Episcopalian Frightens Unitarians (Not)

An Episcopalian convert by choice has attacked Unitarians for undermining Christmas and stealing Christian clothes. Garrison Keillor, once a Plymouth Brethren, but who then had a liberal conversion and became Episcopalian, decided to attack both Unitarians and Jews over rewriting Christmas carols and drawing on other festivities that belong to Christians.

Don't rewrite and pinch Christian carols, he says: Silent Night has been rewritten, he says, to say more about silence and less about God, and this happened in the location where Ralph Waldo Emerson (a Unitarian and ejected Unitarian too) preached (the First Church of Cambridge). He says:

Unitarians listen to the Inner Voice and so they have no creed that they all stand up and recite in unison, and that's their perfect right, but it is wrong, wrong, wrong to rewrite "Silent Night." If you don't believe Jesus was God, OK, go write your own damn "Silent Night" and leave ours alone. This is spiritual piracy and cultural elitism, and we Christians have stood for it long enough.

Then he immediately bashes the Jews similarly, adding:

Did one of our guys write "Grab your loafers, come along if you wanna, and we'll blow that shofar for Rosh Hashanah"? No, we didn't.

He declares, for all our benefits:

Christmas is a Christian holiday - if you're not in the club, then buzz off. Celebrate Yule instead or dance around in druid robes for the solstice. Go light a big log, go wassailing and falalaing until you fall down, eat figgy pudding until you puke, but don't mess with the Messiah.

Don't worry mate: I don't. But Jesus was a Jew, and he believed in one God. He did not turn himself into a salvation figure, like Paul did in a thoroughly ahistorical manner for an exporting Gentile Christianity, but pointed to an immediate future almost present and the action of a justice filled supernatural God. Dominic Lawson defends the Jewish bit, but Unitarians have long looked after themselves (and, come to think of it, so have Jews) and there is some solid agreement between historical, progressive Christian and Jewish scholarship and the Unitarians regarding Jesus. The difference is, Unitarians pinch things and get on other people's nerves. But I'd buzz off, regarding the celebration, personally, but - just to annoy, and for the aesthetics - will still turn up for the evening concert late on the 24th and into the 25th.