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 The
War on Religion
As we celebrate another Yuletide season, it’s
hard not to notice that Christmas in America simply doesn’t
feel the same anymore. Although an overwhelming majority of Americans
celebrate Christmas, and those who don’t celebrate it overwhelmingly
accept and respect our nation’s Christmas traditions, a certain
shared public sentiment slowly has disappeared. The Christmas spirit,
marked by a wonderful feeling of goodwill among men, is in danger
of being lost in the ongoing war against religion.
Through perverse court decisions and years of cultural indoctrination,
the elitist, secular Left has managed to convince many in our nation
that religion must be driven from public view. The justification
is always that someone, somewhere, might possibly be offended or
feel uncomfortable living in the midst of a largely Christian society,
so all must yield to the fragile sensibilities of the few. The ultimate
goal of the anti-religious elites is to transform America into a
completely secular nation, a nation that is legally and culturally
biased against Christianity.
This growing bias explains why many of our wonderful Christmas
traditions have been lost. Christmas pageants and plays, including
Handel’s Messiah, have been banned from schools and community
halls. Nativity scenes have been ordered removed from town squares,
and even criticized as offensive when placed on private church lawns.
Office Christmas parties have become taboo, replaced by colorless
seasonal parties to ensure no employees feel threatened by a “hostile
environment.” Even wholly non-religious decorations featuring
Santa Claus, snowmen, and the like have been called into question
as Christmas symbols that might cause discomfort. Earlier this month,
firemen near Chicago reluctantly removed Christmas decorations from
their firehouse after a complaint by some embittered busybody. Most
noticeably, however, the once commonplace refrain of “Merry
Christmas” has been replaced by the vague, ubiquitous “Happy
Holidays.” But what holiday? Is Christmas some kind of secret,
a word that cannot be uttered in public? Why have we allowed the
secularists to intimidate us into downplaying our most cherished
and meaningful Christian celebration?
The notion of a rigid separation between church and state has no
basis in either the text of the Constitution or the writings of
our Founding Fathers. On the contrary, our Founders’ political
views were strongly informed by their religious beliefs. Certainly
the drafters of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution,
both replete with references to God, would be aghast at the federal
government’s hostility to religion. The establishment clause
of the First Amendment was simply intended to forbid the creation
of an official state church like the Church of England, not to drive
religion out of public life.
The Founding Fathers envisioned a robustly Christian yet religiously
tolerant America, with churches serving as vital institutions that
would eclipse the state in importance. Throughout our nation’s
history, churches have done what no government can ever do, namely
teach morality and civility. Moral and civil individuals are largely
governed by their own sense of right and wrong, and hence have little
need for external government. This is the real reason the collectivist
Left hates religion: Churches as institutions compete with the state
for the people’s allegiance, and many devout people put their
faith in God before their faith in the state. Knowing this, the
secularists wage an ongoing war against religion, chipping away
bit by bit at our nation’s Christian heritage. Christmas itself
may soon be a casualty of that war.
December 30, 2003
- Ron Paul
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