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?
December 17, 2010 at 6:43 pm
well if the fed is going to insure bank deposits then they will have a role to play in the policies of the bank. Since the feds have to be religously neutral this is goig to extend to what symbols and signs can be displayed on bank poroperty. You can alternatively put you money in a bank that is not regulated or insured in any way (think "friendly neighborhood lender"), but as an ametuer financial advisor I would advise against this.
December 17, 2010 at 7:28 pm
Matthew,
While I am staunchly opposed to what the Fed is doing here, you seem to be forgetting that the Federal Reserve Bank is NOT a part of the federal government. It's not a part of our government at any level…which is especially scary, since it has so much influence over all of our lives. The Fed is private, not part of the gov., and statesmen of the past warned strongly against the formation of this banking entity, and the entaglemnet of our monetary system with it.
December 17, 2010 at 9:27 pm
Anon 1:43 completely misses or ignores Matthew's point about Christmas being a Federal holiday in the first place.
Dave
December 17, 2010 at 9:41 pm
Dave, a private organization can make up whatever rules it wants. If you want to do business with the Fed, you are subject to the caprice of their regulators. The Federal Reserve Bank is as subject to government regulations as Federal Express or Federated Department Stores. The fact that the federal government happens to have a holiday at Christmastime is completely irrelevant.
December 17, 2010 at 10:11 pm
Nonsense, Anonymous.
For the Feds to tell a private bank what holidays it can or cannot celebrate is nothing short of totalitarian tyranny.
If you don't like the fact that a given bank celebrates Christmas (or Hanukkah, or Eid al-Fitr for that matter), put your money in some other bank. It's a free country.
Oh, wait. I forgot. Obviously it isn't, any more.
But what you have written above is arrant nonsense.
December 17, 2010 at 10:13 pm
And Scott, the federal government has intruded so far, and so aggressively, into our lives that we are all forced to do business with it, like it or not.
But both morally and constitutionally, we still have the right to the free exercise of religion.
Or at least we were intended to. Again, this is totalitarian tyranny.
December 17, 2010 at 10:35 pm
http://www.onenewsnow.com/Culture/Default.aspx?id=1257052
Reversal…
December 17, 2010 at 11:03 pm
What did you expect from a bank controlled by the Federal Reserve system? If you want the devil's money, you have to follow his rules. This is where the Federal Reserve lives and that's why it will fail and take everyone's money with it.
December 18, 2010 at 12:02 am
KTUL-TV (Tulsa) is reporting this evening that the bank will be allowed to display the religious symbols after all, following a great public outcry in Perkins.
December 18, 2010 at 12:08 am
The self-evident unalienable rights are endowed by OUR CREATOR and enumerated in our constitution. Freedom of expression of one's Faith in speech, press or peaceable assembly is no crime therefore, it may not be curtailed or labeled a crime. Tryanny and censorship. "IN GOD WE TRUST" the "feds" ought to know that they print enough paper money on our backs.
December 18, 2010 at 1:18 am
Thomas Jefferson said in 1802:
I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property – until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.
December 18, 2010 at 1:18 am
The manger for Christians, the menorah for Jews, the crescent moon and Davidic star for Muslims, a water fountain for Gaia, and a blank page for the atheists. If there is anyone excluded, let him bring a picture of his elephant-headed god and it will be included. It is OPEN HOUSE at the school for sharing the common good.
December 18, 2010 at 1:26 am
Now, the funny part: When the atheist went before the Supreme Court, in Engel v. Vitale, the court said: “She can go her own way” Freedom of Religion. The Media Circus bannered “PRAYER BAN”. The mob mentality demanded that all religious symbols or sentiment be denied. The Supreme Court said that ALL people’s religious expression be allowed. The Supreme Court cannot ban a First Amendment civil right. The Supreme Court never barred expression of Faith in God, the media did. (and they have less power than any living creature because they are not right.)
December 18, 2010 at 2:05 pm
I guess these bank examiners would have busted George Bailey (in "It's a Wonderful Life") for wishing them Merry Christmas, instead of for the missing $8,000!
Elaine
December 18, 2010 at 2:12 pm
Also, the Supreme Court "ban" on school prayer doesn't mean anyone will go to jail for praying in school. It simply means that schools which do allow or encourage Christian prayer risk being sued if someone complains, and the plaintiff would have legal precedent on his or her side and be more likely to win the case.
What the Fed is doing here is bending over backwards to minimize the risk of some crazy, hypersensitive atheist or other non-Christian filing a discrimination suit against this bank. That probably isn't very likely to happen in a small town in Oklahoma.
Elaine
December 21, 2010 at 2:27 pm
Here are a few options:
1)The Fed provides banks with FDIC insurance. It's a service, and it isn't free. By accepting FDIC insurance, a private bank no more gives up its constitutionally protected rights than a university does for accepting student aid.
2)The Federal Reserve is not a department of the federal government, but a government chartered entity. It receives its charter from Congress, and its authority concerns finance and banking issues, not social policy.