State House News informs us that on Wednesday, in the Great Hall in the State House, Representative James Lyons and The Massachusetts Family Institute will be holding their second annual Celebration of Christmas, featuring a view of the nativity.
At last year’s event, Representative Lyons, pictured below, said “our message today is that this is about what Christmas has always been, to us as Christians and I think to a lot of non-Christians also. This is about that message, the message of love, hope and joy.”
His request to put the nativity scene in the State House was initially denied, he said, but was approved after lawyers at the Thomas More Society told State House officials that they would take the matter to court. The effort resulted in a vindication of “religious liberty, freedom of expression, First Amendment, all kinds of things tied into one,” he added.
I so hate these kerfuffles. Strictly speaking, a Nativity on State House property neither establishes religion nor prohibits free exercise as the Bill of Rights generation understood those concepts, especially if no public money is involved. However, someone will claim it’s an endorsement, technically not forbidden by the specific words of the amendment and want to erect their religion’s symbols. If that means Hanakkuh, Kwanzza, or Ramadan those are well within the mainstream and shouldn’t get much objection, but inevitably some Satanist will want to really push the envelope and display a message or symbolism that many would find offensive. Then people throw up their hands and decide it’s best to not display anything and we all look and feel like a bunch of Scrooges who can’t display something intended to convey universal values such as love, hope, and peace.
Unlike the country as a whole there really was a Christian basis to the founding of Massachusetts. Therefore most communities have churches in the town center which can display Nativities on their lawns and avoid the town common fight altogether. The irony of course is that the same Puritans who founded the state are also the only people in our history to actually ban the celebration of Christmas.
If it were up to me each community would decide how to handle this without resorting to a federal case. Even the statehouse display ultimately doesn’t hurt anybody.
I attended the annual Hanukkah menorah lighting at the State House a few days ago. All the politicians were there. It was cheesy in the way all such events are cheesy, but it was fundamentally a positive thing. And if we’re going to have the menorah, we’re going to have the nativity.
The Daley Center always has a German Christmas market this month, including a nativity, the city tree, and a menorah. Recently an atheist group put up a lit neon red A as an atheist symbol. The same group put up the Jefferson and Paine treatises on separation of church and state next to the Good Friday cross the Archdiocese erects during Holy Week.
I’m fine with all of it. Fine with Satanists too, since their beliefs aren’t offensive to another faith anymore than mine are to them. Literally I guess, we offend each other since our faiths are premised on negating one anothers God. Jews and Muslims also deny my God’s divinity and I wouldn’t take that as an offense.
Yet being in a pluralistic democracy means learning from them and vice a versa. Religious viewpoints, including skepticism toward religion, are discourse in the marketplace of ideas permitted in the public square. I would even say this messy interaction is far better than a sanitized secularism or majoritarian monopoly on displays.
What most struck me about this story, as reflected in the post’s title, was not the fact of a nativity in the State House but rather Representative Lyons’ unironic notion that a nativity in the State House, of all things, properly illustrates the meaning of the First Amendment.
As to the former point, yes, as Tedf says, if we’re going to have the menorah, we’re going to have the nativity. Especially when the nativity is sponsored by an organization whose agenda is rolling back the civil rights of women, gays and transgender people and by the legislator who is most keen on smoothing the way for Trump’s deportation machine, then, yeah, I’m good with having neither.
My wish is that these events could be non-political. The only sour note at the Hanukkah event (which, by the way, featured the excellent Navy Band from Newport and the Solomon Schechter Day School’s Shir Chai choir, was Sen. Creem’s remarks. The other politician speakers, including the Governor, the AG, the Auditor, and the Speaker, all gave thoughtful reflections on the themes of Hanukkah and religious freedom in Massachusetts. Senator Creem kept saying that we had to remember that “love trumps hate,” as though the event were an HRC rally circa September 2016. Check the politics, please. I suppose I would want to hold the nativity scene display to the same standard: reflect on the themes of the season; leave the politics at the door.
The Nativity is sponsored by a homo/transphobic group? My GSA made beautiful laminated solidarity placards-maybe putting some up in the Great Hall can be a field trip idea….naughty and nice at the same time.
Go for it.
Jimmy Lyons is a deplorable sack of —- who, with wife in tow, screams his religion at young women entering women’s health clinics.
His playing the poor persecuted Christian here is just more [of the same – edited by Charley]