Paranoia is the thought process heavily influenced by anxiety or fear, often to the point of irrationality and delusion that typically includes persecutory beliefs, or beliefs of conspiracy concerning perceived threats towards oneself such as “Everyone is out to get me.” It must be torturous to always be in fear that someone, or group, is deliberately out to persecute a paranoid individual, but it is why the condition is regarded by medical professionals as a psychiatric mental defect with virtually no medical treatment available to relieve the constant state of fear and delusion. Researchers believe that paranoid individuals suffer from a cognitive deficit or impairment in reasoning ability that explains, in part, the rampant paranoia and virulent persecution complex plaguing America’s religious right movement.
Evangelical Christians, and their conservative facilitators, are absolutely convinced everyone is out to get them to the point they claim there is a concerted secular and government war not only against them as Christians with no allegiance to Jesus Christ, but against their Pagan-originated religious holidays as well. Just the fact conservatives and Christian cultists believe it is possible to conduct a war against a specific day of the year would convince most thinking human beings that there is more than just a cognitive defect at play and regard them as hopelessly insane. Only a mentally disturbed individual would claim expressing an opinion different from theirs is oppression, persecution, and outright war.
The latest paranoia whipping Fox News and fanatical Christians into elevated paranoid delusions is their belief there is an “unholy war on Easter.” First, as Hrafnkell Haraldsson explained here Thursday, Easter is stolen from Pagans and the goddess “Eostra” that represents fertility and life renewed associated with Spring. Second, there is nothing whatsoever in any version of the Christian bible that commands, or even suggests, 1st through 21st Century Christians were to celebrate the idiotic idea that a dead man magically rose from the grave, or cave, three days after being crucified on a cross. There is however, an edict from god warning his devotees NOT to mix pagan rituals with devotion to god, and for many people the idea of wearing or devotion to a graven cross (commandment number 3 of the BIG TEN) of their savior’s cause of death is itself a morbid practice at best.
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The only thing Jesus Christ commanded his disciples to continue doing in remembrance of him is what is known today as communion (Last Supper celebrating Jewish Passover), or eating bread symbolizing Christ’s body and drinking wine representing his blood (virtual cannibalism). Still, Christians revere the cross and the day (not always a Friday) Christ allegedly died on after being crucified on a cross, and this past week Fox News went berserk over what they called “an unholy war on Easter.” There were two specific events that lit up the religious right thanks to Fox News’ attack on the Separation Clause of the 1st Amendment, but even if Fox had not attacked the 1st Amendment, paranoid evangelicals would have decried the secular war on Easter.
Fox’s Bill O’Reilly was incensed at President Obama and the White House for “empowering secular progressives to pressure school districts around the country to eliminate terms like “Easter bunny” and “Easter egg.” School districts adhering to the 1st Amendment drove O’Reilly to take up where he left off during the so-called war on Christmas and he railed for days about “the war on Judeo-Christian tradition continuing in some public school districts.” O’Reilly cited school districts in five states that he said “are having Spring egg events. Moderated by a Spring bunny” he asserted was stupid and claimed all Americans know it is stupid. He said, “I know it’s stupid. You know it’s stupid. But it’s happening, and there is a reason why it’s happening. Secular progressives are running wild with President Obama in the White House. They feel unchained, liberated and they are trying to diminish any form of religion. The goal is to marginalize religious opposition to secular programs.” In that sense O’Reilly is correct; religious opposition to secular programs in a nation founded on secularism should be more than marginalized, it should be crucified with extreme prejudice. O’Reilly perpetuated a religious right claim that “Christianity is on the run in this country,” and “you rarely see those kinds of assaults against Jews or Muslims,” but Jews and Muslims are not attempting to impose their belief system on the entire population like the religious right. He also claimed that “the 10 percent who would be upset by the Easter bunny, they should be institutionalized, by the way.”
Fox’s other talking heads joined O’Reilly’s “war on Easter” crusade and asserted there was a “deliberate attempt to diminish religion by removing the word Easter from certain school activities” solely to cause pain to Christians. According to Fox, the unholy war on Easter’s began when the principal of an Alabama middle school directed her school to not call an egg hunt an “Easter egg” hunt in order to respect others’ religion. Respect for others’ religion is anathema to the Christian right who also claim, by the way, the First Amendment gives them the right to impose their so-called Christian beliefs on the entire population, especially school-age children, women, and gays.
The other major assault in the “unholy war on Easter” came in the form of banners erected by the Freedom From Religion Foundation in Chicago’s Daley Plaza featuring Thomas Jefferson and President John Adams promoting the secular views of our founding fathers. The banners were aimed at countering a nineteen foot tall cross and a 10-foot tall image of the resurrected Jesus. The outrage from Christians is another case of expressing an opinion that does not support Christianity that Fox News and evangelicals decry is an “unholy attack on Easter and Christianity;” something the Founding Fathers did not support.
No-one cares if Christians celebrate Pagan religious holidays with absolutely no scriptural basis, but they cannot use public schools to advance their beliefs or expect to erect public displays promoting their religion without opposing displays whether they are secular or another religion. This ridiculous and persistent paranoia driving the religious right that secularists, or President Obama, are waging a war on Christian holidays is getting old and if Christians were half as confident and faithful in their religious beliefs as they claim, they would not feel “persecuted” by contrary beliefs or oppose the Constitution’s Separation of church and state.
Many secular humanists were queasy that President Obama used his weekly address to extol the virtues of Easter to “remind us of our responsibilities to God and, as God’s children, our responsibilities to one another.” For secularists, there is no need to be reminded that responsibilities to one another are dependent on responsibilities to god or that “we” are god’s children because their regard and concern for other human beings is borne of compassion the religious right or Fox News’ pundits cannot possibly fathom. At least President Obama understands that simple premise and all it got him for the past month is more claims he is persecuting Christians suffering paranoid delusions their precious Pagan-related Easter is the latest victim of an “unholy war.”
Audio engineer and instructor for SAE. Writes op/ed commentary supporting Secular Humanist causes, and exposing suppression of women, the poor, and minorities. An advocate for freedom of religion and particularly, freedom of NO religion.
Born in the South, raised in the Mid-West and California for a well-rounded view of America; it doesn’t look good.
Former minister, lifelong musician, Mahayana Zen-Buddhist.
