This Week in God
It may have been a fairly slow news week in light of the holiday, but the God Machine had plenty to offer. First up is a new poll that will be of great interest to the “war on Christmas” crowd.
A new survey found that 67 percent of American adults prefer the holiday-specific greeting in seasonal advertising, while only 26 percent want to see “Happy Holidays.”
There wasn’t a gender gap in the answers: Both men and women like seeing “Merry Christmas” in store windows, according to Scott Rasmussen, president of Rasmussen Reports, an independent polling company.
But from a political perspective, there was a sleighful of difference: 88 percent of Republicans wanted to see “Merry Christmas,” while just 57 percent of Democrats favored it.
Now, this report was published in the far-right Washington Times, which adds its own slant to news items. As such, it was “only 26 percent,” whereas I thought the exact opposite — more than one in four Americans want stores to drop “Merry Christmas” and go with “Happy Holidays”? Indeed, 26% sounds like quite a bit.
As far as I can tell, retail outlets generally don’t care much about religion, politics, or Fox News initiatives; they care about selling products and making a profit. “Red” and “blue” pale in comparison to “green.”
With that in mind, with two-thirds of the country preferring the Christmas-specific greeting, most stores probably won’t push too hard in the other direction. But so long as more than a fourth of the public prefers more generic holiday well-wishes, and nearly half of Democrats agree, a lot of outlets are going to hesitate, figuring out who to alienate and how.
Remember the reason for the season — waging a silly culture-war fight that pits communities against one another based on some amorphous religio-political commercial conflict. It warms the heart, doesn’t it?
Other items from the God Machine this week:
* Huge shake-up at Oral Roberts U (thanks to tAiO for the tip): “Facing accusations that he misspent university money to support a lavish lifestyle, the president of Oral Roberts University has resigned, officials said Friday. The resignation by Richard Roberts was effective immediately, according to an e-mail statement from George Pearsons, the chairman of the university’s Board of Regents…. Mr. Roberts received a vote of no confidence last week from the university’s tenured faculty. The regents will meet Monday and Tuesday to decide how to conduct a search for a new president, Mr. Pearsons said in the statement.”
* Bill O’Reilly loves to talk about his religious grounding, but he’s a little confused about his holy book: “On the November 13 edition of his nationally syndicated radio show, while discussing the ‘secularists’ and their refusal to acknowledge the ‘holy war going on,’ Bill O’Reilly cited the Book of Revelation, the final scripture in the New Testament, saying, ‘This was written — what? Five thousand years ago?’ But the Book of Revelation, which addresses the end of the world and the return of Jesus Christ, was, according to the book itself, written by ‘John’ on the Greek isle of Patmos, after receiving ‘[t]he Revelation of Jesus Christ’ (who was born about 2,000 years ago).” I’m afraid the secular progressives must have gotten to O’Reilly.
* Another mega-church, another sex scandal (thanks to SKNM for the tip): “The 80-year-old leader of a suburban Atlanta megachurch is at the center of a sex scandal of biblical dimensions: He slept with his brother’s wife and fathered a child by her. Members of Archbishop Earl Paulk’s family stood at the pulpit of the Cathedral of the Holy Spirit at Chapel Hill Harvester Church a few Sundays ago and revealed the secret exposed by a recent court-ordered paternity test. In truth, this is not the first — or even the second — sex scandal to engulf Paulk and the independent, charismatic church. But this time, he could be in trouble with the law for lying under oath about the affair.” Wow.
An astonishing number of people who claim to be deeply religious are theologically illiterate. O’Reilly is an excellent example. The Bible doesn’t say what the religious right says it says. If Jesus is really coming back, he’s going to pissed. Very pissed. And not at the poor, conscientious unbelievers.
