About Face: Marquette Accepts “Christmas Tree”

It was just what one would expect of a politically correct university (although not of a genuinely Catholic university): describing a Christmas tree as merely a “tree,” as Marquette did when it announced a tree lighting taking place yesterday afternoon.

Our Sunday night post on this was quickly picked up on social media, and also by Charlie Sykes, who discussed it yesterday (Monday) morning. Here is Sykes:



Then, all of a sudden, announcements from Marquette of the event suddenly began to include the word “Christmas.”

There was an e-mail, dated Monday at 3:17 p.m. that announced the “Annual Christmas Tree lighting ceremony.”

And sometime yesterday an announcement on “Marquette Today,” first posted on November 21, was updated to say that the ceremony is “tonight.” The other change? The inclusion of the word “Christmas.” Here is the blurb on “Marquette Today” as it appeared on Sunday afternoon, and here is the way it appeared when we saved the page as a PDF today.

Somebody forgot to sanitize the University calendar, however, since today the entry still omits “Christmas” just as it did on Sunday.

How Did it Happen?

It would be nice to know who first decided that a Christmas tree could not be called a “Christmas Tree.” But Mary Janz, Executive Director of Housing and Residence Life (the office that oversees the Residence Hall Association, which sponsored the event), has not responded to a request for an explanation of the policy, who made it, and how it was made.

Likewise, University spokesman Brian Dorrington did not immediately respond to a request for a statement about the change of policy that allowed “Christmas.”

The banning of “Christmas Tree” probably did not come from top University officials. More likely, some Residence Life official decided that “Christmas Tree” was not sufficiently “inclusive.” But that is the problem. The campus bureaucracy is dominated by the kind of people who define “inclusive” as requiring the exclusion of things explicitly Christian.

And these are the people who make most of the day-to-day decisions.

Update

A woman posting a comment on the Badger Catholic blog said the following:

I attend Marquette and this is the actual text from the E-mail we received, “Reminder: Residence Hall Association to hold annual Christmas tree lighting ceremony tonight

NOVEMBER 21, 2016

The Residence Hall Association will hold its annual Christmas tree lighting ceremony, “Igniting Hope,” on Monday, Nov. 28, at 5 p.m. in Westowne Square. The ceremony will include speakers, performances and the tree lighting. A reception, including musical performances, crafts and snacks, will follow from 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. in the AMU Monaghan Ballrooms.

This, of course, is the November 21 post on “Marquette Today” that has been modified with “Christmas” added. Here, again, is the original November 21 post.

Marquette, after our story broke, appears to have been aggressively e-mailing people with the version of the announcement that includes “Christmas.”

Marquette Won’t Call a Christmas Tree a “Christmas Tree”

We blundered onto this announcement on the Marquette website:

Residence Hall Association to hold annual tree lighting ceremony

NOVEMBER 21, 2016

The Residence Hall Association will hold its annual tree lighting ceremony, “Igniting Hope,” on Monday, Nov. 28, at 5 p.m. in Westowne Square. The ceremony will include speakers, performances and the tree lighting. A reception, including musical performances, crafts and snacks, will follow from 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. in the AMU Monaghan Ballrooms.

Let’s see: a tree with lights, being lighted in late November. What is it? Obviously a Christmas tree.

And what is missing from the above news blurb? The word “Christmas.”

Maybe somewhere else is an announcement calling this a “Christmas tree,” but the only other one we could find for this event omits “Christmas” also.

What about previous years? It seems the similar event for 2015 also omits “Christmas.” Sorry we missed blogging about that.

But every year before that seems to happily include the word “Christmas.” For example, the same event for 2014 uses “Christmas tree” and “Christmas season.” Here is another announcement for the 2014 event.

And the same event announcement for 2013 uses “Christmas tree.” This goes way back. We quickly found announcements for a “tree lighting ceremony” that was “in celebration of Christmas” for 2007, and a “Christmas tree lighting ceremony” for 2009.

So apparently, in 2015, Marquette decided that a Christmas tree was politically incorrect.

Mary Janz, Executive Director of Housing and Residence Life, did not immediately respond to a request for an explanation of this change of policy, who made it, and how it was made.

War on Christmas

Whether a Christmas tree can be called a “Christmas tree” has been a staple of the Culture Wars over the last few decades. At the nation’s Capitol, the National Christmas Tree somehow got renamed the the “Holiday Tree” in the 1990s, but when Republican Dennis Hastert was elected Speaker of the House, he got the tree returned to its original name. Fox News noted:

Calling a Christmas tree a Christmas tree has become a politically charged prospect in jurisdictions across the country, from Boston to Sacramento and in dozens of communities in between. The city of Boston changed the name of its Holiday Tree back to Christmas Tree after being threatened with several lawsuits.

