12 Days of Yule ... Day 3

First bird

Well, it's an omen.

The first bird I heard was one I didn't recognize (edited to add: it was a phoebe). Then, in quick succession: crow, blue jay, Carolina wren.

The first bird I saw was too far off to make out, just a dark shape against the sky. The first one I could recognize: a sparrow. Yes, a white-throated sparrow, but still.

However, they all count in the Christmas Bird Count!

The 115th Christmas Bird Count begins on Sunday, December 14th, 2014, and runs through Monday, January 5th, 2015. The longest running Citizen Science survey in the world, Christmas Bird Count provides critical data on population trends. Tens of thousands of participants know that it is also a lot of fun. Data from the over 2,300 circles are entered after the count and become available to query under the Data & Research link.

The Nation is the Sacred Concept

Stephen Jay Gould proposed that religion and science could live together, because they were what he called "non- overlapping magisteria", which is to say, they operate in different spheres. Science rules over the "how"and the "what" and religion over the "why", and as long as they keep to their respective parts of the world, all will be sweetness and light.

Well, whatever one thinks of that as a basic formula for coexistence, it's hard to see it actually working. Religion keeps intruding in the realms of reality, making real-world claims that science has the actual say over.

There's another set of these regions that supposedly don't overlap. Religion's in one of them again, but the other this time is occupied by politics. In this country, for some time, we've kept the two apart, but of late the fence is weakening here, too.

Ed Stoddard quotes a professor in his article about McCain's pastor in today's Washington Post:

"In the United States, the sacred cow is the concept of the nation -- someone who is a religious minister can say almost anything they want and not get into trouble in the political realm unless they go after the nation," said David Domke, a professor of communication at the University of Washington.

The nation is the sacred concept.

I actually agree with this - though not quite in the way Domke meant it, though he's right, mostly.

What he's saying is that preachers can rant about abortion, drugs, homosexuals, anything they want - including saying that gays don't deserve rights or the abortion is murder and God will destroy us for it - as long as they don't say "I hate America". There's a lot of truth in that. But some guys get awfully close to that line - they manage to separate "America" into two groups and blame one group for all the bad things that happen. Some even manage to say that America deserves bad things because it allows people to reject God. Check your Phelps - and your more mainstream Falwell and Robertson, for that matter. McCain's endorser (not pastor) Hagee told New Orleans it had earned God's wrath and deserved to be destroyed. I'm quite sure the country is full of preachers who stand in their pulpit and rail every Sunday against godless liberals destroying the country.

So it's okay to preach hate and intolerance as long as you manage to plunk yourself down on the side of "America."

But there's something more disturbing in what Domke said. That's the "someone who is a religious minister can say almost anything they want and not get into trouble in the political realm".

In other words, ministers can stand up in the pulpit and say things that would in fact get other people "into trouble" - they can incite hatred and even crimes (arson, hate crimes, assault, even murder as long as they're just inspiring rather than ordering) and it's all fine and dandy. Things that would result in other people having to resign their jobs if not actually go to jail are okay coming from ministers.

Why is that? Is it just because being religious is an exemption from civilized behavior? It's an exemption from other things - like taxes - and certainly we as a people are inclined to "respect" religious people. Their beliefs are held up to us as things that can't be questioned or insulted. Even calling one of them into question brings anger and outrage. And it's not a big jump from 'what I believe can't be questioned' to 'I can say anything I want if it's based on what I believe'. And a lot of people are willing to allow that to go unchallenged.

This licenses professionally religious people to interject themselves into public discourse on every level - along as they don't say "God damn America" or "I'm ashamed of America" - as long as what they say is "I want to save America" they're okay. And if people didn't take them seriously that wouldn't matter. But they do.

Politicians compete for their approbation and endorsements. And it seems that as long as they haven't crossed that line - insulted that "sacred cow" Domke mentions - their endorsements are seen as positive. Contrast Wright and Hagee, just for example, or look at the other people McCain has cozied up to since he decided being president was worth more than sticking to his principles.

