First, I would like to thank Mike Patrick and The Press for giving me the opportunity this past year to highlight some of the many Christian ministries in our community. We have many more to cover this next year! Some might say that Kootenai County is not a “Christian County,” but when you look at the hundreds of churches and independent ministries reaching the poor, addicted, homeless and others in need, we are indeed a Christian community of people.

As we look at our history, you would need to broaden that definition to a Judeo-Christian worldview and the parallels or commonalities of shared values between these two religions that come from the Bible. Both acknowledge a Creator, and the concept that every person is important and as Jefferson stated in the Declaration of Independence that, “we have been endowed by our creator with inalienable rights.” This affirms the theology of imago Dei (which affirms that every single human is made in the image of God).

The first colleges in America were Harvard, Princeton and others begun by church leaders to train pastors. This continued so that we recognize today the colleges of a Whitworth, Gonzaga, Yeshiva, Notre Dame or Baylor and all church related. The first hospitals were started by churches and why we have Sacred Heart and Deaconess in Spokane, but also Mt. Sinai and St. Jude among the hundreds of others.

Out of 400,000 missionaries around the world today, the United States has sent 127,000. Many of these mission groups are involved in third world countries providing health care and education. Within our own country, organizations like YMCA, Salvation Army, Union Gospel missions and dozens of others provide important services and began out of this view of service. Our country, fortunately, has been an advocate for Christian compassion by issuing proclamations of thanksgiving, prayer and fasting and appealing to the nation to turn to our creator.

This doesn’t mean we didn’t have religious freedom, even though the U.S. Capitol was used as a church in Washington before churches were constructed. Our founders had left Europe to escape a “national church” with a monarch at the head. From our beginning, Jews and other religions are welcome. In fact, out of 14 million core Jews in the world, about 40 percent live in Israel, another 40 percent live in the United States and the remaining population are scattered around the world. The United States is not only a melting pot of peoples, but allowed others like the Jews, to prosper.

Today, America remains more Christian, and more religious, than most of the countries of Europe. We are in the midst of the biggest celebration of the year — Christmas. The influence of Jesus on our calendar, art, music and literature is enormous. Read Dickens, Chaucer, Shakespeare and others, and the biblical influence is self-evident. Bach, for example, signed all his works with Soli Deo Gloria (“solely to the glory of God). We have to fear that when Christian restraints have been removed from a society, the atrocities are magnified many times over. For example, the regimes of Hitler, Mao, Stalin and Pol Pot.

The spirit of Christmas embodies many wonderful qualities — love, sharing, tolerance, hope and peace. May the Christmas spirit continue in our community and throughout the country.

May we continue to see the love of Christ shown this season.