Do You Remember "How the Republicans Stole Christmas" and That "The War on Christmas" Is Underway?

Bill Press is “mad as hell”: con-
servative Christians within the Republican Party have declared a monopoly on religion. John Gibson is convinced there’s a conspiracy among liberals to ban Christmas and, by extension, Christianity itself. There isn’t much upon which these two high-profile commentators agree, and you can see and hear them espousing their brand of politics just about anytime you’d like: Press hosts the radio program The Bill Press Show, is a political analyst on MSNBC, and author of Spin This!: All the Ways We Don’t Tell the Truth (2001); Gibson is host of the FOX Radio program The John Gibson Show and author of Hating America: The New World Sport (2004).

In their Christmas-season commentaries on religion and its place in society and government, it’s no surprise that their views are equally divergent. Take, for example, the manner in which Press and Gibson opine on the country’s divisiveness, using the au courant color-coded system popularized after the 2004 presidential election. Press writes:

As spiritual leader, [conservative Christians] look to President George W. Bush: a man, they believe, God Himself placed in the White House. Displaying a total lack of Christian humility, Bush says he shares their belief.

Faith in God, which used to be the common thread uniting almost all Americans, is now portrayed as the exclusive province of the GOP. Ignoring the fact that [Senator John] Kerry won millions of votes in red states—and Bush, in blue states—the media pundits would have us believe that election 2004 proved that there are two kinds of Americans: red-staters, who worship God, love America, and voted for President Bush; and blue-staters, who worship the devil, hate America, and voted for Senator Kerry. . . . [T]hose who live in red states thrive in the godly, moral values of Jesus. Those who live in the blue states wallow in the filthy, permissive amorality of Hollywood.

Well, I don’t buy any of it—and that’s why I wrote this book.

Gibson writes:

You might assume that [the war on Christmas] is being fought in blue states, bastions of liberalism and multiculturalism, where anything traditional, Christian, or Western is a target. But the war on Christmas is broader than you can imagine. . . . As you will read in [my book], Christmas is under attack in bright red states such as Oklahoma, Georgia, Texas, and Indiana.

. . . The wagers of this war . . . are a cabal of secularists, so-called humanists, trial lawyers, cultural relativists, and liberal, guilt-wracked Christians. . . . These [“backers of the war”] are the churches that marry gays and turn their backs on preborn babies. Their congregants vote for John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, and Barney Frank. . . . These are the people who fly over the masses they seek to dictate to, crisscrossing the country back and forth from Hollywood to New York City, who . . . are certain that the people who voted for George Bush want to install a Christian Taliban as custodians of the levers of power.

Gibson and Press rely on the U.S. Constitution to establish their viewpoints. Gibson, whose book is limited to the celebration of Christmas and whose tone stings with more severity than Press’s, cites regularly the First Amendment, from which the principle of separation of church and state derives. Gibson shows how school superintendents, city managers, and state boards of education misinterpret this Amendment—and indeed, break the law— when they institute bans on Christmas and its expression. Such prohibitions include the use of the colors red and green within a public school district (Chapter 4: “Plano, Texas: A Red and Green-Free Zone”), putting up Christmas trees in municipal buildings (Chapter 5: “Eugene, Oregon: ‘Therefore, We Decided to Ban Them’ “), and use of the word “Christmas” on a school calendar (Chapter 1: “Covington, Georgia: “ ‘We Couldn’t Call It Christmas’ “).

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that these symbols and activities are secular, not religious, and that, as part of the First Amendment they do not violate constitutional law even if they appear or occur in the public arena.

Gibson explains that widespread adherence to political correctness, tolerance and diversity, and avoidance of potentially offensive practices trigger this pervasive “hostility” toward Christianity. And he adds to his aforementioned list of miscreants the American Civil Liberties Union and the Americans for the Separation of Church and State, the “left-wing” institutions that maneuver this battle.

Whether or not you agree that Christmas and Christianity are under siege or find Gibson’s characterization of the war-wagers accurate or hysterical, many insights can be drawn from his book. One in particular is exemplary: “ ‘If a Catholic is offended by a star of David, or a crescent and star, wouldn’t the right corrective be to educate the Catholic and get him out of his dim-wittedness and his bigotry [rather than censor that which offends him]?’ “

In his insightful, smart, and commonsensical book, Bill Press raises “a number of critical questions about the proper intersection between religion and politics.” His focus is broad, and along with the Constitution, he references extensively the Bible—both the Old and New Testaments—to show how conservative Christians preach the Bible but “[ignore] the most important teachings of Jesus, which place love and compassion above greed and intolerance.”

Having a degree in Theology and spending 10 years in the seminary studying for the priesthood, Press’s Bible-talk is authentic; it is not puffed-up rhetoric used to justify his opinions. Press takes the Christian conservatives’ political agenda, which is based on Scripture and the Gospels and which they believe is mandated by God, and breaks it down to illustrate the misconstruing of essential Biblical teachings, the hypocrisy, the false claims that often go unchecked.

Press’s comparing-and-contrasting is impressive, and he doesn’t side-step any of the challenging moral, ethical, and social issues facing our nation. He tackles abortion, the environment, the death penalty, homosexuality, gay marriage, the waging of a “just” war according to traditional Judeo-Christian requirements, stem cell research, education, health care, and poverty—all within a religious and moral context.

Like Gibson, Press has his list of troublemakers. They include Rev. Jerry Falwell (now deceased), Rev. Pat Robertson, a “handful of Catholic bishops,” and James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family. He derides Dobson’s institution, the American Southern Baptist Convention, and the Christian Coalition of America. Press also uses a fair amount of sarcasm in his observations, yet it is not acrid or mean-spirited.

One goal of Press’s book is to generate “an honest discussion . . . about how to arrive at the proper balance between religion and politics.” (Common ground between Gibson and Press?) Another is to inspire Democrats to reclaim the moral high ground, which they’d held for decades― Think of FDR, Press says― but relinquished. They can achieve this, first, by acknowledging that religion does have a place in politics, and second, by “getting comfortable again talking about faith, moral values, and God. Until we do, however, Democrats will remain a minority party.”

Happy Holidays to the readers of “Off the Bookshelf.”

Portions of this book review appeared in MotherTown in December 2005.