That's bad enough. Worse is when the politicians themselves decide that they're religious. Politicians who begin making religious pronouncements - talking about doing God's work by spreading democracy, for instance - are trying to co-opt the mantle of religious invulnerability for themselves, to cover their policies in the un-criticizable aura of religion.

That's bad for politics. And it's bad for religion.

Because Dombe's right: religious figures can in fact (whether they should is a different question) say pretty much whatever they like, with only a very small exception, and politicians would kill for that license - and that invulnerability. But that invulnerability is illusory, not genuine; it's the invulnerability that comes from an agreement not to attack, not from any actual strength. And once that invulnerability is invoked by a politician, it risks attack.

We've seen some signs of that recently - when a few people question Hagee's support of McCain or, more accurately, McCain's seeking out that support and embracing it. So far, the questions aren't as much about Hagee's right to say what he says - that seems granted - but McCain's right to associate himself with someone who says those things. Let McCain begin saying them, and the bets are off, and then, then, perhaps people will begin to wonder about Hagee. (Note that so far McCain is certainly not saying them, nor even appreciating (in public) that Hagee does.) People are wondering why McCain seems to embrace Hagee - not as many as wonder about Obama and Wright, of course, but still.

It seems evident to me that, whatever one thinks of the idea that the religious leaders among us have license to say whatever they want, one should be wary of extending that license to politicians. Not merely because basing the policy that governs a country on the tenets of a religion, any religion, is a bad idea; not every one agrees with that idea. No, it's because once the religion actually crosses over the line into the political, it becomes fair game.

And once the questions and attacks are licensed, not the invulnerability, religion may find it doesn't like the game.

(Find the Blogswarm Against Theocracy listings here)

Go to First Freedom First to find out what you can do.

Blogs Against Theocracy 2008

Yes, it's coming up to that time of year again. Blogs Against Theocracy, the annual blogswarm of posts supporting the Glorious First (amendment) and the separation of church and state (note: not the abolition of either). I'll be posting.

Join in if you want:

1. Write a post in support of our United States Constitution, specifically regarding the separation of Church and State. You can write your post anytime, but the blogswarm takes place Easter Weekend, March 21-23. Your post will be linked at the Blog Against Theocracy website during and just after that weekend.

2. Send the URL of your post via this online form, and add any comments you would like. Blue Gal, the coordinator, will receive your link and over Easter Weekend (and just after) and will post these to the BAT website.

This is important:

The theme, like always, is the Separation of Church and State — we are for it. But the variations on the theme are many...This is not a bashing of religion - peeps can believe what they choose, however they choose — but it is a reminder that the Government should keep out of religion, and Religion should keep out of the government.

Tengrain at Mock, Paper, Scissors.

God's Allegiance

With a full sense of irony I want to say, God bless Bil Keane.

See, I was trying to decide what to write for the Blogswarm Against Theocracy, and not having much luck. I had settled on writing about my profound ambivalence toward Barack Obama and his religiousness, but not enthusiastically - too many other people have said pretty much what I think. And then I opened up my father's Sunday paper and was presented with this:


Wow. What perfect timing.

Because, yeah, I suppose the "one nation under Me" bit is funny - maybe, for certain values of "funny" - but ... what on Earth does God say at the beginning of the pledge? What we do?

"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America"?

That's disturbing on many levels - not least of which is that Bil Keane either didn't think of it, or didn't mind it. (That smug grin on little Billy's face is pretty disturbing in itself, come to think of it.) I mean, think about it for a minute: God owes allegiance to the USA?

This is worlds beyond the craziness of those people who think that God has a special place in his heart for the good old US of A - either smiting us something fierce because of 'teh gay' or the feminists or the atheists or whatever (Pat Robertson and Westboro Baptist Church aren't that far apart), or else protecting us and sending us out on divine missions to spread democracy, which apparently - though he's a King - he has a fondness for. It's beyond those who sing the National Hymn

Thy love divine hath led us in the past,
In this free land by Thee our lot is cast,
Be Thou our Ruler, Guardian, Guide and Stay,
Thy Word our law, Thy paths our chosen way.

and think it's an historical description of the country's founding and a workable blueprint for the future - a desirable blueprint, to boot.

