As America’s favorite satirist put it:

“Yes, the long war on Christianity. I pray that one day we may live in an America where Christians can worship freely! In broad daylight! Openly wearing the symbols of their religion… perhaps around their necks? And maybe — dare I dream it? — maybe one day there can be an openly Christian President. Or, perhaps, 43 of them. Consecutively.”

The simple fact is that Christianity remains the world’s largest religion, and nearly 37% of the world’s Christians make their home in the Americas. Despite this dominance, or perhaps because of it, many Western Christians feel uneasy about the future, thinking that some secular/pagan/Islamic overthrow is just around the bend. This fear is often exploited by politicians to win votes, framing any limitation on Christianity or Christian institutions as a stalking horse for persecutions.

“You don’t want the gay liberation movement to morph into something like the Ku Klux Klan, demonstrating in the streets against Catholicism.” - Cardinal Francis George, Archbishop of Chicago

I think few realize how limited the discussion of religion really is in our media, often limited to debates between liberals and conservatives (or progressives and traditionalists) within Christianity, sometimes with a token Jewish or secular voice thrown in. Any deviance from this pattern is seen either as satire or scandal. Coming out of the Christmas holiday, where a yearly fabricated “war” over Christian celebrations continues to garner press, it can be easy to forget the millions of individuals who fall outside the Christian paradigm, and how we exist, worship, and compromise in a culture that alternately enforces a Christian culture while claiming that culture in under constant threat. For example, CNN looks at how “other faiths” celebrate Christmas (aka December 25th for anyone who isn’t a Christian).

“Sometimes in the West these days there’s a kind of tendency to clump all the religions together and say, ‘We’re all climbing the same mountain,’ and I think the intention there is nice. There’s a harmonious intention there. But I think it’s much nicer to say, ‘Let’s respect the differences and love and appreciate the differences of the other faiths,” [Buddhist monk Ajhan] Yatiko said.

Meanwhile, at RealClearReligion, columnist Jeffrey Weiss bemoans the “Xmas Borg” and discusses just how difficult it is to avoid wall-to-wall expressions of Christianity for two to three months out of every year.

“I defy Bill O’Reilly and his compadres to locate the smallest corner of our nation immune from the months-long drumbeat of Christmas stuff. For us, the holiday seems closer to Star Trek’s Borg Collective (“Resistance is futile!”) than anything I can find in the Christian scriptures. To be Jewish (or Hindu, Bahai or Brama Kumari) in America requires some effort to wall out the overwhelming pressure of our national majority faith.”

The tendency to bundle non-Christian Winter holidays together and treat them like cultural add-ons to the Christmas juggernaut has started to find some dissenters, but most of us rationalize celebrating the holiday in the secular-religious hybrid that has now become the norm (particularly since most of us have Christian relatives and friends). Pagans perhaps have the best excuse, as many traditions and observances have their genesis with our religious ancestors, but we still exist in a culture where those elements: trees, gift-giving, various decorations and customs, are understood by most as function of a nominally Christian holiday, not some syncretic hybrid.

So long as Christianity remains the dominant religious force in our lives minority religions will have to hope that secular separations of church and state hold (or in the case of Mexico, progress), and that Christians of good conscience start to understand how their power works, and how that affects those who aren’t Christian.

“The most searching way to discover, recover, or practice one’s faith is to be a member of a religious minority–to live on a small island of Otherness in an archipelago of bigger religions or in the lake of a theocracy. The situation can be agreeable or dangerous. This is a truism for religious minorities, but it may surprise many in “Christian America.” Not everyone belts out Christmas carols.

Being a minority tests the temper of a faith, its resilience and fiber [...] Being a member of a minority entails the ability to bend and to negotiate. This, in turn, demands a deep understanding of the majority and local conditions, deeper than the majority may have about the minority; respect for them whenever possible; diplomacy; patience; and the building of relationships, infinitesimal gesture after infinitesimal gesture.”

