Saturday I took a walk around downtown Walnut Creek during peak holiday shopping mayhem. In the course of the afternoon I was surprised to encounter more of the Christmas season than I expected. Long lines of ladies juggling shopping bags and rambunctious kids, and a gingerbread latte at Starbucks gave my festive mood and energy level a jumpstart. Then as I meandered through the outdoor plaza toward the movie theater a familiar tune piped over the speakers caught my attention…“Oh holy night the stars are brightly shining—it is the night of our dear savior’s birth…” In the minefield of “spiritual correctness” paranoia where Wal-Mart and other major retailers have been apprehensive to wish customers “Merry Christmas,” I wondered if anyone else was surprised to hear a Christmas song in public that mentions more than trees, reindeer and Santa.

I arrived at the movie theater and bought a ticket for The Nativity and joined a matinee crowd—mostly young families and older adults. When a preview for Charlotte’s Web used the tagline, “this holiday season give your family something to believe in,” I couldn’t help but brace myself for what mainstream Hollywood might do with a story central to Christian belief.

The Nativity’s telling of Christ’s birth opened with scripture from Jeremiah scrolling down the screen. With the exceptions of minor changes in timeline, and necessary character and dialogue elaboration, Catherine Hardwicke’s film stayed remarkably true to the Biblical account of Christmas.

Hardwicke managed to paint a picture of the turbulent, dangerous world of first century Bethlehem and Nazareth under the thumb of King Herod and Rome. From the bedlam of the streets of Jerusalem, crawling with entranced snake charmers and menacing soldiers to the poverty-stricken village where Mary’s family struggles to survive selling goat cheese, there is a tangible sense of the constant struggle to survive. Hardwicke gently gives the audience a taste of the threats Caesar’s ruthless tax collectors and Herod’s unpredictable desperate measures, not to mention the excruciating ordeal of primitive, dusty natural childbirth.

Despite some “gritty” elements, Nativity remains mild, tame and family friendly. Some critics have balked that the movie lacks energy and dynamism, and triggers Sunday School flashbacks. I have to admit that adults should be warned that Hardwicke’s film has some flannel board moments, but is that so bad? Maybe a simple, reverent account of the Christmas story geared toward families with children isn’t meant to pack the punch of the new Bond movie, or jarring images like Gibson’s Passion.

It was refreshing to see the nativity outside the context of a Christmas pageant or carved wooden figurines. While it is impossible to do justice to the birth of God in flesh on film, The Nativity is a good reminder that Christmas is not about a fairy tale—but a story of real human beings in a messy uncertain world. And who would have expected Hollywood to offer fare that tries to remind us frantic shoppers and decorators what all the songs, lights and sugar cookies are all about?

D'Souza debate with Sam Harris

FOX News changed the format for D'Souza's appearance on Your World
with Neal Cavutto last week. While D'Souza was slated to debate Sam Harris, FOX News refocused the segment after our announcement was broadcast. Thanks for tuning in!

In Chicago, a Fairy and Santa Are In, Jesus Is Out

Here’s what happened. Christkindlmarket, based on a German Christmas market dating back to 1545, has been staged, with the city’s blessing, since 1997 at Daley Plaza. It’s a German-themed open air extravaganza, complete with bratwursts and beer, Christmas music, cookies, craft booths and women wearing dirndls. The Christkindlmarket website boasts that it is the largest such event in America, drawing about one million visitors from November 23 to December 24. For you ACLU types, the closing date is the eve of Winter Holiday.

The current trouble began when city officials got wind that New Line Cinema, one of the corporate sponsors, would have a booth featuring clips from “The Nativity Story,” which depicts the events surrounding the birth of Jesus. According to early reviews, the movie is a powerful, true-to-Scripture portrayal of Joseph and Mary’s travails and Jesus’s birth in a stable in Bethlehem.

For being too upfront about the real meaning of Christmas, the studio was sent packing--by the very city officials who welcome annual Gay Pride Week, complete with, well, you know. Okay, maybe you don’t, because the media airbrush out the most shocking depravities. Suffice to say that city officials welcome “Mr. Leather” and friends, but feel that too much Jesus might be offensive. The good news for the studio is that you can’t buy this kind of publicity. When a film is so moving that it poses a threat to non-stop shopping, beer guzzling, and wurst gobbling, it must have something going for it. Since this hit the news, the bureaucrats have ladled more PC dressing over their ham-handed action than street vendors pour mustard on a Chicago hot dog.

The Associated Press reports that Mayor’s Office of Special Events spokesgrinch Cindy Gatziolis argued that the event already has a nativity scene, and that other religions are represented in the square with displays erected by private groups. OK, fair enough. But she stressed that the city doesn’t want to appear to endorse one religion over another—at the Christmas fair. It’s all about inclusion, you see, which is why they have to exclude a film about Jesus that might move people’s hearts. Jim Law, executive director of the same office, issued a statement that the film would be “insensitive to the many people of different faiths who come to enjoy the market for its good and unique gifts.” In effect, Mr. Law is saying the City of Chicago prefers its Christmas to be the commercialized, Santa-centered kind. You can display a pretty nativity scene, but keep the stronger spirituality behind closed doors.

Robert H. Knight
FreeReplublic.com

Behind the scenes of “The Nativity Story

On a sidenote, it is important to discuss rumors swirling about the young, 16 year old, unwed star of “The Nativity Story.” Keisha Castle-Hughes announced shortly after the filming had been completed that she was pregnant by her boyfriend. Of course, the tabloids have been making plenty of jokes about the virgin-no-more or the immaculate conception, but her friends put it in perspective.

Producer Wyck Godfrey said, “What I really admire about her is that she chose …to put her career aside and to raise this child, and I think that that is very admirable …there are a lot of people who would have told her different.”