The National Hymn has this line in it, too: Thy true religion in our hearts increase. That's the line that should make everyone sit up and take notice - when people start talking about the "true religion" and "thy Word our law", is intolerance - and its accompanying activities - far behind? No.

And that really is the heart of theocracy, isn't it? As Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged, 2002 defines it, theocracy is

: government of a state by the immediate direction or administration of God b : government or political rule by priests or clergy as representatives of God

God himself isn't showing up to run things, but "representatives of God" is what "Thy true religion" is all about. This administration, from the president down, is filled with people who talk Jesus all the time, who funnel government money to "faith-based initiatives", and who say (if not all of them believe) that God chose Bush to run the country.

And now we have a cartoonist whose characters have always been religious - Catholic, in fact (who else prays, as Dolly did once "Hail Mary"?), though gently so, no overt intolerance - is actually making a joke which depends on the notion that God is an American. (Keane might be surprised at how quickly the Falwells and Robertsons of this country would turn on the Catholics once they've achieved their first goal - much as the theistic creationists would be surprised if the Wedge comes to pass. But that is by the way.)

But, on second thought, perhaps that's not such a bad idea after all. Perhaps, if God really means it, if he's really pledging allegiance to the republic, then he can straighten out his followers on just what the republic is really like.

Yeah. I know. Figure the odds. Their God thinks like they do. His Word be Our Law. Amen.

No, thanks. The United States wasn't founded by religion (though it's true that (a) many of the Founders were religious and (b) many of the original settlers were fleeing someone else's Established Religion (a lesson our own theocrats have failed to learn)). The Constitution is America's sacred document, not the Bible. No one group's god runs our country - even one who's a citizen.

Go to First Freedom First to find out what you can do.

Blog against Theocracy III: Easter

For First Freedom First - Blue Gal, Mock Paper Scissors, Neural Gourmet, Talk2Action, and Blogs against Theocracy present a Blogswarm Against Theocracy.

Easter Sunday. What's it all about?

Bede wrote in Latin:

"Eosturmonath, qui nunc paschalis mensis interpretatur, quondam a dea illorum quae Eostre vocabatur et cui in illo festa celebrabant nomen habuit."

Translated: "Eosturmonath, which is now interpreted as the paschal month, was formerly named after the goddess Eostre, and has given its name to the festival."

Eostre are derived from the Old Teutonic root 'aew-s', 'illuminate, especially of daybreak' and closely related to (a)wes-ter- 'dawn servant', the dawn star Venus and *austrôn-, meaning "dawn".

The Indo-European root is *aus- h2eus-

DEFINITION: To shine.
Derivatives include east, Easter, and aurora.
1a. east, from Old English ast, east (< “the direction of the sunrise”); b. ostmark, from Old High German stan, east. Both a and b from Germanic *aust-. 2a. eastern, from Old English asterne, eastern; b. Ostrogoth, from Late Latin ostro-, eastern. Both a and b from Germanic *austra-. 3. Easter, from Old English astre, Easter, from Germanic *austrn-, dawn. 4. Possibly in Latin auster, the south wind, formally identical to the Germanic forms in 2 and 3, but the semantics are unclear: Austro-1. 5. Probably suffixed form *auss-, dawn, also Indo-European goddess of the dawn. a. aurora, from Latin aurra, dawn; b. eo-, Eos; eosin, from Greek s, dawn. (Pokorny aes- 86.)

In most Christian countries/churches, the word for "Easter" is a derivative of the Hebrew "Pascha" (familiar to Americans, perhaps, in the appellation for Christ of "Pascal lamb"); in some Slavic countries it's called Velikden or Velikonoce, "Great Day or Great Nights".

