When the church’s Christmas witness wanes, let’s blame Starbucks. When our Advent hope falters, let’s fault the “war on Christmas.” When the “Gospel of Wealth” (Andrew Carnegie, 1889) fails to undergird our Bethlehem-borne faith, let’s whine about it. Or we could repent of such whimpering worldliness and again turn loose the Advent story with its radical implications for both church and community.
In yet another Advent season, certain Christians complain that Starbucks and other business establishments attempt to divest “Christ from Christmas” through a litany of politically correct holiday blessings at the drop of a VISA card. Starbucks specifically is accused of instructing employees to wish customers “happy holidays,” thereby omitting references to Christmas, the Christ-child, or related Christocentric niceties. Righteous indignation is also manifested against Starbucks’ decision to delete explicit Christian decor from their throwaway coffee cups, replacing it with nondescript secular (Santa Clause) red. As one Baptist leader noted, it was simply another attempt to “diss” Christianity in American public life. Perhaps we should be less concerned for political correctness than for a gospel incorrectness that falsely demands of the culture a witness that belongs primarily to the church itself.
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