From Touchstone Magazine:
Real Hard Cash
Russell D. Moore on the Path of the Man in Black

There was an empty seat at this year’s MTV Music Video Awards. The late Johnny Cash wasn’t there. It’s not as though Cash frequented the Generation X/Y annual awards program. He was old enough to be the grandfather of the most seasoned performer on the platform. Still, two years ago, even while he was sick in a hospital, the Man in Black was there.

At the 2003 awards show, Cash’s video “Hurt” was nominated for an award—up against shallow bubblegum pop acts such as that of Justin Timberlake. Cash didn’t win. But the showing of the video caused an almost palpable discomfort in the crowd. The video to the song, which was originally performed by youth band Nine Inch Nails, features haunting images of his youthful glory days—complete with pictures of his friends and colleagues at the height of their fame, now dead.

As the camera pans Cash’s wizened, wrinkled face, he sings about the awful reality of death and the vanity of fame: “What have I become? My sweetest friend/ Everyone I know goes away in the end/ You could have it all/ My empire of dirt/ I will let you down, I will make you hurt.”

Whereas Nine Inch Nails delivered “Hurt” as straight nihilism, straight out of the grunge angst of the Pacific Northwest’s music scene, Cash gives it a twist—ending the video with scenes of the crucifixion of Jesus. For him, the cross is the only answer to the inevitability of suffering and pain.

Fleeting Fame

“It’s all fleeting,” he told MTV News. “As fame is fleeting, so are all the trappings of fame fleeting; the money, the clothes, the furniture.” This could not be in more marked contrast to the culture of the popular music industry (whatever the genre), a culture of superficiality, self-exaltation, and sexual libertinism.

Perhaps this is the reason Cash remained—to the day of his death—a subject of almost morbid curiosity for a youth culture that knows nothing of “I Walk the Line.” At the 2003 awards show, 22-year-old pop sensation Justin Timberlake, beating Cash for the video award, demanded a recount. Why would twenty-something hedonists revere an old Baptist country singer from Arkansas?

In one sense, the Cash mystique was nothing new. For the whole length of his career, onlookers wondered what made him different from the rest of the Hollywood/Nashville celebrity axis. Much of it had to do with the “man in black” caricature he cultivated. Cash joked that fans would often say to him, “My father was in prison with you.” Of course, Cash never served any serious jail time at all, but he could never shake the image of a hardened criminal on the mend. People really seemed to think that he had “shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die.”

That’s probably because of just how authentic and evocative his songs of prison life were. “Folsom Prison Blues,” for instance, just seems to have been penned by someone lying on a jailhouse cot listening to a train whistle in the night: “There’s probably rich folks eating in a fancy dining car/ They’re probably drinking coffee and smoking big cigars/ Well, I know I had it coming/ I know I can’t be free/ But those people keep a’movin’, and that’s what tortures me.”

The prison imagery seemed real to Cash because, for him, it was real. He knew what it was like to be enslaved, enslaved to celebrity, to power, to drugs, to liquor, and to the breaking of his marriage vows. He was subject to, and submissive to, all the temptations the recording industry can parade before a man. He was a prisoner indeed, but to a penitentiary of his own soul. There was no corpse in Reno, but there was the very real guilt of a lifetime of the self-destructive idolatry of the ego.

It was through the quiet friendships of men such as Billy Graham that Cash found an alternative to the vanity of shifting celebrity. He found freedom from guilt and the authenticity of the truth in a crucified and resurrected Christ. And he immediately identified with another self-obsessed celebrity of another era: Saul of Tarsus. He even authored a surprisingly good biography of the apostle, with the insight of one who knows what it is like to see the grace of Jesus through one’s own guilt as a “chief of sinners.”

He Connected

Even as a Christian, Cash was different. He sang at Billy Graham crusades and wrote for Evangelical audiences, but he never quite fit the prevailing saccharine mood of pop Evangelicalism. Nor did he fit the trivialization of cultural Christianity so persistent in the country music industry, as Grand Old Opry stars effortlessly moved back and forth between songs about the glories of honky-tonk women and songs about the mercies of the Old Rugged Cross.

To be sure, Cash’s Christian testimony is a mixed bag. In his later years, he took out an ad in an industry magazine, with a photograph of himself extending a middle finger to music executives. And yet there is something in the Cash appeal to the youth generation that Christians would do well to emulate.

Other Christian celebrities tried—and failed—to reach youth culture by feigning teenage street language or aping pop culture trends. How successful, after all, was Pat Boone’s embarrassing attempt at heavy metal—complete with a leather outfit and a spiked dog collar?

Cash always seemed to connect. When other Christian celebrities tried to down-play sin and condemnation in favor of upbeat messages about how much better life is with Jesus, Cash sang about the tyranny of guilt and the certainty of coming judgment. An angst-ridden youth culture may not have fully comprehended guilt, but they understood pain. And, somehow, they sensed Cash was for real.

The face of Johnny Cash reminded this generation that he has tasted everything the MTV culture has to offer—and found there a way that leads to death. In a culture that idolizes the hormonal surges of youth, Cash reminds the young of what MTV doesn’t want them to know: “It is appointed to man once to die, and after this the judgment.” His creviced face and blurring eyes remind them that there is not enough Botox in all of Hollywood to revive a corpse.

Cash wasn’t trying to be an evangelist—and his fellow Bible-belt Evangelicals knew it. But he was able to reach youth culture in a way the rest of us often can’t, precisely because he refused to sugarcoat or “market” the gospel in the “language” of today’s teenagers.

One of Cash’s final songs was also one of his best, an eerie tune based on the Book of Revelation. His haunting voice, filled with the tremors of approaching hoof-beats, sang the challenge: “The hairs on your arms will all stand up/ At the terror of each sip and each sup./ Will you partake of that last offered cup?/ Or disappear into the potter’s ground/ When the Man comes around?”

Cash’s young fans (and his old ones too) may not have known what he was talking about, but they sensed that he did. They recognized in Cash a sinner like them, but a sinner who mourned the tragedy of his past and found peace in One who bore terrors that make Folsom Prison pale in comparison.

The Dark Side

Johnny Cash is dead, and there will never be another. But all around us there are empires of dirt, and billions of self-styled emperors marching toward judgment.

Perhaps if Christian churches modeled themselves more after Johnny Cash, and less after perky Christian celebrities such as Kathy Lee Gifford, we might find ourselves resonating more with the MTV generation. Maybe if we stopped trying to be “cool,” and stopped hiring youth ministers who are little more than goateed game-show hosts, we might find a way to connect with a generation that understands pain and death more than we think.

Perhaps if we paid more attention to the dark side of life, a dark side addressed in divine revelation, we might find ourselves appealing to men and women in black. We might connect with men and women who know what it’s like to feel like fugitives from justice, even if they’ve never been to jail. We might offer them an authentic warning about what will happen when the Man comes around.

And, as we do this, we just might hear somewhere up in the cloud of witnesses a voice that once cried in the wilderness: “Hello, I’m Johnny Cash.”

Russell D. Moore is Dean of the School of Theology and Senior Vice President for Academic Administration at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. He is the author of The Kingdom of Christ: The New Evangelical Perspective (Crossway). He is a contributing editor for Touchstone.

From The Los Angeles Times:

A new pope must face old problems
By George Weigel

GEORGE WEIGEL, a senior fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, is the author of the recently released "God's Choice: Pope Benedict XVI and the Future of the Catholic Church" (Har

December 30, 2005

POPE BENEDICT XVI has celebrated his first Christmas as bishop of Rome, giving his blessing "to the city and the world." His retired brother, a priest and distinguished choir director, came to stay with him; perhaps the Ratzinger brothers played Mozart duets on the Steinway that the piano company recently donated to the papal apartment. And now, the pontiff may be engaged in a little post-Christmas relaxation. Yet for some who were most enthusiastic eight months ago about the choice of Joseph Ratzinger as pope, this Christmas season has continued a period of waiting — some becoming a bit impatient — for Benedict XVI to fulfill more of the promise of his election.

It's not that the pope has been inactive since April. He has been a luminously clear teacher, the kind who gently compels others to think, even to reconsider.

His sermons are miniature masterpieces of Christian doctrine, the refined reflections of a man who has thoroughly mastered the Bible and 2,000 years of Christian tradition.

Then there was the lengthy free-for-all he had with Italian priests of the Alpine Diocese of Aosta in July; there, he spoke in an intriguing way of Europe as a world weary of its own culture, and he counseled European Christians to be patient as they traveled through what he described as "this tunnel, this underpass of arid secularism."

The pope's recently released statement for the World Day of Peace on Jan. 1 was a careful, penetrating analysis of the lethal combination of nihilism and fundamentalism that lies behind so much of modern terrorism. His widely anticipated first encyclical, reported to be ready for publication in mid-January, will likely be a challenging reflection on the false loves that mar 21st century life, viewed through the prism of the Christian gospel of love.

THE NEW POPE has also displayed a compelling public personality. He held the attention of more than a million young people at World Youth Day in Cologne, Germany, in August. In September and October, he consistently drew larger crowds to the weekly papal general audience than his great predecessor, John Paul II, had drawn at the height of the Jubilee Year of 2000. Those who worried in April that the shy, scholarly Benedict would not be able to summon the enthusiasm and affection that was showered on John Paul can relax: In his distinctive way, Benedict XVI is also a leader who commands attention.

Yet this is what those who actually knew Joseph Ratzinger — as distinct from the caricature of Joseph Ratzinger — expected last April. No one who knew the man doubted that this would be a pontificate of doctrinal clarity and insightful analysis of contemporary culture.

But something more was anticipated — that the new pope would take in hand, and soon, a reform of the personnel and practice of the Roman Curia, the Catholic Church's central bureaucracy. More than a few of the cardinals who rallied to support him in one of the shortest conclaves in modern history did so because they believed Ratzinger, having spent more than two decades in the Curia, would know what was broken and would fix it.

That may yet come. The pope is a careful, prudent man, not given to impulsive action or premature decisions. At the same time, it was precisely because he was not a product of the current Curial system, but rather a scholar who had to struggle to get things accomplished within it, that his supporters expected him to bring to the papacy a well-developed sense of where changes, even dramatic ones, need to be made in both structure and personnel. Those supporters are waiting, now a little anxiously, for serious change to be implemented.