Some Christians (such as Jehovah's Witnessess or Sabbatarians) don't explicitly celebrate Easter, instead keeping what the church of my youth called "the weekly remembrance of his blessed death and resurrection" and considering that sufficient without trying a single yearly celebration. Many others rue the pagan symbols that remain attached (rabbits and eggs), just as many rue the mingling of Yule and Christmas. But for most, Easter is the chief celebration of the liturgical year - for some, the only important one.

The date of Easter is calculated using an ecclesiastical lunar calendar that roughly accords with the astronomical one; Easter is celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox, set as March 21. As the Eastern and Western churches use different calendars, their dates for Easter do not always coincide - this year they do, but last year they were a week apart (April 16 and 23) and next year over a month will separate them (March 23 and April 27). That's a pretty typical three-year cycle - week/month/same - though leap years can insert a fourth year in there in various spots.

The date of Easter was variously celebrated in the early church, it not being until that busy Council of Nicaea that the same date was ordained for all Christendom - though in practice it was nearly three centuries later that all the churches actually fell in line.

And what lies behind all this? It's not just another Dying God reborn in the spring, though that may have been the template (what CS Lewis once called the "good dreams" God sent to pagans to prepare them for the truth). Easter is about the redemption of the human race from its sin. For humanity is created sinful and can only be redeemed by the blood of the god that so created them... Or, as Jesus explains it to Mo, "It is the culmination of a plan set in motion at the dawn of time. Having created sinful man, I then contrive to get myself whacked in order to save him from my wrath, for it is only the spilling of my own blood that can appease me and cleanse man's sin."

You gotta admit, it's a heckuvan idea. God, dying. For us.

(If you just don't think about it too closely.)

And I freely admit that I can understand why, if you believe it to be true, you'd want everyone else to believe it, too.

But belief cannot be legislated: only outward conformity can be. And religiously coercive legislation breeds defiance, which creates martyrs, which breeds nonconformists - who spark rebellions and found countries with different beliefs, which start the cycle over again. While laxly enforced or lenient legislation, by eliminating the state support for dissenters while otherwise ignoring them, breeds ... well, look at secular Europe with its state-supported churches.

So preach the gospel, preach Easter - but don't try to use the law make it compulsive. That's in no one's best interest, after all.

This is the final post in my entry (and the least related, to be honest) - look here for day one and day two (the main one).

Blog against Theocracy II: the glorious first

For First Freedom First - Blue Gal, Mock Paper Scissors, Neural Gourmet, Talk2Action, and Blogs against Theocracy present a Blogswarm Against Theocracy.

The first amendment to the Constitution, part of the Bill of Rights:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The subject had been on many people's minds for a long time before the Constitution was written.

In 1644, Roger Williams, that fervent Puritan, wrote "The Bloody Tenet of Persecution", which contained these points:

Eighthly, God requireth not a uniformity of religion to be enacted and enforced in any civil state; which enforced uniformity (sooner or later) is the greatest occasion of civil war, ravishing of conscience, persecution of Christ Jesus in his servants, and of the hypocrisy and destruction of millions of souls.

Ninthly, in holding an enforced uniformity of religion in a civil state, we must necessarily disclaim our desires and hopes of the Jew's conversion to Christ.

Tenthly, an enforced uniformity of religion throughout a nation or civil state, confounds the civil and religious, denies the principles of Christianity and civility, and that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh.

Eleventhly, the permission of other consciences and worships than a state professeth only can (according to God) procure a firm and lasting peace (good assurance being taken according to the wisdom of the civil state for uniformity of civil obedience from all sorts).

Twelfthly, lastly, true civility and Christianity may both flourish in a state or kingdom, notwithstanding the permission of divers and contrary consciences, either of Jew or Gentile.

