Ghost enemies

There’s been a lot of talk lately about the farce known as “The War on Christianity”. While the absurd idea of a war on a mainstream religion gives me an inner chuckle, it also gets me a little angry. As a Christian, I don’t feel like I’m at war with anything except misguided attempts to hijack my religion for political reasons.

These so-called “wars” on Christmas, Christianity and now even Easter are nothing more than frontal assaults on the intellect of the American public. Senator Delay, Bill O’Reilley, and the rest of the schmucks that opine about these attacks on their favored religion and holidays are no better than streetwalkers, pandering to anyone foolish enough to listen. However foolish, these “wars” are symptoms of a larger problem: mainline Christianity is being overwhelmed by a radical minority hell bent on dominating the religion and revising it to fit their narrow views.

As a Lutheran, I never thought of my flavor of Christianity as “progressive.” I grew up with the whole “Love the Lord your God and love your neighbors as yourself” spiel, believing that the best kind of evangelism was ministry through living. My family, for all their various human flaws, never taught me to push Christianity on my Jewish and Muslim friends, though later on I learned the technique from my new and interesting fundamentalist friends.

We were taught that the best ministry was by example: live a life that others want to lead. This type of evangelism is more difficult than street preaching or bible-thumping because it requires sincerity. These are not qualities inherent in today’s political talking heads and they’re not usually found lurking in the larger than life personalities of the religious right. Instead, we have paranoid leaders lurching at ghost-enemies, claiming to be under attack from all sides.