The author of that piece, Professor Catharine Stimpson, was writing about being a Christian in the Islam-dominated United Arab Emirates, and how that perspective has shifted the way she sees all religious minorities. I think that her experience is important, and her testimony much-needed. Christianity has a historical and theological persecution narrative, which can unfortunately become something of a complex that distorts reality,  instead of calling its adherents towards a witness of tolerance and coexistence for all. All persecution narratives, even and especially our own, run the risk of becoming a toxic method of making people of different faiths or perspectives an inhuman “other.” Faceless villains who sport labels instead of human qualities, who become distorted monsters not to be trusted. The challenge for the formerly persecuted is to rise above their own persecution narratives, to build a future where none are persecuted, while it is the challenge of minorities to avoid enshrining them in the first place.

I hope that as this holiday season winds down we’ll all take a moment to consider the perspectives of others, and to critically think about the narratives we are participating in.

The new policy would revoke previously adopted policies that allowed private organizations, such as the Freethought Society, the Pennsylvania Pastor’s Network, the Chabad of Chester County, and the Greater West Chester Chamber of Commerce, to erect displays on the front and south side lawns of the county’s 1846 courthouse facing High and Market streets. The resolution adopted calls for the county to “erect and maintain its own seasonal holiday displays to celebrate the traditions of the holidays” to support the troops, celebrate peace, and promote commerce. The displays, it stated, would conform to “constitutionally permitted … applicable law.”

No one is sure what will happen yet, but the Freethought Society of Greater Philadelphia is donating its news-making “Tree of Knowledge” to the county in hopes it will continued to be used.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrcUxFqrhYk

“The Tree of Knowledge has become a beacon of enlightenment and has drawn visitors to Chester Count y from around the country,” society President Margaret Downey said in the letter. As a gesture of goodwill, FS will donate the Tree of Knowledge and its ornaments to Chester County for use in official holiday displays. However, should the Commissioners reject these donations, we request that the explanation for denying the nontheist community representation be sent to us, in writing, at your earliest opportunity,” she wrote. “The eyes of the nation are on Chester County this holiday season as you decide whether or not the nontheist community will be allowed equal participation on the public grounds of a government building.”

Supporters are pointing out that this move is just the latest in a series of maneuvers designed to eliminate the troublesome “Tree of Knowledge” from the holiday displays.

“This would have been the fourth year in which the Tree of Knowledge shared the lawn of the Chester County Courthouse with the Christmas Tree, the Jesus Crèche, and a large Menorah. Each year has been a fight for the Freethought Society to get around the Commissioners ever changing procedures designed to block them from participating in the winter festivities. Last year, the county even created “zones” in which holiday displays could be placed, but after a few days all the displays were moved to a more prominent location not in the zoned area except the Tree of Knowledge…”

While the commissioners say this wasn’t a religiously-oriented decision, claiming it was about supporting the troops, even the local press seems somewhat skeptical of that assertion. Meaning we’ll most likely be seeing a  lawsuit, or at least the threat of one, very soon. While there isn’t a Pagan angle to this particular story, the deliberate closing of a public space to a single minority religion or philosophy can create a chilling effect for us all. If atheists aren’t welcome in the public square, I can’t imagine modern Pagans are either. Over the last couple of years Pagan involvement in Winter public holiday displays haven’t always gone over very well, and now it seems like the “War on Christmas” is being won by the self-proclaimed “Christmas” partisans.

“This season, merry Christmas — not happy holidays or season’s greetings — will dominate retailer’s marketing messages. There will be Christmas sales and Christmas trees and Christmas carols galore. That has the American Family Association, arguably one of the loudest voices advocating the use of Christmas in retailer’s marketing messages over the past few years, predicting that its crusade could conclude in the next year or two.”

The public square should reflect the diversity of the public, especially when it comes to religion, lest it be seen as establishing or endorsing a religious preference for the government. A nativity scene, a menorah, and Santa Claus isn’t diversity, it’s a subtle endorsement of Judeo-Christian cultural norms. Further, this time is special for many different religions, and to browbeat government officials and retail companies into “putting the Christ back in Christmas” isn’t “defending” Christmas, or protecting tradition, its silencing inconvenient voices.

