Religion

A guest post by AWR Hawkins:

Beginning in the early 1900s there was a seismic shift in attitudes toward the relationship between education, societal norms, and Christianity. As this shift sharpened in focus, Christianity came to be viewed as nothing less than the enemy of freedom redefined, and a concerted effort has since been made to jettison it from our culture. Yet the question remains: Can there be freedom without Christianity?

During the first two decades of the 20th century, the Progressive Movement sought to separate education from religion, and particularly from Christianity. The goal was secularized education in the name of science: the false dichotomy was that Christianity and science were mutually exclusive.

Although the Progressive Movement’s glory days died with America’s full-fledged entrance into World War I, progressives themselves did not cease to exist. In obvious as well as not so obvious ways they continued to pursue their goal of education divorced from religion, and slowly broadened their goals to include the pursuit of a general society divorced from Christianity’s influence as well.

Perhaps the continued activity of the progressives was best exemplified in 1947, when the Supreme Court suddenly discovered that the true intent of the First Amendment was to separate Church and State in a way that gave the State control over where religion could or could not be practiced. (This decision would open the door to later ones barring prayer in schools, prayer before football games, prayer before graduation ceremonies, etc., ad nauseam.)

In the 1960s, those pursuing this secularism coupled it with a pursuit of freedom, but it was freedom redefined via a blend of humanism and hedonism. It was the not the freedom on which Thomas Jefferson pledged his life, his fortune, and his sacred honor “with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence,” but a cheaper thing through which radicals impressed by Bolsheviks, Socialists, and Fascists, looked to turn our nation’s order upon its head.

As the 1960s passed, the radicals that had come to age during that decade began permeating all levels of society, seeking positions of power from which to fundamentally change America. These were those for whom the phrase…

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Well, that time of year is once again upon us. You know- the time of year when one can still find a few people around that are brazen and uncouth enough to use the “C” word. That’s right- there is a small minority of people who still dare to refer to the “Holiday Season” as (gasp!) Christmas! Can you imagine? Don’t “those” kinds of people understand that they might offend somebody with such blatant attempts at forcing their “belief system” on others?

The good news is that with each passing year, the list of entities that can be counted on to respect the Constitution’s recently discovered ban on all things Christian continues to grow. We all know that the public school system has been systematically erasing our Nation’s Christian heritage for what is now going on an entire generation. Indian (oops) Native American (oops) FIRST AMERICAN “spiritual” rituals? No problem. Japanese paper origami cranes as "a wish for world peace?" No problem. Singing “Silent Night” at a “seasonal concert”? BIG PROBLEM!

We are now at a point where it has become a societal taboo to even utter the word “Christmas”.  Consider the local hospital’s annual decorative tribute/ fundraiser, which occurs each year around this time: The “Holiday Tree of Love”. How nice. How non-sectarian. How “non-offensive”. How very “sixties”. Can you imagine the uproar if the hospital referred to its tree by the term Americans used to call this ubiquitous December decoration- a CHRISTMAS tree? Heaven forbid they do so because that would be “imposing” a religion on people!

And don’t worry about having any religion forced on you when shopping Amazon.com, who, while seeking to profit from (ahem) "holiday" gift giving traditions, celebrate the always safe and beloved "12 Days of Holiday".  (After being a customer who has spent lots of money here through the years, I will seriously consider whether I wish to do business with them any more)

It’s really not all bad, however. Perhaps we can, through the simple replacement of certain words, re-introduce some traditional Christmas (oops) songs back into the various “holiday concerts” and other “winter celebrations”. How great it would be to once again hear the children singing Bing as he croons,

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by Patrick Hynes

There is evidence that Sen. Joe Biden’s presence on the Democratic presidential ticket has done Sen. Obama no favors among Catholic voters. And yet Andrew Kohut from the Pew Research Center argues that

“There is a tendency … to exaggerate the role religion has on voter behavior.”

What’s the deal?

Kohut errs when he speaks in such broad strokes about religion. For example, despite a six year propaganda effort on the part of progressive evangelicals and the mainstream media, white evangelicals support Sen. McCain over Sen. Obama by roughly similar margins to those President Bush enjoyed over Sen. Kerry. Going to church on Sunday still rivals owning a gun as a determinant to whether you will vote Republican.

To the extent Kohut is referring only to Catholic voters however, he has a point. There is an open debate whether there really is anything we can accurately call “the Catholic vote.” Geographic and ethnic diversity make is nearly impossible to measure “how Catholics vote.” We simply cannot lump white Catholics of Eastern European extraction with Mexican-Americans. In fact, Latino Catholics who are several generations removed from their ancestral homelands vote differently from Latino Catholics who are only one or two generations removed (they are more apt to vote Republican).

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