“She wants to do the right thing, no matter what anyone says, she’s going to do the right thing and raise this child, and love this child, …so I am really proud of her …she will shower this child with love.”

The producers also noted that “the difficult part was coming out and telling people.” With the public attention and spotlight placed on her, it would have been easy to avoid responsibility in a society that seems to have lost respect for motherhood, but she is choosing to have the baby and to marry the father, so we can only support her and pray for child. She may have made the wrong choice with her boyfriend, but she has made the right choices since then, so she deserves our prayers and respect.

David Criswell, Ph.D.
Christiananswers.net

Answering Atheist's Arguments
by Dinesh D'Souza

Edmund Burke once described atheists as an “unenterprising race.” No longer. Dinesh D'Souza's recent article in the Christian Science Monitor stirred up a hornet’s nest of response from atheists. Who knew they read a newspaper put out by the Christian Scientists? Today’s atheists, D'Souza discovered from their missives, are a scrappy, disputatious bunch. The following article is his response to some of their assertions.

First, several atheists contended that you cannot really compare the crimes of Christian regimes of the past to those of atheist regimes of the twentieth century. A representative of the American Humanist Association noted that population levels were much lower during the Inquisition than, say, the period of Stalin’s or Mao’s purges. This was a point I made in my original article. But our humanist friend also noted that the technology of homicide is much more lethal in an era of weapons of mass destruction. Never mind that Stalin and Mao didn’t use any of those weapons. They relied on primitive techniques of murder, such as forced relocation, forced labor, and forced starvation. Besides, the caveats of our humanist colleague hardly change the overall calculus. The best estimates are that between 5,000 and 10,000 were killed in the Spanish Inquisition. That’s compared with 100 million who were killed in the atheist purges of the twentieth century. The 100 million is actually a low figure, since it uses very modest estimates for how many people Stalin and Mao killed, and it leaves out a host of lesser atheist tyrants such as Pol Pot and Enver Hoxha. Even so, using this conservative estimate, a quick calculation reveals that atheist regimes killed ten thousand times more people in the space of a few decades than the Spanish Inquisition managed to kill over a period of more than two centuries.

Second, several atheist writers argued that Stalin and Mao’s crimes could not be blamed on atheism since atheism is not really a belief, it is really an absence of belief. As one writer put it, “Leaders such as Stalin and Mao persecuted religious groups, not in a bid to expand atheism, but as a way of focusing people’s hatred on those groups to consolidate their own power.” Of course I agree that murderous regimes, whether Christian or atheist, are generally seeking to strengthen their position. But if Christian regimes are held responsible for their crimes committed in the name of Christianity, then atheist regimes should be held accountable for their crimes committed in the name of atheism. And who can deny that Stalin and Mao, not to mention Pol Pot and a host of others, all committed atrocities in the name of a Communist ideology that was explicitly atheistic? Who can dispute that they did their bloody deeds by claiming to be establishing a “new man” and a religion-free utopia? These were mass murders performed with atheism as a central part of their ideological inspiration, they were not mass murders done by people who simply happened to be atheist.

Third, many atheists angrily insisted that Hitler was not an atheist, indeed he was a lifelong Christian! (You learn something new every day.) Here I discovered that the atheists were rummaging through various atheist websites that seem to have done their homework on Hitler. One letter noted that Hitler was “raised as a Roman Catholic.” Another quoted Hitler saying in a speech during the early 1930s that he was “doing the Lord’s work.” Another provided an excerpt of one of Hitler’s speeches praising Christ as a valiant opponent of the Jews. The atheist message was that Hitler was not one of them, he was one of us.

The poverty of the atheist argument becomes clear with a bit of examination. What does it prove to say that Hitler was raised Catholic? Stalin was raised in the Orthodox Church. Mao was raised as a Buddhist. Lots of people repudiate their religious upbringing. Hitler vehemently rejected the traditional Christianity in which he was raised. During the period of his ascent to power, he needed the support of the German people—mostly Christian, mostly Lutheran—and he occasionally used boilerplate rhetoric such as “I am doing the Lord’s work” to try and secure this. This rhetoric, it should be noted, is a commonplace rhetorical device among atheist writers. Nietzsche, for instance, regularly compared himself to Jesus, even titling one of his books Ecce Homo (“behold the man,” a biblical reference to Christ). But no intelligent reader of Nietzsche can doubt that he was a rabid atheist, as was Hitler. One should not confuse political opportunism with personal conviction. Not surprisingly, Hitler invoked Christ’s death at the hands of the Jews in order to solicit Christian support for his (secular and racial, not religious) anti-Semitic agenda.

Once Hitler and the Nazis came to power, however, they denounced Christianity and launched a ruthless drive to subdue and weaken traditional Christianity. Since 1937 the policies of Hitler’s government became openly and increasingly anti-religious. In particular, they repudiated what they perceived as the Christian values of equality, compassion and weakness and extolled the atheist notions of the Nietzschean superman and a new society based on the “will to power.” Hitler’s leading advisers, such as Goebbels, Heydrich and Bormann, were atheists who were savagely hostile to religion. Several of his associates reported that the Fuhrer’s personal views were deeply anti-Christian. Again, Hitler’s hostility to religion in general, and Christianity in particular, were not incidental to the violence that characterized his regime. They were part of the Nazi ideology—a secular ideology that deified race over creed—and they helped to justify the horrors of extermination and holocaust. Like Stalin and Mao, Hitler illustrates the point made by both Dostoyevsky and earlier John Locke: when God is excluded, then it is not surprising when morality itself is sacrificed in the process and chaos and horror is unleashed on the world. So it has been in our time, and all the elaborate evasions produced by today’s atheists cannot change what their anti-religious kinsmen did, cannot change the grim facts of history.

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