Characters Divided

USA Network established a campaign called "Characters Unite" that seeks to reduce divisiveness and promote the idea that we're stronger when we're united. The program disparages stereotypes and celebrates individuals: "Millions of smart, funny, quirky, heroic, shy, glamorous, fierce, stubborn characters, each completely unlike the next."

Characters Unite held a panel discussion led by Tom Brokaw. According to Kathleen Parker of the Washington Post - a panelist herself - the participants "covered the waterfront: black, white, Asian, Hispanic, straight and gay leaders representing education, finance, entertainment, Congress, media, the military and academia. Missing was anyone representing the faith community."

So we've got a collection of "experts" whose only real commonality was a desire to make society change to their specifications. As Parker put it, the premise "is that diversity is good and ought to bind rather than separate us. It's a nice thought but not so easily realized." It's especially difficult when differences are exalted and bonds that unify (like patriotism, family and faith) are verboten.

Ms. Parker felt the "greatest obstacle to tolerance (was) a lack of exposure" to other kinds of people. She noted that "the faith community has a great opportunity to integrate people in more natural ways. First of all, when you're in a house of worship you tend to be on a slightly higher plane..." and her next comments were edited out of the tape. Faith was given less than two sentences before the door slammed shut.

I have an idea where Kathleen was going with this, so I'll take the liberty of finishing her comments as I would have responded. It goes like this:

"We have a big variety of people in my church. There are cops, cooks, teachers, truck drivers, surgeons, homemakers and unemployed workers. Young, old, in-between, short-haired, long-haired, tattooed, pierced, clean-cut. Some have been in jail or had drug problems. Single, married, separated, divorced. Black, white and a potpourri of ethnicities. Some have disabilities."

"These differences are no more divisive than whether you've got brown or hazel colored eyes. We have a bond: a shared faith that supersedes the differences the "experts" so industriously promote. It's amusing to watch secularists try to cram together puzzle pieces with mismatched shapes, colors and thicknesses. It takes an act of God to do this, but He wasn't invited."

"Characters" can't "Unite" unless they have a shared higher purpose. Secular nostrums that emphasize differences and resentment can't achieve this. But Christian faith can, has and does."


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No God...No Problem!

The American Humanist Association is running its annual non-theist (apparently the politically correct term for "atheist") advertising campaign. It started in Washington, D.C. with posters in 50 train cars, inside 200 buses and on the outsides of 20 others. The advertising also ran in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco. The ad shows a diverse group of smiling people wearing Santa hats with the caption "No God...No Problem. Be good for goodness' sake."

It's hard to see why they're happy. They've ignored what scientists tell us about the indispensability of God, written off any sort of afterlife and support from Him, and come to believe that "religion does not have a monopoly on morality - millions of people are good without believing in God," according to their press release.

You can be "good" without believing in God, but it's less likely. Civil laws - which aren't as expansive as Christian standards - provide guidelines we usually obey in order to avoid fines or jail. Even then, lots of people violate them. Have you checked the incarceration rate lately? Or watched prison documentaries or the Gangland series on cable? The criminals portrayed are usually from lower socio-economic levels, but they aren't the only malefactors. Bernie Madoff has new digs, too, showing that the self-determined morality that got him there can infect anyone regardless of wealth or stature.

It's troubling to see the level godless people can sink to, and it's obvious that "being good for goodness' sake" isn't a code they live by. Having no God is a problem that leaves man racing to the bottom as he makes up his own rules on the fly.

So, it's Christmas and the humanists are back again. Along with the obligatory elementary school principal who instituted a "Happy Winter" celebration to replace religious festivities in Waterbury, CT. And the traditional removal of a Christmas tree from an Orange County courthouse after a citizen complained about it. In a new twist, an international flavor was added
when all Christmas trees were ordered removed from the streets of Copenhagen in deference to the UN Climate Summit.

Even so, it doesn't seem the anti-Christmas fervor is as intense this year, and it seems OK to say "Merry Christmas." Maybe Christians just got fed up with their faith being trashed every December, individually decided to use the greeting and found that most people are fine with it. Who would've thought?

