What would Seinfeld say? Concerning people without Christian beliefs who celebrate Christmas

QUESTION:

Should people who’ve shed Christian beliefs celebrate Christmas anyway?

THE RELIGION GUY’S RESPONSE:

The quandary above is not posed by The Guy himself but by Keith Giles in a December 5 piece titled “Deconstructing Christmas,” one of his Progressive Christian columns for the multi-faith site Patheos.com. Giles departed from his career as the pastor of a conventional church and now participates in an anonymous “house church” with no salaried staff.

For purposes of this article, what’s pertinent about the writer is his vocation of encouraging people in the process of deconstructing their past Christian faith the way he himself has done, as expressed in his patheos columns, with “Heretic Happy Hour” podcasts, and in his books that include “Jesus Unbound: Liberating the Word of God from the Bible.”

So, what does a deconstructed Christmas look like these days? Giles is well aware from his past that in Christmas, believers are celebrating that the baby Jesus, born in Bethlehem, was God the Son come from heaven whose ultimate death brought salvation to humanity. That’s apparently at the heart of what “progressive” people shed, the story as woven into those familiar carols that everybody sings (alongside all the Rudolph and Frosty and Santa tunes).

Think Charles Wesley’s 1739 phrases fused with Felix Mendelssohn’s 1840 music: “Veiled in flesh the Godhead see; Hail the incarnate Deity, pleased as man with man to dwell; Jesus our Emmanuel. . . Mild he lays his glory by, born that man no more may die, born to raise the sons of earth, born to give them second birth.”

For Giles, “almost everything about the Christmas story is worth deconstructing” and the result is that “many of us wrestle with celebrating Christmas,” which “can be a difficul time” for those who follow their newly deconstructed religion. Perhaps the family “puts pressure on us to go along with something we no longer believe in.” Or perhaps a progressive still wants to celebrate the day yet will “feel weird doing so” because people know the celebrant has left behind the beliefs involved.

To tithe or not to tithe: Should 21st Century Christians give church 10% of their income?

THE QUESTION:

Should 21st Century Christians still give 10% of their income to the church?

THE RELIGION GUY'S ANSWER:

A bad pun says that the week of a church's annual budget pledge drive the pastor preaches the Sermon on the Amount. Many churches are fretting about amounts these days, hoping attendance and offering-plate receipts will recover from the COVID crisis.

How much should modern-day Christians donate to support their churches? The oft-cited standard is the "tithe," a biblical term for 10% of income. But Keith Giles, a "progressive Christian" blogger at Patheos.com, argued that there are "very good reasons to stop tithing your 10% every week."

Definitions: Should that be 10% of wealth and accumulated assets or only income? Should all 10% go to the church only with any other giving counted beyond the 10%, or does the tithe cover all religious and charitable donations? Also, of course, the very different biblical situation involved gifts of agricultural produce, not money.

Speaking of the ancient context, Giles's main theme is that tithing was part of a bypassed Old Testament system that provided upkeep for the Jerusalem Temple and the priests working there who had no other livelihood. The Romans destroyed the Temple in A.D. 70 so there's no Temple or priesthood that need support.

However, that argument ignores that today's clergy similarly live off believers' financial support in order to carry out religious work. In fact, clergy typically get lower pay than other professionals with comparable years of training.