I don’t know how far Santa Monica is from the La Brea tar pits, but it sure looks like the non-believers scored a slam-dunk into the sticky black for the War On Christmas this year.
Atheists 18, Christians 2, Jews 1.
Here’s to the nine-point-five percent for Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Have public Christmas displays been sunk with the mastodons into the mists of history?
Church spokeman Hunter Jameson:
Our belief is that these new applicants have been working together to displace and push out the nativity scenes from the park, rather than erecting a full display of their own.
Rick Perry keeps wanting to tell me there’s a war on religion. But I don’t see the problem with churches displaying the nativity on their own property. The problem with bringing religion into the public sphere, such as in schools and into parks, is that you never know what you might get.
When I worked in rural Iowa, athletes led their own prayers before games. I asked one of my parishioners what the reaction might be if he led the rosary instead of a run-on evangelical-type prayer. I got a blank stare. I thought that would be the case. I’m not so sure these school-prayer types really want their kids getting offerings from Catholics, Muslims, LDS, pagans, and other religions.
The Christians were outmaneuvered in Santa Monica this time around. Maybe they should be thankful they’ve still got Augustine’s mama as a namesake. Or perhaps they should start acting sly (like snakes) instead of extinct (like saber-tooth cats) and start lining up for next year’s lottery.
Morality: taking upon the attitude of Christ. That definition keeps moral conduct in the sphere of grace, not personal determination or even, as some conservatives might like us to believe, in one’s ideology:
