Permanent Place Picked for Wren Chapel Cross, I Heard

I thought that March 6, 2007 heralded Armistice Day for the War of the Wren Cross. It seemed that threats by an unnamed donor to withdraw $12 million in funding from the college had the intended effect of driving President Nichol to reconsider his position. In keeping with the bureaucratic method, President Nichol formed his hand-picked Committee on Religion in a Public University to study options. They had magnanimously recommended the Cross’s deliverance from the closet of darkness to the light of the Wren Chapel.

Ah, victory—peace at last.

And then came the reality of the proffered treaty. It failed the smell test. There’s something about the display and placement of the cross in the Chapel that stinks like a pair of old gym shoes.

At the risk of dating myself, I remember the days in elementary school when the teacher would remove a rebellious and distracting child by making him sit in the corner facing the wall. The Cross shall suffer the same humiliation. The Cross that distracts from the doctrine of political correctness, the Cross that leads the rebels of tribal exclusivity, shall sit entombed in a glass box in a shadow-swaddled corner of the Chapel.

The Committee offered to place the cross “in a prominent, readily visible place…,” non-committal words, those. The Committee never intended to include the altar as an option for prominent display. According to Webster’s Dictionary, prominence means “conspicuous, noticeable at once”—in other words, where one’s attention is drawn. I suppose compared to where the cross has been displayed the last few months—in a closet smothered in blinding darkness—anywhere in the Chapel can be defined as prominent. If the committee meant “prominent” according to the universally accepted definition of the word, then they should have recommended that the cross be placed at the location where attention is drawn: the altar.

The Committee’s decision to confine the Cross chaps my backside even worse than the intended placement. Even with an accompanying sign to explain the College’s Anglican roots, sealing the Cross in a glass box has the psychological effect of erecting a wall between the Cross’s historical identity of the past and its active meaning today. Caging the Cross diminishes its significance as a piece of living history and reduces it to a meaningless, dusty old museum relic—like old bones. Yet other potential religious displays in the historically Christian chapel will have no such restraint. The rule that now requires the Cross to remain in the Chapel during all other types of ceremonies and meetings is pointless. Who would be offended by old bones?

Mr. Nichol’s propaganda machine, aka his religion committee, has a purported mission to explore the role of religion in the public university, whatever that means. Mr. Nichol’s bureaucratic edict for this bureaucratic arm is nothing more than a magician’s misdirection. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. Rather, know that this whole process demonstrates that the Cross is neither equal to other symbols nor particularly welcome anymore in its own historical house. To the perpetually offended few this is a good thing. But the placement-and-display decision is not a solution but only a first step toward the real goal: a return to the status quo of October ’06.

Wren Cross: The Solution's Problems

The battle was hard fought on both sides of the line, but March 6 brought an armistice in the War of the Cross.

President Gene Nichol’s Committee on Religion in a Public University unanimously agreed on a compromise that will deliver the cross from the closet of darkness and return it permanently to the light of the chapel. It seems that the 18,000 plus who signed the Save The Wren Cross petition and withheld funds can now move on, satisfied in the victory.

But something about the proffered treaty is a bit odoriferous—something about the proposed display and placement of the cross in the Chapel smells like a pair of old gym shoes.

The first smelly concern is the proposal to display the cross sealed in a glass box. Even with an accompanying sign to explain the College’s Anglican roots, such a display has the psychological effect of erecting a wall between the cross’s meaning today in the life of the chapel and its historical identity of the past. Caging the cross diminishes its significance as a piece of living history and reduces it to a meaningless, dusty old museum relic—like old bones. Yet other potential religious displays in the historically Christian chapel will have no such restraint. This is a nonsensical dichotomy.

The second concern is the nebulous placement of the cross “in a prominent, readily visible place…,” obviously not on the altar. According to Webster’s Dictionary, prominence means “conspicuous, noticeable at once”—in other words, where one’s attention is drawn. I suppose compared to where the cross has been displayed the last few months—in a closet smothered in blinding darkness—anywhere in the Chapel can be defined as prominent and that is the problem. If the committee means “prominent” according to the universally accepted definition of the word, then we must place the cross at the location where attention is drawn: the altar.

