FunctionalAmbivalent

More Evidence That It's Liberals, Not Greed To Make a Buck, That Are Ruining Christmas

For those who believe that Christians are persecuted in the United States, insanely opportunistic WorldNet Daily brings you a high-margin Christmas Defense Kit, including a $6 bumper sticker 3-pack.

For information on Christians who are really persecuted, and not just self-dramatizing whiners, go here.

Today's Unlikely Story

Six Catholic nuns in Arkansas are excommunicated for being members of a cult that believes the Virgin Mary has been re-incarnated as a Canadian. Here.

Show of Hands: Anyone Think Republicans Will Stand Up For This Particular Person's Religious Freedom? Anyone? Anyone At All?

Socially conservative Republicans have in the past supported the so-called Pharmacists' Rights movement. That's the movement dedicated to passing laws to protect the "religious freedom" of pharmacists who refuse to dispense birth control based on their interpretation of The Bible.

Now this:

A discrimination lawsuit filed by a Muslim Dunkin' Donuts franchisee who was not allowed to renew his contract with the chain because of a refusal to sell pork products can proceed, a U.S. appeals court ruled Tuesday.

The decision reversed an Illinois federal court judge's 2004 ruling that rejected Walid Elkhatib's argument that Dunkin' Donuts discriminated against him based on his race by making the sale of breakfast sandwiches with bacon, ham or sausage a mandatory part of his franchise agreement.

From a legal standpoint, the logic in this case is exactly the same as the logic in the Pharmacists' Rights cases. (For previous crabbiness on this subject, read this.) Should a person in a private, contractual agreement with a business be able to violate parts of that agreement purely because he or she doesn't want to comply on religious grounds?

The sensible thing, of course, would be for the law to step aside and let the businesses run the way they want to run. If Dunkin Donuts wants it franchises to carry bacon sandwiches for breakfast, that's Dunkin's business and anyone who doesn't want to live by Dunkin's rules shouldn't be a franchisee. If Walgreens wants to sell birth conrol pills and one of Walgreens' pharmacists doesn't, Walgreens should be free to terminate the employment of that pharmacist.

Republicans have sought to enshrine Christians as a protected class, able to live by their own rules even in entirely voluntary business relations. This has been positioned as an issue of religious freedom. If that's really the case, consistency would require Republicans to support Mr. Elkhatib's right to refuse to sell the menu items Dunkin Donuts advertises and expects its customers to be able to purchase.

I, personally, do not expect the Republican politicians so deferential to Christian pharmacists to step up quite so enthusiastically for Mr. Elkhatib. That's because I, personally, think most of the conservative Republican argument is not in favor of religious freedom so much as it is about the creation of an American theocracy. Religious freedom, to them, is the power of certain sorts of Christians to dictate the behavior of the rest of us.

We'll see.

God Hates Me

It is at this very moment hailing on my new car.

UPDATE: My new car survived. I barely did. When it used to hail on my old car I didn't even care. I miss my old car.

And no, I don't really believe that God hates me.  I assume that God is not concerned with whether my car gets dented or not. I vastly prefer a God who prioritizes better than that.

In Which I Visit Mid-America and Witness Religious Insanity

This weekend my wife and I went to the small town in Illinois where my parents have settled. It's a Mayberry kind of town where one of my sisters lives, and with my parents' health not what it once was they moved to be close to people who could help them.

So we're in a chain steakhouse eating and catching up, and we mention to the waitress that we've never been to that restaurant before. She tells us that it's the restaurant's last night, that it's going out of business. That kind of surprises us, because this is not a town with a lot of restaurant options.

So as we're talking I look around the restaurant and I spot the manager going from table to table, delivering his Christian witness. He asks about the religious affiliation of each customer and sits down at the table to explain his own relationship with Christ. My mother, wife and I -- regular churchgoers and practicing Christians all -- chewed fast to get the hell out of there before this guy could come to our table. My 81 year old mom commented that didn't seem like a very effective form of evangelism, since all it did was drive people from the restaurant.

We understood, at that moment, why the restaurant was going out of business.

I hope the manager had an ownership stake in the place. I'd hate to think he was simply pissing away other people's money.

Trick or Treat

First of all, I, personally, favor letting anyone dress up for Halloween any way they want.  And, second of all, because of that, I personally think kids shouldn't wear Halloween costumes to school, because what schools don't need is hallways filled with little hookers and pimps which, for some reason, is what people want to dress up as for Halloween.

One other thing before we get started: In my vast experience with the public schools, there seems no group less qualified to make complicated public policy decisions than elementary school principals.  I've dealt with quite a few elementary school principals, and I've found every one of them committed and well-intentioned and dedicated, but also not capable of doing the kind of intricate calculations necessary to maneuver the tabloid-infested waters of difficult social issues.

All of that said, here's a case in which a Christian mom, who doesn't like Halloween because it's based on a pagan celebration, decides to make a point by dressing her 10-year old son up as Jesus and sending him off to school 

Now I, personally, think this is a provocation.  That doesn't make it a bad thing -- I'm actually in favor of provocations, myself -- but let's not pretend it's the act of an innocent.  Mom was making a statement about the acceptance of paganism.  And a highly successful provocation it was, too.  The school reacted just as one might expect the school to react: The principal, wanting to avoid controversy more than she wanted to avoid anything else in the whole world, sent little Bobby or Billy or whatever (his name has not been released because he's only 10) home to put on some less provocative attire.  This must have seemed like a simple decision at the time: the Halloween celebration at the school is not about either promoting a religion or giving parents a forum in which to grind political axes.  (I assume the principal would have reacted the same if some parent had sent their little Susnhine to school dressed as, for example, Iraqi war dead.)  By sending the boy home, the principal generated exactly what she was seeking to avoid: controversy.