Then there is the question of the appointment of bishops — and the volatile but unavoidable question of whether the church ought not devise criteria and processes for removing bishops who are manifestly incapable of leadership. Whether Benedict XVI undertakes a far-reaching reform of the Catholic Church's Roman bureaucracy or not — and my bet remains that he will, although perhaps slowly — his papacy will be judged in no small part on his shrewdness in choosing bishops and his courage in facing questions of episcopal failure. With half a dozen major appointments coming in the next three years in the United States alone, the stakes are very high.

Pope Benedict XVI has delivered, beautifully, as a papal teacher. Now comes the hard part for this man who wanted nothing more in April than to be spending this Christmas season back home in Bavaria

FrontPage Magazine's Woman of the Year: Oriana Fallaci
By FrontPage Magazine

FrontPageMagazine.com | December 30, 2005

After spending most of the last century fighting against fascism, Oriana Fallaci continues to demonstrate the enduring grip of Orwellianism: she is to be tried in Italy for thought-crime. For spending her childhood fighting Hitler and Mussolini, and for dedicating the last four years of her life to rousing the West to the danger posed by Islamofascism, she more than merits designation as FrontPage Magazine’s Woman of the Year.

Oriana Fallaci has rebelled against fascism most of her life. She is not an ideologue, bound to implement any given ideology. Hers is a defensive mission. She is, by her own designation, neither a conservative nor a leftist, finding defects with both. Like FrontPage Magazine, her main concern is fighting encroaching totalitarianism, not advancing a narrow partisan agenda ruled by either orthodoxy.

This is, in fact, her second honor from FrontPage Magazine. David Horowitz bestowed the Center for the Study of Popular Culture's prestigious Annie Taylor Award upon Oriana in a special ceremony in New York last month. In his speech, he called the Italian firebrand author and journalist “a warrior in the cause of human freedom.”

How right he was.

Oriana commenced her lifelong insurrection against totalitarianism early, fighting the Axis powers as part of the Resistance. For her actions, the fascists tortured her father, who defiantly refused to collaborate. The lesson stuck. Oriana smuggled weapons to anti-Hitler forces within Germany. After Mussolini received his just deserts, she became a journalist, acting as a war correspondent in Vietnam. In the following decades, she would earn a reputation as one of the world’s most probing interviewers.

Over her career, she met with the world’s leading figures – for good or ill – interviewing everyone from Kissinger to Qaddafi. She examined a rage-filled Yasser Arafat, who revealed to her that he liked little boys. She sat down with the Shah and the Ayatollah Khomeini (separately, of course) – the latter so infuriating her that during one of his rants, she ripped off the headscarf she was forced to wear in his presence. After making an international impact in her chosen field, she retreated into semi-retirement.

Then after a lengthy hiatus, Oriana Fallaci found herself lured from a self-imposed exile by the clarion call of 9/11.

She spoke and wrote forcefully about the peril a free, pluralistic, democratic, and secular society faced at the hands of an Islamic jihad. She condemned terrorism everywhere and called out the Euro-leftists who marched in solidarity with Palestinian terrorists – including some elements of the Vatican. Straining against the vivid memories of a war correspondent and every inclination of her heart, she supported the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, writing of her anguish:

I hate [war] as the pacifists in bad or good faith never will. I loathe it. Every book I have written overflows with that loathing, and I cannot bear the sight of guns…When peace stands for surrender, fear, loss of dignity and freedom, it is no longer peace. It's suicide.

It was in this period that she committed her unpardonable sin: she published “the trilogy” of books examining the threat of jihad in detail: The Rage and the Pride, The Force of Reason, and The Apocalypse.

The cancer-stricken 75-year-old woman was promptly demonized by the Islamic world, by the European Left, and even demonized as a racist by Newsweek.

Her crime? She exposed the threat of Islamic jihad – from without and within. Europe, she wrote, is becoming “an Islamic province, an Islamic colony.” Describing increasingly Muslim Europe, she wrote, “In each of our cities lies a second city: a Muslim city, a city run by the Quran.” When Shari’a rules certain areas of Christendom’s ancient home continent, and French girls cannot go through certain Parisian neighborhoods without wearing a burqa without fear of being raped, few could argue with her insight.

She frankly says she is against Islam, not because she opposes religious freedom, but because she believes in it. As she has said, after 9/11, “they want to come impose it on me, on us.” She calls herself “a Catholic atheist,” and she realizes the world cannot survive half-secular and half-theocratic, anymore than it can survive half-slave and half-free.

Unlike Daniel Pipes, she has written that there is no moderate Islam, that radicalism is ingrained in the religion itself, but that does not mean there aren’t any moderate Muslims. However, she recognizes some Muslims have risen above (or ignored) a literal interpretation of the Koran, as adherents of Judaism and Christianity did before them. In this, she is echoing both Muslim apostates and Muslim fundamentalists, each of whom insist jihad is the truest expression of the religion of Mohammed, and those who shun that path are displaying infidelity to the Prophet. As with Salman Rushdie, a fatwa was soon issued for the septuagenarian.

Her frank truthfulness was also too much for the sensibilities of unfree Europe. In 2002, she faced charges in France that her book The Rage and the Pride promoted “racism,” the plaintiffs apparently unaware “Muslim” is not a racial designation. (Fallaci supported Operation Iraqi Freedom to give Arabs the gift of self-determination.)

Two years later, she learned she would face similar charges in her native Italy, over the same book. In April 2004, an Italian leftist judge allowed the Muslim-instigated lawsuit to go forward on the grounds that her works were “without doubt offensive to Islam and to those who practice that religious faith.” However, FrontPage Magazine columnist Robert Spencer has examined the allegedly “offensive” passages that “defame Islam” – 18 in all – and found each one undeniably rooted in Islamic theology and history.

The plaintiff, Adel Smith, president of the Muslim Union of Italy, could as easily be charged by the loose anti-religious discrimination statute that has snared Fallaci. He calls on fellow believers in the Religion of Peace to “eliminate” and “die with Fallaci.” He also refers to Christianity as a “criminal association” and has demeaned the Crucifix as a “miniature cadaver.”

However, Europe is Europe, and now for refusing to live according to Shari’a law, a woman who helped free Italy from Il Duce is on trial for speaking her conscience about the next impending, Islamofascist threat.

Since the trial, she has taken refuge in Upper Manhattan, during what she openly anticipates will be the final year of her life, estranged from the people she loves and the land she helped free. Yet in her exile, she has rallied another democracy in danger of slouching into pre-9/11 complacency. She tells all the American anti-terror crowds she can that the media are collaborating with America’s enemies. America faces an implacable enemy out to impose an all-encompassing legal code upon the entire infidel world, and the media continue to portray the jihadists as poverty-stricken victims of Yankee imperialism, someone with whom to enter into a dialogue. This is blurring the West’s vision of the true nature of the enemy and obscuring the stakes if we fail.

The media, though, are not the all-important problem. Most importantly in her view, Americans have lost their passion for freedom. They have specifically lost The Rage and the Pride, the patriotism that comes from being a believer in liberty and the burning desire to protect our “Shining city upon a hill” at all costs. That’s what she’s trying to stir, and the world will be safer in 2006 if it catches spark from her flame.

From The Dallas Morning News: An interesting take on Brokeback by a right winger.

Rod Dreher:
The real message in Brokeback

Seen the gay cowboy movie yet? I have, though I hadn't planned to because the rapturous reviews made Brokeback Mountain sound like a film that delivered yet another fierce left hook across the jaw of homophobic America. Ho hum.

I'm not interested in propaganda, whether pro-gay or anti-gay, and I get tired of the way the news and entertainment media find it difficult to discuss homosexuality without propagandizing. And some of the loudest conservative voices on gay issues are just about as bad.

What gets lost in the culture-war blitzkrieg over homosexuality are the complex and ambiguous truths that real people live and struggle with. Art that reduces messy humanity to slogans and arguments is not art at all, but sentimentality, kitsch, anti-art – in a word, propaganda.

My friend Victor Morton turned me around. On his "Right-Wing Film Geek" blog (www.cinecon.blogspot.com), Victor wrote a long, impassioned post that said, in effect, Don't believe the 'Brokeback' hype, from either side! The film is good, not great, Victor argued, but what makes it worthwhile is its fidelity to the tragic truth of its characters, not its usefulness to anybody's cause.

Intrigued, I found on the Internet a link to the Annie Proulx short story on which the movie is based and was shocked by how good it was, especially at embodying the "concrete details of life that make actual the mystery of our position here on earth" – Catholic writer Flannery O'Connor's description of what true artistry does. Though director Ang Lee's tranquil style fails to capture the daemonic wildness of Ms. Proulx's version, I came away from the film thinking, this is not for everybody, but it really is a work of art.

Brokeback Mountain is the story of two young cowboys, Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist, who meet in a 1960s summer job tending sheep on the mountain. They fall in love, then upon returning to the world, go their separate ways, marry and start families. A few years later, they resume their intensely sexual affair – visually, this is a rather chaste film – but with terrible consequences for themselves and the wives and children they deceive. The film climaxes violently and tragically, and it's this that has the critics lauding it as a cinematic cri du coeur for tolerance and acceptance of homosexuality.

But Brokeback is not nearly that tidy. True, the men begin their doomed affair in a time and place where homosexuality was viciously suppressed, and so they suffer from social constrictions that make it difficult to master their own fates. But it is also true that both men are overgrown boys who waste their lives searching for something they've lost, and which might be irrecoverable. They are boys who refuse to become men, or to be more precise, do not, for various reasons, have the wherewithal to understand how to become men in their bleak situation.

It is impossible to watch this movie and think that all would be well with Jack and Ennis if only we'd legalize gay marriage. It is also impossible to watch this movie and not grieve for them in their suffering, even while raging over the suffering that these poor country kids who grew up unloved cause for their families. As the film grapples with Ennis' pain, confusion and cruelty, different levels of meaning unspool – social, moral, spiritual and erotic. In the end, Brokeback Mountain is not about the need to normalize homosexuality, or "about" anything other than the tragic human condition.

