This far exceeds the regular ol’ war on Christmas story. This isn’t some town crank complaining about a nativity scene. This isn’t a sad little group of atheists holding a press conference. This isn’t the ACLU filing a lawsuit.

This is the federal government forcing a small town bank to take down any religious Christmas symbols in the bank.

Weasel Zippers reports:

PERKINS, Okla. — A small-town bank in Oklahoma said the Federal Reserve won’t let it keep religious signs and symbols on display.

Federal Reserve examiners come every four years to make sure banks are complying with a long list of regulations. The examiners came to Perkins last week. And the team from Kansas City deemed a Bible verse of the day, crosses on the teller’s counter and buttons that say “Merry Christmas, God With Us.” were inappropriate. The Bible verse of the day on the bank’s Internet site also had to be taken down.

What is it about “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion… or prohibit the free exercise thereof.“

The Federal Reserve’s argument supposedly is that the bank’s decorations may “express, imply or suggest a discriminatory preference or policy of exclusion.” Imply? Really? So their policy trumps the free exercise clause of the First Amendment? How does that work?

And there’s also this little factoid that they don’t seem to have internalized at the Fed – CHRISTMAS IS A FEDERAL HOLIDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This one really disturbs me. This is why you constantly hear liberal secularists talking about “freedom to worship” rather than “freedom of religion.” They’re all fine with religion as long as it’s relegated to one hour on your weekend. To secularists, religion should not rear its ugly, dangerous, homophobic head in public. At all.

They don’t just want a separation of church and state they want a separation of religion from life. And what is a religion that doesn’t inform one’s actions? What would that make us? Oprah watchers. It makes us people who say things like, “I’m not religious per se but I’m very spiritual which means I do whatever the heck I want and feel very self affirmed about it.”

Is that really what we want?

Note: Weasel Zippers has the original story.