“New media creators seek to report on their communities by being actively involved in them. They engage in newsgathering and reporting that is informed by their own knowledge and sense of place. They seek to entice members of their community in robust conversations. They pay close attention to their readers and communities to figure out what is of interest …New media news creators deliberately employ more involved (participatory), less dispassionate points of view, while maintaining the distinction between news and opinion …The primary motivation of news creators in starting a community news site is to amplify a sense of community and connect its members in meaningful interactions … For news creators, the primary gap is a geographic one. They are seeking to fill a void that exists because traditional media never covered their communities or have abandoned coverage because of economic pressures.”

The above could read as a mission-statement for The Wild Hunt and hundreds of other blogs, podcasts, and new-media resources out there. I’m not “embedded” in the Pagan community, I’m a part of the Pagan community, and that intimacy and familiarity gives me a perspective and vitality that no mainstream journalist can hope to match. I do believe I can be passionate about a topic while distinguishing what is fact and what is merely my opinion.  Further, the study makes plain that media creators and consumers (an increasingly blurry distinction) are both frustrated by the current state of mainstream news reporting, pointing out how “old media” has been petty and hostile towards emerging new-media solutions and  outlets.

This new attitude/reality is certainly worrying for newspapers and other traditional news-outlets. As Newspaper Death Watch states: “reinvention doesn’t come without pain”, and that pain has yet to run its course. However, I believe in the long run this change in journalism and news-gathering will ultimately create more quality journalism, not less. Further, it will forever change the old paradigm of a select few deciding what is “newsworthy”. For many, what happens in the world of modern Paganism isn’t worth reporting, or only worth reporting during Halloween, but we are no longer limited by the page-count or the deadline. In the future, news will be initially generated by self-interested communities which will then “trickle-up” to larger journalism-creating entities as “big” stories emerge. News outlets that continue to ignore these changes will just become another statistic for the media “death-watchers”.

In Other News: Turning briefly to Catholicism, I’ve previously mentioned that American nuns are currently undergoing a “doctrinal assessment” to see if they are coloring inside the lines and not straying too far into feminism, practicing Reiki, or getting too cozy with Goddess-worshipers. Well it looks like many of the women religious aren’t going to go down quietly, by, well, being quiet.

“Most US women religious are failing to comply with a Vatican request to answer questions in a document from Apostolic Visitator, Mother Angela Millea. Leaders of congregations, instead, are leaving questions unanswered or sending in letters or copies of their communities’ constitutions, NCR Online reports. “There’s been almost universal resistance,” said one women religious familiar with the responses compiled by the congregation leaders. “We are saying ‘enough!’ In my 40 years in religious life I have never seen such unanimity.” The deadline for the questionnaires to be filled out and returned to the Vatican appointed apostolic visitator, Mother Mary Clare Millea, was November 20.”

So what happens when non-contemplative Catholic womens religious orders, the ones who are usually the most tied to and involved with their local communities (and hence, quite popular with the laity) put their foot down? Saying that they are through being “bullied”? We can’t be sure, but I doubt this is making Benedict XVI very happy. Something tells me this isn’t going to be the last instance of civil disobedience and non-compliance from American nuns.

The Religion Clause blog alerts me to an update on the South Carolina “I Believe” license plates story that I’ve covered here at The Wild Hunt in some depth. It seems the local Palmetto Family Council, instead of urging the state to issue unconstitutional endorsements of a single faith, is going to follow the law and sponsor the plates themselves.

“The plaintiffs who just won the lawsuit that killed the General Assembly-sanctioned “I Believe” license tag are saying they won’t protest Smith’s plan — as long as it’s a private group, and not state government, that is sponsoring the tag. “This would be a specialty license tag like all the other specialty tags,” said the Rev. Neal Jones, one of the four plaintiffs who filed the lawsuit over separation of church and state. “It would be an expression of freedom of speech by a private group, and we don’t have a problem with that.” Jones, pastor of the Universalist Unitarian Fellowship in Columbia, said he had discussed with the other three plaintiffs the possibility of a private group putting “I Believe” on a tag. “Everyone was fine with it,” he said.”

