William A. Donohue
Even though roughly 80 percent of
Americans are Christian, 96 percent celebrate Christmas. Can
non-Christians and non-believers really celebrate Christmas? To some
extent they can, just the same way those who are not Irish can celebrate
St. Patrick’s Day: they can partake in the fun aspects of it, but
that’s it. At bottom, it’s a hollow exercise.
Multicultural propaganda maintains that
the U.S. is so incredibly diverse that it is wrong to exclude
non-Christians at Christmastime. But no one is excluding them: it is
Christians who are being excluded—they are the ones being denied their
right to celebrate Christmas in the schools, public parks and the
workplace. That these exclusionary policies are being invoked in the
name of inclusion is the ultimate irony.
Diversity gurus who spin the
multicultural propaganda are fond of saying that there are thousands of
religions in the U.S., and therefore it is wrong to make a big deal
about Christmas. What they don’t say is that 95 percent of Americans who
are religious are Christian. In other words, only 5 percent of those
who are religious belong to a religion other than Christianity. Yes,
there are many religions in this country, but aside from Jews and
Muslims, each comprising roughly two percent of the population, the rest
are tiny. Some could fit all their members on a tugboat.
Approximately 40 percent of Americans
say religion is an important part of their life; these are the “very
religious,” the ones who also attend church (or synagogue or mosque) on a
weekly basis. The rest of the population is roughly split between those
who occasionally attend church (they see religion as playing at least
some role in their life), and those who are not religious.
This last segment is the most diverse of
the three: about half of these “non-religious” persons still go to
church, albeit infrequently, and almost all of them believe in God; the
other half, about 16 percent of the population, never attend church.
Those who do not attend church are called the “nones”; when asked about
their religious affiliation, they say they have none. But contrary to
the popular perception, most of them are neither agnostic or atheist,
and a slight majority still believe in God. Indeed, agnostics are only
3.3 percent of the population and atheists are a mere 2.4 percent. To
show how few hard-core agnostics and atheists there are, consider that
13 percent of these two segments still attend church on a monthly or
yearly basis.
Clearly, then, we have been misled,
intentionally I would argue, about the religious profile of Americans.
Those who do the misleading include professors (they are
disproportionately represented among agnostics and atheists),
professional atheist crusaders, and the diversity specialists who push
the multicultural agenda. They would have us believe that all
non-Christians are upset about Christmas celebrations, but this is a
ruse: they are the ones who want to stamp out Christmas.
The Catholic League is the nation’s
largest Catholic civil rights organization. Founded in 1973 by the late
Father Virgil C. Blum, S.J., the Catholic League defends the right of
Catholics – lay and clergy alike – to participate in American public
life without defamation or discrimination.
Motivated by the letter and the spirit
of the First Amendment, the Catholic League works to safeguard both the
religious freedom rights and the free speech rights of Catholics
whenever and wherever they are threatened.
The Catholic League is listed in the Official Catholic Directory and has won the plaudits of many bishops.