Add these two issues together and the committee’s compromise sends the clear message that the cross is neither equal to other symbols nor particularly welcome anymore in its own historical house. To the perpetually offended few this is a good thing and apparently a goal achieved.

But the goal, my goal, hasn’t just been to return an object to permanent residence in the chapel. It has been to return all that the cross stands for: a staunch reminder of the heritage that has driven the values of the “alma mater of a nation” and the message of welcome to all that enter the Chapel. This compromise does not meet this goal.

Many on all sides of the conflict have sincerely held beliefs. The Committee has worked hard to accommodate the diverse views. However, the lion’s share of the compromise burden stands on the shoulders of the supporters of the cross’s return. The recommendations are only a first step toward a complete solution. I recommend the next step be the permanent placement of the glass encased cross on the altar.

Wren Cross Removal is Official Censorship

Does American democracy offend you? Then burn the flag—that’s free expression guaranteed.
Do decency laws cramp your style? Then sue for your porn—against censorship unlawful.
Does the sight of a Christian symbol anger you? Then banish it in the name of tolerance—the First Amendment need not apply.

I heard it all began with a letter from a disgruntled somebody. Or was it a prospective student who fled the Wren Chapel and its dreaded cross screaming, “My eyes, my eyes, they burn!” Who knows? We do know that Gene R. Nichol, President of the College of William and Mary and former ACLU leader, continues to stubbornly stand by his no-cross-unless-asked-for policy. He formulated his policy on his belief that the cross in the historic Anglican chapel makes other-faith people feel unwelcome in contradiction to the “best values of the College.”

But Mr. Nichol’s deceptively altruistic policy violates much worse than feelings.

Some people don’t see this as an important issue. Indeed some, like Kate Perkins (Richmond Times Dispatch December 18th op-ed), see this as a “cosmetic battle” over an “anachronism” that fails to follow the higher road to love people and serve God. But these two choices are not mutually exclusive—they compliment one another. While I do not doubt Ms. Perkins’ sincerity of faith, I think she and many people, having been seduced by Mr. Nichol’s flowery rhetoric, do not comprehend what is ultimately at stake: our religious freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment.

Despite this threat, proponents of Mr. Nichol’s policy remind us that William and Mary is a state institution and as such church-state separation must be rigorously enforced. The over-used legal argument of “separation of church and state” has been a favorite chisel of the ACLU and its allies to remove Christian symbols and to stop public expressions of faith. This argument has been used so often over the years that people think it is in the Constitution. It isn’t.

In 1802, Thomas Jefferson came up with the phrase “wall of separation of church and state” in a letter to the Danbury Baptist Church to allay the congregation’s fear that the government would try to regulate religious expression. Jefferson wrote “that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between church and state.” The “wall” was not meant to stop religion from public life but to stop the government’s interference with it.

The infamous 1947 Everson case mutated Jefferson’s idea to the ACLU mantra we have today. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black wrote that the First Amendment had erected a wall between church and state. Despite numerous subsequent rebuttals from constitutional scholars and Supreme Court decisions, the ACLU has used the 1947 opinion to shut down public religious expression and remove symbols from public view.

The First Amendment will not be wiped out by a band of Capital-storming Bolsheviks who will rip it away from 300 million Americans in one day. Rather, it is stripped of its power by methodically chipping away religion, specifically Christianity, from America’s religious history and replacing Judeo-Christian values with secular ones.

The Wren cross controversy is not a matter of insensitivity to members of a diverse university as Mr. Nichol has asserted. It is official censorship. To challenge the presence of the symbol of the College’s cultural and historical roots from which said values are derived smacks of anti-Christian bias.

But the chips are small and people, like frogs in steadily heating water, won’t notice the tiny erosions of our religious freedoms until it’s too late. How many steps are there from here to a totalitarian denial of the First Amendment?

The cross is only a two-foot portable brass object in one small chapel on one campus of thousands in America. But given the stakes, I protest one little piece at a time to help preserve one of America’s most cherished and important freedoms.

Wren Cross: Compromise Is Not Enough

The following piece was published in the December 23 issue of the Virginia Gazette in an edited form.

