Life, Religion

Holding a Light in the Village Square

Here in the United States, religious liberties are fast eroding

Last night on the news, I saw a segment about public schools near me (Montgomery County, MD) removing all references to religious holidays from their school calendar.

The story goes that Muslim families approached the school board and asked them to make Eid al-Fitr (the highest Muslim holiday which celebrates the end of Ramadan [a month of prayer and fasting] and is [culturally, and sorta-kinda theologically] somewhat like Easter is for Catholics) a school holiday, i.e., to give all children off from school on that day so that the Muslim students could do what all children of religious families do: celebrate their important holy day with their family and religious community.

This is a reasonable request: Christian students get off for Easter (and Easter is always on the weekend!) and Christmas; Jewish students get off for Rosh Hashanah. In the interest of equality, schools close on those days so that Jewish kids get off on Christian holidays and vice versa. Muslim families—and let me tell you, there are a lot of Muslim families in Montgomery County, Maryland—just want to have the importance of their holy-days recognized by the schools.

Rather than address the concerns of religious freedom and the right of all people of all religions to celebrate their holy days peaceably, the school board simply decided to remove all references to religious holidays from the calendar.

This means students will still have Christmas Day off, but it will not be the “Christmas holiday,” it will be the “December 25^th Holiday.” Christmas, in other words, does not deserve a name in the same way “more important” celebrations like Columbus Day or Veterans Day do.

Oh, and nobody gets Eid off at all.

Why is this concerning? Because religion belongs in the public square.

Muslims, Jews, and Christians, along with the less populous believers of other faiths, should be permitted to freely celebrate their holy days in a way recognized by the state. When the state (or its representatives) decides that the moral concerns voiced by religious believers are unimportant, it does horrible things like attempting to legislate away legitimate moral qualms.

When the state decides that truly holy holydays are less important than the state’s trumped up holidays which celebrate country, not God, it not-so-subtly attempts to replace God with the Nation-state in the hearts and minds of its citizens.

Siobhan Benitez

After growing up near Kennett Square, PA, the Mushroom Capitol of the World, Siobhan knew she would always live in a bustling capitol city. She earned a B.A. in Theology, History, and Classics at Mount St. Mary's University and an M.A. in Theology (specializing in Systematics) at Villanova University. Now she lives in Washington, D.C. with her wonderful husband where she is still getting used to living with a boy, right down to playing video games and watching football. When she's not hanging out with him or reading novels, she uses her spare time to earn a PhD in Moral Theology at the Catholic University of America.