December 29, 2005 Issue

The religious right continues to force non-essential issues before our beleaguered public.
Following on the heels of such burning topics as same-sex marriage and prayer in schools, we now have to enter the debate over Santa Claus versus Jesus in the “keep Christ in Christmas” debate.

Tele-evangelists and the leaders of the mega-churches need to worry more about keeping Christ in their actions and less about forcing Him upon everyone else. I am betting that Jesus would be less concerned about funding larger churches than about helping the poor.
He would be less concerned about receiving the glory after one team wins a football game than about helping the sick. (Trust me on this: Jesus and his father God could care less about who wins the Sugar Bowl.) Jesus would be less concerned about having forced prayer in public schools than He is about world poverty, war and famine. He would not be as concerned about homosexuality as he would be about love, compassion, and tolerance among all people.

If the proselytizing evangelists would spend less time trying to reinstate prayer in schools, they would have more time to teach children at home about their particular religious views. Parents have mornings and evenings and weekends to pray with their children. They have churches and Sunday schools and prayer meetings. That should be more than enough time to burden their children with topics ranging from sex to religion to “evil-doers” in foreign countries.

It has been said that, “Revenge is a dish best served cold.” Revenge is usually the result of actions taken because of resentment. Neither revenge nor resentment is healthy. This country’s actions taken after the catastrophe of 9-11 were not thought out, they were misdirected and they will prove to be far more catastrophic than the original event.

The great non-violent leaders of our time, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., both gave all the credit for their actions to the greatest anti-war and non-violent practitioner of all time: Jesus Christ. How in this world can we have so many blathering born-again Christians leading us to war and violence against people we don’t know or understand?

One of our most prominent religious figures recently advocated the assassination of another country’s president. These self-righteous nuts want us to believe that God is on our side. I thought God was on everyone’s side. I thought God fed the hungry and downtrodden and healed the suffering. Our leaders—both political and religious—are not advocating that.

The leaders of this radical new religious movement need to worry less about what happens inside their mega-churches and more about what happens outside of them. The teachings of Christ need to be put into action outside of schools, and churches and football games, not inside them. Evangelistic leaders need to spend more time ministering to the weak, the troubled, the poor and the ignorant instead of preying on them.

People will always think of the beautiful story of the birth of Jesus this time of year. We don’t need the obnoxious, flashing, computerized marquees that most churches now use to post goofy religious clichÈs to remind us what Christmas is about. What we do need is for the demagogues who are running the show at so many of these monster churches to show us a little more and tell us a lot less.

For whatever reason, the holiday season brings us a respite from the violence and hatred and bigotry we have become so accustomed to. The local police log, detailing criminal activity, is shorter. Outbreaks of military battles around the world become less common.
Acts of kindness occur more often. People are more reasonable and more understanding.

I don’t care who gets the credit for a more peaceful world during the Christmas season. Give the credit to Jesus Christ. Or Buddha. Or give it to Santa Claus. But religious leaders should pay attention. Because for the most part, their contributions to world peace and understanding and tolerance are not in line with the book they rely on for guidance.

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