You know, if local Christian groups had just coughed up the $4000 dollars to sponsor the specialty plate in the first place we wouldn’t have had to have an expensive court battle. But I suppose that would rob local politicians of some quality Christian pandering for votes.

In another follow-up, the massive (and controversial) Nepalese ritual-animal-slaughter of the Gadhimai Mela is over and the AFP interviews some unrepentant participants in the killings.

“Munna Bahadur Khadgi, a professional butcher, said he had enjoyed the chance to give the goddess “something in return.” “Gadhimai has been kind enough for me to have a good life and I take this slaughter as a way of saying ‘thank you’,” said the 40-year-old, who said he had killed 200 buffalo this year. “I make money by killing animals normally but at the festival I do it for spiritual satisfaction. It is the least that I could do for the goddess and I didn’t want to miss this opportunity.” For 31-year-old Abhimanyu Rana, the slaughtering was in keeping with the family’s religious belief and practice. “When I was young I had seen my dad and grandpa slaughtering animals. I am proud that I am continuing the family history,” said Rana, who owns a local restaurant.”

But while many local Nepalese participants seemed pleased with the festivities, Utpal Parashar of the Hindustan Times seemed to have had a terrible time, saying the slaughter was “nauseating” and that he was pick-pocketed twice. Inside Nepal, a commentator for the Kathmandu Post, invoking Peter Singer, said the event was “the legitimization of violence in Nepal writ large”. The coalition lobbying to stop the mass-sacrifice points out that few safety and humane regulations were witnessed during the festival, and I can’t help but wonder if a reformation movement would have met with better success than a movement for a complete ban.

In a final note, now that Thanksgiving is over, people are turning toward Yuletide gift-giving and reporters are anxious to turn in their “pagan origins of Christmas” story before heading out for Black Friday deal-hunting. In an article about a festival of trees, the pre-Christian origins of hauling a tree indoors was cited, while a variety of letter-writers are quick to point out the pagan-ness of Christmas while considering church-state concerns. Meanwhile, SF Gate columnist Jon Carroll quotes a reader on the issue of Jews adapting and adopting Christmas for themselves.

“So can’t the Jews attempt something that the Christians did so successfully 200 or so years ago with a pagan celebration?”

Yes Virginia, Winter festivals do predate Christianity, and that religion did steal borrow many popular pagan traditions in the process. However, I’m not sold on the theory that Santa was a shaman. I’m more a “he exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist” kind of guy. I’m also a let everyone celebrate their Winter festivals in whatever way they want kind of guy, but I still think that Gap ad is stupid.

That’s all I have for now, have a great day!

Even though the American Family Association stumbled from the gate in the kick-off to this year’s skirmishes over religious language and iconography during the Winter holidays (aka “The War on Christmas”), that doesn’t mean other groups haven’t been cowed. Instead it looks like were going to be seeing a rather holy protest at the steps of the United States Supreme Court as Faith and Action and the Christian Defense Coalition stage a live Nativity scene.

“Rev. Rob Schenck, President of Faith and Action, states, “The traditional creche, portraying Mary, Joseph and the Christ Child, along with the angels, shepherds and Wise Men, remind us all of what Christmas is all about. “We like to refer to this effort as keeping Christ Mass in the nation’s Capitol.” Rev. Patrick J. Mahoney, Director of the Christian Defense Coalition, adds, “Sadly, we are seeing an erosion and hostility toward public expressions of faith in the public square.   This is especially true during the Christmas Season. “The Nativity Project and Operation Nativity are reminders that our Constitution provides freedom ‘of’ religion not freedom ‘from’ religion…”

Ah, the old “freedom of” not “freedom from” argument, too bad that commitment to freedom is a mile wide and only an inch deep. As the Green Bay Wisconsin Nativity battle proved, once people actually start demanding real “freedom of”, which means the inclusion of all religions and philosophical points of view on public lands, things start to go a bit haywire for those crusaders for “religious freedom”.