Ms. O'Connor once wrote that you don't have to have an educated mind to understand good fiction, but you do have to have "at all times the kind of mind that is willing to have its sense of mystery deepened by contact with reality, and its sense of reality deepened by contact with mystery." The mystery of the human personality can never be fully plumbed, only explored. To the frustration of ideologues, artists like Annie Proulx and Ang Lee undertake a journey to those depths and return to tell the truth about what they've seen – which is not necessarily what any of us wants to hear.

As Ms. O'Connor taught, "Fiction is about everything human and we are made out of dust, and if you scorn getting yourself dusty, then you shouldn't try to write fiction."

Or read it. Or watch it.

Rod Dreher is an assistant editorial page editor. The views expressed in this essay are his own. You may e-mail him at rdreher@dallasnews.com.

The last War on Christmas post for 2005?

Indeed He Is Born!
"Merry Christmas" May Not Be Enough

By Mark Gauvreau Judge

December 15, 2005

There’s only one response to the war against saying “Merry Christmas”: We need to add another Christian greeting to the American lexicon. We need to meet secular force not with equal force, but with overwhelming counter-force.

It’s easier than you think. Last spring I was visiting a little religious icon store near Catholic University in Washington, D.C. The store is run by the Eastern Orthodox Church, which is slightly different from my folks, the Catholics. I realized this when I entered the store and a middle-aged man looked up at me and said:

“Christ is risen!”

I stood there, not knowing what to do. If this was a homeless guy, he was a spirited and happy one. I mumbled something about, “Yeah, great ain’t it?” and scuttled away.

Then it happened again. I was leaving the store right as another man was coming in.

“Christ is Risen!”

Before I could speak, the original guy responded.

“Indeed He is Risen!”

Ok, now it was clear that there was some kind of club operating out of the store that I was not a part of. A quick inquiry explained things. It was a few days after Easter. In the Eastern Orthodox Church, during the time from Easter to the Ascension, members great each other with “Christ is Risen!” And then the reply: “Indeed He is Risen!”

I say that in the wake of banned nativity scenes, “Happy Holidays” greetings, and solstice celebrations with “winter trees,” we add to the misery of the ACLU and the secular left. I think it’s high time we took the Orthodox Easter greeting and imported it to America.

Actually, this is a good idea for deeper reasons than you might imagine. To be sure, watching anti-Christmas jackboots implode at the prospect of not only losing the war on Christmas but helping midwife an entirely new Christian catchphrase is worth the price of admission. But it would also go a ways toward correcting the sometimes unseemly emphasis on Christmas in America.

Despite the theologians who remind us that Christ was born in the shadow of the cross—who ever gets to the third verse of “We Three Kings,” which refers to Christ as “child and king and sacrifice”?—the commercialization of the holiday has largely overwhelmed it’s religious intent, a fact recently noted by Pope Benedict. Easter, which is supposedly the time of the greatest miracle and cause for the profoundest joy, suffers by comparison. A recent encyclical from the Eastern Orthodox Church, delivered this past Easter, eloquently says as much:

Christ is risen, shaking the earth,
Removing sadness and bringing joy.

With these words of the Holy Bishop Nicholai, we announce the most joyous of all days—the day when life manifested itself to the world, when death was defeated, when the doors to Hades were destroyed, the all-joyous day the day of Resurrection.

The resurrection is the greatest event in our human history, our Divine-human eternity. It is the day that delivers us out of all the worldly days and nights of this life and brings us into the day without evening, the eternal day of God's Kingdom. “Pascha is the Feast of all feasts and Celebration of all celebrations, which surpasses all other feasts and celebrations just as the sun surpasses the stars,” said St. Gregory the Theologian.

Imagine the sea change that could occur if we adopt the simply orthodox call and response. To be sure, there would be a significant breaking in period. I learned this the other day when I tried out the greeting while Christmas shopping at the mall. I tried it at three stores. At the first, a nice young lady rang up my purchase, some clothes.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Christ is Risen!” I shouted.

“Thank you,” she said, backing away.

“Indeed He is Risen” I said, furnishing my own reply. She seemed relieved when I made for the exit.

The second store, a record shop, was more of the same, except this time is was a male teen-age clerk.

“Christ is Risen!”

“Um...I don’t think we have that.”

“Indeed He is Risen.”

“You may wanna check our Christian rock section...” He reached for the phone. I think he was about to buzz the manager. I beat it for the front door.

The third time was the charm. It was a middle-aged African-American man. He had an accent that I guessed was from Nigeria, and an inquiry proved me right. Christianity is booming in Africa, and it shows.

“Christ is Risen!”

“Amen!” he shot back with a laugh.

I told him the proper response. He nodded but didn’t repeat it. All he said was, “I believe it.” Then, like a member of a dissident underground, he leaned forward and whispered “Merry Christmas.”

I considered that the baptism of a new movement. For a few years we can look forward to baffled looks from friends—even fellow Christians—store clerks, even clergy. But the key is in making oneself as obnoxiously ubiquitous about it as ACLU lawyers are whenever a creche appears in the public square. Say it to your mailman. Greet store clerks with “C is R!” Put it on t-shirts. If we wanted, we could even take things further. How about, “Grand Annunciation!” Or “Brilliant Immaculate Conception!”

If we put our minds to it, we could have some kind of Christian greeting for almost every day of the year. Of course, in these times of aggrieved oversensitivity, some will be offended and things could get ugly, perhaps even winding up in court. But that would be worth it just to see where the ACLU ends up—defending free speech of the anti-Christian minority.

On second thought, maybe a tsunami of greeting is not a good idea—its ubiquity may take away its punch and even lapse into farce. Best to stick with the assault twice a year.

“Christ is Risen!”

All together now.

Darwin's Pyrrhic Victory
By Pat Buchanan

"Intelligent Design Derailed," exulted the headline.

"By now, the Christian conservatives who once dominated the school board in Dover, Pa., ought to rue their recklessness in forcing biology classes to hear about 'intelligent design' as an alternative to the theory of evolution," declared The New York Times, which added its own caning to the Christians who dared challenge the revealed truths of Darwinian scripture.

Noting that U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III is a Bush appointee, The Washington Post called his decision "a scathing opinion that criticized local school board members for lying under oath and for their 'breathtaking inanity' in trying to inject religion into science classes."

But is it really game, set, match, Darwin?

Have these fellows forgotten that John Scopes, the teacher in that 1925 "Monkey Trial," lost in court, and was convicted of violating Tennessee law against the teaching of evolution and fined $100? Yet Darwin went on to conquer public education, and ACLU atheists went on to purge Christianity and the Bible from our public schools.

The Dover defeat notwithstanding, the pendulum is clearly swinging back. Darwinism is on the defensive. For, as Tom Bethell, author of "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science," reminds us, there is no better way to make kids curious about "intelligent design" than to have some Neanderthal forbid its being mentioned in biology class.

In ideological politics, winning by losing is textbook stuff. The Goldwater defeat of 1964, which a triumphant left said would bury the right forever, turned out to be liberalism's last hurrah. Like Marxism and Freudianism, Darwinism appears destined for the graveyard of discredited ideas, no matter the breathtaking inanity of the trial judge. In his opinion, Judge Jones the Third declared:

"The overwhelming evidence is that (intelligent design) is a religious view, a mere re-labeling of creationism and not a scientific theory. ... It is an extension of the fundamentalists' view that one must either accept the literal interpretation of Genesis or else believe in the godless system of evolution."

But if intelligent design is creationism or fundamentalism in drag, how does Judge Jones explain how that greatest of ancient thinkers, Aristotle, who died 300 years before Christ, concluded that the physical universe points directly to an unmoved First Mover?

As Aristotle wrote in his "Physics": "Since everything that is in motion must be moved by something, let us suppose there is a thing in motion which was moved by something else in motion, and that by something else, and so on. But this series cannot go on to infinity, so there must be some First Mover."

A man of science and reason, Aristotle used his observations of the physical universe to reach conclusions about how it came about. Where is the evidence he channeled the Torah and creation story of Genesis before positing his theory about a prime mover?

Darwinism is in trouble today for the reason creationism was in trouble 80 years ago. It makes claims that are beyond the capacity of science to prove.

Darwinism claims, for example, that matter evolved from non-matter -- i.e., something from nothing -- that life evolved from non-life; that, through natural selection, rudimentary forms evolved into more complex forms; and that men are descended from animals or apes.

Now, all of this is unproven theory. And as the Darwinists have never been able to create matter out of non-matter or life out of non-life, or extract from the fossil record the "missing links" between species, what they are asking is that we accept it all on faith. And the response they are getting in the classroom and public forum is: "Prove it," and, "Where is your evidence?"

And while Darwinism suggests our physical universe and its operations happened by chance and accident, intelligent design seems to comport more with what men can observe and reason to.

If, for example, we are all atop the Grand Canyon being told by a tour guide that nature, in the form of a surging river over eons of time, carved out the canyon, we might all nod in agreement. But if we ask how "Kilroy was here!" got painted on the opposite wall of the canyon, and the tour guide says the river did it, we would all howl.

A retreating glacier may have created the mountain, but the glacier didn't build the cabin on top of it. Reason tells us the cabin came about through intelligent design.

Darwinism is headed for the compost pile of discarded ideas because it cannot back up its claims. It must be taken on faith. It contains dogmas men may believe, but cannot stand the burden of proof, the acid of attack or the demands of science.

Where science says, "No miracles allowed," Darwinism asks us to believe in miracles.

Why Black Christians Shouldn't Celebrate Kwanzaa
(With Commentary)
By LaShawn Barber

“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Do not be carried about with various and strange doctrines.” Hebrews 13:8&9

America — the greatest country in the world — was founded on the concept of religious freedom. In America, you can be a Christian, Jew, Muslim, atheist or pagan, without fear of persecution. While government cannot endorse one religion over the other, individuals can.

[Discussions about Christ are taboo in government schools, but Kwanzaa isn’t. From a reader: “Today a gentleman was invited by my child’s kindergarten teacher to talk about Kwanzaa to the class…If the philosophy of Kwanzaa is allowed to be discussed in public school should I be allowed to discuss Jesus Christ with the class also?” Answer: Of course you should be allowed, but you are NOT.]

For decades, the media have given credence to many a self-appointed black “leader,” no matter how outrageous. Now they’re doing the same with a pagan ritual called Kwanzaa, a so-called African-American holiday.

