To the editor:

In a history class I took at CSU, a student brought up the Anglo-Saxon fertility goddess Eostre. She said Eostre worship centered on rabbits, symbolizing fertility, and eggs, symbolizing new life, a rumor spread around campus the previous Easter. Acknowledging the student's statement, the professor commented that feminists were wrong to want a fertility goddess religion, which were historically abusive toward women.

Wikipedia addresses the student's claim, citing the eighth century St. Bede. However, more recent Christian sources contend the timing of Easter, which has long deviated from the Jewish Passover, has nothing to do with pagan fertility rites. Yesterday, a skeptic friend posted on Facebook that Easter comes from Ishtar, another fertility goddess.

I'm not the sort who worries about "pagan" holidays like Halloween or Christmas. Frankly, I think Pope Gregory the Great was wise to repurpose pagan festivals. Still, I've been a Christian for 37 years this Valentine's Day and have never before seen so many people convinced my religion was a fertility cult.

There's no biblical reason for this. As Jesus explained to Nicodemus in John 3, the life he was concerned with begins at baptism, not in the womb. "You must be born again." Not "your baby must be born."

Jesus had good cause for drawing this distinction. Fertility gods wreaked havoc with Old Testament prophets. Like other male fertility gods, Baal died every fall, and rose from the dead every spring. The Greeks and Romans, too, worshipped nature gods and goddesses. Jesus sought to distinguish his religion from these pagan faiths by emphasizing redemption, not reproduction.

Undoubtedly, the reproductive focus of Christian politics creates a stumbling block for many Americans.

Yet, for all the debate surrounding the pros and cons of anti-abortion laws, all the moralizing about the lives of babies versus the liberty of women, for all the arguments about whether the Founding Fathers intended America to have a Christian government, there's one question nobody seems to ask: Is the pro-life movement actually Christian?

I don't always attend Easter services, but when I do, I prefer only one Christ to rise from the dead.

Megan Stewart