More News On High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire Public Library. They had banned the display of posters promoting Christmas services for fear of offending other religions hosted a party to celebrate a Muslim festival only days earlier.
Church officials in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, were told by the town’s public library last week that their posters could not be displayed because they pertained to a “religious preference group”.
It emerged yesterday, however, that a party to celebrate Eid, the breaking of the fast of Ramadan, had been held there less than a week previously.
I’m not surprised
I’ve read that we’re in a post-Christian era. It looks like it.
Either the people in charge of this library are afraid of looking like they’re advocating Christianity (ashamed of it?) or they’re clueless about Ramadan and many other events being religious in nature. (Don’t they have any books about this in their stacks, or are religious books banned too?) Another possibility, and I hope this isn’t true, is that the people in charge are actively anti-Christian.
The quote by “Margaret Dewar, the councillor who is responsible for libraries” suggests that she thinks Christians should just shut up when anybody says that they can’t have privileges equal to everyone else’s. Christian(ity) bashing is suprisingly well tolerated compared to being antihomosexual or antiJew or anti-(insert favorite slightly “different” group of people here).
Re:I’m not surprised
I thought the library is a place for all the community surrounding it and that it displays all their activities.
Re:I’m not surprised
It seems to me that the author of the newspaper article misunderstood the situation. The councillor, Margaret Dewar, states,
“The policy is that we do not display posters on our noticeboard. If we accepted one poster, we would have to accept them from everyone.”
The subject matter of the poster was not a factor. They do not accept any posters. By comparing this situation with the library party, the author is, then, comparing apples to oranges, and misrepresenting the affair.
Riiiight….
It always cracks me up when Christians in a Western democracy try and portray themselves as an oppressed minority.
Look, people, Christians in the Sudan are oppressed. Christians in Communist China are oppressed. You couldn’t put up a poster.
Get over it.
Re:I’m not surprised
From the article:
‘Church officials in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, were told by the town’s public library last week that their posters could not be displayed because they pertained to a “religious preference group”.’
I’m confused…why would the church officials be told the poster was refused because it was religious instead of just being told “sorry, we don’t display posters” as Margaret Dewar stated in the article?
Re:I’m not surprised
Well, we don’t know how the conversation between the church official and the library official went. It could have gotten into the “Why not?” spiral and the library had to give a specific reason beyond “we don’t display posters”. More than likely this is all one big misunderstanding between the library and the church.