Let Your “Light” Shine For Christ This Christmas Season!
Looking for an effective way to express your Christian faith this Christmas season to honor our Lord Jesus? Now you can…. with the “Original Christmas Cross” yard decoration.
That's the product description from the American Family Association. And this (I swear I'm not kidding) is the photo they attached:
Via Balloon Juice.
The AFA's target demographic really doesn't see that when they see a big, lit up cross. There's a furniture store called Guardian between my hometown and the town where I went to high school, and they've had a massive, KKK-rally-sized cross that they light up at night for years. The first time I saw it after I'd learned about the KKK was when we were driving home late at night and I'd just woken up -- it momentarily scared the hell out of me.
ReplyDeleteI am continuously amazed at the obliviousness of some people in the world. I fully agree with pg's point that the christians who this item is aimed would more than likely see it as nothing more than a big bright cross.
ReplyDeletei encountered a similar experience when the issue over a gop party person calling obama uppity happened. many friends i talked with had no clue that the term had a derogatory racial connotation.
Christians aren't known for their awareness or intelligence.
ReplyDeleteAs tacky as the lighted cross is (and I think it is really tacky) a lighted cross is not a burning cross. Set the silly racism claim aside, will ya? It's a pretty shallow argument.
ReplyDeleteCollin,
ReplyDeleteI think you're missing the point here. We're not saying that the AFA intends people to think of a burning cross when they see an electrically-lighted cross. On the contrary, we're saying that they seem fantastically oblivious to the possibility that anyone -- say, a person like David who is Jewish and thus unlikely to see giant lit crosses in a positive religious context -- might have a negative association for the image.
They're not being "racist" in the sense that you'd probably recognize. They're merely being insensitive to minorities, which is probably a badge of pride for groups like the AFA. No multi-culti political correctness for them, no sir!