Christmas Day, 1914 is celebrated every year as a testimony to many things. You will see inspiring posts about it on social media, and you will be moved, as I am every year. Christians like to think that on this day, the Prince of Peace conquered, because on this day, at several points along the Western Front, British and French troops on one side and German troops on the other, stopped shooting at each other, came out of the trenches and shared food, soccer, cigarettes and the "Christmas spirit." And the war was over! No. They went back to killing each other. It almost makes me want to become a Puritan, because in banning the celebration of Christmas (and other holy-days, since no day was really more holy than any other, they reasoned), the Puritans might have avoided this particular hypocrisy. But maybe we should celebrate it. When one's home is the battlefield, a day of fellowship between enemy soldiers is really incredible. When your world is relatively stable and tranquil (like many Americans, as long as they avoid cable-news), an act of violence on Christmas seems the worst of atrocities. So, I'm posting this early; you might forget about it by the 25th...

Forget about it by the 25th so you can enjoy a nice Christmas with your family, but read on for now. Another Christmas event that Americans like to celebrate is Washington crossing the Delaware on Christmas Day 1776. David Hackett Fischer wrote a great big book about it that is quite acclaimed. Did you remember that it was a Christmas event? There's a great (if inaccurate) painting of it that you might have seen. Below is a partial view from pbs.org.
Why did Washington cross the Delaware on Christmas? It sounds like the beginning of a joke. It is not.

 In Joseph Buffington's 1936 biography, The Soul of Washington, Buffington praised Washington’s wisdom in making the “Christmas Day” (actually December 26, 1776) attack on Trenton, NJ.  Buffington wrote that Washington devised the attack because he was “filled with the Christmas spirit himself… [and] knowing the German and British love of Christmas and their joy of Christmas cheer… [they] would, of all nights in the year, be off guard (53f).” Perhaps Washington (the schismatic Anglican?) was strangely Puritan about holidays? Not likely. Buffington went to great lengths to establish Washington’s special love of Christmas. He might overplay Washington’s “Christmas spirit” but surely the General was capitalizing on the British and German celebrations. Reportedly, when Washington was informed by General Sullivan that the weather inhibited the army’s weapons from firing, Washington retorted “Tell General Sullivan to use the bayonet. I am resolved to take Trenton."[i] Apparently the British/German forces suffered 'only' 23-26 casualties to the Americans 4 or 5. Still, this is not what most Americans think of as “the Christmas spirit” in either the religious or secular sense. In 1779, publisher John Bell wrote that Washington was “a total stranger to religious prejudices, which have so often excited Christians of one denomination to cut the throats of those of another.”[ii] And yet, when caught up in a political conflict against other Christians it was, “use the bayonet.” I know some of my fellow American-Christians are equally inspired by this event and by the Christmas Day truce of 1914, but I that is too much cognitive dissonance for me. For me, December 25, 1776 remains the “Real” War on Christmas. With this kind of historical example, I can’t be too irate over “Happy Holidays.” Now, forget about this and enjoy the Holidays. I intend to have a joyous celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ (that’s basically what ‘Merry Christmas’ means right?).

References:
Howard Peckham, ed.  The Toll of Independence: Engagements and Battle Casualties of the American Revolution (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1974), 27.
[i] Wright, Kevin. “The Crossing and Battle at Trenton – 1776” An article for Bergen County Historical Society. http://www.bergencountyhistory.org/Pages/crossingatdtrenton.html
[ii] Boller, George Washington and Religion, 118.

I grew up with 14 guns in the house (including one like the semi-auto Colt .45 1911 model pictured here - I recall it kicked like a mule). These guns made me feel safer. I learned to shoot them moderately well, and it was fun.

In light of the many recent mass-shootings, I wanted to share some random thoughts as a long-time gun-lover, who is not currently a gun owner.

1. Articles like this, which suggest that public discourse between gun-rights advocates and gun-control advocates is basically impossible aren't helpful. If discourse is impossible, then coercion or submission become the only options.

2. I can only assume that calls to "repeal the 2nd Amendment" in social media are intended to:
- preach to some choir that already agrees with the preacher
- counterproductively enflame the opposition, in which case, WHY??
That being said, repealing the 2nd Amendment would move gun-ownership from "right" to "privilege." The government hasn't always done well with citizen rights. How do you expect they would do with privileges?

3. Calls to large groups of young Americans to arm themselves and obtain concealed-carry permits are irresponsible.
We currently have a problem with too many of our well-trained law enforcement officers making lethally bad judgement-calls. If 10s of thousands of 20-40 year old males (in particular) intend to start carrying, I project an explosion of lethally-bad judgement calls made by would-be hero-citizens.

4. I once did some research on cases of firearm self-defense. I came across a large NRA-affiliated database of cases. I selected the case that was geographically closest to my location. The database described a case of a woman at home, shooting at armed intruders from a local biker-gang. I dug up the case in a local news source. It turns out the woman worked from home... running a meth-lab, and had fallen afoul of the bikers. This was not a clear-cut case of a law-abiding citizen defending herself from anonymous bad-guys. But where innocence or righteousness are concerned, maybe few cases are clear-cut.