A made-up, anti-Christian observance, Kwanzaa is celebrated by blacks who profess Christ. In our politically correct climate, even President George Bush, a believer in Christ, feels obligated to praise this ritual.

[All holidays are made up! True. But in this context, here is what I meant: Kwanzaa is a jumble of political ideology, pseudo-cultural, and spiritualized “African” rituals. Unlike Christmas, the Christian observance of the birth of the Savior, Kwanzaa isn’t a deep-rooted, historical, or true observance of anything African. An ex-convict created a faux African Christmas replacement for black folks.]

Kwanzaa was invented in 1966 by Dr. Maulana “Ron” Karenga, a former black militant, Marxist and convicted felon. Claiming to have the unity of black people in mind, Karenga committed most of his crimes against blacks.

Just five years after his invention, he was convicted of torturing two black women by stripping them naked, beating them with electrical cords, placing a hot iron into the mouth of one and mangling the toe of the other in a vice. During the ordeal, he forced them to drink detergent.

[Hey, we all have a past, including me. I just thought this information was important to note.]

But I digress.

Observed from December 26 to January 1, this “alternative” to Christmas is based on a mixture of East African harvest rituals called first fruits — according to Karenga — and 1960s radicalism, although most ancestors of black Americans were from West Africa.

[I cringe when I read news stories that assert Kwanzaa is a “celebration of black culture.” ]

Participants acknowledge their African roots and promote seven, harmless-sounding principles — unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity and faith.

While they sound commendable, the guiding principle behind Kwanzaa is based on race, not on faith in the one true living God and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Paganism is a “religion of nature.” Those who practice it and other New Age fallacies see the divine in the created — humans, sun, moon, stars, trees — instead of the Creator. Christians who worship created beings are acting like pagans. It’s that simple.

[Christmas also has pagan roots! False. While it’s true that certain objects associated with Christmas have pagan origins (the Christmas tree, mistletoe), the commemoration of the birth of Christ itself is not pagan. Critics often make the mistake of dismissing our claims simply because Christians may have borrowed ideas from other cultures. But Christians know the Bible is our final authority, not the culture. Although it doesn’t command or even instruct believers to set aside a day to celebrate Christ’s birth, the Bible doesn’t forbid it, either. The whole point behind Christmas was much clearer before the days of politically correct thought control and speech codes.]

Karenga and his followers worship the created, their African ancestors, in a “libation” ceremony, and believe these dead ancestors to be spiritual intercessors between humans and God. But Christians know (or should) that only Christ is the intercessor between us and God.

[Unfortunately, I’ve participated in a Kwanzaa ritual, and it was quite worshipful. Fortunately I was an unbeliever at the time.]

Attention Christians: Kwanzaa is a made-up creed cobbled together by a man hostile to the very God you claim to worship! According to Karenga, Christianity is a myth. He does not believe in the God of the Bible. He says this about Christianity: “Belief in spooks who threaten us if we don’t worship them and demand we turn over our destiny and daily lives must be categorized as spookism and condemned.” He believes that the death, burial and resurrection of Christ, the whole rationale behind Christianity, is a myth.

[As a Christian, I don’t feel that Kwanzaa is religious in any way. I see it as a cultural celebration.

“‘I think African American Christians must recognize that Kwanzaa is not a simple appreciation or reaffirmation of one’s ancestry, said Eric Redmon, pastor of Hillcrest Baptist Church in Temple Hills, Md., a predominantly African American congregation. The concept of self-worth based on one’s ancestry is inherent in the system of Kwanzaa, and perhaps can reflect ‘the majesty of the image of God in all people,’ Redmon said. But he noted that Kwanzaa overlooks the depravity that can arise within any human culture.” ] (Source)

Over the years, Karenga has altered his pagan intentions to attract more black Christians into the fold. He now claims that Kwanzaa is a time of giving “reverence to the Creator.” Just what creator he refers to is unclear. Red flags should jump out at any Bible-believing Christian when someone reveres a “Creator” but denies the deity of Christ.

Christians must understand that Karenga intends Kwanzaa to be an alternative to Christmas so that blacks can celebrate themselves rather than the birth of Christ.

Kwanzaa is not an innocuous celebration of black history. It attempts to spiritualize that history, replacing Christ-centered theology with pagan principles. For Christians, the only principles by which to live are found in God’s word, the Bible.

Pagans have argued that Christ was not born on December 25. Insignificant. While no one knows exactly when Christ was born, the fact remains that He was born. Christmas is a time for Christians to celebrate this joyous fact.

Christ became a man to save men, not to lift up one race or culture in worship. As with any man-made religion, Kwanzaa is just another attempt to make gods of men. All Christians must be discerning when faced with these false doctrines.

The Fall of Man was the direct result of our determination to become gods. The pagan ritual of Kwanzaa is merely the old Lie wearing a new disguise.

The Greatest Gift For All
By Paul Craig Roberts

Christmas is a time of traditions. If you have found time in the rush before Christmas to decorate a tree, you are sharing in a relatively new tradition. Although the Christmas tree has ancient roots, at the beginning of the 20th century only 1 in 5 American families put up a tree. It was 1920 before the Christmas tree became the hallmark of the season. Calvin Coolidge was the first President to light a national Christmas tree on the White House lawn.

Gifts are another shared custom. This tradition comes from the wise men or three kings who brought gifts to baby Jesus. When I was a kid, gifts were more modest than they are now, but even then people were complaining about the commercialization of Christmas. We have grown accustomed to the commercialization. Christmas sales are the backbone of many businesses. Gift giving causes us to remember others and to take time from our harried lives to give them thought.

The decorations and gifts of Christmas are one of our connections to a Christian culture that has held Western civilization together for 2,000 years.

In our culture the individual counts. This permits an individual person to put his or her foot down, to take a stand on principle, to become a reformer and to take on injustice.

This empowerment of the individual is unique to Western civilization. It has made the individual a citizen equal in rights to all other citizens, protected from tyrannical government by the rule of law and free speech. These achievements are the products of centuries of struggle, but they all flow from the teaching that God so values the individual’s soul that he sent his son to die so we might live. By so elevating the individual, Christianity gave him a voice.

Formerly only those with power had a voice. But in Western civilization people with integrity have a voice. So do people with a sense of justice, of honor, of duty, of fair play. Reformers can reform, investors can invest, and entrepreneurs can create commercial enterprises, new products and new occupations.

The result was a land of opportunity. The United States attracted immigrants who shared our values and reflected them in their own lives. Our culture was absorbed by a diverse people who became one.

In recent decades we have begun losing sight of the historic achievement that empowered the individual. The religious, legal and political roots of this great achievement are no longer reverently taught in high schools, colleges and universities. The voices that reach us through the millennia and connect us to our culture are being silenced by "political correctness." Prayer has been driven from schools and religious symbols from public life. Diversity is becoming the consuming value and is dismantling the culture.

There is plenty of room for cultural diversity in the world, but not within a single country. A Tower of Babel has no culture. A person cannot be a Christian one day, a pagan the next and a Muslim the day after. A hodgepodge of cultural and religious values provides no basis for law—except the raw power of the pre-Christian past.

All Americans have a huge stake in Christianity. Whether or not we are individually believers in Christ, we are beneficiaries of the moral doctrine that has curbed power and protected the weak. Power is the horse ridden by evil. In the 20th century the horse was ridden hard. One hundred million people were exterminated by National Socialists in Germany and by Soviet and Chinese communists simply because they were members of a race or class that had been demonized by intellectuals and political authority.

Power that is secularized and cut free of civilizing traditions is not limited by moral and religious scruples. V.I. Lenin made this clear when he defined the meaning of his dictatorship as "unlimited power, resting directly on force, not limited by anything."

Christianity’s emphasis on the worth of the individual makes such power as Lenin claimed unthinkable. Be we religious or be we not, our celebration of Christ’s birthday celebrates a religion that made us masters of our souls and of our political life on Earth. Such a religion as this is worth holding on to even by atheists.

Noted at National Review Online, from publisher Civitas:

POVERTY OF MULTICULTURALISM
Patrick West

£9.50, October 2005

Multiculturalism is a divisive political doctrine that creates enormous costs, foments racial hatred, and may even have been complicit in cultivating the homegrown suicide bombers of July 7, according to a new report from the independent think-tank Civitas.

In The Poverty of Multiculturalism Patrick West argues that there is a difference between Soft Multiculturalism - the idea that minorities should not face discrimination and that the customs of different people should be tolerated, and which he describes as a 'benign force' - and Hard Multiculturalism, which insists no culture is better than another, and which believes society should not only tolerate difference but promote it (pp.3-4). This leads some Western intellectuals, who regard themselves as progressive, into the perverse position of defending cultures that condone the killing of homosexuals and the virtual enslavement of women, whilst denigrating the culture of the free societies of the West, inspired by the ideals of the Enlightenment, 'in which universal franchise, free speech and democracy are the norm and the expectation' (p.9). West notes the contradiction that lurks at the heart of the exponents of Hard Multiculturalism.

From Rocky Mountain News:

Orthodoxy of a liberal sort
By Paul Campos

December 27, 2005

A sure sign that a belief system has triumphed over its opponents is that it stops thinking of itself as a belief system at all. Instead it becomes "what every rational person knows to be the case," or "simple common sense," or, more concisely still, "the truth." In other words, the truly orthodox never think of themselves as orthodox. This allows them to crush all dissent to their orthodoxy with a good conscience, since what reasonable objection could there be to sincere attempts to stamp out self-evident falsehoods?

Thus we have just been treated to the remarkable spectacle of liberals shouting hosannas to the heavens in praise of a federal court ruling that makes it illegal to even mention the existence of a dissenting point of view in a public school classroom. The court held that a Dover, Pa., school board violated the Constitution when it mandated that a short statement be read at the beginning of the school year to ninth-grade science classes.

The statement noted that students are required to learn Darwin's theory of evolution; that there are gaps in the evidence for this theory; that an alternative theory called intelligent design exists; that the school library contains a book that students may consult if they wish to learn about this dissenting point of view; and that they are encouraged to keep an open mind about theories in general.