University president Gene Nichol has been creating quite a big stink in the College of William and Mary community. Last October, he had made a unilateral decision to quietly banish the Wren Chapel’s two-foot brass cross to a closet until it was requested—a reversal of the original policy which allowed the removal of the cross from the altar during secular or other activities that did not appreciate its presence. His decision had received both praise and wrath; praise for his sensitivity and social enlightenment and wrath for his discrimination against the Christian history of the College. In response to the uproar among concerned community members, he has offered to replace the cross on Sundays. This gesture of compromise is still unacceptable.

Mr. Nichol based his decision on his belief that the Christian icon creates an atmosphere of exclusivity and intolerance that he sees as contrary to the values of the university in this multicultural age of assentation. Out of sight, out of mind—his policy, formulated in the name of diversity, inclusiveness and sensitivity, attempts to erase the memory of the Christian influence on the university’s development and even the university’s reason for being. The chapel seems to have become a battleground between the secularist agenda and legitimate traditional history. Despite the pretty words the president has used to mitigate outrage at his policy, suspicion about the politics remains.

Mr. Nichol’s reasons for removing the 100 year old cross seem to be more controversial than the act itself. Reactions in the blogosphere and commentaries in several regional newspapers have ranged from hailing him as courageous for standing on Jeffersonian principles to criticizing him for indulging his own secular agenda. Mr. Nichol has been very careful to avoid overtly arguing separation of church and state, instead blurring the notion with educationally ingrained political correctness: “And though we haven’t meant to do so,” said Mr. Nichol to the William and Mary Board of Visitors, “the display of a Christian cross—the most potent symbol of my own religion—in the heart of our most important building sends an unmistakable message that the Chapel belongs more fully to some of us than to others; that there are, at the College, insiders and outsiders; those for whom our most revered place is meant to be keenly welcoming, and those for whom presence is only tolerated.”

His colleague Melvin Ely, Professor of History and Black Studies, writing to the editor of The Flat Hat, was more transparent: “I respect tradition and am not inclined to tamper with it lightly. Yet I also believe that, in avoiding the implicit establishment of a particular religion by the state, the president is conforming to Jefferson’s Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom and to the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution at, what I would remind readers, is a state institution.” Evidently, the mere presence of a religious symbol in the public space constitutes the official establishment of the religion, thereby creating a situation where one religion is acceptable and the others, be they faith-based or secular, only tolerated. But even a cursory reading of the 1786 Virginia Act for Establishing Freedom of Religion shows that Jefferson’s goal was to abolish governmental coercion that employed “temporal punishments” and “civil incapacitations” to force loyalty to a governmentally supported church. The presence of symbols does not a religion endorse.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit decided a similar case in the 2005 American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky v. Mercer County. The ACLU demanded the removal of a Ten Commandments display from a Mercer County, Kentucky courthouse charging it signified state endorsement of a religion. An Alliance Defense Fund press release reported that in its decision, the court wrote: "the ACLU makes repeated reference to 'the separation of church and state.' This extra-constitutional construct has grown tiresome. The First Amendment does not demand a wall of separation between church and state." The court went on to note that the ACLU's argument that the Ten Commandments are religious does not answer the question of whether the display actually endorses religion. The ACLU, the court said, "erroneously-though perhaps intentionally" equates merely recognizing religion as government endorsement of religion. "To endorse is necessarily to recognize, but the converse does not follow." The parallel between the two situations is clear.

If church-state separation isn’t the driving force behind the decision, then perhaps the pressure of secularism is. Reiterating the president’s view, one Wren building employee told me that as an evolving institution—socio-political evolution presumably—the Wren Chapel as part of the university must evolve too, for it is not a museum “frozen in amber.” If this were the case, she reasoned, the historic rules that denied the admission of women and African-American students should stand. But changes like these do not violate any of what the altar cross stands for and stands against. History is frozen in amber and must not be revised to accommodate those social philosophies that would minimize or eradicate the historic record of Christian influence on this campus and in this country. The former policy clearly solved the problems of offended sensibilities without revising the historic significance of the Chapel. The new policy, despite his latest offer, accomplishes the opposite.