So while the  “you aren’t saying Christmas” boycotts have lost their sizzle, the battle over Christmas religious displays in the public square is still heating up. There are already a couple cases that look like they’re headed for the courts, and it seems like only a matter of time before a Wiccan or atheist decides they want a Winter display next to a Nativity on public land somewhere. Then we’ll get to really test the “religious freedom” resolve of the groups currently dressing up like Joseph and Mary on the Supreme Court’s steps.

Edward Woodward in "The Wicker Man"

At news of his passing, “Wicker Man” director Robin Hardy said that Woodward was “one of the greatest actors of his generation”, while co-star Sir Christopher Lee called him “a good friend and a splendid actor”. Matt Holmes at “Obsessed With Film” says that Woodward (as Sgt. Howie) committed the most memorable “gut-wrenching” on-screen death ever, while Pagan film reviewer Peg Aloi offers a touching farewell.

“Woodward is remembered by many of his colleagues as a kind, warm man who told wonderful stories, as well as being a consummate actor. His distinguished career will long be remembered. In particular, his role as Sergeant Howie in The Wicker Man will be remembered for its complexity, subtlety and power. Howie is a repressive, seemingly cold-mannered police officer who eventually reveals stunning emotional depth and passion. Woodward’s portrayal unfolds with delicious tension and suspense, as the film builds to its shocking ending.”

Here’s to you Mr. Woodward, thank you for your work, may you find peace across the veil.

Turning from the sad news of this passing, to the optimistic idea of deeper understanding and communication between faiths, we have an interesting editorial from the national Catholic weekly America. There, Catholic priest and Harvard professor Francis X. Clooney, S.J., who has argued in the past against “bland secularism” at Catholic colleges, favoring instead a “religiously diverse” campus, talks about his experiences teaching the class “Hindu Goddesses and the Blessed Virgin Mary”.

“The mix of the course is thus quite extraordinary: some wonderful Hindu and Christian texts read by a great group of students, as we discuss a wide range of issues about scripture, our images of God and humanity, and what to make of the varied religious experiences of the human race. Harvard is not the place wherein to reach single, definite conclusions about truth, but I think that this learning across religious boundaries does open us to truth, to Truth. By studying the traditions of the goddesses and Mary together, we understand both more clearly; those of us who are Catholic at Harvard find ourselves brought closer to devotion to Mary, who holds her own in every discussion. The goddesses too fare well, though each of us has to make up her or his own mind on how to appropriate these goddess traditions.”

Perhaps there’s room in this world for Mary and the goddesses? That seems to be at least partially the gist, he even recounts how a group of students sing hymns to both Mary and the goddesses before each class, and how both the Catholics and the goddess-worshipers have deepened their understanding and practice. To read more about Clooney’s work, you should read his essay “Interreligious Dialogue: Goddess in the Classroom”, and check out his book, “Divine Mother, Blessed Mother: Hindu Goddesses and the Virgin Mary”.

In a final “War on Christmas” note, it seems the American Family Assn. is issuing its yearly call to boycott The Gap for not saying “Christmas” even though the clothing chain’s silly wince-inducing holiday ad name-checks several yule-tide holidays, including “Christmas”, “Hanukka”, and “Solstice”.

“It’s unlikely the new Gap ads will placate the psalm-singers in Tupelo. After all, in the spirit of inclusiveness, Christmas is mentioned in the same breath as Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and solstice. The winter solstice, as everyone knows, is a pagan celebration, so — viewed through a peculiarly warped lens — the Gap ad puts Christians on the same level as a bunch of blue-paintedheathens dancing around a Yule log drinking mead out of a stag horn.”

The LA Times is dead-on the money, as the AFA has issued a boycott update saying the Christmas-invoking ad is “completely dismissive and disrespectful to those who celebrate the meaning and spirit of Christmas.” Yes, whatever happened to all those tasteful clothing-chain holiday ads that didn’t cheapen the holy Winter months by trying to sell you loads of stuff.

That’s all I have for now, have a great day!

“We succeeded in supplanting the pagan holiday, but we didn’t rid ourselves of the pagans. Instead, a good many of us joined in, gradually helping to associate Christmas with over-consumption, drunken revelry, and self-centered celebration. One can’t help but wonder if Christ would just as soon have us call what America now celebrates something else, something that doesn’t invoke his name. In this I find myself increasingly on the side of the grievance-minded and the anti-Christians—let’s publicly call this big event the “Happy Holidays,” or “Winter Festival,” or even “Saturnalia,” and stop—for the love of God—calling it Christmas.”

