Tolerance

I was alerted to this article by Charles Krauthammer over the weekend regarding the annual bout of Christmas intolerance. I especially liked this:

"Some Americans get angry at parents who want to ban carols because they tremble that their kids might feel ``different'' and ``uncomfortable'' should they, God forbid, hear Christian music sung at their school. I feel pity. What kind of fragile religious identity have they bequeathed their children that it should be threatened by exposure to carols?...It is the more deracinated members of religious minorities, brought up largely ignorant of their own traditions, whose religious identity is so tenuous that they feel the need to be constantly on guard against displays of other religions..."

Exactly. And typically those who are the loudest are those without any religious tradition at all and whose rather nominal atheism is threatened by the appearance of religious activity in the public square. As C.S. Lewis said in his autobiography Surprised By Joy:

"A young man who wishes to remain a sound Atheist cannot be too careful of his reading. There are traps everywhere--'Bibles laid open, millions of surprises,' as Herbert says, 'fine nets and stratagems.' God is, if I may say it, very unscrupulous."