{"id":1732,"date":"2013-12-04T07:51:47","date_gmt":"2013-12-04T13:51:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dave.dlscott.info\/?p=1732"},"modified":"2013-12-04T07:53:41","modified_gmt":"2013-12-04T13:53:41","slug":"not-all-christians-believe-there-is-a-war-on-christmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dave.dlscott.info\/?p=1732","title":{"rendered":"Not all Christians believe there is a &#8216;War on Christmas &#8216;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/story\/news\/nation\/2013\/12\/02\/war-on-christmas-blog\/3802231\/\">http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/story\/news\/nation\/2013\/12\/02\/war-on-christmas-blog\/3802231\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p><b>Not all Christians believe there is a &#8216;War on Christmas\u00a0&#8216;<\/b><br \/>\nHeidi Hall, The (Nashville) Tennessean 2:34 p.m. EST December 2, 2013<\/p>\n<p><b>A number of evangelicals distancing themselves from those concerned that the department store greeter said &#8220;Happy holidays,&#8221; instead of &#8220;Merry Christmas\u00a0.&#8221;<\/b><\/p>\n<p><b>Story Highlights\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Author&#8217;s blog says being wished &#8216;Happy Holidays&#8217; is not persecution<\/li>\n<li>Many remain convinced there is a national war on Christmas<\/li>\n<li>Southern Baptist Convention&#8217;s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission says media overstating the war<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Nothing in evangelical Christian author Rachel Held Evans&#8217; five years of blogging has gone as viral as her simple little flowchart to determine if one is being persecuted during the Christmas season<b>.<\/b><\/p>\n<p><b><\/b><strong>Simple little flowchart to determine if one is being persecuted during the Christmas season<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;Did someone threaten your life, safety, civil liberties or right to worship<b>?<\/b>&#8221; it asks<b>.<\/b>\u00a0No. &#8220;Did someone wish you happy holidays?&#8221; Yes.<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;You are not being persecuted,&#8221; it says<b>.<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>At last count, the post had attracted more than 700 comments, the vast majority in agreement with her<b>.<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Call it the backlash against the &#8220;war on Christmas&#8221; camp \u2014 a number of evangelicals distancing themselves from those concerned that the department store greeter said &#8220;happy holidays,&#8221; that the Nativity scene is gone from the local courthouse, that classrooms are hosting &#8220;winter parties<b>.<\/b>&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;God became flesh and lived among us, and if that&#8217;s not enough for people, I think they&#8217;ve missed the point,&#8221; said Evans, who lives in Dayton, Tenn<b>.<\/b>, and wrote last year&#8217;s best-selling book, &#8220;A Year of Biblical Womanhood<b>.<\/b>&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Still, the idea that there&#8217;s a national war on Christmas is going strong<b>.<\/b>\u00a0Former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin&#8217;s new book, &#8220;Good Tidings and Great Joy: Protecting the Heart of Christmas,&#8221; is at No<b>.<\/b>\u00a014 on The New York Times best-seller list for hardback nonfiction<b>.<\/b>\u00a0&#8220;The &#8216;war in Christmas&#8217; is the tip of the spear in a larger battle to secularize our culture and make true religious freedom a thing of America&#8217;s past,&#8221; the back cover reads<b>.<\/b><\/p>\n<p>The Fox News opinion site Fox Nation has a prominent War on Christmas page, inviting viewers to submit their own battle stories<b>.<\/b><\/p>\n<p>State Sen<b>.<\/b>\u00a0Stacey Campfield, R-Knoxville, was thinking about Christmas well before the season arrived, introducing a bill last summer to assure that students and teachers could say &#8220;Merry Christmas&#8221; in schools<b>.<\/b>\u00a0He said it was to protect them against the American Civil Liberties Union, which responded by saying Campfield was addressing a problem that did not exist<b>.<\/b><br \/>\n<b>Pastor urges peace<\/b><br \/>\nIt&#8217;s strange that folks would argue about saying &#8220;Merry Christmas&#8221; in public when Jesus Christ himself instructed his followers to make peace with religious opponents, said Dan Scott, senior pastor of interdenominational, evangelical Christ Church in Nashville<b>.<\/b>\u00a0There may be extreme cases where Christians in America face opposition for their beliefs, Scott said, but it&#8217;s more likely that some suddenly are realizing they live in a religiously diverse nation<b>.<\/b><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We really need a way to treat the public square as the public square and private realms as private realms and not feel demonized because we come from a certain perspective,&#8221; Scott said<b>.<\/b>\u00a0&#8220;It&#8217;s not a very popular viewpoint these days<b>.<\/b>&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Daniel Darling, vice president of communications for the Nashville-based Southern Baptist Convention&#8217;s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, addressed the topic in the December issue of Homelife magazine, urging Christians to be joyful instead of judgmental this season<b>.<\/b><\/p>\n<p>He said on Friday that some media outlets are overstating the war on Christmas debate, and very few Christians actually engage in it<b>.<\/b><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We advise people that, rather than trying to force that weary Wal-Mart worker to say &#8216;Merry Christmas&#8217; against company policy, how about we be the bearers of joy<b>?<\/b>&#8221; he said<b>.<\/b>\u00a0&#8220;Instead of taking offense, say, &#8216;Here&#8217;s the story, we&#8217;re the joyful ones<b>.<\/b>\u00a0We&#8217;re the ones that have the greatest story<b>.<\/b>&#8216;<br \/>\n&#8220;If we really believe Christ is the reason for the season, we shouldn&#8217;t force people to say it<b>.<\/b>\u00a0It should be evident in our lives<b>.<\/b>&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><b>\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/story\/news\/nation\/2013\/12\/02\/war-on-christmas-blog\/3802231\/ Not all Christians believe there is a &#8216;War on Christmas\u00a0&#8216; Heidi Hall, The (Nashville) Tennessean 2:34 p.m. EST December 2, 2013 A number of evangelicals distancing themselves from those concerned that the department store greeter said &#8220;Happy holidays,&#8221; instead &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/dave.dlscott.info\/?p=1732\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3dxA8-rW","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dave.dlscott.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dave.dlscott.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dave.dlscott.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dave.dlscott.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dave.dlscott.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1732"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dave.dlscott.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1732\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1733,"href":"https:\/\/dave.dlscott.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1732\/revisions\/1733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dave.dlscott.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dave.dlscott.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dave.dlscott.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}