Via Howard at Religion Clause, the School Board treasurer in Petoskey, Michigan has caused quite a stir with his demand that the school calendar revert to referring to the winter holiday as "Christmas break". Jack Waldvogel threatened in an e-mail (pdf) to "raise… a stink, and bring out every redneck Christian conservative north of Clare to compel the district to do so."
What interests me is not so much the request – lots of school boards these days have to endure troublemakers who falsely believe, as Waldvogel does, that America is a Christian nation (see Texas lately, for starters). I'm not even too worked up about naming the December-January break a "Christmas" vacation, even if clearly "winter holiday" is more thoughtful and inclusive.
No, what concerns me is Mr. Waldvogel's tone here: angry, threatening, and ready to incite others. Maybe it's just the context of today's health care protests that worries me – as government officials are shouted down, meetings are disrupted, and some are even bringing guns as a show of….well, frankly I'm not sure what the point of that is.
Either way, religious freedom is robust and thriving in this country. We don't need angry uprisings (or sermons preaching death) to work out our church-state policy disagreements, when passionate but peaceful debates will do just fine. Culture warriors like to escalate conflict, as if Christians in America represent a viciously persecuted class. In addition to being an insult to the truly persecuted, though, raising the temperature in that way is both misleading and dangerous – if our new style of protest takes hold, especially – and in the name of Christ, of all things!
There are areas of honest disagreement over church-state principles and law, and we should debate them. Whether or not Christmas represents a secular holiday may indeed be one. That dispute, though, should be discussed in the peaceful, respectful spirit of the Christian faith it purports to defend.