U.S. Founded on Religious Freedom Not One Faith

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Hello, Starhawk! Thank you for writing this truth that should be self-evident, to paraphrase the Declaration of Independence.

This is a bit off-topic, but are you still planning a film of your novel "The Fifth Sacred Thing"? I haven't heard much about it recently. I ask because I would be quite interested in writing/composing music for it, or in collaborating with others in doing so.

In any case, Happy (western) New Year; and Peace, Love and Courage for 2007!

--Karen

Thank you Starhawk. I always try to put things like that into words but instead often manage to confuse those I'm speaking to.

I admit I'm only 17 but I have the luck of having an immensely understanding close family. This Christmas I celebrated my Yule and my parents celebrated commercial Christmas (they are atheist). Because I was able to do this I feel even closer than ever to my family and in a lot of ways it's the caring spirit more than the name of the holiday that matters at this time of year.

Oh and to go completely off topic, thank you for writing "The Earth Path" I only just bought it and I am only just starting it, but it's definitely one of my favorite books all ready, you are a brilliant writer!

Blessed Be!

Bright Blessings to you, Starhawk.

The whole holiday argument always seemed kind of funny to me, as a pagan. I mean, the tree with a star (pentacle) on top was ours (pagan, that is) to start with. The birth of the Sun King at Winter Solstice predated Christianity for thousands of years, and the woman in blue that is the mother of the god is obviously the goddess. Plus - the 3 wise men who followed the star in the sky? The shephards with their animals who listened to the angels sing? What's not to like about that?
Maybe I'll be an equal opportunity offender of religious fanatics in general, because I like it all - especially if there's presents - or a funnel cake - involved. I love candles, so I love Menorahs and the Kwanza version of it with the green, red and black candle in the middle is lovely to me - especially for it's symbolism.
And no, I'm not some wacky kid. I care for a parent with altzheimers. I'm a mother of a young, recently disabled Iraq war veteran and his siblings. And I love all holidays, no matter whose they are. People can be religious bigots if they want to. I just chose not to be. Hence my favorite poem:
"He drew a circle to shut me out
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout
But love and I had the wit to win
We drew a circle that drew him in."

Starhawk, I thank you from my heart for all the great work you have done for our community over the past nearly 30 years. It was through your writing (and my reading) the Spiral Dance that I gained an initial footing on this beautiful Path. In our home we lite a Yule Fire welcoming the renewal of Light into the world, and this by Her own essential nature to be renewed again and again, through any and all avenues opening harmoniously in response to this same nature. I revere the Light...that which gives rise to love and compassion among all beings regardless of species, race, sex, or creed. We live in a nation where there is at this time freedom and the ongoing defense of our right to freely choose the manner of our religious expression. I choose to see the Light as GODDESS...that which contains and is contained within all that exists. She is Love and Light and Peace. )O( 'Saktijnana

At home, we've set up a nativity scene in front of a largish Buddha. Our three year old is getting curious about the whole business and whilst our lounge isn't big enough to accommodate 57 varieties of representative religious iconography, it at least sends him the message that Christmas (and religion) has more than one story.

What interests me about the hoop-la in recent years over Christmas terminology -- should it be a "Christmas tree" or a "holiday tree" (if ever there was a ridiculous argument!), should the Wal-mart greeters say "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Holidays -- is that it seems to bear no relation to the meaning of the holidays themselves. The religious holidays at this time of year all seem to be centered around concepts of charity, generosity, hope, sharing resources even if they are meager, and feasting with the community.

Christmas as it is commonly practiced in secular America today is a mix of many different traditions. It seems to me that to jealously hoard the holiday as belonging only to one group or another goes against the very essence of what it is supposed to be about. Let's take the time this year to share our particular brand of food and festivities, and to be open to what's shared with us. "Only the lamp is different, not the light."

"Christians can celebrate their Baby God
Pagans can put up the Solstice Tree
Jews can light the Menorah
Athiests can put up telescopes and show us why it's the Solstice
Hindus can light up the park for Diwali
Muslims can share the Eid celebration
Buddists can have a Bohdi Day celebration

And we can all learn and share the joy.

Blessings
Kate"

Kate-

If we can just find someone to sell funnel cakes we got a PARTY!

Marie--

You reminded me of my son's response when one of his classmates asked him if he believed in God.

His response? "Yeah, all of Them".

I agree with making the public square open for all religions to put up their Holiday display.

