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An interesting read for Atheists and Christians alike.
A controversial Christmas card reading “O come all ye faithless” has been strongly criticized by Christians as an “ill judged and insensitive joke.” Borders book stores began giving away the card free with every copy of Richard Dawkins’ well known atheist work, The God Delusion, this Christmas.
The Rev. Jonathan Edwards, general secretary of the Baptist Union of Great Britain. said the idea was “crass.”
He continued, “Christians have always been used to being punch bags but I would have hoped that, in a society in which we are seeking to show respect to all people and beliefs, we might have grown out of this kind of nonsense.”
“Borders wouldn’t do this to any other religious festival. Borders [has] made a strategic mistake and Christians will boycott it.”
Oh good, another boycott. We all know how much good comes out of Christians boycotting stuff. Sigh…
In Borders defense…
“Our customers are intelligent, curious people who enjoy exploring all types of books and music. Naturally, some of the thousands of books and music selections we carry could be considered controversial or objectionable depending on individual views, tastes and interest,” Borders said in a statement.
(via ChristianPost.com)
Popularity: 7% [?]
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Boycott?
Not interested in boycotting anybody or any company.
Christianity has been a punchbag for a long time and this is only another knock. It’s only a matter of time everything is set right.
Just waiting for that day.
Christians make up about 1/3 of the worlds population, I can hardly see how they consider themselves “punching bags”. That’s absurd. Christians hold 90%+ of all public offices in the U.S yet somehow they are vunerable are are being picked on? If you are secure in your faith you should be able to laugh at it as you should be able to laugh at yourself. I have trouble believing that Jesus had no sense of humor and could not laugh at irony.
I think that the slogan on the card is very clever.
If you think about it could you use it as a Christian message to back away from the commercialisation of Christmas? Imagine it as a poster on the side of a church. It’s hard hitting and honest in it’s statement.
Boycott it indeed.
Also I thought the Jews were the religious punch bag, not the Christians. Am I not keeping up?
Why is “O come all ye faithless” only making fun of Christians? I know it is based on a Christmas carol, but doesn’t it poke fun at all religions? Plus it is only being handed out to people who buy The God Delusion, it’s not like they are sticking it in Bibles or anything. Maybe Christians have always been a “pucnh bag” because they always look for reasons to be a “punch bag”.
I haven’t bought a book at Walden or Borders since they pulled ‘Free Inquiry’ from the shelves during the ridiculous fiasco over those Danish Mohammad cartoons. That’s my own personal decision and I haven’t been asking anyone else to boycott them. However, with this recent development I might have to reconsider my decision.
[...] Friendly Christian draws my attention to a very depressing story. Apparently Boarders have been giving out Christmas Cards with the message ‘O Come all ye faithless’ when people are buying Richard Dawkins’ God Delusion. This is in itself a bit of a non-story, except we seem to have people quite strongly offended by it. [...]
It’d be ironic if they were putting them in bibles.
Christians haven’t been victims of anything since 200 A.D.; I don’t believe that to be an overexageration either. Especially in North America.
Really. Can anyone name an incident of Christians being persecuted in America (or Canada or the UK)?
No wait I already see a problem with my challenge. Let me rephrase.
Can anyone name an incident of Christians being persecuted in America (or Canada or the UK) where the group persecuting them weren’t Christians themselves?
I’ll even give you a head start.
USA = Mormons by non-Mormons, that doesn’t count because it’s either Christian-on-Christian persecution or you think Mormon’s are fake Christians in which case it’s not Christians being persecuted in the first place
USA = Martin Luther King Jr. and his congregation being persecuted by the Klan, oohh that’s a good one. Oh but wait… The Klan were Christians.
USA = The Philadelphia Nativist Riots in 1844, ok fine that one was Protestant vs. Catholics, and we all know Catholics aren’t really Christians, but unfortunately the Protestants (True Christians) started that one.