We here at The Wild Hunt fully support Woodlief’s proposition for Christians to fully surrender to a post-Christian inevitability. Here’s hoping his suggestion for all Christians to “quietly celebrate the birth of Christ in our churches and homes” reaches far and wide! Now that Pagans have retaken Halloween, and the tide is turning for the Winter holidays, could it be time for “the grievance-minded and the anti-Christians” to set their sights on Eas… I mean Eostre?
]]> http://www.patheos.com/blogs/wildhunt/2008/12/christians-want-to-give-it-back.html/feed 6 http://www.patheos.com/blogs/wildhunt/2008/12/preparing-for-pagan-christmas-rush.html http://www.patheos.com/blogs/wildhunt/2008/12/preparing-for-pagan-christmas-rush.html#comments Sat, 06 Dec 2008 14:45:00 +0000 Jason Pitzl-Waters http://patheos.com/blogs/wildhunt/2008/12/preparing-for-the-pagan-christmas-rush.html December brings many things: snow, cold weather, people acting horribly at shopping centers, and journalists seeking a new angle on holiday reporting. A favorite in recent years is to talk of the “pagan” origins of the Christmas holiday. These often come in the form of editorials rebutting the inane “War on Christmas” prattlings by Bill O’Reilly and his ilk. For example, Pete Langr of the Budgeteer News has this to say.

“It’s ironic that the effort to put Christ back in Christmas is both so profitable and so willing to focus on the Christmas tree and on the word “merry.” The Christmas tree itself “has nothing to do with other religious holidays celebrated in December” says my letter writer. Except that the Christmas tree was apparently co-opted by Christians from a pagan celebration in which evergreen boughs were hung in the home. In effect, the pagans lost an earlier culture war. Perhaps they bartered buttons saying ‘take back our winter solstice celebration.’”

And so on, and so forth. Some reporters have even tried to debunk the “Christmas traditions aren’t really Christian” debunkers.

“Despite popular belief, the idea of Christmas trees did not come from Pagan rituals. In fact, the first Christmas trees are believed to have originated in 17th century Germany. It took two centuries for the idea to catch on in the U.S.”

To bad the Bible somewhat refutes that notion.

“Jeremiah 10:2-4: “Thus saith the LORD, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them. For the customs of the people are vain: for one cutteth a tree out of the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the axe. They deck it with silver and with gold; they fasten it with nails and with hammers, that it move not.” (KJV).”

The New York Times has its own formula for many beloved Christmas traditions: pagans invented them, Christians appropriated them, Dickens (and 19th century England) synthesized, secularized, and popularized them, and the public embraced the entire culturally tangled mess whole-cloth.

“Standiford, the author of four other non­fiction books, tidily explains the appeal of “A Christmas Carol,” its readership “said at the turn of the 20th century to be second only to the Bible’s.” Replacing the slippery Holy Ghost with anthropomorphized spirits, the infant Christ with a crippled child whose salvation waits on man’s — not God’s — generosity, Dickens laid claim to a religious festival, handing it over to the gathering forces of secular humanism. If a single night’s crash course in man’s power to redress his mistakes and redeem his future without appealing to an invisible and silent deity could rehabilitate even so apparently lost a cause as Ebenezer Scrooge, imagine what it might do for the rest of us!”

So the answer to the “pagan origins” debate is that everyone’s right. A lot of “Christmas-y” stuff is pre-Christian in some form or another, but it is equally true to say that they have been fully absorbed into a Christian context. In turn, both the pagan and Christian contexts for hanging the holly and trimming the tree have morphed into a fully secular affair, complete with a popular mythology that is a mish-mash of pagan, Christian, and pop-culture elements. What the Christmas warriors don’t understand is that their war was lost long ago, and the majority of people who just wanted a reason to find hope, merriment, and camaraderie during the bleak midwinter won out.
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