Judge John E. Jones ruled that reading this statement violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment because doing so advances "a particular version of Christianity." Let's be clear about what this ruling means. According to Jones, it's against the law for a public school science teacher to mention that intelligent design theory exists, except, one supposes, for the purpose of immediately declaring it to be "not science, but religion."

Another interesting feature of orthodoxy is that it tends to cause a species of mental retardation in otherwise intelligent people. Consider some of the justifications put forward for the proposition that it's a great day for truth, justice and the American way when a federal court makes it illegal for teachers to mention the existence of a dissenting point of view to their students:

• Science has refuted theories such as intelligent design, because science is based on the postulate that theories such as intelligent design cannot be true. It says a great deal about the power of orthodox thought that many people of normal intelligence are apparently incapable of seeing what's wrong with this argument. To quote the philosopher Bertrand Russell: "The method of 'postulating' what we want has many advantages. They are the same as the advantages of theft over honest toil."

• Intelligent design is not a scientific theory, because it cannot be refuted. This claim is true only in the trivial sense that no scientific theory can be refuted from within the theory itself. Consider the theory of naturalism, which undergirds the argument in the previous paragraph. Naturalism assumes that all events have natural causes. Is there any evidence that could refute this theory in the eyes of someone who adheres to it? Obviously not, since any evidence such a person examines will always and already be interpreted within a framework that excludes the possibility of a supernatural cause.

• Metaphysical orthodoxies about the origins of life, the universe, and everything become something other than a form of religious belief when you use the word "science" instead of the word "God." Even more preposterously, it's asserted that requiring one particular form of metaphysical orthodoxy to be presented in public schools as The Truth allows the government to maintain "neutrality" toward religion.

But, as has been noted in another context, no one ever expects the Spanish Inquistion.

Paul Campos is a professor of law at the University of Colorado. He can be reached at paul.campos@colorado.edu.

Critics dismiss `Lion,’ but kids don’t
by John Kass
Chicago Tribune

Published December 23, 2005

There were about a couple of hundred children in the suburban theater to see the "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," the movie based on one book in the wonderful "Chronicles of Narnia" series by C.S. Lewis.

I took my 10-year-old twin boys to see it. The deal was we’d see the film only after they had read the book. They read it, we talked about it, and then the other night, we drove to the theater.

And what I saw there amazed me. On the screen, yes, but in the theater, too. If you’re a parent, or a teacher or have spent any time with kids, you’ll understand:

There wasn’t a peep out of all those kids during the movie.

There wasn’t a sound. Perhaps that’s because wonder doesn’t have a sound. But I could see it in the eyes of my boys, and in the eyes of the other children.

Though some critics treated the movie fairly, many others gave it the back of their hand. It never got the buzz that it should have received, most likely because C.S. Lewis delved into Christian allegory.

I understand. It’s not Aslan the lion that threatens many who ridiculed the film. Instead, what likely threatened them is the understanding of who the lion would have been had Narnia been Earth, and the unyielding message delivered almost 2,000 years ago.

But the kids weren’t threatened. They and their families were of various demographics, and presumably different religious backgrounds.

I don’t think the children were thinking about allegory, or polemics, or comparative religions, relativism, or culture wars.

They were watching a movie about children and a lion and a faun and an evil White Witch, in a frozen land where there was never any Christmas.

And you could have heard the crickets chirping in the theater, if there were crickets in December. You get the idea.

The behavior may have been quite different elsewhere. I’ll find that out when we see the movie again over the holiday break, but on that night, at an early evening show, the children were mesmerized.

Before we had the boys, I was an expert at child raising, with many theories. Now, since I’m a dad, I’m no longer an expert in the child-raising department. Many of those theories have been discarded.

Yet in my limited experience, the one thing I’m certain about is that kids are not silent creatures in theaters.

They’re full of questions and some are too used to talking, as if they were watching TV, and some are compelled to kick their feet, or jab their brother in the shoulder if the brother has filched too much of the popcorn. Sometimes the older ones offer running commentary, adolescents raising a shield against emotions thrown from the screen.

Surely you’ve witnessed such behavior. I have. As a kid, I engaged in all of it at the old Coral Theater in Oak Lawn.

But that evening there wasn’t any yelling, fidgeting or talking. There wasn’t any need to put your forefinger to your lips and "shhh" them.

Throughout the movie, I kept peeking at the faces of my sons. They’re boys and were attracted to the battles and the action, because boys love movie battles of all kinds, but it wasn’t the swordplay and centaurs’ cavalry charge that will stick with them.

What will stick is the sense of gentle wonder in the film, from the first step through the wardrobe into the snowy land on Narnia, to the first tea and toast served by the faun, to the gracious manner in which most characters addressed each other.

And what will stay with me was the pressure from my sons’ hands on mine. It wasn’t during a great battle scene. There weren’t any magic wands involved.

It happened when Aslan the lion spoke quietly on the hillside with Edmund, the boy who loved Turkish Delights, and who, through fear and selfishness had betrayed his family, and was redeemed.

You could see Edmund talking with Aslan, but you couldn’t hear dialogue. That’s when my sons, sitting on either side of me, squeezed my hands.

Aslan the lion fights evil, gives up his life to save others, is tried by his enemies and put to death only to be resurrected and triumph over the witch.

This apparently put some people off, but it wasn’t as if the lion carried a magic ring of evil that could destroy the world, and was helped by elves and dwarfs and a wizard, the ring finally destroyed in a river of molten lava.

It is not as if the lion went to an English boarding school to learn to cast fantastic spells.

Those are other movies, and quite entertaining, as was this one. But unlike the others, this one has Aslan, and all the children watching that evening were in awe.

The House of Christmas
by Gilbert Keith Chesterton

There fared a mother driven forth
Out of an inn to roam;
In the place where she was homeless
All men are at home.
The crazy stable close at hand,
With shaking timber and shifting sand,
Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand
Than the square stones of Rome.

For men are homesick in their homes,
And strangers under the sun,
And they lay on their heads in a foreign land
Whenever the day is done.
Here we have battle and blazing eyes,
And chance and honour and high surprise,
But our homes are under miraculous skies
Where the yule tale was begun.

A Child in a foul stable,
Where the beasts feed and foam;
Only where He was homeless
Are you and I at home;
We have hands that fashion and heads that know,
But our hearts we lost - how long ago!
In a place no chart nor ship can show
Under the sky's dome.

This world is wild as an old wives' tale,
And strange the plain things are,
The earth is enough and the air is enough
For our wonder and our war;
But our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings
And our peace is put in impossible things
Where clashed and thundered unthinkable wings
Round an incredible star.

To an open house in the evening
Home shall men come,
To an older place than Eden
And a taller town than Rome.
To the end of the way of the wandering star,
To the things that cannot be and that are,
To the place where God was homeless
And all men are at home.

From National Review Online:

A Sword Will Pierce Your Heart
The dark side of Christmas.

By Amy Welborn

About a year ago, my husband and I traveled across the chilly cornfields of Indiana to the frigid cornfields of Ohio to have our younger son baptized.

It was not quite, but almost, spur of the moment. A bishop, an old friend of my husband's, would be visiting his mother for a few days after Christmas, and yes, he could certainly squeeze a baptism in. The parish church was available, the bishop's sister and mother would be witnesses, and there you have it: insta-baptism.

Perfect timing. A baptism is a happy occasion centered on a baby. Christmas is another happy time centered on a baby, and a fine opportunity to focus ourselves on the vaunted Real Meaning of Christmas. Babies, love, and family. Comfort, joy, and peace.

But perhaps not so fast.

The discussion about Christmas in our society is endless and loud. The self-proclaimed defenders of Christmas go about daring salespeople to wish them "Happy Holidays," boycotting businesses that sell "Holiday Trees," and reminding one and all that Jesus is the Reason for the Season.

Which he is. But I say that many of the Defenders of Christmas have it almost as wrong as the secularists. Their vision of Christmas — centered on words, a rather generic baby, and nostalgic visions of families and fireplaces — actually gets no closer to the real Real Meaning of Christmas than do generic wishes for peace and joy in this holiday season.

What they forget, neglect or conveniently ignore is what we can not-too-dramatically call the Dark Side of Christmas.

The really traditional Christian remembrance of the Nativity is not about sweetness. It is about awe, fear, and trembling, and it is shot through with hints of suffering to come.

Mary, with a scandalous pregnancy. Joseph, courageous enough to take her on despite it. A birth among farm animals. The threat of death, from the very start, necessitating flight. Mary, told by the prophet Simeon that because of her son, her soul will be pierced by a sword (Luke 2:35).

We view the elements of the story in a nostalgic haze — how sweet to be born with the goats. But is it? Is it sweet? Would you want to give birth among goats?

How charming that Mary and Joseph had to wander before and after the birth of the child. Charming until you remember the reasons why, the doors shut in the face of a heavily pregnant woman, the threat of death from a jealous king.

Look at it closely, with clear eyes. At every turn in this story of this baby there is threat and fear and powers circling, attempting to strike at the light.

We might forget, we might wrap up Christmas in good cheer, but Christian tradition doesn't. It's striking that the next day — the very next day — after Christmas, the Church remembers not glad tidings, angels, and shepherd boys, but a bloody death by stoning. St. Stephen it is, the first Christian martyr.

St. Stephen is followed by St. John on December 27th, who may not have met a violent death, but who, the tradition tells us, died in a prison of sorts, in exile for his faith, far away from the "civilized" powers that had sent him there.

December 28th brings us back to babies, but with no relief — it is the Feast of the Holy Innocents, remembering the children Herod ordered slaughtered, according to Matthew's gospel, in his rabid fear of the rival king.

The message is clear and hard: Following this baby, as he reaches to us from the resin manger, looking out at us with the soft-eyed cattle and docile sheep, comes at a price.

There is an edge to Christmas, a harshness, and a different kind of promise than that implied by the easy words of peace and glad tidings. It is a mystery, all of it. The Word made flesh indeed, but into a world that was from the beginning set against it, that sought with every bit of strength at hand to stay in the darkness.

So it was that our baby's baptism was on that day, December 28, the Feast of the Holy Innocents. The heart skips a beat now. Not so fitting, perhaps, as we contemplate the lovely soft living baby being washed, but in the shadow of sorrow.