While the political correctness has trapped some communities into taking the Christianity out of Christmas in order to accommodate the minority of Americans who don’t celebrate the holiday, the White House continues to call its tree a Christmas Tree.

That “diversity” and “inclusion” require censoring and silencing all things Christian is a typical attitude of the politically correct. Of course, this is not “inclusive,” but rather exclusionary.

Genuine inclusion would mean recognizing the diversity of religious beliefs and traditions. The National Menorah, on public property just south of the White House, is an example. If Muslim students at Marquette wanted to stage events to celebrate Ramadan they would certainly be allowed to by Marquette (although Ramadan is usually in the summer with few students around).

But Christianity is different. Secular leftists don’t much like Christianity.

Secular Activists Trying to Suppress Christian Schools

From The Federalist, an essay titled “The Other Campus Free-Speech Problem No One’s Talking About.” Some key points:

During the past few years, responding to ever-more draconian codes on secular campuses aimed at constraining free speech, dissenting voices have been raised here and there across the political spectrum, defending free expression and free association for all. This addition of conscientious objection outside conservative and religious ranks is a welcome development. It also brings us to one other large threat to free speech in education these days—one that’s still in the closet.

Secularist progressivism claims to champion diversity, but its activists today do not tolerate genuine diversity, including and es­pecially in the realm of ideas, as revealed by today’s legal and other attacks on Christian colleges, Christian associations and clubs, Christian schools, Christian students, and Christian homeschooling.

These are bellwether ideological campaigns that have yet to gar­ner the attention they deserve outside religious circles. Their logical conclusion is to interfere with and shut down Christian education itself—from elementary school on up to religious colleges and uni­versities.

It’s Not An Education If It Includes Christian Ideas?

Consider a few particulars. The Christian college club Intervarsity has had its credentials questioned on secular campuses around the country. So have other student groups including Chi Alpha and the Christian Legal Society, the focus of Christian Legal Society v. Martinez (2010), which found that Hastings College had not violated the First Amendment in forcing the CLS to accept members who violated its Christian moral code. During the past ten years, two high-profile Christian colleges—The King’s College in New York, and Gordon College in Massachusetts—have been subjected to accreditation battles. Meanwhile, home-schooling remains an object of attack by leftish pundits, New Atheists, the National Education Association, and other progressive standard-bearers.

Still other authorities want to discredit religious higher education altogether. Writing in the Chronicle of Higher Education in 2014, a professor at the Uni­versity of Pennsylvania called accreditation for any Christian col­lege a “scandal,” adding that “[p]roviding accreditation to colleges like [evangelical Protestant] Wheaton [College] makes a mockery of whatever academic and intellectual standards the process of ac­creditation is supposed to uphold.” Trinity Western University in Canada has likewise been embroiled for years in a battle to keep its accreditation—because its community members pledge not to have sex outside traditional marriage.

Let’s ask the obvious question: exactly whose schools are being at­tacked as unworthy, substandard, and undeserving of recognition? Christians’ schools, that’s whose—not progressive flagships like Bennington, Middlebury, or Sarah Lawrence. If religious tradi­tionalists were fanning out to campaign against schools dominated by other canons, cacophony would resound from Cupertino to Ban­gor. But because the prejudice propelling these attacks has Christi­anity in its sights, no one outside religious circles objects.

These efforts to impede religious education are also part of an ongoing paradox. It is not Christian colleges that have made a habit of ha­rassing and intimidating speakers who represent different points of view; it is nonreligious campuses. When socialist presidential candidate Bernie Sanders gave a speech in September 2015 at Liberty University, media accounts, including in The New York Times, took note of how courteous and polite the student body was, and how they unfailingly applauded a speaker who acknowledged at the outset profoundly disagreeing with their views.

Contrast their civility with the hostile reception certain other thinkers are guaranteed these days, just by setting foot on secular campuses. Followers of the Cross, especially, are often greeted by an especially bilious class of protester. Thus, for example, University of Tulsa students protested a former self-professed lesbian turned Christian—on the grounds that calling something “sinful” is “thinly veiled hate speech,” as one leader of the protest explained.

Simi­larly, when Jennifer Roback Morse—a former Ivy League professor and head of the Ruth Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to traditional Christian teaching—appeared at the University of California, Santa Barbara, 20 students interrupted her talk with chants, waving signs inscribed with various obscenities. When Christian speaker Ravi Zacharias spoke at the University of Pennsylvania, a local athe­ist group handed out bingo-style cards mocking the speaker to every student who entered the hall. The list could go on.

