Chad Fradette: Wise man or sorcerer?

Interesting comment here posted by one of the Green Bay Nativity scene agitators, Taku Ronsman. Ronsman confirms that Chad Fradette, who originally installed the Jesus, Mary, and Joseph figurines, did so as an act of political defiance. Ronsman quotes the city councilman as saying, “I'll keep going on this until this group [the Freedom From Religion Foundation] imposing Madison values crawls back into its hole and never crawls out.”

Another remarkable observation is attributed by Ms. Ronsman to Green Bay Mayor Jim Schmitt, characterizing the Wiccan pentacle that was installed and subsequently vandalized for its “association with witchcraft,” and regretting, on those grounds, his decision to allow it in the first place.

This would explain the absence from the Nativity scene of the “wise men from the east” introduced in Matthew 2:1 (unless Fradette is planning on erecting them at a later date). One needn't be a credentialed etymologist to recognize the derivative forms of “Magi,” which is the term for the wise men used by the New International Version of Matthew.*

Not only that, but the same Greek word that's translated as “wise men” and “Magi” becomes “sorcerer” in Acts 13:6. How's that for political correctness? When you're facilitating the illegal immigration of the Nativity set into Egypt, you're a wise man, but when you're a Jewish false prophet, you're a sorcerer.

So I wouldn't be so quick to denounce the Wiccans for their “association with witchcraft” while at the same time celebrating some Iranian sorcerers for their gifts and their heroic protection of the Saviour against the depredations of King Herod.

The Green Bay Press-Gazette has an entertaining account of last night's public meeting and council vote, including the entreaties of one Tim Entringer, who declares Christianity the One True Religion™ and therefore its god(s) must be kept on the roof of City Hall.

* My default Bible is the KJV, for the poetry.