'Tis the Season for Barry and His Marauding Band of Barristers

Barry Lynn of Americans United for Separation of Church and State is one of those "Reverend" types for whom the title serves no purpose except to legitimize a cause which a little over a generation ago would have been considered spiritually vacuous and legally frivolous. Lynn can be seen frequently as a talking head on many a cable news show. He's not one to wear a clerical collar. He prefers instead the suave, debonair look of the business suit so as to make himself virtually indistinguishable from the army of lawyers his and similar "civil liberties" organizations send forth into every village, town, and hamlet across the country this time every year. This marauding band of barristers is dispatched to look for manger scenes and other public reminders of the religious overtones of an otherwise overly-commercialized Christmas season.

It is difficult, if not impossible, to get around the fact that Lynn is a walking, talking contradiction: an ordained Christian minister who has devoted his life to the elimination of all public displays of the Christian religion. Somewhere in the back of his mind, the good "Reverend" may have convinced himself that his mission in life is to rescue Christianity from the trivialization which inevitably results from its being woven into the fabric of American Civil Religion. But such an attitude, in and of itself, betrays a humanistic worldview which is inherently hostile toward a genuine expression of the faith once for all entrusted to the saints.

Christmas, of course, is more than just manger scenes on a public square. The fact that Lynn and his secularist allies feel "threatened" by the presence of such symbols in front of City Hall bears witness to the larger reality.

A manger scene in front of City Hall is more than a mere holiday decoration. When Mary and Joseph sought lodging in Bethlehem, they could find only a smelly old stable. The Savior of the world had to settle for a cattle stall as a crib. The fact that his birth is now commemorated on the front steps of many a seat of municipal government is testimony that the little Child born in that stable over 2,000 years ago is King of kings and Lord of lords, sovereign even over the supposedly "separate" realm of secular government.

Here is the real reason Barry Lynn and his minions get so out of sorts whenever they see Mary, Joseph, and the Baby taking up residence in some place other than the Bethlehem stable. Jesus' claim to absolute Lordship is the death knell for the phony cause of "separation of church and state." For the same Lord is Lord of the church as well as the state. For both church and state have been ordained by God and serve his purposes, and his purposes alone, in the redemption of his creation. There is no power on earth, least of all Barry Lynn and his bevvy of barristers, who can separate what God has placed together under the Lordship of Jesus Christ.