Which brings us to…
UK = The recent bloody history of Northern Ireland in which Protestant and Catholics… oh crap not again… have been fighting for some time but now they have effectively self-segregated (and not so self-segregated) themselves to the point that Protestant cops patrol Protestant neighborhoods and Catholic cops patrol Catholic neighborhoods. That helps keep the Christian persecution to a minimum.
UK = Ever hear of the Church of England, I hear the British government actually actively persecutes this church by forcing it to be the officially established church of England. The horror!!!
…and on to Canada…
CN = Of course, our Canadian friends north of the board at least in Ontario still fully and directly fund (unless this has changed since 1999-ish) Catholic religious schools… ONLY.
Will the insanity never end?! Will Christians ever be a majority in any country and hold 90+% of the elected congressional members?! Will they some day be able to trust in God and have it printed on every coin in the land?! How will Batman and Robin ever escape from the Joker’s trap!!
… I hope the sarcasm comes through. :d
Skep….absolutely, hands down, the sarcasm is a shinin’ brightly!!!
All I have to say is….as if any of this will thwart or change the outcome of God’s plan for humanity….there, I said it…. :d/ someone had to:-s
To be fair Skeptigator in the UK we have a national faith and have had since Henry VIII broke from the Catholic church and claimed the divine right to lead the church. All because he wanted a male heir. Politics, politics, politics.
Of course his eldest daughter, Mary, was Catholic and there was all that fuss when she inherited the crown then the fuss was back again when Elizabeth took over and after a generation it was all chaos and slapping and much shouting on both sides.
Now we have modern times when Prince Charles says that he doesn’t want to be head of the Church of England but head of Churches in England. You know, when his mum’s dead. Then we’ll have to listen to the dreary King’s speech rather than the dreary Queen’s speech on Christmas Day.
Anyway, didn’t Canada inherit the trappings of a monarchy?
Maybe Batman will have something in his utility belt?
How small is our God when we are bothered by something handed out at Borders?
Stuff like this only serves to deter us from God’s vision for our lives.
I agree Scott!! =d>
He sure isn’t up there scratching His head wondering what to do now….
I don’t find the card very offensive. I have a very strong faith and I just don’t see how I could let anything as small as that bother me. And is it specifically going against Christians? Who knows, but boycotting is going to do nothing but make Christians look like we have no sense of humor and way too much time on our hands. Therefore, this will give people another reason to laugh at us and make fun of us. Try to find the humor, and if you can’t….chalk it up as clever and move on. Also, I agree with hoverFrog…aren’t the Jews the religious punch bags?
Christians in Vietnam and North Korea can say they are oppressed. They get locked up in jail, beaten and killed for their faith.
American Christians….not so much.
Kwrigh5, I would fully agree with your statement, although I would have to put a “yet” at the end of it…;)
[...] Friendly Christian) Technorati Tags: atheist, atheism Share This Popularity: 1% [...]
I’m not to worried about something like this. They aren’t pushing it, and they’re only giving it to the people buying the Dawkins book. Hence, I never would’ve known a thing about it unless I’d come here.
I’m on fire for Christ and feel His presence constantly, but I’m not really bothered by this. Sure, I’d love for everyone to share my same faith, but God gave us free will, and with that comes many different views, to say the least.
And Kwrigh5, I’d have to totally agree with you. I’m thankful that we live in a country where we are free to practice Christianity freely and oh so openly. :d:d
@hover
I agree the influence and power of the CoE is nominal. I’m not British but that’s what I hear.
@kwrigh5
Don’t forget Darfur
@All
my point obviously was that the persecution Christians “feel” is just that a “feeling” not reality. I believe there is a prevalent feeling of persecution in the Christian community as a whole. In the Christian circles I travelled in my younger days there was a persecution vibe to everything. If we weren’t actively being persecuted by being thrown to the lions now, you just wait.
It will happen…………………..
….. eventually. [cue ominous music]
@ Skeptigator
You are very correct. I just gave a quick list. There are many more countries that have Christian persecution.
@Gods gal why add the “yet”?
