MB Civic

By E. J. Dionne | Christmas Day, Monday, December 25, 2006 | The Washington Post

Most Christmas essays are frankly sentimental and crammed with feel-good slogans, cliches and excesses born of the revsionist Christmas invented by Dickens, Thomas Nast, Clement Clarke Moore (‘Twas the night before Christmas…’) and others in the nineteenth century. Rampant materialism aside, I think that for MB-CIVIC — a blog focused on high ideals, humanitarian hippie values and the flow of current events — they are not the sort of thing I would normally post.

But this Christmas essay is very different. Political analyst E.J. Dionne portrays the central role of the Bible in the African American community, past and present. The Bible itself celebrates the underpriveleged, the persecuted, the humble, the unroyal. There are obvious strong connections for an enslaved people. The very birth of Jesus happened in an unlikely and humble place, into a most unlikely and humble family. The message of Christ’s religion is peace, compassion, forgiveness and love for all human beings – making kings the equals of slaves. Subversive? Yes. Revolutionary? Very.

The essay stands confidently on its own, but it is organized around a book review of Allen Dwight Callahan’s “The Talking Book: African Americans and the Bible”. The book sounds like an important volume that we should review here on MB-CIVIC. Dionne’s essay and his contemplation of Callahan’s book combine into on an inspiring Christmas message, deep and loving and historical, honoring persecuted people past and present with true charity and honest compassion…BS

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/24/AR2006122400497.html