Posted on 12/20/2013 4:45:39 AM PST by Kaslin
What's been called the "War on Christmas" is often a case of secular liberals wanting to engage in Christmas denial. In the name of not wanting to offend people of minority faiths (or no faith), they remove the C-word from department store catalogs and Christmas songs from public school concerts, leaving us with lame messages about snow.
But there's another kind of Christmas denial: the kind that simply stomps on Christianity as ridiculous and kicks over the nativity set. Take the atheist punk band Bad Religion and its new record of Christmas songs they found "hilarious" to record.
Co-founder Brett Gurewitz told LA Weekly, "Clearly, it's a satire. We were rolling on the floor a lot of the time ... it felt like a Monty Python skit to me."
Greg Graffin, the other co-founder, is a part-time professor of biology and author of the book "Anarchy Evolution: Faith, Science, and Bad Religion in a World Without God." This is Graffin in a nutshell: "Our faith should be expressed in working toward a better planet for our children and not the selfish, juvenile hope for a better afterlife for ourselves. I don't think anyone is going to Hell, because it only exists in the minds of people who wish ill will on others."
Bad Religion's "Christmas Songs" album is concluded by a song called "American Jesus," which rips on America and Christianity. The lyrics start with an apparent conservative Christian's take: "I feel sorry for the earth's population/'Cause so few live in the U.S.A./At least the foreigners can copy our morality/They can visit but they cannot stay."
Then it turns to God, and the band lets it fly: "He's the farmer's barren fields, the force the army wields, the expression on the faces of the starving millions/The power of the man, he's the fuel that drives the Klan, he's the motive and conscience of the murderer/The nuclear bombs, the kids with no moms and I'm fearful that he's inside me."
Phil Robertson of "Duck Dynasty" was suspended from A&E for expressing his Christian beliefs to GQ Magazine. How do these elites react to an entertainer that slams Christianity?
Does it surprise you this album drew an eight-minute promotion on taxpayer-funded National Public Radio? On a Sunday night "news" program? NPR anchor Rachel Hunter played a clip of their takedown of "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" and wisecracked that by listening to it, "you find yourself engaged in a spontaneous episode of fist pumping. Maybe a family mosh pit because things are about to get rowdy."
Hunter called them "the esteemed punk band Bad Religion" and laughed along with them as she promoted their "haunting bass line," their "awesome guitar solo" and their "very tight, lovely produced harmony." The segment had everything a salesman would love except the question "So where can we all buy it?"
What it did not have was a single challenging question about every offensive lyric and argument listed above. There was no time in eight minutes to discuss the assertion that "American Jesus" drives the Ku Klux Klan, and no time to examine the "selfish, juvenile hope for an afterlife." Gurewitz did repeat to NPR that recording the songs was "hilarious" and added he has a "twisted sense of humor."
"This is something that you're doing a little tongue-in-cheek," Hunter lamely suggested. Graffin agreed: "The band's name is 'Bad Religion,' and we have a long history of questioning religion and social norms and being skeptics and so forth. So we thought that that would make it a really fun thing to do." Would gays have accepted Robertson's statement had he defended it as "a really fun thing to do"?
Hunter added that the songs selected are not secular songs but "religious Christmas hymns." Graffin argued back: "Virtually everyone who celebrates Christmas has heard these songs. And so, it's not Bad Religion that has made them ironic. It's kind of a secular society that's made Christmas ironic."
Why can't leftists ever take responsibility for anything?
Since this band believes churches are a blight on society, it's unsurprising that 20 percent of their sales proceeds will go to suing the Catholic Church through the "Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests," a group as despicable as it is dishonest. Only a group like SNAP could accept money from a band called Bad Religion.
Epitaph Records promotes the album with these words: "In a world still brimming with rampant anti-intellectualism, inequality and oppression, Bad Religion's signature brand of sonically charged humanist dissent is as relevant as ever, and this Christmas season, just a little more ironic." That's what secular liberals like the NPR fan base love most about the Christmas season: promoting a garbage pail full of allegedly hilarious "sonically charged humanist dissent" from the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Um, Ok, but punk rockers have done worse. That’s the whole point of punk. See this little number for example.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8z2M_hpoPwk
I didn’t know Bad religion was still extant.
These clowns are still flogging the hog? There’s no justice if they’re still going 30 years on and great bands like Crime and The Weirdos are totally forgotten.
Maybe they can get a reality show on A&E
With names like these, they should be forgotten
I can’t get worked up about this. Believe me, Punk Rockers will be singing tunes that reinforce OUR SIDE soon enough.
Those aren’t punk rockers, those’re gramps rockers.
Some kids never grow up, how old are these cript keepers? some one tell them that the punk rock era is over
Using the left’s “logic,” since this groups criticizes a very sizable percentage of the country, religious people, they should be dropped from their record company and shunned. Any sponsors they have should be forced to apologize and issue statements saying how much they disagree with their songs. So what if their free speech rights are violated, they offended (and deliberately too) many millions of people. That’s all that counts in lib land. Very shortly I expect many national news outlets and talking heads will condemn these jokers for their material. But I won’t hold my breath.
All I want for Christmas is an AK-47.
One sided arguments are so funny. Here’s some information you “forgot” to include.
1. The song American Jesus has been around for 20 years. The American Jesus of the song is in fact the almighty dollar. The band is commenting on the American citizens tendency to treat money like a deity.
2. A&E is responsible for the actions of their employees and has a right to protect themselves in any means necessary. This is do not mean their opinions do or do not reflect those of their talent. Bad Religion, on the other hand, OWNS their record label/distributors, so the only people responsible for their actions are the band themselves.
Why would their record company drop them when they own Epitaph Records? Their guitarist, Brett, created the company when they were teenagers. Bad Religion is, lyrically, one of the smartest bands out there. The whole point of punk music is to question social norms. If people get offended by their material, they have the right not to listen to it.
I was being very much sarcastic. My point was that tv shows are supposed to drop people, the Robertsons, who are critical are leftists. But leftists feel free to knock religious groups with no repercussions. I don’t care diddly squat what this band says one way or the other about religion. I was just commenting on the hypocrisy of libs.
Oh good grief, I was being sarcastic. I don’t care what happens to this stupid group.
They remind me of the ugly girls in high school who dissed the prom.
Right on. Remember, if you’re not doing it the way they do it, then you’re doing it wrong.
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