Holiday thoughts

I trust that everyone had a good Christmas, and that the spirit of the Holidays is still alive in you. I haven't blogged much lately, as there were other priorities to tend to during this season.

 

This year in particular, because Christmas Day fell on a Sunday, there was a vigorous debate about the role that Christmas plays within our society. Many Christians are feeling threatened by the prevailing influences that are turning our celebration into a purely secular one. Some churches, almost resigning to this reality, even cancelled their Sunday morning services. (Side note: Much to even my surprise, our attendance on Christmas morning exceeded our average and my own pessimistic expectations).

 

Talking about holidays, I came across an interesting article from the Washington Post and reproduced at a blog called BadGals-Radio.com. The article concerns the meaning of Kwanzaa within the African American community, and deals with the conflict that it poses to Christians who see it conflicting with Christmas. My interest in this article is because of their quote from one of the most well-known Church of God figures outside of our movement, Cheryl Sanders. While I encourage you to read the entire article, here is the excerpt pertaining to Sander's comments:

Ministers and churchgoers described Kwanzaa as having moved beyond the politics of its roots, which date to a time when some American blacks saw Christmas and Christianity as having a decidedly white, European pedigree. Today, Kwanzaa, with its rituals and explicit focus on values, seems nothing if not spiritual.

“To me, the only thing that makes spirituality comprehensible is the ethical values it affirms,” said the Rev. Cheryl Sanders, senior pastor at Third Street Church of God in the District and a professor of African American spirituality at Howard University’s Divinity School. She leads her church in marking Kwanzaa by lighting candles, inviting the choir and congregants to dress in Afrocentric garb and discussing from the altar the holiday’s principles: unity, self-determination, shared responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity and faith.

Those principles resonate today, Sanders says, after the baby boom era of abandoning traditional ideals. “Kwanzaa is an example of a way to recover the intergenerational dialogue around values,” she said.

These examples further illustrate that we all face many challenges as we strive to proclaim and practice a meaningful faith in an increasingly irreligious culture.