So a judge threw out a case in Bladensburg, MD, where a bunch of jackasses were trying to get a cross removed from a public park. The cross in question happens to be a WWI military memorial that’s nearly 100 years old.
Chalk one up for common decency and common sense.
But as I thought about this case, and other cases where similar jackassery is in play to get crosses and other religious paraphernalia removed from the public square, even where many of them have been in place for decades, it occurred to me that perhaps these atheists and secular humanists would prefer that we lived in a country under the rule of the Taliban, where all religious monuments that don’t fit the worldview of the powers that be are simply destroyed.
And for that matter, why don’t we Western Judeo-Christians agitate to have the pagan Pyramids destroyed? Why don’t we demand that various Native American religious sites be removed? For crying out loud, there’s a pagan druid Stonehenge in England that thousands of people visit every year.*
The answer is obvious: Some of us (most of us) respect what’s gone before. We accept that people of earlier ages had a more outwardly-religious bent and that erecting monuments and memorials that incorporate faith-based elements was a testament of their beliefs and values.
It seems silly to argue about a cross existing on public property, said cross having had the approbation of the public when it was erected there nearly a century ago. Such a monument no more establishes religion than a group of atheists picketing it leads me to question my faith.** Which, by the way, if you have been my reader for awhile, you know isn’t Christian. Hell, I’m Jewish by birth, but my faith doesn’t define me. Rather, I choose to define my faith. But that’s fodder for an entirely different post, if I ever decide to write it.
The fact is that these atheists and secularists who would pull down the religious underpinnings of our nation are little different than the Taliban whose religion they undoubtedly scorn. We live in a world that contains thousands of years’ worth of religious art, architecture, and writings — and not all of it necessarily speaks to our own personal beliefs or faiths. If we allow anyone to tear down that cross in the public park as an establishment of religion simply because it somehow causes them mental anguish, then at what point does the rest of religion — and our history — get fed to the fire?
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* For the record, I know some druids. Nice people.
** Indeed, far from establishing religion, it simply expresses faith. If you observe the cross and suddenly have a zeal to become a Christian, then you were likely thinking in that direction already. That’s how faith works.