5. Most of the mass-shooting cases I can remember were not perpetrated by Muslims.

6. Gun-control advocates fail to recognize that for gun-rights advocates, the problem is not enough responsible people stepping up and owning guns. While other countries have less gun-violence, American gun-rights are what make us superior to those other nations. If a new Hitler arises there, he will run over those people. If a new Hitler arises here, he'll have to think twice.

"This record keeps skipping. Everyday I read something new about our Crumbling Cultural Christendom. Today it was a throwback article on NPR about Randall Balmer's 2011 book, Thy Kingdom Come: An Evangelical's Lament and Tobin Grant's post of last week on Religion News Service, "Evangelicals (always) fear losing religious liberty and being called bigots; a look at 1950s evangelicalism." Go check them out.

The topic of Grant's post is fairly self-evident, but the main thrust is evangelical concern about public discourse. Grant writes, "such is evangelicalism. It is a tradition that wants to engage in public debates in which evangelical arguments are met with hostility." In the 1950s, evangelicals (represented by the National Association of Evangelicals or NAE) were afraid that the U.S. government's newly friendly relationship with Roman Catholic leadership would erode religious freedom; but more so, they were beginning to feel that explicitly Christian discourse was increasingly unwelcome in these public debates. (This is now kind of ironic given Fr. John Neuhaus' prominence in evangelical circles for the promotion of ecumenical efforts in public theology - check out First Things.) They complained about a "code of platitudes" governing public discourse, in the same way that many leaders today complain about "political correctness." They also pushed for the U.S. to withhold aid from countries that limited religious freedom, which seems somewhat reasonable depending on the circumstances, but runs counter to certain New Testament teachings about loving concern for enemies and persecutors. 

Tobin Grant is making interesting cultural observations, not necessarily critiquing anyone, but his article reminded of atheist Daniel Dennett's challenge from his book Breaking the Spell:
Suppose I have a friend, Fred, who is (in my carefully considered opinion) always right. If I tell you I’m against stem-cell research because “my friend Fred says it’s wrong and that’s all there is to it,” you will just look at me as if I was missing the point of the discussion. This is supposed to be a consideration of reasons, and I have not given you a reason that I in good faith could expect you to appreciate. (From Brian Hines' Church of the Churchless site).

Does this mean that all public dialogue on public policy must be framed in "secular" terms? The debate is ongoing. On one hand maybe Christians shouldn't be so pragmatic. Speak the language of faith and deal with the results. On the other hand, when it comes to ethics, insisting on the language of faith sometimes seems to assume that Christian ethics are totally arbitrary, rather that assuming that Christian ethics stem from a God who may have reasonably discernible human well-being in mind.

Randall Balmer's lament is summarized as follows:
"He says blind allegiance to the Republican Party has distorted the faith of politically active evangelicals, leading them to misguided positions on issues such as abortion and homosexuality.
"They have taken something that is lovely and redemptive and turned it into something that is ugly and retributive," Balmer says.
He argues that modern evangelicals have abandoned the spirit of their movement, which was founded in 19th-century activism on issues that helped those on the fringes of society: abolition, women's suffrage and universal education.
"I don't find any correlation in the agenda of the religious right today," Balmer says.
Balmer's book describes how he discovered that the Religious Right of the late 70s and the 80s was not founded on concern about abortion, but concern about religious liberty stemming from IRS attacks on Bob Jones University for its outmoded "anti-miscegenation" policy that forbade interracial dating. Balmer, a somewhat disaffected evangelical historian was invited to attend a fairly high-level meeting of Religious Right leaders in 1991, in which this reality was clearly stated. He points out that certain prominent Southern Baptist leaders (for instance) welcomed more permissive legislation on abortion in the 70s and he laments that late-20th century white-evangelicals were on the wrong side of civil rights in the 60s in particular.

This is a fascinating excerpt and I have not read the book, but the excerpt misses a couple of things. First, the "pro-choice" (anachronism noted) Baptist leaders of the 70s were about to walk into a brutal maelstrom of ecclesial tension in the 80s. Those guys represented an "old guard" that was on the way out. Second, even if Religious Right leadership came late to abortion as an issue with potential traction to mobilize their base, it might still be the case that evangelicals (ie. church-goers, not politicians) saw in abortion an issue worthy of the legacy of 19-century activism. The methods and ideologies used by activists, then and now, might still be deeply problematic as well, but to dismiss the pro-life movement because of the idiosyncrasies of its foundation, its sometimes crude scientific misunderstandings and uncompromising ideology is to miss the bigger point. People in our country regularly dismantle living humans in the womb, often because women feel they have no other "choice." What kind of choice is that and is this reality unworthy of the attention of Christians? I understand that Balmer is partly frustrated because Religious Right leaders created a false narrative, and it is well worth Balmer's revision to set the story straight. Therefore, maybe his lament should be less concerned with the missed opportunities for heroic activism on the left (this issue, not that one) and more concerned with evangelical truth-telling and power-politics in general.