Peggy Noonan writes about upper crust "Banners" who dislike displays of religious belief
12/29/2003 3:44:35 PM
In an article in today's Opinion Journal, Peggy Noonan considers the The Banners and their dislike for public displays religious belief—especially statues of the Blessed Mother:
The motives of The Banners are mixed. Some seem to have aesthetic distaste for religious symbolism that is the outward and visible expression of an inner distaste for religion itself--it's old fashioned, unworldly, very booga booga woo woo, which can't be helpful, can it? Some of The Banners seem driven by malice and the impulse to bully--your religion is not my religion, so it will not be mentioned in public, bub, no matter what the holiday or how many celebrate it.
But some of The Banners mean well and believe their efforts are constructive. They believe that assertions of religious belief are inherently divisive, that to put forward the symbols of belief is threatening to society's peace. They believe that the displaying of the symbols of one faith is an implicit denial of the beliefs of another faith. They do not think that faith is part of the answer; they think it is a big part of the problem (see fundamentalist Islam; see the protracted war in Northern Ireland). They think that if only people would stop being religious, we wouldn't have religion around roiling people's emotions and making them violent. (If you say to them, "Man is prone to violence, and one of the things that tends to make his heart gentle is faith in God," their eyes widen in shock: That couldn't possibly be true!)
