The War on "The War on Christmas"

According to this press release from a group called Faith in Public Life:

Catholic social justice leaders, priests, religious sisters and evangelical Christians want a “ceasefire in the Christmas culture wars.” These leaders are challenging Bill O’Reilly of Fox News and others who have lashed out against a so-called secular “War on Christmas” to join them in a new campaign that restores a focus on the common good during this holy season.

In an “Open Letter to Christmas Culture Warriors” to be published as an advertisement in the New York Post, Washington Times and National Catholic Reporter, the group says that outrage over some department stores using “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” fails to address the profound moral challenges we face in confronting the threats to human dignity in our world.

“We believe the real assault on Christmas is how a season of peace, forgiveness and goodwill has been sidelined by a focus on excessive consumerism,” the letter states. “The powerful message Christ brings to the world is ‘good news for the poor.’ Instead, Christmas is being reduced to a corporate-sponsored holiday that idolizes commerce and materialism.”

I'm basically sympathetic to this kind of critique.  Isn't it true that many of the "keep America Christian" efforts seem to be motivated more by the idea of retaining (cultural) power than the idea of pursuing Christ-like servanthood?

But there's a big potential pitfall in this criticism too.  The culture warriors may often overlook servanthood, but they are right to oppose secularism -- and the social-justice Christians need that opposition to secularism in order for there to be public space for their own critique.  If it's improper to bring up Jesus's name in pluralistic public settings (including department stores), then you can't proclaim, "Jesus came to bring good news to the poor and oppressed," in those settings.  The social-justice types need to give one cheer, maybe two, for the culture warriors.

The "Christian nation" notion can be criticized for promoting arrogance rather than servanthood; the critique can even be "secular" in the sense that it emphasizes what Jesus means for this world, not just for the church or for our souls after death.  But those critics should not, as they sometimes do, buy into secularism in the sense of "leave Jesus out of public settings so as to respect others" -- because that cuts the ground from under their own proclamations.

I've explored this distinction between servanthood and secularism in this article (posted at the right), and in this one called "Christianity and the Secular in Modern Public Life" (link is near the bottom of page, not the top).

Tom