Highway Memorial Crosses

In scanning through news today I watched a segment on Fox News about a lawsuit asking that crosses erected as memorials in Utah be removed from the roadside. I did not find the story on their web site immediately; perhaps it will be posted later. But I did find two other links that I think make the story fairly clear.

First, from the Salt Lake City Tribune, the article Atheist group wants memorial crosses removed, which can be pretty much consider “pro-crosses” though it does provide the basic claims of the opposing side. Second, the story of the lawsuit from the American Atheists site, THE (UNCONSTITUTIONAL) CROSS BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD — ATHEISTS IN COURT TO REMOVE CHRISTIAN HIGHWAY MEMORIALS, which includes a link to the actual petition as filed.

I chose to comment on this story because I think it shows some of the problems with the debate about separation of church and state, both in the actual petition and in the public response to it. Please read the linked stories (both of them, please!) to get more details. I summarize the positions as follows. Plaintiffs: Any religious symbol on public land is bad. Respondents: We like it, so it’s good.

The latter response results in ideas such as that the cross is not really a religious symbol, just a symbol of comfort. The former can easily be challenged, as it was on Fox News, by simply showing crosses on public land in Arlington cemetary. Crosses are, in most cases, religious symbols, and religious symbols do occur legally on public buildings and on public land. (Note that I’m going to ignore Utah law, which may, in fact, forbid this type of display. That could be dealt with in a legislative way. I’m more interested in the general principles.)

I believe that we need to distinguish a wall of separation between church and state, which I believe is a good thing, and a wall of separation between church and the individual, which I believe is a problem. Often, those who do not value religion (and I think American Atheists would qualify as an organization), see any presence of religion as some kind of violation of church and state boundaries. Religious folks, particularly Christians, on the other hand, see anything that limits whatever we want to do in some particular circumstance as anti-religious, and an attack on our faith. If we want to pray at a public meeting, we don’t want to be reminded that we’re not in our home or our church, and that we have a duty to be open and inclusive. I’ve seen this same attitude in online forums in which Christians feel that they should be free to post copyrighted material that promotes Christian values and become quite irate when they are thwarted. The fact is that whether the law is one of copyright, or whether it is one of appropriate public behavior, we need to behave in an appropriate manner. Obeying God rather than men doesn’t mean violating every law that seems to inconvenience us.

So how do I see this particular case as illuminating these issues? Let me first look a bit at the case of the ten commandments display at the Alabama supreme court. This was found, correctly in my view, to be a form of promotion of religion. The response of both Judge Moore himself, and of the public, made it very clear that it was widely seen as a promotion of religion. The comparison was made to the U. S. Supreme Court building where the ten commandments are also displayed. What was the difference? In the case of the U. S. Supreme Court, the ten commandments are displayed as part of a broad panorama of historical lawgivers and law codes. Thus it is not promoting a particular form or religion, unless we are to believe that it’s also promoting Babylonian religion with the code of Hammurabi. The Mosaic law and more specifically the ten commandments are doubtless a substantial part of the history of law. But if the government singles out that particular code from all the laws of the world that have contributed to our modern system of law, then that is definitely a promotion of religion.

Again, on another topic, when someone complains that President George Bush is a very religious man, and is quite open in confessing that he is, and then claims that is a violation of church and state, I believe they are crossing this line. Now I don’t support everything President Bush has done or has said. But it is both appropriate that he is a religious person and that he is open about that. Nobody was in any way deceived about his religious faith when they voted for him. It is quite possible for him to intrude specifically religious views into public life, and that might require some other action, but that’s why we have a legislature and courts. The simple fact that he is a religious person, and that he speaks of his faith, is not a violation.

At the same time, he and his staff are behaving quite appropriately when they produce generic holiday greetings. Whatever his beliefs, he is the president of the entire United States, and it is not political correctness run amuck, as I’ve heard it called, for him to be inclusive in his holiday greetings. To the extent that these greetings are privately financed, it would also be legally acceptable, in my view, for him to send out purely Christmas greetings–legally, but I think not a good idea either from a Christian perspective or from a political perspective.

So, what about those crosses in Utah? I would ask simply this: Were all of those officers who died Christians? If they were Christians, would they have wanted their death in the line of duty memorialized with a symbol of their faith, as the crosses doubtless are? Finally, if any officer dies or has died in the line of duty who is not a Christian, or whose family would prefer that something else be used in a memorial, would the organization that sponsors these memorials provide the appropriate symbol? If we can answer yes to this, I think it is crossing the line into an anti-religious bigotry to oppose this particular type of memorial. On the other hand, if only crosses are contemplated, even if an officer who is Jewish, Muslim, or secularist is memorialized, then I would have to ask if the purpose is really simply to memorialize the officers, or if some sense of promotion of religion is not involved.

That is the weakness of the Fox News picture of the field of crosses. The military has marked graves of Jewish soldiers with stars of David, and to me that makes a vast difference. If someone who professes no faith, or a Muslim, or someone of any other faith that might not identify with a cross desires a different memorial, that should be supported. But when the cross represents the faith of the person memorialized, I believe it is entirely appropriate. The faith needs to be separated from the power of the state, not from the person.

Let me add one note to my Christian friends. I probably annoy more people with my view of separation of church and state than I do with any other view. But these political considerations are not at the root of my support of separation of church and state. My faith is the most fundamental issue there for me. I believe that any time the church becomes dependent on public money, public power, or any form of public promotion or duress, that church will be inevitably and quickly corrupted, and if it is not quickly separated from the state’s power, it will become completely corrupted. My bottom line on separation of church and state is that it is most important for the church. Our method of spreading Christian principles should be through the proclamation of the gospel and the transformation of individual lives. I believe strongly that any attempt to transform people by force from on high is doomed to failure and will do more harm than good.