Editorials

In God do they trust . . .

So why should they insult anybody?

Here's yet another entry in our bulging Billboards Must Go! file. (We've been stuffing it with news items for years.) Oh, sure, billboards may be all right in New Jersey or Louisiana, especially when they cover up smog-filled industrial belts, but in a beautiful, green state like Arkansas? They only get in the way of the natural scenery in The Natural State.

Give us a full view of the picturesque Ozarks or the Delta farmland stretching out forever towards the horizon. Either beats still another billboard for some gambling casino somewhere.

Besides, you never know when somebody who wasn't raised right is going to cause a commotion by putting up a billboard that's more of a provocation.

Look to Harrison, Ark., for a recent example of ugliness on public display. Some anonymous pot-stirrer decided to pay for space along a Boone County highway for--how sum up its message?--an anti-anti-racist appeal in big letters. Talk about urban blight, it ain't got nuthin' on the rural kind. Like this signboard.

All of which gave the national press another chance to review Harrison's ugly past and portray Arkansas as a place crawling with rubes, haters and know-nothings in general. There's no telling what said pot-stirrer was trying to say with his misbegotten billboard, but some of us suspicion it was nothing good.

Just up the road a piece, in Springdale, another billboard has sprouted like a great big noxious weed, this one more contemporary but just as ignorant in its own way. This desecration of the Ozark landscape is one of the new-fangled electronic kinds that flash one message for a few seconds, then another, then another, then another . . . . One minute you're looking at the smiling face of a personal-injury lawyer ("Happy Personal Injury!"), the next a phone number for a tire shop. This is called Progress. And it's enough to depress any poor soul unlucky enough to encounter it. And make him just a little dizzy. Like a light show on high-speed.

What makes this billboard in Springdale newsworthy is its message. An outfit that styles itself American Atheists--based in, yes, New Jersey--bought space on the blinking billboard to promote its yuletide message. And it isn't Peace on Earth, Good Will Toward Men. The sign pictures a little girl in a red Christmas stocking cap writing a note to Santa. To quote it, in full: "All I want for Christmas is to skip church. I'm too old for fairy tales."

Yes, depressing. But, thank God, it's perfectly permissible in a land blessed with a First Amendment that not only guarantees freedom of religion but freedom of speech. Here in the land of the free, anybody has a right to make a damfool of himself, thank God. Even the kind of atheists whose bad taste would embarrass your old-time village atheist--who may have been argumentative when pushed but would never have dreamed of gratuitously insulting anybody's religion, let alone disillusion little children.

So what's to be done, especially by onward Christian soldiers in northwestern Arkansas, when this new breed of atheists shows out?

For the best response to date, we nominate what the good church people at Grace Church in Alma, Ark., did. They bought time on the same billboard. And can be forgiven for that--for to err is human but to forgive divine. The congregation raised about $900 to send its own yuletide message to the community: "Questions, Doubts, Curiosity? All welcome at Grace Church, Alma."

Enough said. Brevity isn't just the soul of wit, but of respect for one's neighbors, who should indeed be welcome at any house of worship.

The executive pastor of Grace Church, one Devon Walker, isn't shy about offering another point of view--one that respects other folks' beliefs. "We wanted to express respect and a desire to sit down and listen," the Reverend Walker told the paper. "We actually love that discussion. We support that."

'Tis the season for this kind of story. Good will toward men, peace on earth, and all that. Although there's never a season when those feelings would be out of place, they just seem to rise naturally as Christendom prepares to celebrate the birth of the Christchild. For there is an expectancy in the chill air. Call it Advent.

Thank you, Grace Church, for reminding folks just passing through--and aren't we all?--the reason for the season. You folks at Grace live up to your name. God bless you for that.

Editorial on 12/18/2014

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