Christians can celebrate their Baby God
Pagans can put up the Solstice Tree
Jews can light the Menorah
Athiests can put up telescopes and show us why it's the Solstice
Hindus can light up the park for Diwali
Muslims can share the Eid celebration
Buddists can have a Bohdi Day celebration

And we can all learn and share the joy.

Blessings
Kate

Mike,
You've obviously never tried living as a publicly- openly-Pagan person.

As an openly Pagan person I am asked all the time by "Christians" to remove religious symbols from my car, my person, and my home.

After they tell me I shouldn't be wearing any religious symbol other than a cross, and I tell them I am NOT going to wear the symbol of any God who demands the sacrifice of a first-born son, these people try to tell me we live in a "Christian" country and I tell them to go read the Constitution and find where it says so. Then I tell them that our nation was founded on freedom including freedom of religion. Not freedom to be Christian, but freedom to follow any religion. Many of our Founding Fathers' religious or spiritual preferences were Unitarian, Universalist, Transcendentalist, or Masonic. While I agree that some of these beliefs are not so much religions as they are philosophies of living, and modes of thinking about spirituality, some of them do not co-exist well with Christian religious practices and none of these beliefs are fundamentally Christian.

My favorite phrase, though, always spoken by some proselytizing parking-lot stalking individual who obviously hasn't met me yet:
"Have you found Jesus, sister?"
My unvarying response:
"You mean you people lost him AGAIN?
Go check the Mexican restaurant, I hear that he is the guy who mops the floors, and it's pronounced "Heysoos", not "Geezus".

Thank you, Tonio. I've enjoyed discussing these issues with you.

Norrie Hoyt, I am suggesting that in terms of public perception, a government-owned town square and a government building are two different entities. Also, a town square is for the use of the public, while a government building is for the use of the government.

I think we should be clear when we talk about "religious symbols." The intent is to keep government neutral among competing faiths. I see it a distinction between "religion" and "religions." So in a town square, I believe either all religious symbols should be allowed, or none of them should be allowed. But in a government building, where the ownership is obvious to a casual observer, no religious symbols should be there in the first place.

Your story about the Lord's Prayer in school was very saddening. Thanks for sharing that experience with us.

... well put Starhawk - about the sacredness of the Solstice celebration, and keeping it so. Thank Goodness(Goddess) that Solstice has not been co-opted by the Consumer-faith: I guess that is the 'up-side' of being a minority. I'm part of even more of a minority in Australia - celebrating Summer Solstice here, midst all the Winter decorations of crazed European descendants celebrating 'Christmas' or some variation thereof. We're dripping with the heat, and walking past houses and shops decked out in fake snow, ice crystals, holly and Santas in winter clothes - how mad is that?

I was thinking lately that the Southern Hemisphere is probably the only place on Earth where Christians really celebrate 'Christmas', because it has nothing to do with what is happening with Earth in this region: so it can't be confused with Pagan celebrations of Summer. It is also possible that that makes it more clearly a celebration of the modern Consumer-faith (which I guess is a global faith!).

This entire issue suggests the difficulty to be an intrinsic human need for equality; while existing in a social world where one group seeks to have power over another!
Where we rever the physical world;-we seem to overlook it too holds oppressive motions;-as disease, floods or earthquakes that overpower the natural state and bring things to an end.
America opened the door to escape from oppressive mentality. Social direction moved toward common welfare,-toward escape from environmental harm. This was accompanied by words as devotion, honor, Divine inspiration;-where our ancestors had religious freedom, of greater significance should be their SPIRITUAL UNITY!

I have no objection to other people's religious symbols and am not aggrieved by them. I like most of them and love some. My objection is to the placement of these symbols on public property because (1) it violates the Constitution and (2) it's a first step toward the government's imposing religious observance on citizens who don't have the particular belief in question.

I went to elementary school in Massachusetts at a time when the Lord's Prayer was required to be recited every morning in every class. One year when the class reached the end of the Catholic version of the prayer, our Catholic teacher banged a ruler on the desk to keep the Protestants from finishing their version.

You can see why governmental involvement in religion can be so destructive. But talk about unintended consequences: my experience had the salutary effect of turning me against organized religion for the rest of my life, particularly the Roman version.

Sue -

I loved what you had to say about growing up with multiple traditions and religions. Even though I grew up here in the U.S. (and in the midwest to boot), this time of year has always been about family, togetherness, and love.

Other people's celebrations are just that much more to celebrate, in my eyes. Even though I celebrate Christmas and wish others a Merry Christmas, there is nothing like a Christian Conservative to ruin my holidays by taking the "Merry" out of the whole occasion.

