Sunday, March 31, 2013 will go down in history as the day a multinational corporation viciously attacked the moral sensibilities of a third of the world. Google intentionally and maliciously insulted billions of people—including millions of its users—throwing them under the bus in its pursuit of its aggressively liberal politics.
At least that’s what the religious right likes to think.
Last Sunday, Google commemorated labor organizer Cesar Chavez’s birthday with a Google Doodle in his honor. Of course, last Sunday marked another important day: Easter. The way right-wing pundits such as Erick Erickson and Glenn Beck see it, Sunday’s Doodle was a slap in the face to billions of Christians worldwide. The simple act of commemorating something other than Easter on Easter was described as everything from “a poke in the eye” to a “clearly intended message that Google doesn’t deign to wish [Christians] well on their sacred day.” In short, it was something that the righteous stewards of American morality could not abide.
Google does not make a habit of commemorating religious holidays, Christian or otherwise. It recognized Easter with a Doodle back in 2000, with nothing more than a pair of eggs to replace the “O”s in its name. One is hard-pressed to find Doodles celebrating Jewish or Muslim holidays. Instead, Google chooses to recognize secular holidays like Thanksgiving and Mother’s Day, nations’ independence and election days, and the birthdays of famous and important people.
As a corporation without a particular religious affiliation but with a huge client base, Google honors historical events, not specific religious events like Easter—which many take as an affront to that holiday and its associated beliefs. But if failure to publicly celebrate a religious holiday is indicative of a disdain for the relevant religion, then Google must be considered anti-Semitic since it has never celebrated Yom Kippur with a Doodle.
This reaction is a symptom of a larger problem—the belief that even a failure to acknowledge Christian holidays indicates an intolerance of the religion. Caterwauling about the “War on Christmas” is another example—Christian conservatives take it as a personal and religious offense that governments and businesses might decline to celebrate Christmas and instead wish people a more inclusive “happy holidays.” As everyday life becomes more secular, religious conservatives claim that their rights are being trampled and that public morality is disappearing as others seek to nurture a culture dominated by human values and celebrations that can be had by all.
The fact is that in the mainstream view, religion is becoming an ever-more-private affair. The young and the educated in general eschew religious arguments for societal issues such as marriage equality, and incredulously wonder how something as individual and private as religion can justify curtailing the rights of entire classes of people who do not share the same socially conservative religious views. Google’s failure to publicly celebrate Easter is not a vile offense against every Christian in America but an acknowledgement of the idea that religion should stay in the private realm.
Here at Bowdoin, Easter celebrations seem to have followed that general trend. Dining pulls out a few stops on Easter Sunday and students have Easter egg hunts, often substituting beer in place of the pastel eggs of their childhoods. We no longer have an Easter break, but students who wish to celebrate Easter in a religious capacity may do so. We accommodate but neither encourage nor discourage the religious celebration. Religious observance of Easter is treated, rightly, as a private affair, particular to each student.
Of course, at this point it seems to be a vocal minority that laments the passing of religion from mainstream culture. For most of the 18-40 set, this change is welcome. We prefer our culture and our laws to focus on human needs, not religious beliefs. The cohort of old religious white men is shrinking in size and are being replaced by the secular younger educated generation. We recognize that the United States is not a Christian nation, but an inclusive one that seeks to expand human ideals rather than religious ones. Our culture certainly draws from Christianity, but it also draws from Judaism, and African and Latino cultures. No one would describe the United States as a Jewish, African or Latino nation.
To symbolize their anger towards Google, angry Christian conservatives on Twitter declared that they would switch to Bing. Unfortunately for them, moving to an inferior search engine will not win their culture war. That battle will ultimately be lost with the disappearance of the close-minded belief that religion should govern the daily life and the continued rise of secular, humanistic ideas that seek to better all of humanity—not just those of whom the old, tired and strictly religious approve.
David Steury is a Member of the Class of 2015