My baby's baptism in Ohio was, according to earthly judgment, a disaster. The weather was miserable, icy, and cold. No one's cameras would work. The bishop decided we might as well immerse the baby fully, which was okay with us, but turned out to be not okay with the baby, who commenced screaming his lungs out at the unexpected bath, and not okay either with the bishop's elderly mother, who was quite horrified. And circling around us the whole time was our three-year-old, who seemed to have absorbed the demons driven out of his brother during the exorcism part of the rite, and who would not, in the face of many and varied threats, be still. He raced like — yes — a demon, in and around the church, constantly, through the whole affair. I've helped out at many baptisms in my work in parish ministry but this one was, I think, the worst.

But perhaps it was more fitting than it first appears. Trivial problems, yes, but still an apt metaphor for the Christian life begun there, and yet to come for Baby Michael: not the warmth of a tidy, neat manger scene, with everyone gathered in comfort, calm, and peace, but something startling and new, a shock to the system, entered upon in a world of frustration and discord, circled by forces intent to disrupt.

Glad tidings of comfort and joy, and Merry Christmas indeed. But without awareness of the risk of discipleship, and the reality that the baby in the manger ends up hanging on a cross, those words have about as little power to change the world as "Happy Holidays."

Amy Welborn is the author of 12 books, most recently of The Catholic Woman's Book of Days. She blogs at http://amywelborn.typepad.com.

From National Review Online:

Inventing Christmas
Here’s one Donald Trump didn’t come up with.

By Father James V. Schall

One writer against Christmas went so far as to say that the shopkeepers for their own commercial purposes alone sustain Christmas Day. I am not sure whether he said that the shopkeepers invented Christmas Day. Perhaps he thought that the shopkeepers invented Christianity. It is a quaint picture, the secret conclave between the cheese-monger, the poulterer, and the toy-shop keeper, in order to draw up a theology that shall convert all Europe and sell some of their goods. Opponents of Christianity would believe anything except Christianity. That the shopkeepers make Christmas is about as conceivable as that the confectioners make children. It is about as sane as that milliners manufacture women. — G. K. Chesterton, Illustrated London News, January 13, 1906.

Exactly a century ago this Christmas-tide, Chesterton, with no little amusement, attacked the central heresy about whether the commercial side of Christmas invented this memorable feast, or whether Christmas came first and the commercialism came later, as a kind of prosperous afterthought. The very idea that commercial folks could get together in a backroom to dream up a theology explaining the core idea of Christmas, then proceed to convince the world of its truth, all so that the merchants could make a bundle of money during the otherwise-dull winter solstice, is, on the face of it, absurd.

Shopkeepers did not, in their greed or entrepreneurship, dream up Christmas. Neither did theologians. It is the other way around. Christmas, being what it is, a gift of no merely human origin, is a boon to shopkeepers and a stimulus to theologians. It is closer to the truth to say that Christmas invented shopkeepers and theologians, than it is to say that shopkeepers and theologians manufactured Christianity. Shopkeepers antedated Christianity. In Africa and Asia today, the shopkeepers are most likely to be Hindus or Arabs or Chinese. So shopkeepers did not need Christianity to be shopkeepers. It seems less clear, however, whether theologians could exist without Christmas.

No theologian could invent Christmas from the fervid ponderings of his own mind. Too few in this guild can, in fact, accurately explain what Christmas is about once it was invented not by themselves. Many opponents of Christianity "would believe anything except Christianity." That is, many would do anything but understand what exactly it is that constitutes the precise explication of Christmas.

Some relation does exist between what we understand Christmas to be and how festively we celebrate it, or how inappropriately celebrate it, or refuse to celebrate it, as the case may be. Christmas customs and traditions should exist in order to explain more profoundly what the feast is about. Too often, however, they obscure what it is about. Unless they were inspired by the truth of the feast and lead back to it, customs can, if we are not careful, lead us away from the heart of Christmas.

An ex-student of mine was in town recently. She, an American, had married a Spaniard, has a daughter. Their family spent some time in Switzerland. She laughed that one year her daughter had three "Christmases" — St. Nicholas Day in Switzerland, Christmas Day in Philadelphia, and the Feast of the Three Kings in Spain. These are all gift=giving and receiving days.

The American Christmas, like its population, is a collection and mixture, even a hodge-podge, of Christmas traditions from all over the world rolled into one. We add our own touches with Bing Crosby's "White Christmas," the ubiquitous and improbable Rudolf, and "All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth."

Mexican traditions of the lighted candles in sand bags to guide the Holy Family to our homes are found in the southwest. We all have, brightened with the latest technology, German Christmas trees, when we do not have artificial ones, made in China. Some have the English Yule Logs. Chesterton thought that the modern Christmas mood was largely the invention of Dickens. Santa Claus, though himself from Bari in Italy via a town in Turkey, has Scandinavian origins. Some reactionary people actually have mangers and cribs. I was once in Oberammergau in Bavaria where they produce wonderful wood carvings of the Nativity scenes sold all over the world.

There are purists who only want such Nativity scenes, no pagan greenery. Likewise, we find and ideologues who want anything but Nativity scenes, especially where anyone can see them. The early Puritans in New England forbad Christmas. There was a time a couple of years ago when greeting someone with a cheery "Merry Christmas" violated your neighbor's constitutional right to your silence. No one wants to be reminded of the day. And we all know the madness of substituting "Holiday" Parties for "Christmas" Parties. I refuse to go to anything called a "Holiday" party during the Christmas season.

School systems seem to have taken the lead in driving out any reference to Christmas, even its name. "Winter" not "Christmas" breaks are in order. We fear not only the idea of Christmas, but the very word "Christmas." I sometimes suspect there is more here than meets the eye. It is not just a question of "imposing" Christmas on others, but the unsettling sense that a joy is connected with this feast that cannot be admitted to exist. If Christmas is not a natural "right" for everyone of whatever persuasion, it must be gradually prohibited as a private privilege for anyone.

At bottom, however, Christmas cannot be held or enjoyed except on its own terms, that is, except on condition of acknowledging what it is that we celebrate. Christmas not only means that a Child is born unto us, but that, because of this birth, this world is not sufficient to us, not our final home. And Christmas is the feast of the home, both our family home and our eternal home. We live in the first age in the history of the world, aside from Plato's Republic, that questions both the proper make-up of a home, with husband, wife, and children, and actually engineers alternatives to it.

We Prepare Ye...
Roughly, there are two contrary traditions about Christmas and how properly to celebrate it. One is the "expectation" approach, the waiting-for-something-to-happen time of the year, the longing for the real explanation of what we are. This season in the Church is called "Advent." It recalls the long preparation for the coming of Christ that we see in the Old Testament. In the 25th Chapter of Isaiah, we read, "On this mountain the Lord of hosts will provide for all peoples a feast of rich food and choice wines, juicy, rich food and pure, choice wines." These are menus we Christians anticipate for Christmas.

We are to renew its mood and atmosphere in the month before Christmas. Of course, if someone sees no such expectant thing in the Old Testament, then Christmas, as we Christians know it, must seem like an imaginary illusion. Christians hold that solid textual, historical, and theoretical foundations exist for what they maintain about the Birth of Christ in Bethlehem, who He was, where He came from, both His far-reaching origins in a Jewish family, and in His transcendent origin as the Word now made flesh, the Son of God, to dwell amongst us

The "anticipation" approach is one of expectation, of a hushness over the world, even of penance. Advent contains a sense both of our unworthiness and of our longings. "Veni, veni, Emmanuel, Captivum solve Israel...." Preparations for Christmas begin to be seen in the streets and shops around Thanksgiving time in this country. Even in towns and cities that insist on practicing paganism in their decorations, whose public squares are truly naked, with only lights and greens and tinsel, no crèches, no angels singing on high, it is difficult to avoid the impression that, nevertheless, something not yet here is coming in the stillness of the night, in the "Silent Night, Holy Night.". Indeed, in areas where the Nativity scenes are still allowed, or in homes and churches that have them, the full Manger Scene, with Joseph, Mary, and the Child, the shepherds, does not appear until Christmas Eve.

However, in most cities, usually a radio station or two are still free to play the well-known and not so well-known Christmas music, from the classic traditions to those of various ethnic origins, even liturgical music. It is not uncommon to find CD's or other forms of recorded music with all of this music performed by finest orchestras and vocalists to be best-sellers. But if one likes bluegrass or country music, these stations specializing in it are sometimes very good in keeping, playing, and indeed composing Christmas music. It may be easier to drive the Christ Child out of the public square than out of the airwaves.

In any case, plans are made, presents bought, cards sent, homes decorated. Students come home, relatives plan to meet. Christmas, as I hinted above, is a season for food and drink, egg nog, wassail. Traditions and memories are kept alive simply by the smell of mince-meat pie, or turkey, or popcorn balls, or "chestnuts roasting on an open fire." Reds and greens appear in our garb.

Still behind all of these preparations lies the expectation, the sense of something being given to us, something intended for us but about which we have no control. We are not worthy. It is a gift, not a reward, not something earned. Yet it comes because we sense something lacking to us. We await. No real appreciation of something can exist unless we also wait for it, wait in some awe.

The second tradition is what I might call the "celebration" tradition, the Twelve Days of Christmas, the days from Christmas to the Feast of the Magi, the Three Kings in January, the Feasts of Stephen, the Holy Innocents, Beckett, and good King Wenseslaus in-between, with the rather secular New Year's Day being thrown for good measure. The dating of Christmas does seem to have something to do with supplanting pagan feasts, but also, as Chesterton said, with keeping what is best in the pagan traditions. Like any birthday of any given human being, Christmas, also the birth of one of our kind, cannot be fathomed in one day. Yet its own day, Christmas Day, is the best day. A celebration is what we do when something beyond our powers or sometimes even beyond our comprehension happens to us, something that is addressed to the heart of things, to our very meaning, to our very souls.

Easter Will Come
Of course, both the anticipation and the celebration are essential to Christmas. Joseph and Mary were in Bethlehem because of a "decree that went out from Caesar Augustus." How remarkable in the Gospel of Luke is this "coincidence," this linking of the first Roman emperor with the birth of the Son of Man in a manger, in that particular place at the origins of the House of David. But few knew of this event when it happened. Though angels were singing on high, it was a whole before a couple of Roman historians even hinted at it. Christmas is not a feast of great events in this world. Rather it is a feast that reminds that great things take place in small towns, in out of the way places, things that need time to grow, to flourish.