Read the entire essay.

At Marquette

One might believe that Marquette, a “Catholic” university, would at least be tolerant of Christian teachings about sexuality.

But to believe that, one would have to believe Marquette is really a Catholic university.

At Marquette, the Intervarsity Christian Fellowship was threatened with being kicked off campus for canning an officer who was engaged in a homosexual affair. He made it clear he did not accept Christian teaching about homosexuality, and would continue the affair. Under pressure from alumni, Marquette relented.

This was in 2011. Would Marquette back off today? We doubt it, given that the institution seems to seek out every way possible to pander to the campus gay lobby.

All of this, of course, represents the glaring hypocrisy of the Orwellian phrase “diversity and inclusion.” “Diversity” is interpreted to exclude a large body of ideas, including the ideas that Christians have about sexuality and the ideas that all civilizations have had about marriage until very recently.  “Inclusion” means intolerant and exclusionary conduct toward Christians and others who hold to these ideas.

Anti-Christian Bigotry in Canada

Happily, Defeated

Arrested for Preaching About Homosexuality

This, of course, is a fundraising video, but the reality it talks about (no free speech for people critical of homosexuality) is endemic. The situation in the U.S., with our First Amendment, is better in strict legal terms, but bullying, harassment and intimidation from the gay lobby can achieve the same thing here that arrests can in the U.K.

[Update]

The Huffington Post ran a reasonably unbiased article on this incident, but note the level of vitriol directed against not only the street preacher, but also Christianity in general, in the comments.

Intolerance of Christians in . . . Guess Where?

From Real Clear Politics:

As an ancient Christian minority in a mainly Muslim society, Coptic Christians have often been persecuted and marginalized.

Even so, Coptic believer Nadia Eweida was startled at the blatant discrimination she encountered in her job at the national airline. While Muslim women around her freely wore headscarves to fulfill their religious obligation, she was forbidden to wear a cross openly while working. Even Jews and Sikhs received more consideration: the policy was directed solely and explicitly towards Christians. When Nadia complained, political authorities and news media were grossly unsympathetic.

We might wonder why Nadia did not simply give up the unequal struggle, and move to a country like Great Britain, where Christianity is not just tolerated but which actually has an established national church. Why would she continue to tolerate the systematic injustice of an aggressive Islamist regime...

Oh wait, my mistake. Is my face red!

It turns out that although Nadia Eweida really is a Coptic Christian, she was living in England at the time, rather than Egypt, and that her job was with British Airways, at Heathrow. It was her British employers who concluded that public expressions of Christianity were unacceptable, in a land where the Queen is head of state, and the Supreme Governor of the Church by law established. British government lawyers defended that situation before a European court. One suggested that if Christians did not like the situation, they should find other employment. And why so much fuss about the cross, they objected? Wearing it is not an actual requirement of the faith, as opposed to an individual whim, so you can’t insist on any right to do so.

British Christians are not persecuted. Around the world, Christians are massacred, tortured, subjected to bogus show trials, starved into submission, and reduced to penury on the grounds of their faith. That’s real persecution, and nothing like that happens in the United Kingdom.

But it is legitimate to point out that in contemporary Britain, aggressive secularism on a wide variety of fronts is making life very difficult for conservative or traditional-minded Christians. Notionally, such an anti-religious campaign should be targeting all supernaturally-based faiths equally, but British secularism is accompanied by a multi-cultural principle that acknowledges some religious expressions as legitimate manifestations. Hence the tolerance for Muslim headscarves or Sikh turbans in the workplace.

Unfortunately, that respect does not extend to the beliefs or practices of Christians who often come from other non-European cultures -- to a faithful Coptic Christian like Nadia Eweida, or to African or Afro-Caribbean Pentecostals. Most media coverage of thriving African churches in Britain involves ludicrously exaggerated charges of witch-hunting and even human sacrifice by these supposedly primitive fanatics. It’s good to know the old idea of the Heart of Darkness is alive and well in the former imperial metropolis.

Legal cases resulting from religious discrimination have generated vast media attention in Britain. The Eweida affair apart, some other employment conflicts involved nurse Shirley Chaplin, ordered not to wear a cross on her ward duty; or Lillian Ladele, a marriage registrar who refused to conduct same sex civil partnerships. Relationships counselor Gary McFarlane was fired because his religious beliefs prevented him offering sexual therapy to same-sex couples. McFarlane and Ladele, incidentally, are both black.