Even if we give Mr. Nichol the benefit of the doubt and accept that his goal is only and genuinely a concern for people’s feelings, then we must realize that neither the Constitution nor adulthood guarantee that an individual will not see things that are disagreeable. The removal of the cross will not satisfy those who determine to be offended at the sight of Christianity. But we cannot develop public policy on the basis of feelings. If we did, the only logical response in the Chapel’s case would be to rip out the altar, sever the pews from the floor, tear down the wall plaques that refer to scripture and the Lord and rename it the Wren Multipurpose Room.
The final question remains: will political correctness erase the noble history of the Wren Chapel or will reason preserve it? As Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”

Update on the Cross and the Politics

University president Gene Nichol seems to be buckling under the pressure of William and Mary students, alumni and others who are outraged at his decision to remove the cross from the altar at the Wren Chapel, College of William and Mary.

His appeasement is to allow the replacement of the cross on Sundays for limited hours and mount a plaque acknowledging the place of the Anglican Church in the establishment of the Chapel. Although he appears to be caving under pressure, his offer is just the classic wink and nod to stifle the opposition. He continues to push his secularist agenda by trying to eradicate the memory of the solid Christian foundation of the College and the chapel and make believe that secular humanism and other anti-Christian beliefs had something to do with the College's development.

He claims that he is not trying to bleach out the Anglican memory, but that he is oh so deeply concerned that people don't feel excluded. The school is evolving, they say. Yes, and nicely too according to secularist plans, but this does not affect the history of the Chapel. It doesn't matter that the chapel is used for traditional matriculation exercises or other secular activities, its history is frozen. Exclusivity? The chapel could be used for nothing else but Episcopal church services if this were true, but instead anyone can visit, and use the chapel for any reason. It couldn't be more inclusive. Mr. Nichol's reasoning is irrational and irritating. Read the latest emails he sent out to the student body explaining his offer:

From: Gene R. Nichol [mailto:gnichol@wm.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, December 20, 2006 2:30 PM
To: william-mary-leadership-boards-l@wm.edu
Subject: [william-mary-leadership-boards-l]

TO: Leadership Boards, The College of William and Mary

FROM: Gene R. Nichol, President

DATE: December 20, 2006


As many of you know, in late October, after many conversations with
students, faculty, and staff, I requested that we amend our display of the
Wren Chapel cross. Instead of being present on the altar until removed for
a private event, the cross is kept in the Chapel's sacristy unless
requested for use during an event or by individual students for quiet
reflection.

I've since heard from students, staff, faculty, alumni, friends--some
supportive, many critical. I've been reminded that all of us,
unsurprisingly, hold the Chapel close to our hearts. Since that's so, and
since the symbolism and history and peace of the cross mean so much to so
many--including, not incidentally, to me--I have thought long about our
practice in recent weeks.

The attached note, which I sent to the campus community this afternoon,
reflects much of my thinking. Though I plan to share a few of these ideas
with the broader alumni community in my January annual letter, I wanted to
share this fuller account with you, as well.

My goal, which I hope I've adequately explained in the attached, is to make
the Chapel, so much a part of the life of the College, appropriately
welcoming to all. In the last few weeks I began to hope for ways to also
recognize the historic importance of Christianity in the Wren Building and
the College. We will soon take the steps I describe herein.

Issues that challenge us, as I told the Board of Visitors last month, are
the grist of great universities. I much appreciate those of you who have
already begun considering this one with me, and I invite you to be in touch
if you'd like to share your ideas. Thanks, as ever, for all you do for
William and Mary. Glenn and I send our very best to you and yours for the
holidays.





December 20, 2006

To the College Community:

I trust that you are enjoying the close of the semester. There are, as yet,
still a few exams to be completed, papers to be graded, projects to be
mastered, and, finally, miles to be traveled toward those who have missed
you more than it was thought possible. My family and I have again been
amazed by the warmth of the College community. From the Yule Log, to the
carolers and singers who have brought greetings to our house, to the
later-night enthusiasts of the Sunken Garden , you have lifted our hearts.

