Rabbi Morton Pomerantz
Friday, Nov. 14, 2003

If I had been told 40 years ago that American society would be guilty of persecuting religious practice, I would have expressed disbelief. If I had been told that the religion discriminated against was Christianity, I would have broken up in laughter.

After all, America did not persecute religious people for religious practice, and America was a nation whose people were overwhelmingly Christian.

It is now 40 years later, and I am not laughing.

Even without David Limbaugh's book "Persecution," I see example after example of Christian religious practice on public grounds challenged and banned.

It may be possible at Christmas time to show a representation of the Holy Family in the manger, but only if there is ample representation of Frosty the Snowman and Santa Claus to show that the display is really not religious.

What David Limbaugh has done is to take a cold eye to our society and calmly report case after case of Christian practice challenged by the ACLU and others, and often banned. No, the good guys do not always win in our society today.

How far does this persecution of Christianity go?

Well, Mr. Limbaugh reports to us that in Montana, Jaroy Carpenter, a motivational speaker, was prevented from speaking to students to help them cope with teen suicides and accidental deaths because Mr. Carpenter was a Christian.

Understand that Mr. Carpenter was scheduled to make an entirely secular presentation that he had made many times before in many places. Understand this was to be far from a revival meeting.

The simple fact that Mr. Carpenter was in fact personally a Christian believer was enough to cancel his presentation.

At this point, it is good to consider basic American values. Forget the First Amendment and deal with the body of the Constitution itself. It is clearly stated that there is to be no religious test for public office.

As one who espouses Judaism, it has long been a source of personal pride to me that, unlikely and far-fetched as such an occurrence might be, our first president technically could have been Jewish.

Nevertheless, Mr. Carpenter was barred from speaking to students in Montana, not for anything he would say or do, but because he was a Christian believer – this in spite of the fact that Mr. Carpenter had made over 200 "secular" presentations at assemblies in schools around the country and had never once addressed religion.

Mr. Carpenter was lucky. Joshua Burton, a fourth-grade student, found himself in all kinds of trouble in his public school.

What horrendous acts did little Joshua perform that caused the consternation of the authorities of his school? Little Joshua was reading his Bible silently during free time. It was necessary for Joshua's parents to file suit against the school, which eventually did pay Joshua's legal fees.

Let us understand something else. What is involved here is not merely someone insisting on separation of church and state to the point of nuttiness; what is involved here is an open and full-scale assault upon Christianity and Christian religious practice.

Mr. Limbaugh points out that if the religion is not Christianity, but Islam, then a very different standard is followed in the public schools. In public schools in California, the textbook "Across the Centuries" was taught together with what were called Islam simulation materials.

Bad enough that the textbook is biased in favor of Islam and against Christianity; the book does not even mention the history of bloody military Islamic conquest.

There is no mention of the invasions of the Moors, the battle of Tours, and incidentally, nothing at all is said about the execution of Jews in Quarayza. When the simulation materials were put into play, students were compelled to pretend that they were Muslims; they were to pray in the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful.

To further demonstrate the difference between separation of church and state and separation of mosque and state, the students were made to chant, "Praise to Allah, Lord of Creation!"

Not satisfied with this, the school authorities had the students simulate their own Jihad through a game and planned to make a pilgrimage to Mecca.

Remember our little friend Joshua, who got into trouble for reading a Christian Bible silently? Well, as part of this learning experience, teachers encouraged their students to employ such phrases as "Allah Akbar," which means Allah is great.

So much for claiming that the attacks on Christianity are merely motivated by a desire for separating church and state.

It is not merely the public schools that are subject to persecution of Christianity; it is every aspect of society.

In 1999, the Brooklyn Museum of Art sponsored an exhibition that featured a collage of a black Virgin Mary, employing elephant dung. It should be noted that the tax money used for this display was exacted from Christian believers, who are almost certainly a majority of the taxpayers funding the Brooklyn Museum.

The New York Performance Alliance gave a dozen performances of the play "'Tis a Pity She's a Whore." To advertise their production, they used an illustration of the Virgin Mary with the Immaculate Heart and the inscription "'Tis a Pity She's a Whore."

It should be noted that while attacks on Christianity as a whole go on regularly and frequently, Catholic-bashing is a subspecies of this persecution to be found everywhere.

The Institute for the Study of Islam and Christianity, which is based in the U.K., finds a disturbing trend in making excuses for Muslim violence by presuming that the violence is only a response to conditions created by others.

Take one example: When Muslims killed eight people during riots in India, guess whose fault many in the media implied that it was. Was it the fault of the Muslims or some of their more extreme leaders? No, silly! It was the fault of the Rev. Jerry Falwell because he had said something disparaging about Islam.

The assault on Christianity finds a willing and able ally in Hollywood. Thus a movie was made of the life of Jesus in which he is portrayed as sinful and lustful and the apostle Paul is portrayed as a liar. Where, one asks, can there be a hero in such a film? That's easy: Judas Iscariot is portrayed as a hero. No, I am not joking.

Mr. Limbaugh argues his case by and large anecdotally. This may be troubling to some. However, the sheer number of his anecdotes, all scrupulously and fairly examined, amount to an ocean of evidence that time after time in public arena after public arena there is an active, deliberate and conscious attempt to obliterate Christianity from at least the public square.

Christianity, to its enemies, is something to be practiced far from public view, in veiled secrecy.

This was not the view of Christianity held by our founding fathers, nor was this kind of activity part of the America in which I grew up. Everyone is entitled to display his religious beliefs in public, in the public square and, yes, on public property, provided no one is displaying something else there first.

This should be the birthright of everyone who is an American; it should certainly be the birthright of the 87 percent of our fellow citizens who call themselves Christians.

Soon it will be the Christian season. In schools everywhere, I hope Christians will be able to sing songs and make displays about what this holiday means to them. No one should be forced to worship anything he or she does not want to worship, and no one should be forced to hide his or her religion from public view.

They further should not be required to surround their expressions of belief with Santa Claus giving gifts or Frosty the Snowman or dancing icicles or anything else.

They should be able to express their belief openly and freely.

David Limbaugh has written a very troubling book. "Persecution" is not too strong a title. I am a rabbi; I am worried. If Christians are not free to express their faith openly and completely everywhere, then none of us is free to do so. That is the opposite of the ideals and standards of the America in which I grew up.

Rabbi Dr. Morton H. Pomerantz is a chaplain with the state of New York. He is a former state chaplain for the Jewish War Veterans. He served as a Marine Corps and Navy chaplain during the Vietnam conflict. He is a member of the Reform movement of Judaism.