The resignation of Richard Roberts as ORU president is huge news here in Oklahoma, just as the unfolding of the latest ORU scandals has been big news for the past month or so. Will the ORU regents hire a credible university president to replace Richard? Or will they replace him with another preacher? Early signs aren’t promising. The regents are stacked with preachers, and the interim president is Billy Joe Daugherty. Billy Joe is the pastor of the megachurch across the street from ORU, and the star of his own daily radio show.
” I’m afraid the secular progressives must have gotten to O’Reilly.
And they also must have gotten to Olbermann, who while making O’Reilly worst person in the world and correcting the 5000 year mistake claimed several times that Jesus died 2000 years ago in the year 1. Surely at least one person on his staff knows Christianity well enough to know that was when Jesus was supposedly born, not when he died? It was a low point for a great show, you never want to correct someone else’s stupidity and get your facts wrong in the correction.
Guess that makes me a 26 percenter. They’re all religious holidays one way or another and I don’t have a god in that fight. As long as I get invited to the party, I don’t really care what it says on the napkins.
I’d like to see a “War on Christmas” poll that asked the same question but broke it down into months. I suspect the majority would prefer to see Happy Holidays before Thanksgiving and Merry Christmas after.
If you ever have the pleasure of discussing this topic with a wingnut, point out to them that it’s conservative republicans in corporate boardrooms who have expanded the Christmas shopping season all the back to the day after Halloween – when no one wants to hear Merry Christmas just yet. Then ask them if retailers should replace all of their holiday signage the day after Thanksgiving and pass the additional expense on to shoppers.
It’s always a fun conversation.
I prefer a “holiday specific greeting”: Happy Thanksgiving, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year after all, these are nationally recognized holidays, and it should be OK to call them what they are.
However, if someone wishes me a “Happy Holiday” I am not going to be offended, I will respond with “yes, thank you and I hope you have a good holiday also”.
I also see no need to get upset and in someones face to belittle someone that does not believe the same way I do.
Life’s too short to worry about the type of holiday greeting as long as they are not trying to beat me up because my choice is different from thiers.
Personally, as a progressive Christian, I think that Jesus is a bit more pissed at people being greedy and wasteful and ignoring their neighbor’s needs than at the placement of “Christmas” in the ad circular. In fact, I think you can make a pretty good Biblical case that Jesus’ name doesn’t really belong at all in a celebration of consumerist cancer.
Bill O’Reilly cited the Book of Revelation, the final scripture in the New Testament, saying, ‘This was written — what? Five thousand years ago?’
Yeah, God handed the Book of Revelations to Adam and Eve on day one and told them to mind it well. Didn’t you know that?
“The 80-year-old leader of a suburban Atlanta megachurch is at the center of a sex scandal of biblical dimensions: He slept with his brother’s wife and fathered a child by her.”
Proof positive that old men are like garlic: white head and green root.
Besides… If she didn’t have any children with his brother, it was his Biblical obligation to provide her with some. Vide Onan and how kindly God looked at him for not fulfilling that obligation…
“Red” and “blue” pale in comparison to “green.”
Great line. Throw in any other divisions (e.g., religious) and it works as well.
LOL! Maybe the Talevan will boycott BilldO for implying the Earth is so old.
Bill O’Reilly loves to talk about his religious grounding, but he’s a little confused about his holy book
Well, to be “fair and balanced” – O’Reilly is a Roman Catholic. And we’re discouraged from reading the Bible for ourselves…
Egggssssellent.
Just another man of g*d tending to his flock.
http://www.apostasyalert.org/earl_paulk_exposed_by_cnn.htm
Mona Brewer who, along with her husband Bobby, filed suit against Paulk and his church in August, 2005. This is one of many victims that have surfaced and alleged that Paulk had molested them, including a woman who had been molested by Paulk since the age of 7, according to the July 2001 edition of Charisma magazine.
On Thursday’s report on CNN, Mona Brewer painted a pitiful picture of how she was conditioned to obey her pastor who goes by the title of Archbishop Earl Paulk. She had been a singer and member on the worship team in his church for ten years before Paulk made his move.