Whatever their motivations, the grinches clearly have a distorted view of Christmas, Christianity and Christians. Otherwise they wouldn't act as they do. They'd do well to curb their biases long enough to see what the truth is.

Christians have God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, church families, peace, love, strength, eternal life and timeless ethical standards. No misguided affront can take these gifts away and, especially at Christmas, we should be thankful for them.

Merry Christmas!!


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Supernatural Strength

There are days when the radiation and chemotherapy wipe her out. Doctors tell her the treatments are working on the ovarian cancer that was diagnosed a few months ago. The day before her cancer operation, her husband collapsed. She thought it was a stroke; it turned out to be stage 4 glioblastoma multiformae, the cancer that killed Ted Kennedy.

Recounting her story with Tom Shea of The Republican in Springfield, MA, she talked of her twin daughters. Both live with cerebral palsy and muscular dystrophy. Life is filled with visits to the Shriners Hospital, doctors, and a variety of therapists.

AnnMarie and Tim Richard have burdens. They also have faith. Tim says, "We're praying for a miracle." AnnMarie agrees, saying "We believe miracles happen. What we aim for every day is to concentrate on what we can control - take care of our children, our treatment and our bills - and what we can't control we hand over to God."

A friend says AnnMarie is "probably the strongest woman I've ever known." Her cousin adds, "She has such great faith. And she really lives it every single day. She is such an inspiration. Ask anyone who knows her."

These are self-sufficient people who've been blindsided by disease, but they don't live in fear, self-pity or hopelessness.

Why not?

Partly because miracles do happen. But more importantly, they know this life - as cruel as it can be - doesn't last all that long and when it ends the future is bright. They have an eternity devoid of illness and free of pain ahead of them, and so do their faithful loved ones.

Some people see faith as a reed grasped in desperation (the allusion is to a drowning person grabbing flimsy reeds to save himself). If they opened their minds, they'd discover there are solid reasons for Christian faith and that once they accepted it a palpable change happens within them. This confirms the reality of Christ and provides the faith that carries Christians through adversity.

On the other hand, an unbeliever usually lives at the center of his own universe. Troubles are more important because, after all, they mess up his universe. He's only got one, and it ends when he dies.

What's a skeptic left with when he's faced with an ordeal like the Richard family? A self-reliant egotism that's fading into intolerable helplessness? A dawning realization that all the material things he struggled for are meaningless? The relentless, inescapable implosion of his universe? And then ... nothing?

Christianity shows us how to live a satisfying life that has eternal consequences. It puts our struggles in perspective and gives us supernatural strength and hope.

Just ask AnnMarie Richard.


Contributions may be sent to: The Richard Family Fund, c/o Monson Savings Bank, P.O. Box 188, Monson, MA 01057


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Kitty Genovese

The New York Times headline read "37 Who Saw Murder Didn't Call Police" and the story described how they "watched a killer stalk and stab a woman" for over a half hour. Kitty Genovese died in the 1964 attack, and the unconscionable apathy of the community passed into folk history.

Except it's not exactly "history." The murder happened at 3:30AM on one of the coldest nights of the year when windows were closed and people were asleep. Those who were awakened and spotted Kitty on the ill-lit sidewalk outside a bar likely saw her get up staggering after the stabbing and assumed she was drunk. Most witnesses only observed the incident for a few seconds. As Paul Hollander and Stanley Milgram of Harvard University noted, the neighbors saw "fragments of an ambiguous, confusing" situation.

The prosecution only found six eye witnesses, two of whom actually knew what happened. Neither Joseph Fink nor Karl Ross called for help, and they were shamed for their inaction. But it was unfair to paint a picture of the other neighbors hanging out their windows apathetically watching Kitty Genovese die.

The killer was apprehended five days later when he was spotted leaving a house with a TV set by a neighbor. The Assistant DA who prosecuted the case, Charles Skoller, explains,
"The neighbor walked over to him and said, "What are you doing?"
He said, "I'm helping the people move."
The neighbor didn't believe him, went next door to another neighbor and said "Are the Bannisters moving?"
He says, "No, absolutely not"..."I'll call the police, you disconnect the distributor cap in his car."
The citizens of NYC came through.

