c. 1999 Religion News Service

(Carter Heyward is an Episcopal priest and professor of theology at the Episcopal Divinity School, Cambridge, Mass. She is currently in residence at Redbud Springs Community in western North Carolina.)

UNDATED _ Must this season be oppressive to those who aren’t Christian, or can it be an occasion for planting seeds of liberation and hope for all?

Several days ago, three women friends (a retired professor of Christian ethics, an Anglican nun and me, an Episcopal priest) traveled to a law enforcement office in a nearby county to meet with a detective and discuss a film on Satanic ritual abuse.

According to the detective, the film was being shown to teachers and other workers in public school systems throughout the nation. We three were part of a group of concerned citizens called together in response to a complaint by a local school counselor that the film, produced by a conservative Christian group, intimated that young people who are gay are likely to dabble in Satanism.

We saw for ourselves that, indeed, that was exactly what was suggested.

While the film had many problems, a basic one, our group concluded, was its intimation that any spirituality, value, or relationship not traditionally viewed as”Christian”_ religions which revere the earth, mutually respectful homosexual relationships, single parent families, for example _ may indeed be Satanic.

The viewer was led to assume that because Satanism is evil, those who represent it in the judgment of right-thinking Christians must be condemned and, presumably, eliminated. Of course, the film did not list among its Satanic practices those many male-dominated, heterosexual”Christian”marriages in which wife battering and child abuse become a way of life. In fact, the film, like so much literature from the Christian right, sanctifies the”Christian”family as the solution to the entire problem of Satanism, evil and immorality.

En route home from the meeting, we three women found ourselves reflecting on the”Christianization”of public space, especially in the current climate of millennial madness so prevalent these days _ on billboards, flyers in department stores, tags on Christmas trees, warnings everywhere that”Jesus Christ is coming”(and not just into the hearts of Christian believers at Christmas).

In a restaurant where we stopped for a bite to eat, the menu on the wall even listed”Jesus saves”among its various selections, like meat loaf, mashed potatoes and peach cobbler.

We talked about what we imagine it must it be like to be Jewish or Muslim, Buddhist or Hindu, Rastafarian or Wiccan, agnostic or atheist in this nation anytime, but especially right now. Everywhere these days, millennial announcements warn that right-thinking Christians are the ones who count, the ones who are right, the ones worth saving from the fires or the poverty, the hurricanes or the drought, the racism or the sexism.

We suppose that the detective and his staff really don’t believe that the film they screened was a narrow-minded piece of”Christian”propaganda that fans the flames of this sort of oppressive religious zeal. While well-meaning people like the detective may hope that it will curb Satanic ritual abuse, a goal we certainly share, the film was more likely to stir fearful hearts and promote violence against those who deviate in any way from the beliefs and values of those Christians who assume that they _ and they alone _ are right.

But we will not eliminate violence by generating the conditions for more of it. We will not curb Satanism by stirring fear and hatred among young people toward those whom they may perceive as different, wrong, or dangerous in dress or style, spiritual belief or sexual identity.

Surely this is a primary learning from the Columbine massacre and other acts of teen violence against their”different”peers.

Public servants in law enforcement, education, religion and elsewhere who share a commitment to our common well being need to join hands in the struggle not simply for tolerance but, much more deeply, for celebration of our many differences in spiritualities, cultures, styles of dress and life itself.

To build a culture that really affirms diversity is a difficult and long-term challenge. It is much easier not to face it and to turn instead to fear-based, simple-minded religious bigotry that hurts and kills others.

Far better that we Christians suggest in this season that the Jesus story is, at its roots, a liberating invitation to honor one another amidst the differences that make us all who we are _ fully human and totally unique persons in a spirit that knows no religious bounds.

IR END HEYWARD