In 1663 the Plantations of Rhode Island and Providence were chartered, and that charter contained this most remarkable provision:

and because some of the people and inhabitants of the same colonie cannot, in theire private opinions, conforme to the publique exercise of religion, according to the litturgy, formes and ceremonyes of the Church of England, or take or subscribe the oaths and articles made and established in that behalfe; and for that the same, by reason of the remote distances of those places, will (as wee hope) bee noe breach of the unitie and unifformitie established in this nation: Have therefore thought ffit, and doe hereby publish, graunt, ordeyne and declare, That our royall will and pleasure is, that noe person within the sayd colonye, at any tyme hereafter, shall bee any wise molested, punished, disquieted, or called in question, for any differences in opinione in matters of religion, and doe not actually disturb the civill peace of our sayd colony; but that all and everye person and persons may, from tyme to tyme, and at all tymes hereafter, freelye and fullye have and enjoye his and theire owne judgments and consciences, in matters of religious concernments, throughout the tract of lande hereafter mentioned; they behaving themselves peaceablie and quietlie, and not useing this libertie to lycentiousnesse and profanenesse, nor to the civill injurye or outward disturbeance of others; any lawe, statute, or clause, therein contayned, or to bee contayned, usage or custome of this realme, to the contrary hereof, in any wise, notwithstanding.

In 1670 William Penn wrote The Great Case of Liberty of Conscience in reponse to an Act against Dissenters, which includes these points:

we singly state the question thus;

Whether imposition, restraint, and persecution, upon persons for exercising such a liberty of conscience as is before expressed, and so circumstantiated, be not to impeach the honour of God, the meekness of the Christian religion, the authority of Scripture, the privilege of nature, the principles of common reason, the well-being of government, and apprehensions of the greatest personages of former and latter ages?

First, Then we say, that Imposition, Restraint, and Persecution, for matters relating to conscience, directly invade the divine prerogative, and divest the Almighty of a due, proper to none besides himself. And this we prove by these five particulars:

...Thirdly, It enthrones Man as king over conscience, the alone just claim and privilege of his Creator; whose thoughts are not as mens thoughts, but has reserved to himself that empire from all the Caesars on earth: For if men, in reference to souls and bodies, things appertaining to this and the other world, shall be subject to their fellow-creatures, what follows, but that Caesar (however he got it) has all, God’s share, and his own too? And being Lord of both, both are Caesar's, and not God's.

Fourthly, It defeats God’s work of Grace, and the invisible operation of his eternal Spirit, (which can alone beget faith, and is only to be obeyed, in and about religion and worship) and attributes mens conformity to outward force and corporal punishments. A faith subject to as many revolutions as the powers that enact it.

In 1773, the Rev. Isaac Backus, the most prominent Baptist minister in New England, observed in his Appeal to the Public for Religious Liberty, that when

And it appears to us that the true difference and exact limits between ecclesiastical and civil government is this, That the church is armed with light and truth, to pull down the strong holds of iniquity, and to gain souls to Christ, and into his church, to be governed by his rules therein; and again to exclude such from their communion, who will not be so governed; while the state is armed with the sword to guard the peace, and the civil rights of all persons and societies, and to punish those who violate the same. And where these two kinds of government, and the weapons which belong to them, are well distinguished. and improved according to the true nature and end of their institution. the effects are happy, and they do not at all interfere with each other: but where they have been confounded together, no tongue nor pen can fully describe the mischiefs that have ensued.

And while it's true that many of the provisions for "religious liberty" contained some restriction, as did the 1701 Charter of Delaware, restricting that liberty to those who acknowledged the existence of God:

BECAUSE no People can be truly happy, though under the greatest Enjoyment of Civil Liberties, if abridged of the Freedom of their Consciences, as to their Religious Profession and Worship: And Almighty God being the only Lord of Conscience, Father of Lights and Spirits; and the Author as well as Object of all divine Knowledge, Faith and Worship, who only doth enlighten the Minds, and persuade and convince the Understandings of People, I do hereby grant and declare, That no Person or Persons, inhabiting in this Province or Territories, who shall confess and acknowledge One almighty God, the Creator, Upholder and Ruler of the World; and professes him or themselves obliged to live quietly under the Civil Government, shall be in any Case molested or prejudiced, in his or their Person or Estate, because of his or their consciencious Persuasion or Practice, nor be compelled to frequent or maintain any religious Worship, Place or Ministry, contrary to his or their Mind, or to do or suffer any other Act or Thing, contrary to their religious Persuasion.

others did not.

