I was seriously hoping to see the Springfield News-Leader approach the issue regarding the Christmas tree incident at Missouri State university with a truly objective view. I was hoping they would look at why the co-chair of the President’s Diversity Committee was advocating deliberately ignoring the Supreme Court rules? Why this person said it was a religious issue and took action to remove a symbol he thought represented Christianity? Why someone who is supposed to be encouraging diversity…i.e. respect for everyone’s religion…would take steps to harm one religion over another?
No. In fact, they excuse it. They endorse it. The Springfield News-Leader is apparently of the opinion that doing something in violation of a Supreme Court ruling is perfectly acceptable even if the person who pushed the issue is doing it with the intent to harm Christianity.
“Wait,” you’re saying. “They didn’t say anything about the co-chair of the Diversity Committee.”
Exactly. They ignored that entire part of this situation because it didn’t fit with the rest of their mocking editorial.
Their column takes a personal shot at Dee Wampler (who I am no fan of as he promised me something and never delivered!) Then it goes into mocking the “war on Christmas” by saying there is a “war on Thanksgiving” thereby mocking the deeply held beliefs of those who see Christmas as a time to celebrate their faith. The N-L compares the birth of Christ to a holiday to celebrate food.
“Likewise, taking the tree down so the campus could have a conversation about respecting all religious backgrounds was a reasonable action as well,” the News-Leader’s mystery editorial writer said. No, Person Hiding Behind The Newspaper, it is NOT reasonable because the Supreme Court ruled there was nothing wrong with the tree being in that situation. The reasonable course of action would have been to leave the tree in place, gently explaining to the person who raised an issue that it was legal and then having your meeting or discussion. I agree that perhaps there might be an issue with how Jewish holidays are handled by the university.
I noticed the subtle bias in this statement as well: “Indeed, this campus already had a very loud discussion last year over a Christian student not feeling like her views were being respected in the school of social work.” This makes it appear like the issue was only in the mind of this one student when it fact her claims were proven to be true and actions were taken against the university and it’s faculty. So it’s not that she felt like her views were not being respected. They were, in fact, NOT being respected.
This writer for the News-Leader is deliberately leaving out truthful information and I cannot see where Tony Messenger can endorse an editorial staff member deliberately misrepresenting a situation. Tony, who is a champion for truth from Matt Blunt on the Eckersley situation and on the Sunshine Law, must come out and at least issue a clarification that the Emily Brooker situation was not a case of her believing that she was being disrespected but that the University admitted it. I call on Tony do to the right thing and issue this statement and denounce his staff member’s characterization of the situation.
Yes, I know that you can dismiss it as a simple mistake when writing but in light of the shot at Dee Wampler, the complete ignoring of the anti-Christian statements of Chris Craig and the mocking of the Governor for making a statement about a state-funded University deliberately ignoring a Supreme Court ruling you cannot reasonably say the wording in reference to Emily Brooker (who they did not mention by name) was an accident.
If the Springfield News-Leader is truly interested in diversity and discussions then they should question Chris Craig on his statements. Why not have Brian Lewis do it? He seems to be the editorialist on the forefront of injustice issues. Let’s have Mr. Lewis sit down with Mr. Craig and ask him why Mr. Craig thought it was OK to remove a legal symbol because he tied a Christian meaning to it that the Supreme Court said wasn’t there. It would speak volumes to silence critics that Mr. Lewis has a liberal bias to see him at least take Mr. Craig to task on what looks like a clear anti-Christian bias on his part.
This whole business is pretty much an unfortunate mess, but as someone who has been around MSU in various capacities, may I just say that I have never felt any anti-Christian bias there. I’ve always thought that the university did a pretty good job of making people of all backgrounds and beliefs feel welcome. Your wording makes it seem as if people there have a proactive intent to “harm Christianity,” which I must admit I fail to see. It would be nice if promoting and tolerating diversity didn’t require a committee; how I wish that came more naturally to people. Unfortunately, it does not, and trying to maintain a good balance of respect for all people’s traditions and beliefs can be a difficult thing to do in this day and age. I sincerely doubt that anyone involved in this situation ever intended to deliberately “harm one religion over another.” Nor do I think that university officials and News-Leader editorial staff members are lurking around every corner seizing every opportunity to persecute Christians and drive their free expression underground. Calm down! You’re getting all “Nancy Grace with a missing teenager” on us here.
Did you bother to read the statements made by the co-chair of the diversity committee or are you just basing it on your personal feelings?
Are you ignoring the Emily Brooker situation where anti-Christian bias was admitted by the university against Ms. Brooker?
If you fail to see it, you aren’t looking very hard.
