The race for the White House may have ended months ago, but the campaign is still reverberating. See for example this story from the Huffington Post about John McCain’s campaign manager:

Speaking publicly for one of the first times since the end of the presidential campaign, John McCain’s campaign manager Steve Schmidt painted a dire portrait of the state of the Republican Party, arguing that the GOP has largely been co-opted by its religious elements.

“If you put public policy issues to a religious test, you risk becoming a religious party,” Schmidt declared. “And in a free country, a political party cannot be viable in the long term if it is seen as a sectarian party.”

We agree. Sectarian parties (whether liberal or conservative in ideology) are harmful to the sanctity of religion and the integrity of government. And it’s refreshing to hear that some Republicans feel the same way.

But at the same time, I can’t help but notice that Mr. Schmidt used religion as a campaign tactic, much like past political campaigns. Remember the campaign commercial called The One? But to be fair, President Obama’s campaign also used religion as a political tool as well. He printed campaign brochure describing himself as a Committed Christian, as if that were a constitutional requirement for someone running for the White House.

There is plenty of blame to go around. I just hope that the next campaign that Steve Schmidt works on he makes a genuine commitment to changing the way religion is used (or abused) in the political process. But we can’t change the political process without frank admissions of uncomfortable truths such as what Schmidt just said. This is a great first step.

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Have you ever wondered where the term Easter comes from? I’m a Christian, and I honestly did not know. It comes from a Anglo-Saxon goddess called Eostra with roots going all the way back possibly to Bablyonia and ancient Egypt. Eostra is a pagan goddess of fertility whose festival is to be celebrated near the vernal equinox. Hence the Easter eggs. Eostra is also the “dawn goddess” which may explain why many Christian Easter services begin at sunrise. Legend has it Eostra turned a bird into a rabbit, and voila – the Easter bunny.

These facts are interesting cultural and historical footnotes for this time of year. But to the Religious Right, they portend of the coming of the anti-Christ. Richard Reves over at the far-right website WorldNetDaily writes: “Easter has nothing to do with Jesus and everything to do with pagan abominations condemned by the Bible.” He concludes: “Theologians are well aware of the pagan nature of Easter. So are modern day anti-Christs. Non-biblical aspects of traditional Christianity are now being legitimately challenged by those who would turn us away from Christ, and many are falling for their deception.”

So now there is a War on Easter (a la the War on Christmas)? This is just ridiculous. Pagans did not co-opt Easter away from Christians. Christians co-opted Easter away from the pagans.

And it is the Religious Right who have attempted to secularize Christianity in order get more Christian symbols and text to be publicly displayed. Many Religious Right organizations told the Supreme Court that the Ten Commandments could be constitutionally displayed on public land because of the secular meaning behind that religious text. By making this argument, the Religious Right was actually attempting to strip the Ten Commandments of their religious meaning. And the Supreme Court bought that argument, but Justice Antonin Scalia called it a “Pyrrhic victory.”

Now the Religious Right is complaining about the non-Christian influences of Easter. That is a little ironic.

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