“I was just overwhelmed, because that was such a great opportunity,” Brewer said to Mattingly, recalling her elation at the invitation to see Paulk in his office. It was an opportunity to spend time with the man she considered a prophet and a mouthpiece for God. “Nobody got to do that. I mean, he was awesome. I mean, everybody wanted to talk to him. And he just invited me to his office to talk to him for a few minutes. And that was really incredible.”
“He said, ‘well, I guess you will just have to take your clothes off, because I’m going to have to love you.’ Whoa. And I thought, oh, God. You know, I didn’t want to do it, but what choice did I have? I mean, I have been taught for all these years not to question him. And I had this word from God. I mean, God obviously wanted me to do this. And it was so foreign to me, but I — I didn’t know what else to do. I was on the spot. So, I took off my clothes, and we did it.”
She went on to explain how she was at his beck and call for sexual services for the next fourteen years. Paulk shared her with members of his family and visiting charismatic preachers. Paulk excused his behavior with his own personal theology called “Kingdom Relationships.” Brewer explained: “Because he said, ‘you know, the adultery issue was for the little ones.’ It was for the — the people, the, you know, commoners. It wasn’t for people who God elevated and trusted with special things like this, relationships like this. And that’s the way he explained it to me.”
Watch the movie “V for Vendeta”, John Hurt’s character (Suttler the high chancellor) is what you would have with the religious kooks in power….
Wasn’t John of Revelations the first person to discover magic mushrooms? Didn’t the first Ecumenical council of Rome throw out other books by this so called “seer” when they were eliminating gospels and choosing what would be included in the bible destroying all other copies and manuscripts. Isn’t it true that not a single word was written until 200yrs after Christ’s death. What a memory these early Christians had. Just like the Jews who told the story of Genesis for 600years around the campfires before a single word of it was written down. Ever hear 2 Jews tell the same joke the same way. Christmas is much like other Birthdays…it’s always the thought that counts.
I don’t care what they call the holiday season. Merry Christmas is just as acceptable as Happy Holidays (which includes New Years). It amuses me to see FOX going so crazy over something like this. With all the really important issues in the world today, getting upset over this is insane.
I have relatives who really believe that every word in the Bible is accurate and comes directly from GOD. And they don’t care that some of the stories are in other religions…it came from their GOD.
The whole flap about Christmas is asinine. For one thing, using the clues in the Bible (read it sometime, fundies!), such as the timimg of the Roman taxation of the Jews, scholars place the time of the birth of Christ in April, not December. The December holiday was chosen by the early Church to appease European pagans, who held their traditional winter solstice feasts around the 25th of December. Most of the customs associated with Christmas (and Easter) are completely pagan in origin. If people today are worried about accuracy in their holiday greetings, they should wish each other “Happy Solstice”.
Hey Libra (#7), had a parrot once named Onan. Kept spilling his seed on the floor.
Having met both Paulk and Richard Roberts though a church that I used to attend I am not surprised by the accusations against either of them.
Richard’s wife was rarely seen in the church and I do not remember Earl Paulk having his wife with him ever, although Mona was always with him, as was Clarissa.
Sadly there are many within the charismatic community who are so in need of signs and wonders that they are in danger of putting these ministers on pedistals. The result is that the ministers will start to believe they are special, and like a spoilt child that they can do whatever they want.
That they are happy to lie shows how far removed from the truth they are. How Earl Paulk could stand in court and deny any sexual activity outside of marriage other than Mona is beyond belief. It also will cause many to doubt his innocence in the sexual preditor charge now.
As for Richard, he has had too much power, which has caused him to believe that he can do whatever he wants. He is not the first or the last minister to be seen to be living a very rich lifestyle. The problem with the WOF/prosperity gospel is that it maintains that God blesses His people. Therefore if you do not have much money then you are not a good Christian. So they have to use the money and live like kings so that people will believe what they are saying. Don’t they?