Well, this is a little complicated. The Catholic school board here is funded across the country by the government. The reason goes way back to confederation in 1867. Canada (before it was Canada) consisted mainly of 2 parts. Upper Canada (British Ontario) and Lower Canada (French dominated Quebec). After the British defeated the French they wanted to make one nation. They needed to get the French on board and cooperative because population of Lower Canada was so high that there was no way the British could subjugate them. The main concern the French had was keeping their cultural identity. So the British agreed to some concessions about language laws and funding the Catholic French schools. This got into the articles of confederation and we are stuck with it now. So without changing the constitution (good luck), government funded Catholic schools are here to stay.
Of course now you don’t even have to be Catholic to go to Catholic school. It’s a lot like public school except you get a religion class, they have more say over who they admit and they seem to get a lot of days off in the school year. The government figured a kind of clever way to allocate the funding. Each year when your municipal taxes come, you check off if you want to support public or Catholic schools and that’s where your taxes go.
I didn’t know that you could check a box on your muni-taxes to opt out. That is very clever.
Dysentery & everyone, in England we have compulsory religious education at school. Is this not the case in Canada and North America?
Public schools in the U.S. are barred from teaching any religious classes (for the most part).
To clarify, by public schools I mean pre-school age thru the 12th grade. Once you hit college/university they may be a government-funded school but they are open to teach religion (usually comparative religion courses) but as far as I know there are no public schools in the U.S. that require any kind of religious education (some very rare exceptions may offer it as electives).
Private schools (that are open to public enrollment) are a different matter. These are (for the most part) not funded in anyway by any government; local, state or federal. In the U.S., the educational programs for a given school district are generally set at the State level and each state requires all children to attend an accredited school until a certain age (16? usually). The state accredits schools based on whether or not they meet a minimum standard of education/curriculum. If you are a religious school (or even non-religious private) you must at a minimum meet the accreditation standards of your state.
I attended and graduated from an accredited, Christian school. This basically meant that in addition to all the stuff my public school peers were doing I also had a morning Bible class.
From an education standpoint in the U.S. the federal government funds State education programs that the state allocates as long as the State meets the minimal education standards set by the federal government. Of course, the recent No Child Left Behind act (a federal program) is an example of one of those “we’ll let the states run their education programs however they see fit but if they don’t do this then they won’t get federal education dollars”, which amounts to every state follows the No Child Left Behind criteria.
I know several conservative, Republican teachers and they will tell you right where George and Laura can put that bill. :”>
[...] are people on both sides of the fence condemming the controversy. Thanks to feeding the fish and friendly christian for the heads [...]
Yep. That’s right. No religious education at all at public schools in Canada. That’s what the Catholic schools are for. Even they are getting pretty watered down from what I understand. You can opt out of the religious classes.
Kwrigh5: You basically said the same thing in your comment 18. I feel there will come a day when things will get REALLY bad for all who call themselves Christians…
oh ok
put aside the thought it maybe offensive. What if someone read the card and thought “Wow, am I really faithless? what do I have faith in? Do i have faith in my docotors, my family my friends etc?” that card can but whole twist on something totally different.
And another thought that came to me when I thought about the persecution, we, as Christians, deal with it in so many ways and so many magnitudes. This card is just one way of letting the persecution get to us, if we want it to. It’s a choice.
Kim, please, please, please tell me you’re not an american christian? i live in a theocracy (england) where christianity is the majority religion, christian churches hold special status (in the form of tax breaks etc.), and christians even get to influence the laws i have to abide by. even though i, as an atheist, am in a minority group, i would not describe myself as persecuted. discriminated against occasionally, but not persecuted. please tell me how you are justifying your choice of words?
[...] Friendly Christian draws my attention to a depressing story. Apparently Borders have been giving out Christmas Cards with the message ‘O Come all ye faithless’ when people are buying Richard Dawkins’ God Delusion. This is in itself a bit of a non-story, except we seem to have people quite strongly offended by it. [...]