I write, though, on another front. Controversy continues about my decision
to alter the display of the cross in the Wren Chapel. Although the faculty
has been strongly supportive, and the Student Senate voted by a wide margin
not to oppose the change, opinion on campus is far from uniform. And beyond
our walls, many alumni and friends of the College have urged, in the
strongest terms, that the decision be reconsidered.

I have tried to read each letter, note and email I've received about the
issue--though the volume has been high and the language sometimes heated.
And even as the semester has drawn to a close, I have continued to speak
with faculty, students, staff, campus ministers, alumni and the members of
our Board of Visitors about ways to honor our traditions while assuring
that the Chapel is equally welcoming to all. I've found no magic answers.
But having heard much, and having had the opportunity for at least some
quiet reflection on the dispute, I write to offer a few words about the
steps we've undertaken, the disagreements that have ensued, and my hopes
for the future.

I am much taken with the Wren Chapel. Like many others, I attend an array
of crucial College events there. Unlike others, I also have a key to its
imposing west door. So I make studied and frequent use of the Chapel late
in the evenings. It is, by my lights, the most ennobling and inspiring
place on one of the most remarkable campuses in the world. That's saying a
good deal.

But I hadn't been here long before I began to understand that the
experience of the Chapel is not the same for all of us. Over the past
eighteen months, a number of members of our community have indicated to me
that the display of a cross--in the heart of our most important and
defining building--is at odds with our role as a public institution. They
did not say, of course, that the cross is an offensive or antagonistic
symbol. They often understand that to Christians, like me, the cross
conveys an inspiring message of sacrifice, redemption and love. Rather,
they have suggested that the presence of such a powerful religious
symbol--in a place so central to our efforts--sends a message that the
Chapel belongs more fully to some of us than to others. That there are, at
the College, insiders and outsiders. Those for whom our most revered space
is keenly inviting and those whose presence is only tolerated.

Nor are such sentiments merely fanciful. I have been saddened to learn of
potential students and their families who have been escorted into the
Chapel on campus tours and chosen to depart immediately thereafter. And to
read of a Jewish student, required to participate in an honor council
program in the Chapel during his first week of classes, vowing never to
return to the Wren. Or to hear of students, whose a capella groups are
invited to perform there, being discomfited by the display of the cross. Or
of students being told in times of tragedy of the special opening of the
Chapel for solace--to discover that it was only available as a Christian
space. Or to hear from a campus counselor that Muslim students don't take
advantage of the Chapel in times of spiritual or emotional crisis. Or to
learn of the concerns of parents, immensely proud for the celebration of a
senior's initiation into Phi Beta Kappa, but unable to understand why, at a
public university, the ceremony should occur in the presence of a cross.

I have sought, then, to find ways to assure that the Wren Chapel is equally
open and welcoming to every member of this community. My goal has not been
to bleach all trace of religious thought and influence from our facilities
and programs, but rather to offer the inspiration of the Wren to all. As an
array of our campus ministers have indicated--in expressing strong support
for the altered policy--it is the very vitality and the increasing
diversity of our religious community that calls for a more encompassing and
accessible use of the Wren.

But many, many have seen it otherwise. They have worried that, as a new
president, I have failed to understand and sufficiently value the storied
traditions of the College. I can imagine myself, were our roles reversed,
coming to a similar conclusion. (Although no cross would have been
displayed in the colonial Chapel, one has been placed in the Wren for many
decades.) Others have believed, even worse, that my actions disparage
religion. No Christian can warm to the label "anti-Christian"--even if he
is a public figure with need, on occasion, of thickened skin.

I have also perhaps added to the turmoil by my own missteps. I likely acted
too quickly and should have consulted more broadly. Patience is a vital
virtue--especially for a university president. I'm still learning it. The
decision was also announced to the university community in an inelegant
way. I know, or at least I hope, that you are accustomed to fuller and more
appealing explanations of our practices.

But still, I have asked myself and others, does the Wren Chapel, our most
remarkable place, belong to every member of the College community, or is it
principally for our Christian students? Do we take seriously our claims for
religious diversity, or do we, even as a public university, align ourselves
with one particular religious tradition? And I know that despite
disagreements over my actions, no member of the extended William & Mary
family believes that any of our students should be cast as
outsiders--however unintentionally--because of religious preference.