In the United States at least, a clash between gay rights and the rights of religious believers would normally mean walking a delicate legal tightrope. Not in England, though, where the senior judge Sir John Laws -- the amazingly titled Lord Justice Laws -- proclaimed in the 2010 McFarlane case that in any such clash, religious rights would, and must, always lose out. As he said, “The promulgation of law for the protection of a position held purely on religious grounds...is irrational, as preferring the subjective over the objective. But it is also divisive, capricious and arbitrary.”

You can actually spend a good while dissecting Laws’s prolonged shriek, which also noted that “in the eye of everyone save the believer, religious faith is necessarily subjective, being incommunicable by any kind of proof or evidence.” So much for a few thousand years of theology and apologetics -- Christian, Jewish and Islamic.

So much, too, for the British courts, who have moved beyond parody.

The only hope left for the dissident Christians, then, is the European Court of Human Rights, which in recent years has come to occupy a position in European countries parallel to that of the US Supreme Court. And that is where Eweida, McFarlane and the others are now headed. If nothing else, the cases will contribute to shaping the European Court’s developing stance on religious rights, a topic that has caused fevered debate over the past decade. The Court is at what Americans might call a John Marshall moment, deciding the proper limits of judicial power over an emerging constitutional system.

Who would have thought that in the 21st century, Europeans would still be grappling with defending the basic rights of religious believers who still, after years of secular drift, make up a sizable majority of the continent’s population?

The elites that dominate Europe, of course, are the sort of elites that attack religious freedom here in the U.S.

New York Times Prints Anti-Catholic Ad, Rejects Virtually Identical Anti-Islam Ad

From The Blaze:

The New York Times has rejected a full-page anti-Islam advertisement that mirrored a scathing anti-Catholic advertisement the newspaper published on March 9.

According to The Daily Caller, a March 13 letter sent by the Times to the parody’s sponsor, activist Pamela Geller, said the $39,000 anti-Islam ad was rejected because “the fallout from running this ad now could put U.S. troops and/or civilians in the [Afghan] region in danger.”

Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, accused the Times of having a double standard and told DC that The Time’s was based on “either [anti-Catholic] bigotry or fear [of Islamic violence], and they’ve painted themselves into that corner.”

Here is the anti-Catholic ad:



And here is the anti-Islam ad:



It’s tempting to say that the Times is guilty of cowardice. It’s tempting to suggest they would show more respect for Catholics if Catholics might bomb the New York Times building.

In fact, we think cowardice has very little to do with it, and ideological bias is everything. The liberals at the Times, like liberals generally, hate social conservatives. But are’t Muslims social conservatives too?

The simple fact is that it’s Christians, and not Muslims that liberals have to fight for control of American culture and American politics. Muslims are hardly fans of gay marriage, but it’s Christians who turn out in large numbers to vote down same-sex unions.

Indeed, Muslims vote Democratic.

Muslims also serve as yet another victim group to whom liberals can show solicitude, and they are thus every bit as useful as blacks, “women” and gays. Further, Muslims tend to oppose U.S. intervention in the Middle East, and thus have the same views (but for rather different reasons) as liberals, who instinctively tend to sympathize with America’s enemies.

Obama White House Demands Removal of Christian Symbol at Georgetown

From CNS news:

Georgetown University says it covered over the monogram “IHS” — symbolizing the name of Jesus Christ — because it was inscribed on a pediment on the stage where President Obama spoke at the university on Tuesday and the White House had asked Georgetown to cover up all signs and symbols there.

As of Wednesday afternoon, the “IHS” monogram that had previously adorned the stage at Georgetown’s Gaston Hall was still covered up--when the pediment where it had appeared was photographed by CNSNews.com.

President Obama is greeted by Georgetown University President John J. DeGioia as he arrives to deliver remarks on the economy, April 14, 2009, at Georgetown University. Georgetown had covered the symbol “IHS” on the pediment above and behind the two men. “In coordinating the logistical arrangements for yesterday’s event, Georgetown honored the White House staff’s request to cover all of the Georgetown University signage and symbols behind Gaston Hall stage,” Julie Green Bataille, associate vice president for communications at Georgetown, told CNSNews.com.

The letters “IHS” are something most media don’t seem to understand.

In fact, it’s based on a vision supposedly seen by Roman emperor Constantine, with IHS standing for in hoc signo [vinces] -- “in this sign conquer.” The sign being the cross.

Many Christians think it means “in His service.” Either way, it’s most certainly a Christian symbol.

Either way, something that Barack Obama is uncomfortable with.

What is most shocking is that Georgetown would submit to a demand like this, agreeing — for publicity or favor with liberals — to conceal a symbol of its own identity.