When Interfaith Gets Beautiful<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Mike Bird wrote a post about the connection between Christmas, December 25th, and the "triumph of Christianity over paganism." Many pagans were less than\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2011\/12\/when-interfaith-gets-beautiful.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"When Interfaith Gets Beautiful\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Mike Bird wrote a post about the connection between Christmas, December 25th, and the "triumph of Christianity over paganism." 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{"id":5186,"date":"2011-12-20T00:44:13","date_gmt":"2011-12-20T05:44:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/?p=5186"},"modified":"2011-12-20T00:44:13","modified_gmt":"2011-12-20T05:44:13","slug":"when-interfaith-gets-beautiful","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2011\/12\/when-interfaith-gets-beautiful.html","title":{"rendered":"When Interfaith Gets Beautiful"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Mike Bird wrote a post about the connection between Christmas, December 25th, and the \u201ctriumph of Christianity over paganism.\u201d<\/a> Many pagans were less than flattered or impressed.<\/p>\n

$\"\"$ Star Foster, who blogs about her pagan faith here at Patheos, responded with a post \u201cWhen Interfaith Gets Ugly.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

What struck me most was that in her post it didn\u2019t<\/em> get ugly. And I saw in that something beautiful. A bright, shining example of the possibility of disagreeing strongly with someone and yet finding a way to do so in a manner that shows more respect than had been shown by the person to whom you are responding to, and so setting the course of the subsequent conversation on an upward trajectory rather than a downward spiral.<\/p>\n

(I realize that I might be suspected of having been swayed by the fact that Star\u2019s post described me as \u201calways awesome.\u201d<\/a> And so let me remind you that Mike describes me<\/a> as the \u201cLady Gaga\u201d of biblioblogging<\/a> \u2013 which is obviously a compliment).<\/p>\n

$\"\"$ I\u2019m also glad that this incident has given me an excuse to mention the humorous depiction (found at Acts of the Apostasy) of Patheos as the Borg of religious blogging<\/a>. When someone looks carefully at the posts by and interactions between the various viewpoints on Patheos blogs \u2013 pagan, conservative Christian, liberal Christian, atheist, and whatever else \u2013 we have been connected<\/em> here at Patheos. We have not been assimilated. We continue to disagree and discuss, and hopefully to illustrate in our doing so how it is possible to be direct and even forceful while also being respectful. But even when we fall short of that standard, we are connected, and remain so, hopefully illustrating that even if our disagreements or rhetoric gets a bit heated, the appropriate response is not to isolate ourselves into separate cliques<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And so I hope that you\u2019ll think of Patheos<\/a> as the United Federation of Planets<\/em> of religion blogging, rather than the Borg<\/a>.<\/p>\n

$\"\"$ <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"