The Glorious First (I do love that name) is our protection - all of us - against someone else's religion becoming the law of the land. Many of the original immigrants to what became this country were fleeing countries where their religion was unaccepted, second-class, and sometimes even illegal. They didn't come here to found a brave new secular world by any means, but they did mean to have a country where they could worship as they pleased - and they understood that the only way that could be guaranteed in perpetuity was to guarantee the same right to others, even if those others are arrant heretics or blasphemers or (gasp!) Unitarians.

On January 1, 1802, then president Thomas Jefferson wrote the Danbury, Connecticut, Baptists, who had written him he Danbury Baptists were a religious minority in Connecticut, and they complained that in their state, the religious liberties they enjoyed were not seen as immutable rights, but as privileges granted by the legislature - as "favors granted." In Jefferson's letter is this sentence, referring to the First Amendment:

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man & his god, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between church and state.

Jefferson also wrote this, in reference to the Virginia Religious Tolerance Act:

The bill for establishing religious freedom, the principles of which had, to a certain degree, been enacted before, I had drawn in all the latitude of reason & right. It still met with opposition; but, with some mutilations in the preamble, it was finally passed; and a singular proposition proved that it's protection of opinion was meant to be universal. Where the preamble declares that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed, by inserting the word "Jesus Christ," so that it should read "a departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion" the insertion was rejected by a great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of it's protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan, the Hindoo, and infidel of every denomination..

"...of every denomination": that's the key. People of every denomination are to be free and equal in this country, regardless of just what that denomination is - or even if they are Christian. As can be seen from the Danbury Baptists, and Rev. Backus's letter below, Baptists were deeply concerned with this problem. After all, they had been repressed by the established Church of England in the old country, and they had no desire to see this state of affairs restored. As James Madison wrote in A Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments, addressed to the Virginia General Assemby, June 20, 1785:

Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity in exclusion of all other religions may establish, with the same ease, any particular sect of Christians in exclusion of all other sects? That the same authority which can force a citizen to contribute threepence only of his property for the support of any one establishment may force him to conform to any other establishment in all cases whatsoever?

And this is the point that seems to elude those evangelical and fundamentalist Christians who want their variety of religion esconced in the Capitol and the courts and the schools. Our Founders knew all about the devastation and death that occurs when a country switches from one established church to another. They were not against religion - of course not. Many of them were either Christians or Deists of one variety or another. But they were against any establishment of any particular religion - or variety of one.

The First Amendment is a bright distillation of the clear intentions of the Founders, which were that the government should not meddle with any church, and that no church should meddle with the government - in Backus's lovely phrasing, "where these two kinds ... are well distinguished. and improved according to the true nature and end of their institution, the effects are happy", "but where they have been confounded together, no tongue nor pen can fully describe the mischiefs that have ensued."

This is the main post in my entry - look here for day one and day three.

Blog against Theocracy I: liberal scholars

For First Freedom First - Blue Gal, Mock Paper Scissors, Neural Gourmet, Talk2Action, and Blogs against Theocracy present a Blogswarm Against Theocracy.

So, I'm thinking about what I'm going to blog about this weekend and lo and behold, EJ Dionne gives me a topic.

While some Christians harbor doubts about Christ's actual physical resurrection, hundreds of millions believe devoutly that Jesus died and rose, thus redeeming a fallen world from sin.

Are these people a threat to reason and even freedom?

It's a question that arises from a new vogue for what you might call neo-atheism. The new atheists -- the best known are writers Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins -- insist, as Harris puts it, that "certainty about the next life is simply incompatible with tolerance in this one." That's why they think a belief in salvation through faith in God, no matter the religious tradition, is dangerous to an open society.

Dionne says we're "given to a sometimes-charming ferociousness in [our] polemics" and says "As a general proposition, I welcome the neo-atheists' challenge. The most serious believers, understanding that they need to ask themselves searching questions, have always engaged in dialogue with atheists."

