With Easter Sunday in the not-so-distant rearview mirror, it is worth noting that a few people in these United States still celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ. In 2017, Statista recorded that 81.3% of Americans commemorated this most holy holiday. Despite the obvious popularity of Easter, some political elites on the left seem reticent to name-it and claim-it. That is, there appears to be a fear of mentioning Easter as a Christian holiday celebrated by Christians.
There – it’s been said – the dreaded “C” word: Christian.
Not Gracing the Lips of the Left
Those pitching their tent on the left of the American political spectrum can’t seem to make themselves utter the “C” word. Many do verbal somersaults to avoid addressing, writing about, or publicly recognizing those who laud Easter. Are we on some sort of right-wing paranoid rant here? Well, let’s take a moment and see where the facts lead us.
Liberty Nation was first alerted to this odd assault on Christians by Patrick Hauf, who seems to be a rather savvy college student. Perhaps he isn’t the progenitor of this phenomenon, but that’s where we spotted it. Hauf astutely noticed Hillary Clinton’s tweet that referred to Christians as “Easter worshippers.”
Then he did a taste-test, comparing HRC and former President Obama’s tweets about Easter and how they referred to people in the aftermath of the synagogue terrorist attack in Pittsburgh and the horrific killing of Christians in Sri Lanka.
This naturally led to tongue-in-cheek tweets like this one from LN’s Jeff Charles, “Can anyone actually tell me what an ‘Easter Worshipper’ is? Do these people worship the holiday Easter? Are they going to start calling us ‘Christmas Worshippers’ in December?” Then Charles doubled down with: “What happens if a terrorist targets Jews during the same time period as Easter? Are we supposed to call them ‘Passover Worshippers’?”
Point taken, Mr. Charles. Why can’t these politicians find the temerity to say the word “Christian,” even though Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama both claim to be followers of Jesus?
American politicians aren’t the only ones jumping on the bandwagon to exterminate the “C” word. In the vernacular of British Prime Minister Theresa May, the attacks in Sri Lanka weren’t against Christians; they were against “churches” and “hotels.”
The acts of violence against churches and hotels in Sri Lanka are truly appalling, and my deepest sympathies go out to all of those affected at this tragic time.
We must stand together to make sure that no one should ever have to practise their faith in fear.
— Theresa May (@theresa_may) April 21, 2019
Perhaps surprisingly, London Mayor Sadiq Khan was able to utter the “C” word and even went so far as to put out a generous message about Christians. Still, some may take issue with Khan’s reference to the Christian community who “make an important contribution” to London. Skeptics might counter that Christians didn’t merely make contributions to London but in fact were responsible for the city’s very existence. Nevertheless, we are willing to extend Khan some good old-fashioned Christian grace and let him slide on this one since he demonstrated the chutzpah to say the dreaded “C” word.
Of course, this isn’t the first time the left has parlayed political views into a linguistic game of charades. Remember global warming? That became climate change. Next, illegal immigrants in the common lingo of the left became undocumented Americans.
Here we might take a moment to hearken back to a salient proverb of George Orwell. “Political language … is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” Orwell could have added another rubric to language distortion that works just as well: Never write or say the word you despise – just put it on extinction. Then in a generation or so people will ask one another: “Christian? What is a Christian?”