Rush Limbaugh one day talked of a book called The War Against Christmas. No doubt there is such a war. Christmas seems to bring out in some a certain kind of venom that strikes us Christians as bordering on the diabolical. "Why is this most tender of feasts subject to such resentment?" we wonder to ourselves. In these days of an often-intolerant tolerance, we hesitate to speculate. We know of the words spoken of this Child born amongst us that many would rise and fall because of Him. A sword would pierce the heart of His mother. He could not be ignored, even if rejected, perhaps especially if rejected. Such things go against the mood of our age, yet are more true in our age than ever before.

In the Breviary for Christmas Eve, we find a sermon of the great Augustine. "Awake, mankind!" he tells us. "For your sake God has become man.... I tell you again: for your sake, God became man." Is this the clue we need? "You would have suffered eternal death, had he not been born in time. Never would you have been freed from sinful flesh, had he not taken on himself the likeness of sinful flesh." We do not like to be reminded of our sinfulness. We do not like to know what is wrong so that we are left free to do what we will.

On Christmas Eve, our redemption is at hand. But it does not work itself out as we might like, as we would have done it if we were in charge. The shadow of the Cross hovers over the Manger. But what happens is for "our sake." We are to be "awake," almost as if it is possible for us to miss the most momentous thing that has happened to our kind. We can, indeed, choose not to see.

About Christmas an incredible concreteness is found. Little things must be done for ordinary people, by ordinary people, ourselves included. John says in his first letter, "This is what we proclaim to you, what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked upon and our hands have touched — we speak of the word of life...." Shopkeepers did not invent Christmas. Neither did the theologians.

What we most associate Christmas with is a gift. A gift is not something we can demand, not something that is due to us. Ultimately, the structure of the universe is first to be understood as a gift. Who made Christmas? "The Word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us." It has never been put more succinctly. We can choose other explanations and no doubt we do. All gifts must be freely received by those to whom they are freely given. This is the principle upon which the universe is constructed.

— Father James V. Schall, S. J., is a professor of government at Georgetown University. He is author of, among other books, Another Sort of Learning.

From Ignatius Insight:

Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Not Quite a Movie Review
By James Como

December 7, 2005

All my life I’ve loved movies, but only at age twenty did The Chronicles find me. I’ve spent much mental energy paying close attention to both, and now that they have met and that I’ve witnessed that meeting I am thrilled. We could get picky, but we would be picky indeed to fault this book-to-movie; such pickiness would say more about us than the meeting.

Like most people I’ve more often suffered over than been delighted by this sort of transmutation. In moving from printed page to my mind, the book becomes my own; and I know that you, another reader, have your own book too. Certainly our mental books overlap, but the differences between them are a big part of what keeps us talking. In moving from the printed page to the screen, however, the book must first hit my eyeballs and my ears. Two senses are assaulted, and that is no small thing. Twenty-five hundred years ago, Aristotle wrote in his Rhetoric that to be persuasive one should "set it before their [the audience’s] eyes." (He didn’t say "ears," but he didn’t have amplifiers.) He was right then and he’s still right, which is why movies are so irresistible: heavy-handed or not, spectacle up there on that big screen makes all the difference. (And note well: in his Poetics Aristotle included spectacle as one of the five major features of dramatic poetry.)

As I watch the book-to-movie I may be (in truth, I usually am) swept away — but no longer, as with my mental book, when the movie is done. Moreover, you and I and all of us will have seen more or less (though never exactly) the same spectacle, so our talk changes. We no longer discuss author X’s book but director Y’s movie; we no longer talk about our own mental books — the one we’ve taken solitary walks within and lived through — but about our shared spectacular experience.

The point: if we cherish the book, if we regard our mental book as what the author closely intended, and if the director gets that wrong — or worse, betrays it — well, then, we want to throttle the director, who is undoing not only author X’s cherished world but our very own mental book as well. Worse: now with Y’s betrayal out and about, anyone who had not read the book but has seen the movie will get it all wrong. These . . . these turnips . . . will not know that Y is a knucklehead, or worse.

Why, then, has the Narnia movie thrilled me? Faithful both to the substance and spirit of the book, it overdoes nothing. This matters enormously, for the great danger of lavish spending on the production of a movie with epic promise is excess. In this case, though, from deep meaning to sheer spectacle — with the effect of talking and exotic beasts somewhere in between — we behold ordinateness: this movie is fitting.

That is a lot not to have to worry about: a great relief, given my not-inordinate worry. How unlikely an accomplishment is this absence of excess — in how very many ways the movie should have been seriously overwrought, given all the temptations of greed, proselytizing, and vanity, and all the risks of writing, casting, formal complexity, and technical innovation — how unlikely an accomplishment this ordinateness is I leave for each of us who love the books to marvel over and to give thanks for. I do thank God, and all the people who labored. And — without quite knowing exactly what he did or how he functioned, what he contributed or (more importantly) what he prevented — we should probably thank Lewis’s stepson and a co-producer of the movie, Douglas Gresham, and I do.

All of which is not to say there has been (or is) nothing at all to worry about. Along with Lewis’s Narnia (and our mental correlative) and the movie, there is the Twilight Zone Narnia — the Narnia of publicity, marketing and media chatter which bears little relation to either of the first two.

Over here we have a schizophrenic sales pitch: on the one hand an Evangelical Narnia, with its study guides designed to awaken every sleeping dragon that Lewis had sneaked past, and on the other a perfectly non-Christian Narnia that, according to a version of one Gresham interview, couldn’t offend the most devout secularist because there is nothing Christian about it. Over there we have venomous conflict and willfully wrong-headed criticism: the opportunistic Philip K. Pullman (the Christophobe of His Dark Materials fame) and a few smart-aleck New York pundits with really loud megaphones. And bit further away — barely discernible but no longer merely on the horizon — we have a tarted up Narnia, including a new Narnia tale "inspired" by C. S. Lewis, a simplified version of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and a growing pile of trivializing merchandise. In short, the books and the movie have become both a goldmine (and we really must ask of C. S. Lewis Pte Ltd, the copyright holder, How much is enough?) and a battleground.

In truth, however, although Lewis had an indisputably Protestant cast of mind, he did not have an Evangelical one. He limited his religious thinking, writing, speaking, and witnessing strictly to those venues he thought appropriate; he had many Catholic beliefs and practices; and it is doubtful he ever would have referred to himself as having been "born again." Furthermore, we know that he did not set out to write Christian propaganda when he wrote The Chronicles. In other words, unless you are of Pullman’s febrile ilk, you really don’t have much to worry about; and if you don’t believe that then just ask the many thousands of people who love Narnia and who aren’t Christians and who don’t see its Christianity and who don’t care that others do. If Lewis was a commando, "behind enemy lines" as he put it, surely his battlefield was less the culture-at-large than the heart of each of his readers.

In that light, I note finally Lewis’s great accomplishment with Narnia. We recall his famous late-night talk with Tolkien and Dyson in 1931, the one that resulted in Lewis realizing that a myth could remain a myth and still be a fact. What Lewis has done in The Chronicles is to re-mythologize Christianity, re-locating our response from the intellect to the imagination. That is, with his fairy tales — and we do well to recall that, according to Lewis, "sometimes fairy stories may say best what’s to be said" — Lewis has restored that stage just before facticity, or its potential, breaks through, that stretch of time when the longing evoked by the myth as such still beckons pure. Let everyone who sees this movie feel that, and then let each of them wonder . . .

From Jihad Watch:

Muslims Are Held to Lower Standard
by Robert Spencer

Posted Dec 21, 2005

In Gaza some Palestinians greeted news of Ariel Sharon’s stroke with the “V” for victory sign, gunfire into the air, and pastries.

Schadenfreude is a recurring motif of Palestinian life. Some cheered the 9/11 attacks, passing out candy on that occasion as well. Many Palestinians have celebrated suicide bombings, including even mothers rejoicing in the deaths of their own children.

Much of this, of course, stems from a culture that celebrates death. As Mufti Sheikh Ikrimeh Sabri, a Palestinian Authority cleric, stated: “We tell them, in as much as you love life, the Muslim loves death and martyrdom.” That is the rationale behind the glorification of suicide bombers as heroes. They are celebrated not because they kill themselves but because they kill infidels as well. 9/11 and Sharon’s illness are worth celebrating because they represent more of the same: the defeat and destruction of the enemy.

The culture of death is not limited to Palestinians: an Afghan jihadist once declared: “We are not afraid of death. The Americans love Pepsi Cola, we love death.”

In most places and times throughout history one who loves death has been considered at very least unbalanced. And rather than rejoicing in the misfortunes of their enemies, Americans rebuilt Germany and Japan after World War II. Personal graciousness between public opponents has for ages been a hallmark of civilization; indeed, even aides to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas wished Sharon good health.

The gesture of Abbas’ office notwithstanding, the Palestinian culture of death and hatred casts a shadow over the future of the entire region. The prospects for a negotiated settlement and lasting peace are slim to none when so many on one side so openly and unapologetically hates the other and rejoices in its distress. Yet the international community has generally turned a blind eye. Although deeply concerned about the trumped-up, politically manipulative concept of “Islamophobia,” the United Nations has paid scant attention to the phenomenon of suicide terror -- indeed, criticism of suicide bombers has been silenced at the UN in Geneva by Islamic delegates.

This kind of inconsistency demonstrates that world opinion demands a higher moral accountability from the West than it does from the Islamic world. Were Americans or Israelis to hand out pastries and fire guns in the air at the illness or death of a Muslim leader, international opprobrium would be swift and sure -- particularly from the Leftist spokesmen who view all conflicts between the Islamic world and the West as having been caused by Western outrages.

There is an unacknowledged layer of ethnocentrism in this. The international media and governing bodies seem to assume that Palestinians and other Muslims are simply not capable of hewing to the moral and civilizational standards to which Westerners are held.
Less is expected of them. American military personnel who commit crimes at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere are excoriated by world opinion and prosecuted; immensely greater crimes by Muslim terror groups are simply a reaction to Western provocations -- witness the post-9/11 remark by Prince Alwaleed bin Talal when he gave ten million dollars to New York City. He asked the U.S. to “reexamine its policies in the Middle East and adopt a more balanced stance toward the Palestinian cause.”