The Kitty Genovese case gave New York City a black eye that still lingers. Most people saw it as a big city phenomenon but now, forty years later, apathy and self-centeredness have no bounds.

Durham (pop. 9,115) is a quaint town in the New Hampshire countryside that's home to the University of New Hampshire. The university's architecture is brick colonial, its wooded campus is welcoming, and it has a reputation for academic excellence.

Nobody would expect to be kicked, punched and badly beaten here. But it happened to a 21 year-old student who was assaulted by up to five attackers last Halloween night. No one helped, but multiple passers-by stopped to watch. They were useless witnesses since no one offered descriptions, except to note that one assailant was dressed as a hot dog or a banana.

This wasn't a dark New York City street. And the witnesses weren't behind closed windows at 3:30AM. No, they were kids who attend a college that ironically has a program called "Bringing in the Bystander" that supposedly teaches students how to react in these situations.

According to Holly Ramer of the Associated Press, the "marketing campaign involves plastering the campus with 1,100 posters depicting students intervening to prevent violence or supporting victims afterward. The images also appear on campus computers, dining hall tables, campus buses and water bottles given to every freshman."

It's an obviously ineffective attempt to compensate for a morally relativistic society that enables bystanders to keep clear consciences as they cold-bloodedly refuse to help a person in trouble.

As our morally stunted culture continues to erode Christian principles, the sense of responsibility to each other will deteriorate even more. It's already gotten bad when observers to an incident like this could have dialed 911 on a cell phone without even breaking stride.

But no one did, and apparently no one even has a sense of shame about it. As society shrugs its shoulders with subdued dispproval and asks, "What else is new?"


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Sound of Silence

The 500 members of the Shouwang church in Beijing met in unusual luxury. As reported by Leslie Book in The Wall Street Journal, they gathered in a small movie theatre off the beaten track. Previously, "attempts to find indoor space were repeatedly rebuffed" and pastor Jin Tianming had to hold services outdoors, even in bad weather, up until now.

In China, all religious organizations ostensibly fall under the State Administration for Religious Affairs, which registers them. The registered churches have around 14 million members, but their evangelical activities are limited by the state and a patriotic message is promoted.

Shouwang is an underground church - also called a "house" church - that operates without government involvement, unless "involvement" means detaining members and clergy to keep them from attending services. The same month Shouwang used the theatre, authorities shut down the Wanbang church in Shanghai, dispersing its 2,000 members. In Shanxi, "the leaders of one of the country's largest house churches, with dozens of branches and tens of thousands of members, (were) arrested in a crackdown."

But you can't keep a good faith down. Despite the repression, house church membership is believed to be 100 million and growing "rapidly as more and more Chinese, particularly well-educated city dwellers, turn away from Communist Party atheism." As the growth continues the state tries to shut down house churches, possibly out of fear of their potential political power. History demonstrates this is a losing proposition for repressive regimes: the Romans, Stalin, Mao and many others have learned it the hard way.

The cinema building was available for a fleeting moment. Permission for its use was granted because the President of the United States was in town and the Chinese government wanted to avoid a scene. The strategy succeeded: the ongoing suppression wasn't brought up by anyone.

The next week, Shouwang church was evicted and things went back to normal. Christians resumed meeting outside or in smaller groups and continued practicing their faith in defiance of the state.

They were lucky. At the same time, five leaders of the Shanxi house church were quickly tried in court for "disturbing transportation order by gathering masses" and "illegally occupying farm land." They had been detained for almost two months since the government destroyed their church building in an aggressive attack that landed people in the hospital, but the trial was apparently delayed for political reasons. As Air Force One's vapor trail dissipated into the Asian sky, they were sentenced to prison terms of up to seven years.

House churches are experiencing a worsening of religious persecution while Chinese Christians call upon the United States and the international community to sound off about it.

Instead, the diplomatic airwaves are filled with the sound of silence.


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