Whats funny about the war on Christmas is that 300 years ago Fundi Christians had banned it in many colonies and celebrating it was punishable by fine. BTW, the X-mas tree is pagan in origin and I hear the Pagans want to put Odin back into the holiday (Odin hung for three days on the World Tree to get the Runes).
Word on the street(on highly reputed source) says it was a faculty member that started that whole mess. I did not catch the N.L.’s article if they happened to have mentioned that. Anyway, the tree should never have been touched, period! Also, if they decide to name it a “holiday” tree, they will hear from me as that is just silly and trivial.
I originally posted this at the Ozarks Right version of this post but since this one seems to get more attention I have decided to copy it to here. I am also posting Jason’s reply from the site at the end:
I work in Strong Hall and in plain view of the Tree and Menorah at the heart of this debacle. I watched the tree go up, come down, and go up again with its new friend which also went up, then came down, then went up again sans the candles it had once had. Early on, the only concern I had was the potential for the disruption of studies during the final week of classes for students who often populate the Strong Hall atrium while studying for final projects and tests while taking advantage of the popular surrounding internet-hotspot. Then the media circus put up their tent, then took it down. Now all that is left is the tree, the menorah, students, and the questions over what happened in the first place.
For some, the questions have been over a perceived attack on religion. To take this situation and ask “why Mr. Craig thought it was OK to remove a legal symbol because he tied a Christian meaning to it that the Supreme Court said wasn’t there?” stacks the deck and ultimately implies Mr. Craig knew about the court-ruled secularity of the tree in question which has also been applied to it’s new little buddy the Menorah. I am not afraid to admit that I had no idea the Christmas Tree was considered a secular symbol of the holiday season. The last court case over Christmas I paid attention to took place at the end of Miracle on 34th Street. If Mr. Craig KNEW about the secularity of the tree and simply disregarded this knowledge in order to take a shot at the Christian Christmas then these questions are indeed appropriate. If he didn’t know about this, as I would assume would be the obvious case in regards to the person who originally reported the complaint, then a different line of questioning is needed.
Should Mr. Craig be asked whether or nor he knew about the court rulings? Should we poll the entire Diversity Commission? Should we ask University President Dr. Neitzel? Perhaps the real question to ask would be whether or not these court rulings are common knowledge to Southwest Missouri. How many people are like me and simply had no idea the “Christmas” tree, in the context of the Strong Hall atrium, was really a “Holiday Tree”. Good luck getting polite replies to that questionnaire in Springfield, MO.
In light of the Emily Brooker settlement, the hasty removal of the tree while an internal investigation of the legal issues involved here doesn’t seem like such a bad idea. Unless, of course, I was in the minority after all and the majority of people could say “Duh, you didn’t know that?”.
Jason:
Mr. Craig made a statement that it wasn’t about the legality of the tree. That says he had to know the tree was legal or else there’s no reason for him to say it wasn’t about the legality. If he had not said that I would not have been so insistent about asking him the question.
Thanks for your comments! I appreciate it.
Thanks for bringing over my comment as well.
I think even most of my non-Christian agree, along with my Christian friends, that the Emily Brooker situation was wrong. She was treated unfairly and I don’t know anyone who doesn’t recognize that.
However, I don’t think that you can use that situation to say that the entire univeristy is at war with Christmas or Christians. The Christmas tree incident seems to be an unfortanate misunderstanding that was corrected (I’m going to do a post on public Christmas displays in general on my blog). I think your comments on the university’s “war” are a little extreme. In fact, I think that in general, the concept of a “war on Christmas” is absurd. I think the phrase expresses as much entitlement and intolerance as the concept is supposed to argue against.
I never said the University is at war with Christmas. Not once. I spoke of the co-chair of the diversity committee and his taking actions that were counter to Supreme Court and openly saying to the newspaper that it wasn’t about legality (which says he knew what the law was in this situation.)
Nowhere on my blog am I talking about a war on Christmas. I made direct comments about the actions of one individual and raised questions about the actions taken. If you have problems with that, let’s discuss it. If you’re just going to say the “war on Christmas” thing then I don’t know what you’re wanting me to say because I haven’t addressed it.
You said, “Then it goes into mocking the ‘war on Christmas’ by saying there is a ‘war on Thanksgiving’ thereby mocking the deeply held beliefs of those who see Christmas as a time to celebrate their faith. The N-L compares the birth of Christ to a holiday to celebrate food.”
I took this to mean that you support the idea of a “war on Christmas.” I also thought that since you includedit in an article about the university, you felt the university was somehow involved in this so-called “war.”
In re-reading your post, I see how I may have misread your references to the university and thought that you meant the entire university was involved in this incident, when you actually were referring specifically to Mr. Craig.
Sorry I wasn’t more clear on that.