I am so very annoyed by the insistence of "one" religion to mark the holidays. I'll never forget my freshman college roomate's reaction when she learned one Christmas I had never been baptized. "Whatever did your parents teach you?"

I replied honestly: "To be kind and tolerant while searching honestly for whatever makes you happy in life."

As an atheist, I am aggravated by members of any religion who try to narrow my choices on how I wish to live my life, according to how they think a supernatural being wants them to live theirs. But, this does not extend to x-mas trees, carols, nativity scenes, or even great religious art. I am not unduly upset by others' symbols because they do not have any real meaning for me, they do not really "symbolize" anything other than someone else's mythology. I also do not feel the need to surround others with symbols that do have meaning for me. I do not think that my point of view is "validated" in any way, nor is it insulted, just because it does, or does not, appear in a public place. And neither is anyone elses.

I accept that I live in an overwhelmingly christian country, that I happen to love passionately. I can handle the temporary x-mas decorations, as long as no one is trying to force me to pray, keep me from reading what I want, blowing up an abortion clinic, flying airplanes into buildings, or putting Pat Robertson on every channel.

Cool Yule Y'all.

Tonio, you say that the government is only a caretaker of the town square. Here in Vermont all the town squares are owned by the town government and are government property. Perhaps somewhere there's a town square that's not owned by the town, but the town somehow has a caretaker role. It would be pretty unusual, and you'd have to parse the legal relationships to see if religious symbols could be permitted.

Norrie Hoyt, your point about religious symbols on government property applies to government buildings such as courthouses, and to prayer in public schools. No teacher is going to push his or her religious beliefs on my kids without a fight from me. But I see town squares as different since government is only in a caretaker role. A religious display on a town square doesn't necessarily constitute government blessing. Now, if the governmental caretaker only allowed displays from some religions and not others, then that would constitute such a blessing.

Spare me seeing other people's religious symbols on government property. Elsewhere they can do what they want. It's like insisting on prayer in public schools. These folks want an implied govermental blessing for their beliefs, and to impose those beliefs on others. Maybe they feel that without the government imprimatur their beliefs have no substance or reality. Which is most probably the case.

I think it is up to us religious minorities to have a sense of humor about the extent to which Christianity has been subsumed into secular culture in America.

My personal inside joke during this season is to respond with a hearty "Joyous Yuletide!" anytime someone wishes me a Merry Christmas. Most folks (who aren't familiar with the pagan origins of many secular Christmas traditions) think it's just a fancy way of wishing them a Merry Christmas right back. I imagine a few of them would be slightly horrified to know that a Wiccan just wished them a happy solstice!

Tonio-

I think you have a dandy idea. If all religious displays were welcomed equally, people wouldn't get their noses bent out of shape over a creche, or menorah, or...

Wiccan,

I would love to see a town square where different religious groups put up a Nativity, a Wiccan pentacle, a Muslim star and crescent, a menorah, a Buddha, and even an atomic symbol for atheism. Who did I forget? Invite all the groups to put up their holiday displays, and if some groups choose not to take advantage of the offer, that's their loss.

I didn't even realize that Christmas had anything to do with Christianity until I came to America in my late teens.

As a child it Christmas was a fun time of year for family to get together and exchange gifts and follow some fun traditions like stockings and plum pudding... God and Religion never entered into it.

It is actually wonderful growing up with multiple traditions from multiple religions - and not getting all bent out of shape about right or wrong, but seeing them all as just one of the many cultural traditions that exist in the world.

However I will say that I have never felt so "personally invaded" by other people's beliefs as I do here now in the US. I'm not offended, just bored or annoyed with it - and where religion clashes with something I do "not" believe in, and people who do believe want to make it a law, and the only argument is "god and/or religion says so" then I'm angry.

I do chuckle however, at how so many people cannot fathom having a meaningful life without god and religion in it. Easy, it is all about how you are brought up - your religion, your culture, and your belief (or not) in a God.

I look at the world around me and wonder why do people NEED more? Why aren't they satified with everything that there is, everything that there is to do, all the ways we can make it a better place... who needs god or religion for that?

Mike-

We have a true believer named Rita Warren in Fairfax County. She petitioned for, and won, the right to put up a Christmas nativity display on the grounds of the Fairfax Government Center. Bless her heart, it was lighted by a Hanukkah menorah. But how do you think she'd feel if I petitioned to put up a Pentacle on the same county grounds to celebrate the Winter Solstice? How do you think the Christians in Fairfax County would feel? How would you feel?

