Sorry! The Savior is Out
The Mahablog provides us with the perfect odd footnote for this year’s brouhaha over boycotting department stores ask their employees to say “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” and other such religious nuttery.
And I thought Georgie Porgie sending out “Happy Holidays” cards was the final nail. Yahoo! News reports that some megachurches will be closing on Christmas.
Cally Parkinson, a spokeswoman for Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Ill., said church leaders decided that organizing services on a Christmas Sunday would not be the most effective use of staff and volunteer resources. The last time Christmas fell on a Sunday was 1994, and only a small number of people showed up to pray, she said.
“If our target and our mission is to reach the unchurched, basically the people who don’t go to church, how likely is it that they’ll be going to church on Christmas morning?” she said.
The closures stand in stark contrast to Roman Catholic parishes, which will see some of their largest crowds of the year on Christmas, and mainline Protestant congregations such as the Episcopal, Methodist and Lutheran churches, where Sunday services are rarely if ever canceled.
Cindy Willison, a spokeswoman for the evangelical Southland Christian Church, said at least 500 volunteers are needed, along with staff, to run Sunday services for the estimated 8,000 people who usually attend. She said many of the volunteers appreciate the chance to spend Christmas with their families instead of working, although she said a few church members complained.
In a way, it’s hilarious that the fundamentalists are learning that their base isn’t quite as zealous as they are. While they’re fighting legal battles to keep Christ in Target, the churches are letting their staff spend Christmas with their families because not enough people will show up to pray.
And from the same article, we present our current employee of the week in the “Cor, what a giveaway” department:
“This is a consumer mentality at work: ‘Let’s not impose the church on people. Let’s not make church in any way inconvenient,’” said David Wells, professor of history and systematic theology at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, a leading evangelical school in Hamilton, Mass. “I think what this does is feed into the individualism that is found throughout American culture, where everyone does their own thing.”
Gee. Who woulda thunk that Americans would be encouraged to be all individuals and stuff? Aside from anybody who actually paid attention during Social Studies in elementary school, I mean. Or anybody who took Government in high school – and not even the AP class, either. Or anybody who tunes in to any of the major networks during the 4th of July. Or the History Channel. Or A&E.