In this War on Christmas, inspiration for Christianity lost

Just in time for the season, here's the latest report from the War on Christmas.

No, I don't mean the fake war that Fox News fabricates every year to make members of the country's majority religion appear unfairly burdened by the society they in fact run. That is the most laughable claim to

victimhood yet devised.

The war I'm talking about is the assault by many self-professed Christians on the teachings of their own savior.

The one in which the Golden Rule now reads, "Do unto others as you would least like done unto you."

The one in which you strike others' cheeks before they have a chance to strike either of yours.

The one in which you give the thirsty nothing to drink, the stranger no invitation to enter, the unclothed no clothing, the sick and imprisoned no looking after.

Yes, it's the refusal to recognize the humanity and suffering of refugees from the planet's most war-torn regions, to offer them a home, and help, and respect.

It's the claim that all members of another religion - in this case Islam - are undeserving of what Christ claimed for everyone. It's the demonization of Muslims in public utterances, not just by national figures seeking to benefit from spreading fear but by people closer to home.

Like the Idaho governor who warns the federal government not to send any Syrian refugees to his state.

Like the right-wing Lewiston Tribune columnist whose first reference to the president of the United States always includes his middle name - Barack HUSSEIN Obama - seeking to tar a liberal he dislikes as a member of a despised group.

Like the authors of letters to the editor who use terms like "those Muslim bastards" and other disparaging characterizations not just of crazed jihadists but of all adherents to Islam.

This kind of thing is far from new, of course. It is, to steal a phrase from W.H. Auden, elderly rubbish. Americans heard it in the 1920s from Henry Ford, who published four anti-Semitic brochures under the title "The International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem." They heard it again in 1941, when Life magazine published illustrated instructions of "How to tell Japs from the Chinese," helping lead the nation into depriving Japanese-Americans of their liberty and in many cases, their property.

They did not hear it, however, from former President George W. Bush; even as he blundered into the invasion of Iraq, the boy who kicked the hornet's nest took pains to separate the 9/11 terrorists from the millions of peace-loving Muslims across the globe.

His call to basic decency can still be heard, but only in increasingly isolated quarters.

One echo came recently from another state's governor, Democrat Jay Inslee of Washington, who in extending an invitation to refugees noted that his community on Bainbridge Island was home to many of the Japanese-Americans sent to internment camps.

One came the other day from Jeff Flake, a Republican who represents Arizona in the U.S. Senate, when he and his Mormon family visited a mosque in his home state as a public demonstration of Christian tolerance and goodwill.

And another just came from north of our border, where newly elected Prime Minister Justin Trudeau joined fellow Canadians in greeting a planeload of 160 Syrian refugees arriving at the Toronto airport - the first of 25,000 expected in coming days.

Welcome to Canada," the greeters' signs read.

I wonder how many Americans will see that sign as cause to erect a wall across the world's longest international border, something one Republican presidential candidate, Ben Carson, has already judged to be reasonable.

Notice, though, that Carson appealed to reason, not to any teachings from the religion he otherwise wears on his sleeve. And as I survey the justifications that all his fellow border-closers offer for stiff-arming those dispossessed by conflict and strife, I find no words from Christianity's namesake.

My own Christian upbringing tells me why: Jesus' teaching was not only different from but was the opposite of what the gate-slammers now say. In passage after passage in the New Testament, Christ urges his followers to feed the hungry, to care for the afflicted, even to love their enemies.

And he adds, "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."

Now, who is waging the real War on Christmas, those who wish you "Happy holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas" or those who furiously reject the central message of the one whose birth we celebrate every Dec. 25? It's a question worth pondering, these silent nights.

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Fisher is the former editor of the Tribune's Opinion page. His email address is cfandjf@frontier.com.