acknowledge that human life is precious (and it’d be a rare politician who’d deny such a thing), then further acknowledges that deciding when a human life begins is quite the tricky thing (surely, there’s nothing magical that happens when a baby exits the birth canal, is there?), we, as a society, will grow more and more protective of the rights of the unborn. The pro-life movement, it seems to me, has logic on its side.
But that doesn’t mitigate the fact that pro-life Christians have a politically daunting, and potentially damaging, fight right now. Do we lobby to block health care reform as proposed by the Senate, when we know the withering fire we’ll come under?
Abby Johnson, I’d guess, would likely say yes: The risks are worth it.
Johnson, a former director of a Planned Parenthood clinic in Texas, according to the Baptist Press, was raised in a Baptist family, but she turned her back on the denomination (though not her faith) in order to, as she saw it at the time, help women in times of grave need. But on Oct. 6, she could no longer ignore what she felt was God’s calling. She walked out of the center and joined the Coalition of Life, just down the street. Bobby Reynoso, head of the Coalition, was shocked when Johnson came through his door.
“It’s not what we were expecting,” he said. “But as Christians, it should be.”
As Christians, we should expect eventual victory in this struggle against abortion — whether we see an incremental step forward in this health care reform bill or not. Logic is on our side. Justice is on our side. And let me just presumptive and say it: I think God’s on our side, too.
The Christmas tree in Rockefeller Plaza, New York City. Photo by Alsandro
I live in Colorado, where it’s been about 230 degrees below zero for the last week. It’s hard to get into the Christmas spirit when one’s waiting for one’s fingers to thaw enough to type.
Still, I was able to check out a bit of information online today, and I ran across this open letter from the Very Rev. Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York. Seems I’m not the only one ready to bury the “War on Christmas” hatchet:
Obviously, I am enthusiastic about “keeping Christ in Christmas.” … However, many others don’t believe as we do but still wish to celebrate this wonderful time of the year. Parties, decorations, holiday specials, gifts – I’m all for it!
Still we see the public relations battle, the calls to spurn this retailer in favor of that, the angry denunciations of those who wish to sing “Silent Night” or “The First Noel” at a town event. Even more troublesome is that this season, when we should be celebrating peace, we find instead so many ways to be at odds with one another. It really doesn’t have to be this way.
Now, I like the sound of that. And really, if we can put a little peace on earth in New York, we can make it anywhere. right?
photo by Malene Thyssen
Sometimes, I think our blessings can be almost too overwhelming.
I’m reminded of that every Christmas, it seems, when my normally dowdy social calendar takes on all the characteristics of a month-long obstacle course: Crawl through the Christmas shopping, climb past the daughter’s social orchestra concert, leap over another Christmas party and finally cross the finish line, Christmas morning, looking not so much for comfort and joy but a nice, quiet nap.
I think I get a little Scroogish this time of year, and maybe I have company. It’s the only way I can explain the amount of anger generated by the whole War on Christmas thing.
I know lots of Christians find the fight over whether corporate America wishes us a “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays” to be a very big deal. I know Sean Hannity, Bill O’Reilly and others have dedicated scads of airtime to the issue. One prominent association has made the War on Christmas a centerpiece of its ministry, and it recently declared victory over the Gap when the company aired an unambiguous “Christmas” ad. (It had previously boycotted Gap for its rather squishy holiday marketing.) But the organization still keeps a “naughty” list loaded with businesses that are “against Christmas,” which include Best Buy, Office Depot and Victoria’s Secret. I guess the lingerie-clad “angels” don’t count.
I sympathize with the Christmas warriors on some level, I guess. I mean, I think it’s a shame when people are scared to wish others a Merry Christmas, for whatever reason. I don’t think most folks get offended. But by the same token, I don’t get offended if someone wants to play it safe and wishes me a happy holiday, either – and considering how commercial the season has become, the fight over Christmas feels a little akin to activists in Jesus’ time saying, “what?! Take the marketplace out of the temple?! What are you trying to do, marginalize religion?”
Again, I’m sure folks who worry about this sort of thing mean well. But this time of year, it’d be great to see Christians concentrating on being the hands and feet of God: Taking turns ringing a bell for the Salvation Army, perhaps. Or serving food in the local food kitchen. Or volunteering at a homeless shelter. I think that’s where hearts and minds are truly won.
Which is why I get kind of excited to see stories like this: Stories about Christians who are serving others and, perhaps, surprising some of Christianity’s shrillest critics. This particular story, from The New York Times, profiles Jenna Liao, a young evangelical who coordinates activities of volunteers for World Relief. Far from abandoning traditional evangelical causes like abortion, Liao has, like many evangelicals, simply broadened her scope.
While still a student at Wheaton [College], Ms. Liao took part in a national conference about AIDS for young evangelicals. She volunteered on a weekly basis at a homeless shelter for gay men in Chicago. She met her future husband, Richard Liao, literally over the ladle at a soup kitchen. Every experience served to confirm what Ms. Liao thought of as her scriptural mission statement, the passage in the Beatitudes that blesses the poor, the meek, the mournful, the oppressed.
We are truly blessed, and our blessings are never so apparent as they are during the Christmas season. I know it’s a time when, perhaps, we as Christians are sadly reminded that religion doesn’t command the attention it once did in this country. But maybe the best way to honor the season is not to mourn what we’ve lost and fight to get it back, but rejoice over what we’ve been given — and consider what more we can give.
© 2009. The Reader's Digest Association, Inc.