I am mindful, nonetheless, of the powerful claim that altering the display
of the Chapel cross ignores the storied traditions of the College.
Accordingly, I have asked Louise Kale, director of the historic campus, to
take the following modest steps:

First, we will commission a permanent plaque to commemorate the Chapel's
origins as an Anglican place of worship and symbol of the Christian
beginnings of the College.

Second, in an effort to give further recognition to the heritage of the
Chapel without substantially affecting its openness and accessibility for
College use, I have asked that the altar cross be displayed throughout the
day on Sundays with expanded hours. The cross will also continue to be in
place on the altar when the Chapel is used for Christian religious services
or when any individual requests its display for moments of quiet prayer and
contemplation.

Neither these alterations, nor anything I have said, will likely halt the
controversy. The issues it touches are perhaps too powerful, and heartfelt,
and close to the core. And the College community--both within our walls and
across the globe--is too articulate and passionate and too committed--for
easy words or opinions to assuage. But, the cross is, at present, being
displayed frequently, by request, in the Chapel. A number of Muslim and
Jewish students now report, for the first time, that they are using the
Chapel for prayer and contemplation. And I was pleased to learn that the
student organization Hillel recently made a reservation to use space in the
Wren for the first time anyone can remember.

I close only by noting common ground--both for those who support the
decision and those who oppose it.

We believe in the cause of the College--its singular history, its tradition
of life-changing learning rooted in character and rigor, and its promising
role in the future of the nation and the world.

We believe, to the person, in fostering and sustaining an institution, in
the words of the College's Diversity Statement, "where people of all
backgrounds feel at home."

And we believe in the inspiration, even if not uniformly in the theology,
of Archbishop Tutu's claim: "In God's family there are no outsiders. All
are insiders. Black and white, rich and poor, Jew and Arab, Palestinian and
Israeli, Roman Catholic and Protestant, Muslim and Christian . . . all
belong."

Go Tribe.

Hark upon the Gale.

Gene Nichol

The Cross and the Politics

University president Gene Nichol has created quite a big stink in the College of William and Mary community over the last few weeks. His unilateral decision of last October to quietly banish the Wren Chapel’s two-foot brass cross to a closet until it is requested has received both praise and wrath. Mr. Nichol believes that the Christian icon creates an atmosphere of exclusivity and intolerance that he sees as contrary to the values of the university in this multicultural age of assentation. Out of sight, out of mind—his policy, formulated in the name of diversity, inclusiveness and sensitivity, attempts to erase the memory of the Christian influence on the university’s development and even the university’s reason for being. The chapel seems to have become a battleground between the secularist agenda and legitimate traditional history. Despite the pretty words the president has used to mitigate outrage at his policy, suspicion about the politics remains.

Mr. Nichol’s reasons for removing the 100 year old cross seem to be more controversial than the act itself. Reactions in the blogosphere and commentaries in several regional newspapers have ranged from hailing him as courageous for standing on Jeffersonian principles to criticizing him for indulging his own secular agenda. Mr. Nichol has been very careful to avoid overtly arguing separation of church and state, instead blurring the notion with educationally ingrained political correctness: “And though we haven’t meant to do so,” said Mr. Nichol to the William and Mary Board of Visitors, “the display of a Christian cross—the most potent symbol of my own religion—in the heart of our most important building sends an unmistakable message that the Chapel belongs more fully to some of us than to others; that there are, at the College, insiders and outsiders; those for whom our most revered place is meant to be keenly welcoming, and those for whom presence is only tolerated.”