And now mom's suing.  The lawsuit is being bankrolled by the Alliance Defense Fund, an Arizona group that is kind of an ACLU for Christians with persecution complexes.  "A legal alliance defending the right to hear and speak the Truth," is the advertising tagline.  The ADF press release describes the horrifying outrage this way:

But on Oct. 31, Willow Hill Principal Dr. Patricia Whitmire told the fourth-grade student’s mother that a Jesus costume would violate the school’s religion policy.  Whitmire required that the young student remove his “crown of thorns” and not identify himself as Jesus.

I, personally, don't have a dog in this hunt.   If it's up to me I let little Bobby or Billy or whatever his name is dress any way he wants for Halloween -- which is, paradoxically, why I think the only rational position to take in this is that schools ought not to have Halloween parties at all.  I suspect that's what mom and the ADF are really aiming for: driving the pagans from the public square.  But I think there's also a possibility that this might be a case in which the unintended consequences highly displease the authors of the whole incident.

It seems to me mom and the ADF have a great case here.  If a kid can dress up as a devil -- and devil costumes are common on Halloween, at least in my neighborhood -- kids ought to be able to dress as Jesus as well.  It only makes sense.  So let's say the law behaves itself and the outcome of the case reflects good sense; mom and the ADF win.  If they do, it will decrease significantly the power of school administrators to limit the range of Halloween costumes acceptable in schools.  A lot of schools will say "enough is enough" and stop wasting time on Halloween, but a lot won't.  Soon the hallways will be filled with pimps and hookers and Iraqi war dead and even multiple interpretations of Jesus.   Some of those interpretations may be less than adoring.

And there's the rub: the result of all of this may be a world in which Jesus becomes just another Ninja Turtle in the pantheon of American's great celebration of the alter ego.  Imagine the aisles of Walgreens and Wal Mart and the hundreds of of Halloween Super Stores lined with 100% polyester Jesus costumes.  I, personally, am a highly tolerant liberal with a sense of humor that makes even my friends cringe, but packs of bleeding Christ-children out begging for candy seems horrifically insulting to not only Christians but to faith itself.

Fashionable though it may be, in some circles, for Christians to posture as a persecuted minority, the outcome of this case -- the normalization of Christ as ironic Halloween identity -- seems like the kind of thing that sensible Christians ought not to be fighting for.  But that, in effect, is what the outcome of this case might bring.

Jesus and George

Beliefnet takes a look at the Christianity of George Washington:

What do the knowable facts show? A portrait not likely to be satisfying to either extreme in the culture war – a spiritual man who believed God was protecting him and the nation, and yet who showed disinterest in and sometimes disdain for important facets of Christianity.

In some ways, the Father of Our Country bears a striking resemblance to a lot of other fathers: 

He was a casual observer of the Sabbath and a semi-regular attendee of church – a little more than once a month, according to Boller's review of Washington's diaries. For instance, Washington attended church four times in the first five months of 1760 and 15 times in the year 1768. Sometimes bad weather prevented him from making the lengthy trip but there's also evidence that Washington visited friends, traveled or went foxhunting instead of to church.

He did all of that because there were no golf courses within riding distance from Mt. Vernon.

Read the whole fascinating thing here.

One Might Imagine God Would Find a More Efficient Way To Communicate

An 81-year old woman gets a pet turtle and finds meaning in the markings on its belly:

"I told some of my friends, you know, 'I got a turtle,' and I said it has the image of the Virgin Mary on it, and I said it's getting plainer and plainer, and they said 'Yeah, Shirley, you're 81 years old. You think we believe that?' I said it's the truth, so now they all believe it," said McVane.

She named the turtle "Mary."  So far, no sign of crowds outside her terrarium.

This Year's First Evidence of Discrimination Against Christmas

As my regular reader knows, I'm fascinated by the belief prevalent among some species of Christians that Chritsians are discrminated against in the United States.  The United States is, of course, an overwhelmingly Christian country. 

The prime battleground of anti-Christian discrimination is, as half-bright Fox News anchor John Gibson profitably called it, The War Against Christmas.  This war may or may not actually exist -- I, myself, think it doesn't, but then I'm a Lutheran, which puts me way on the outs with rad-right politico-Christians.  But even if it does exist, it's apparently not going well for the anti-Christmas side, as evidenced by this:

Christmas officially arrived in London on Tuesday as one retailer ignored the hot weather and got into the festive spirit.

Launching its 15,000 sq ft 'Christmas World', Harrods reminded customers they have only 139 shopping days left before December 25.

Yes, regular reader, Christmas has already arrived on Planet Retail, apparently not forced underground quite yet by the forces of evil.

I've said before and I'll say it again: If there's a war on Christmas it's being fought not by atheistic liberals but by capitalistic marketers.

Has the Vogue for Intolerance Passed?

Yesterday, the ultra-conservative Southern Baptist Convention elected a new president.  After years of purges of the ideologically impure, morally questionable (i.e., gay) and politically incorrect, Frank Page ran what he thought was a hopeless campaign in favor of unity and relative tolerance.

Page's win over two higher-profile candidates follows years of tightly scripted politics and little tolerance for internal dissent. He called his victory evidence that Southern Baptists believe "we could do together a lot more and a lot better than what we can do separately."

Could this be an indicator of change even on the far, far right?  Perhaps even a de-politicizing of conservative religion?  I think it might be.