Rudolph Giuliani returned the Prince’s check, deploring the notion that anything could justify the 9/11 attacks. But the prince’s views are widespread in the West (and no one at Georgetown or Harvard seemed to mind when he just gave $20 million to each).

No one seems concerned about the fact that by tolerating joy at Sharon’s illness among Palestinians and the culture of death in general, international authorities are postponing, perhaps forever, any chance for so many Palestinians and Muslims to adopt the moral and ethical standards held by the rest of the world. By continuing to expect less from them, the West ensures that it will receive less from them. As a result, the global conflict, fueled as it is by the hatred that is spread so energetically among Muslims today, will doubtless not only continue to grow, but to escalate.

From National Review Online:

It’s God or Darwin
Competing designs.

By David Klinghoffer

December 21, 2005

Tuesday's ruling by a federal judge in Pennsylvania, disparaging intelligent design as a religion-based and therefore false science, raises an important question: If ID is bogus because many of its theorists have religious beliefs to which the controversial critique of Darwinism lends support, then what should we say about Darwinism itself? After all, many proponents of Darwinian evolution have philosophical beliefs to which Darwin lends support.

"We conclude that the religious nature of Intelligent Design would be readily apparent to an objective observer, adult or child," wrote Judge John E. Jones III in his decision, Kitzmiller v. Dover, which rules that disparaging Darwin's theory in biology class is unconstitutional. Is it really true that only Darwinism, in contrast to ID, represents a disinterested search for the truth, unmotivated by ideology?

Judge Jones was especially impressed by the testimony of philosophy professor Barbara Forrest of Southeastern Louisiana University, author of Creationism's Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design. Professor Forrest has definite beliefs about religion, evident from the fact that she serves on the board of directors of the New Orleans Secular Humanist Association, which is "an affiliate of American Atheists, and [a] member of the Atheist Alliance International," according to the group's website. Of course, she's entitled to believe what she likes, but it's worth noting.

Religion and Smallpox
Other leading Darwinian advocates not only reject religion but profess disgust for it and frankly admit a wish to see it suppressed. Lately I've been collecting published thoughts on religion from pro-Darwin partisans. Professional scholars, they have remarkable things to say especially about Christianity. Let these disinterested seekers of the truth speak for themselves.

My favorite is Tufts University's Daniel C. Dennett. In his highly regarded Darwin's Dangerous Idea, he tells why it might be necessary to confine conservative Christians in zoos. It's because Bible-believing Baptists, in particular, may tolerate "the deliberate misinforming of children about the natural world." In other words, they may doubt Darwin. This cannot stand! "Safety demands that religion be put in cages," explains Dennett, "when absolutely necessary....The message is clear: those who will not accommodate, who will not temper, who insist on keeping only the purest and wildest strains of their heritage alive, we will be obliged, reluctantly, to cage or disarm, and we will do our best to disable the memes they fight for."

In an essay, "Is Science a Religion?", Oxford biologist Richard Dawkins is frank enough. Perhaps the leading figure on the Darwin side, he forthrightly states that "faith is one of the world's great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate." He equates God with an "imaginary friend" and baptism with child abuse. In his book The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design, Dawkins observed that Darwin "made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist."

There is Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg, of the University of Texas, who defended Darwinism before the Texas State Board of Education in 2003. In accepting an award from the Freedom From Religion Foundation,Weinberg didn't hide his own feelings about how science must deliver the fatal blow to religious faith: "I personally feel that the teaching of modern science is corrosive of religious belief, and I'm all for that! One of the things that in fact has driven me in my life, is the feeling that this is one of the great social functions of science — to free people from superstition." When Weinberg's idea of science triumphs, then "this progression of priests and ministers and rabbis and ulamas and imams and bonzes and bodhisattvas will come to an end, [and] we'll see no more of them. I hope that this is something to which science can contribute and if it is, then I think it may be the most important contribution that we can make."

There is University of Minnesota biologist P. Z. Myers, a prominent combatant in the Darwin wars being fought in an archipelago of websites. He links his own site (recently plugged in the prestigious journal Nature) to a "humorous" web film depicting Jesus' flagellation and crucifixion, a speeded-up version of Mel Gibson's Passion, to the accompaniment of the Benny Hill theme music "Yakety Sax," complete with cartoonish sound effects. "Never let it be said that I lack a sense of reverence or an appreciation of Christian mythology," commented this teacher at a state university. In another blog posting, Myers daydreamed about having a time machine that would allow him to go back and eliminate the Biblical patriarch Abraham. Some might argue for using the machine to assassinate other notorious figures of history, but not Myers: "I wouldn't do anything as trivial as using it to take out Hitler."

Then there is the Darwinist chairman of the religious studies department at the University of Kansas, Paul Mirecki. He emerged from obscurity recently when his startlingly crude anti-Christian writings came to light. Mirecki's bright idea had been to teach a course about "mythologies," including intelligent design. Things got interesting when it came out that he followed up his announcement by crowing in an e-mail to a list-serve: "The fundies [Christian fundamentalists] want [ID] taught in a science class, but this will be a nice slap in their big fat face by teaching it as a religious studies class under the category 'mythology.'"

Mirecki had previously posted a list-serve message responding to somebody's joke about Pope John Paul II being "a corpse in a funny hat wearing a dress." Mirecki wrote back, "I love it! I refer to him as J2P2 (John Paul II), like the Star Wars robot R2D2."

Administration officials at KU confirmed that the e-mails had come from Mirecki, who also wrote: "I had my first Catholic 'holy communion' when I was a kid in Chicago, and when I took the bread-wafer the first time, it stuck to the roof of my mouth, and as I was secretly trying to pry it off with my tongue as I was walking back to my pew with white clothes and with my hands folded, all I could think was that it was Jesus' skin, and I started to puke, but I sucked it in and drank my own puke. That's a big part of the Catholic experience."

Prudently, the university canceled Mirecki's proposed "mythologies" class and ousted him as department chairman.

I've already reported on NRO about the views expressed by Darwinist staff scientists at the Smithsonian Institution. The nation's museum was roiled last year when the editor of a Smithsonian-affiliated biology journal published a peer-reviewed article favoring intelligent design. His fellow staffers composed emails venting their fury. One e-mailer, figuring the editor must be an ID advocate and therefore (obviously!) a fundamentalist Christian (he is neither), allowed that, "Scientists have been perfectly willing to let these people alone in their churches." Another museum scientist noted how, after "spending 4.5 years in the Bible Belt," he knew all about Christians. He reminisced about the "fun we had" when "my son refused to say the Pledge of Allegiance because of the 'under dog' [meaning 'under God'] part."

God and Darwin
Admittedly, there are those in the Darwin community who argue that Darwinism is compatible with religion. Judge Jones himself, in the Kitzmiller decision, writes that

many of the leading proponents of ID make a bedrock assumption which is utterly false. Their presupposition is that evolutionary theory is antithetical to a belief in the existence of a supreme being and to religion in general. Repeatedly in this trial, plaintiffs' scientific experts testified that the theory of evolution represents good science, is overwhelmingly accepted by the scientific community, and that it in no way conflicts with, nor does it deny, the existence of a divine creator.

Some advocates go further, seeing Darwin as a friend to faith. When I was in New York recently I spent an enjoyable hour at the new Darwin show at the American Museum of Natural History. In the last few yards of exhibit space, before you hit the inevitable gift shop, the museum addresses intelligent design. There's a short film with scientists talking about Darwin and religion, seeking to show that Darwinism actually has religion's best interests in mind. Francis Collins, head of the Human Genome project and a self-identified Christian, says that ID can "potentially [do] great harm to people's faiths." How so? Says Collins: by "putting God in the gaps" — by discovering God's creative powers at the junctures in life's history that science can't so far explain. When science at last finds mechanistic explanations for every presumed miracle, where will that leave God?

Never mind that his view, in which God can be assumed not to operate in the natural world, makes Collins a funny kind of Christian.

Never mind, also, that he inaccurately characterizes ID. The argument for design, whatever merit it may possess, is based on positive evidence, hallmarks of a designer's work. For example, the sudden infusion of genetic information 530 million years, when most of today's animal body plans appeared in the earth's ancient seas.

It should be clear by now that Darwinism makes an unlikely defender of religion's best interests. On the contrary, the ranks of the Darwinistas are replete with opponents of religion.

Does this delegitimize Darwinism as science? Obviously not — no more than ID is delegitimized by the fact that many Christians, Jews, and Muslims are attracted to its interpretation of nature's evidence. Of course, some avowed agnostics also doubt Darwin (e.g. evolutionary biologist Stanley Salthe, molecular biologist Michael Denton, and mathematician David Berlinski who says his only religious principle is "to have a good time all the time"). But there is irony in the way the media generally follow Barbara Forrest's line in portraying ID as a "Trojan Horse" for theism. It would be equally accurate to call Darwin a trojan horse for atheism.

In fact, both Darwin and design have metaphysical implications and are expressions of a certain kind of faith. ID theorists are not willing to submit to the assumption that material stuff is the only reality. Darwinism takes the opposite view, materialism, which assumes there can never be a supernatural reality.

In this it only follows Charles Darwin, who wrote the Origin of Species as an exercise in seeking to explain how life could have got to be the way it is without recourse to divine creative activity. In a pious mode intended to disarm critics, he concluded his book by writing of "laws impressed on matter by the Creator." However readers immediately saw the barely concealed point of the work: to demonstrate there was no need for "laws impressed on matter" by a Creator.

In short, with apologies to Judge Jones, there is no coherent reconciliation between God and Darwin. Attempts to show how we can have both faith in a spiritual reality (religion) and faith in pure materialism (Darwin) always end up vacuuming the essential meaning out of either God or Darwin.

And this, I think, is why some Darwin advocates dislike religion. It's why they fight it with such passion: Because negating religion is the reason behind their belief system. To their credit, they recognize a truth that others prefer not to see. That is: One may choose Darwin or one may choose God.

— David Klinghoffer, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute and a columnist for the Jewish Forward. His most recent book is Why the Jews Rejected Jesus: The Turning Point in Western History. His website is www.davidklinghoffer.com.