With the holiday season full upon us, it’s time for finishing up gift shopping, negotiating family schedules, stealing some time from work (unless evaluations for layoffs are under way!), and maybe even, from our different traditions, remembering the “reason for the season.”
And oh yeah, it’s time to watch with horror the annual spectacle of Bill O’Reilly and other conservatives whining about the so-called “War on Christmas,” that conspiracy by atheist liberal retailers to persecute Christians by exposing them to non-sectarian seasonal mottoes like the deeply disturbing “Happy Holidays.”
If you’re interested, over at Beliefnet, I’ve done an angry post calling on Christians to wage war on all the “War on Christmas” nonsense, which is an insult to people who have really been persecuted for their faith, and exhibits an appalling ignorance of religious history.
And if you’re really in the mood to think about the intersection of the secular and religious in today’s society, mosey over to the Brookings Institution site and check out the useful study by columnist EJ Dionne and academic Melissa Rogers on how to structure a “faith-based organizations” initiative that doesn’t trample on church-state-separation principles.