His colleague Melvin Ely, Professor of History and Black Studies, writing to the editor of The Flat Hat, was more transparent: “I respect tradition and am not inclined to tamper with it lightly. Yet I also believe that, in avoiding the implicit establishment of a particular religion by the state, the president is conforming to Jefferson’s Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom and to the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution at, what I would remind readers, is a state institution.” Evidently, the mere presence of a religious symbol in the public space constitutes the official establishment of the religion, thereby creating a situation where one religion is acceptable and the others, be they faith-based or secular, only tolerated. But even a cursory reading of the 1786 Virginia Act for Establishing Freedom of Religion shows that Jefferson’s goal was to abolish governmental coercion that employed “temporal punishments” and “civil incapacitations” to force loyalty to a governmentally supported church. The presence of symbols does nothing of the kind.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit decided a similar case in the 2005 American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky v. Mercer County. The ACLU demanded the removal of a Ten Commandments display from a Mercer County, Kentucky courthouse charging it signified state endorsement of a religion. An Alliance Defense Fund press release reported that in its decision, the court wrote: "the ACLU makes repeated reference to 'the separation of church and state.' This extra-constitutional construct has grown tiresome. The First Amendment does not demand a wall of separation between church and state." The court went on to note that the ACLU's argument that the Ten Commandments are religious does not answer the question of whether the display actually endorses religion. The ACLU, the court said, "erroneously-though perhaps intentionally" equates merely recognizing religion as government endorsement of religion. "To endorse is necessarily to recognize, but the converse does not follow." The parallel betweeen the cases is clear.

If church-state separation isn’t the driving force behind the decision, then perhaps the pressure of secularism is. Reiterating the president’s view, one Wren building employee told me that as an evolving institution—socio-political evolution presumably—the Wren Chapel as part of the university must evolve too, for it is not a museum “frozen in amber.” If this were the case, she reasoned, the historic rules that denied the admission of women and African-American students should stand. But changes like these do not violate any of what the altar cross stands for and stands against. History is frozen in amber and must not be revised to accommodate those social philosophies that would minimize or eradicate the historic record of Christian influence on this campus and in this country.

Although the current policy allows the cross to be retrieved from exile for Christian specific activities, the prior policy was to request temporary removal of the cross from the altar during secular or other activities that do not appreciate its presence. This policy clearly solved the problems of offended sensibilities without revising the historic significance of the Chapel. The new policy clearly accomplishes the opposite.

Even if we give Mr. Nichol the benefit of the doubt and accept that his goal is only and genuinely a concern for people’s feelings, then we must realize that neither the Constitution nor adulthood guarantee that an individual will not see things that are disagreeable. The removal of the cross will not satisfy those who determine to be offended at the sight of Christianity. But we cannot develop public policy on the basis of feelings. If we did, the only logical response in the Chapel’s case would be to rip out the altar, sever the pews from the floor, tear down the wall plaques that refer to scripture and the Lord and rename it the Wren Multipurpose Room.

The final question remains: will political correctness erase the noble history of the Wren Chapel or will reason preserve it? As Martin Luther King Jr. said, “Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”

Democracy Responds to Boyd's Myth of a Christian Nation

Over the last two weeks I have written four essays about Pastor Greg Boyd’s controversial stand on Christians in politics—they shouldn’t be—where I pretty much disagreed with his position. Apparently I am in the minority opinion in the blogosphere. I thought my reasoning was sound but I couldn’t find any comments like, “Wow, Lisa, I never considered that,” or “You have struck the proper balance.” Well, one or two might be there but most likely they got caught in the stampede of “right-on-pastor” comments by Pastor Boyd’s new fan base.

In his latest book and in his sermons Pastor Boyd attempts to shoot down the concept of America as a Christian nation. “When were we a Christian nation?” he bellowed from the pulpit. “Was it when we were enslaving people and beating them? Or was it when we stole Indian lands?...I don't get it...Where was God in this?” Not that any of these atrocities were carried out under the banner of Christianity but it’s these historic examples of “power over people” that may be associated with the idea of "Christian Nation" that has Pastor Boyd's jeans in a jumble. He is concerned that the evil perpetuated in our history may be associated with the name of Christ. Today's politics (which will be tomorrow's history) are to him a clear and present danger to the reputation and the expression of the kingdom of God when Christians use the political and legislative processes. He calls this methodology to force the Christian agenda (if you can call biblical rightness an agenda) on society through the power of a worldly system "power over people." Such an approach by Christians, he says, is the antithesis to the New Testament teachings that Christians are called to live radically loving lives that will effect changes in the human heart which he believes will ultimately change society.

