Some say Jesus is the reason for the season, but a lot of those same people would turn any Jesus… with a Hispanic last name, away from their inn. No room at the inn, we need to make room.
This season, as Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, is as good a time as any to pause and consider what is arguably the greatest moral and political blight of our time — fundamentalist religious sectarianism — and the remedy to it.
For there is a remedy. It’s more than a little astonishing, given the carnage wrought by extremists historically and now, that it isn’t more often discussed. It is, simply, ecumenism — the notion that people of faith, and indeed agnostics and atheists, have far more in common than they sometimes wish to believe.
We don’t have to love our neighbour, in the biblical sense, just try and tolerate their existence, and not look for reasons to hate.
Peace on earth is a tall order, and not really in our nature, but it’s nice to have goals.
Nice.