It's true that religious Christians were among those who persecuted Jews. It is also true that religious Christians were among those who rescued Jews from these most un-Christian acts. And it is a sad fact that secular forms of dogmatism have been at least as murderous as the religious kind.

What's really bothersome is the suggestion that believers rarely question themselves while atheists ask all the hard questions. But as Novak argued -- in one of the best critiques of neo-atheism -- in the March 19 issue of National Review, "Questions have been the heart and soul of Judaism and Christianity for millennia." (These questions get a fair reading in another powerful commentary on neo-atheism by James Wood, himself an atheist, in the Dec. 18 issue of the New Republic.) "Christianity is not about moral arrogance," Novak insists. "It is about moral realism, and moral humility." Of course Christians in practice often fail to live up to this elevated definition of their creed. But atheists are capable of their own forms of arrogance. Indeed, if arrogance were the only criterion, the contest could well come out a tie.

As for me, Christianity is more a call to rebellion than an insistence on narrow conformity, more a challenge than a set of certainties.

In "The Last Week," their book about Christ's final days on Earth, Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan, distinguished liberal scriptural scholars, write: "He attracted a following and took his movement to Jerusalem at the season of Passover. There he challenged the authorities with public acts and public debates. All this was his passion, what he was passionate about: God and the Kingdom of God, God and God's passion for justice. Jesus' passion got him killed."

That's why I celebrate Easter and why, despite many questions of my own, I can't join the neo-atheists.

And so once again the entire point is missed.

Look, Mr Dionne, I don't give a good god damn about you and the "liberal scriptural scholars". Believe what you like - it does no one any harm. But did you actually read that "bracing polemic" of Harris's, or did you just skim it looking for ways to get around it?

Because the whole point of that book - the whole point of the "neo-atheistic movement" - is that you and yours are enablers for those who blow up buildings, busses, clinics, and people in the name of God.

I will agree without hesitation: Dionne and his kind do not throw bombs into clinics, put bullets into the heads of doctors, or beat young men and string them up on fences to die. They don't get on talk radio and wish for people's death, nor make vicious and anonymous death threats on blogs. Of course they don't. But just because for him Christianity is "more ... than an insistence on narrow conformity" doesn't entitle him to pretend that that is not precisely what Christianity is for others - for many others - an insistence on narrow conformity that they will force on the whole country if they can.

That Dionne and his ilk will be mightily discomforted if that occurs is little comfort. Jesus' passion got him killed? Many of his followers nowadays do the killing, and you must know that to be true. They have a passion for God's Kingdom, too, and they want to establish it right here and now.

Atheists are arrogant, Mr Dionne? How arrogant is it to pretend you and the "scholars" set the tone for Christianity. It's arrogant to pretend that you don't know that "secular forms of dogmatism" are different from religious ones in nothing but name: have you never studied these "murderous" dogmatisms? Have you never seen the giant statues of the Beloved Leader, the embalmed and worshipped bodies on Red Square, the chants of "Lenin lived, Lenin lives, Lenin will live!" - can't you admit these regimes merely worshipped some other god than you? Worship is irrational, whether a Sky God, a State, or a nebulous Notion Of Goodness; and it leads to hatred of the other, those who do not join the worship. What secularist, not setting up his state and self as the new religion, has ever led a nation to invade another, preached the death of those who didn't accept his theory, or consigned all those who disagreed with him to eternal and everlasting torment? Who? When? Where? What political-cum-religious leader has even managed not to have division within his own?

As Christopher Brookmyre remarked, via a character in his novel "Not the End of the World":

Trouble is, there's a fine line between imagining someone's eternal soul is condemned and thinking their earthly life is worthless.

"Christianity is not about moral arrogance", Mr Novak and Mr Dionne? I invite you to reclaim the moral high ground of this argument with "neo-atheists" by teaching your co-religionists this essential dogma.

But if you won't. we'll have to.

This is day one; look for days two and three over the weekend.