It seems to me that the heart of the matter boils down to a petty popularity contest.

Yes, America is 75% Christian. But as my Italian Catholic mother used to say, "If everyone else were to jump off a bridge, would you do it too?"

I have chosen a Pagan path of faith that I was called to, not one that I was told to believe in. I have chosen to follow how Divinity resonates within my own heart, and not by prescribed doctrine or set-in-stone "rules". Spirituality has become a personal relationship with the Divine for me. And isn't that the way it should be?

Look how the majority "flock" of America herds itself to shopping malls, tantalized by blinking electric lights and plastic nativity scenes and synthetic trees. Hear the ringing of cash registers and Muzak carols. Taste the Starbuck's cappuccinos as hundreds of dollars are spent on expensive electronic gadgets and gizmos. Smell the savage scent of commercialism and greed as it creeps all around, camaflouged in pretty ribbons and bows. Feel how the wallet grows slimmer and slimmer, all in the name of creating the perfect Christmas.

The symbols of the celebration of Christmas do not upset me. I have respect for any genuine religious beliefs and paths of understanding the Divine. What does tend to irritate me, however, is that very little of the Christian displays seem centered on the birth of Jesus. It's all about "buy me, buy me, buy me!" and "give me, give me, give me!"

I've asked many of my Catholic friends if they are going to go to church on Christmas this year. They replied that they have absolutely no intentions of doing so. They're just going to wake up that morning and open presents, and then eat.

*sigh*

Well, I guess they must be right because they are in the majority. Yes?

I agree with Starhawk in live and let live, you worship your way and I will mine. But one thing I don't see is christians asking for other religious symbols to be taken down or for the non-recognition of non-christian holidays. That is the one major difference in christians and some people of other faiths.

Asim, I haven't heard the president saying God spoke to him, however. The president gets sound advice from Dr Pat Robertson who does hold conversations with God that are reported in a fever by the NYT.

Dr Robertson is not the first person to speak to God as I'm sure you know. Moses spoke to something that is now the God of all three great faiths. The question that's impossible to answer yes is, was that really God. The spec on God is so high that we can't prove there is or there isn't one or more Gods.

Now about "the God of your[Moses'] father." http://www.hoax-buster.org/sellyoursoul says the whole Moses tale is just that, a tale. Worse yet, the sacred scriptures are a hoax. Now for the firm believers the door is left open for Moses to have made a deal with a supernatural being. Unfortunately, all the evidence says that supernatural being was a Devil and not God at all.

You may have noticed how the Gods of the three great faiths need people to get His way. That's a damning attribute of the Devil, explains 9-11-2001 when people and not Allah destroyed lives and property. Don't you imagine the Devil danced with glee as 9-11 unfolded?

But will the fundamentalist christians in America,for example,allow us to practice our religions freely-whatever our faith is? And how to deal with a president who claims that "God" spoke to him?

I'm dreamin of a green Christmas, just like the ones I used to know, at WalMart. It'll be a blue Christmas without you, WalMart customers. It's so blue thinking about you. You'll be having a Christmas of green, at Target, like one never seen but WalMart's having a blue blue Christmas.

Keep Santa in Christmas!

Not to poke fun specifically at WalMart, but yes, that ambiance is the reason I especially eschew THAT kind of Christmas. Being a ChristoPagan, I try to celebrate the solstice and Christmas, but the later usually at home, quietly. No presents, no plastic, no cheap Chinese junk...
This year, however, since I now have two great-nephews being raised Christian, I have begun to give shares of trees and cows and alpacas from Heifer Intl. Yes, they'll think their auntie was wacky for sending a 3 year old a tree, but maybe by the time they are grown Africa will no longer be a desert, and there will be no hungry people in the world.

Thank you Starhawk, for addressing this debate with patience and understanding. This time of year is special to so many people in so many different ways, and it makes me sad to see so many people up in arms over matters of semantics.

When I wish someone a "Happy Holiday" I do so because I sincerely hope that whatever holiday they are getting ready to celebrate is happy. I hope that everyone celebrating this season remembers what a special time of year it is. Not only because of religous celebrations, but because it is a season of giving and gathering with loved ones. This is what Christmas is about to me. I celebrate the Solstice for love of the earth and Diety, and Christmas for love of my family and the spirit of giving.

Blessings and Happy Holidays to everyone.