According to Boyd, political engagement was never part of Jesus’ earthly mission. For example, Pastor Boyd points out that Jesus did not challenge the Roman government in Palestine, but rather taught submission to it and loving one’s enemies. "If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles," Jesus said (Matthew 5:41) A teaching like this would have irritated Jesus' audience because the Jewish nation wanted their Messiah to throw off the shackles of the hated Gentile oppressor and make Israel preeminant. Despite Jesus' teachings there were many that rebelled against Rome's imperialistic authority and most of them were horribly executed. But Jesus used the Roman oppressor to demonstrate God's love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8). But America is not governed by a tyrannical oppressor but is the land of the free where freedom of thought, religion and speech are paramount to a civil and just society. It is by God's laws that we have a civil and just society. Ergo, Christians can and should utilize the political and legal provisions of a representative democracy to secure that civil and just society. I can't understand how the Christians-out-of-politics crowd can morally equate the Roman emperor with the American constitutional democracy and the Christians who seek national strength through obeying God's laws. Such a comparison is hyperbole and borders on slander.

But still, the Lord requires His followers to go the extra mile as Pastor Boyd correctly teaches. However, we are called to take a stand in our society for rightness even as we serve. They are not polar opposites in God's kingdom but are complements. The world knows the difference between right and wrong, but we Christians know and must stand on the Truth. There is New Testament precedent for godly engagement in secular business: John the Baptist challenged the marriage of King Herod to the wife of his own brother. He lost his head for his efforts. The story is significant because John challenged the moral practices of the Roman-appointed authority on Biblical grounds. Sounds pretty much like Christian activism today, doesn’t it?

Christians in politics is not a new 21st century phenomenon. Some have accused the Republican Party of taking political advantage of the Christian voting block. So what? The Republican Party has not been the first to do this. The Christian voting block came to the attention of the Democratic Party elite in 1976 when apparently large numbers of Christian voters helped elect Jimmy Carter, a ''born-again'' Christian. This voting block became terribly disappointed and disillusioned with Carter's liberal politics and absence of common sense, which motivated them to pursue candidates with more sound policies. Christians became a major recruiting ground for the ''New Right''--which included many of the issues Christians and other conservatives are concerned with today--and secured the twice over election of Ronald Reagan. Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition and his campaign for the Republican nomination in 1995 galvanized the Christian community to seek alternatives to the extreme left policies of the Clinton administration.

Unfortunately, Pastor Boyd makes a grotesquely inaccurate comparison between the Roman Emperor Constantine and the American Church’s political activism. Emperor Galerius issued an edict of toleration in 311 which stipulated Christians, who had "followed such a caprice and had fallen into such a folly that they would not obey the institutes of antiquity", be granted an “indulgence.”

"Wherefore, for this our indulgence, they ought to pray to their God for our safety, for that of the republic, and for their own, that the republic may continue uninjured on every side, and that they may be able to live securely in their homes."

I find it remarkable that this ruler of a decadent, worldly Roman Empire called the Christians to national intercessory prayer.

In 313, Constantine issued the Edict of Milan which returned the meeting places and other properties which had been stolen from the Christians and sold out of the government treasury. Constantine declared Christianity the official religion of the empire and replaced symbols and temples of the old gods with those of Christianity. Christianity in the Roman Empire, Boyd argues, became a political tool wielded by the power of a worldly government, often employing the sword along with it.

Boyd’s analogy disintegrates like vampires in sunlight under the scrutiny of the First Amendment. Christianity never was and never will be declared by the US government to be the country’s official religion. At the same time, the First Amendment guarantees the right to practice religion unhindered by the government. It also keeps Christianity's enemies from using the government to stop its practice, which includes evangelism and its application to good governance--a byproduct the secularists hate. We cannot logically equate Constantine’s official use of Christianity and the public stand the Church takes in the public debates allowed by democracy.

But to hear Pastor Boyd talk about it, you’d think there was something inherently anti-Jesus about Christians exercising their rights in the democratic process. Pastor Boyd rejects the use of the tools of our democracy as a “kingdom of the world” thing. But democratic values are in line with biblical values. Let’s not confuse nomenclature. “Christian nation” does not refer to a theocracy but a set of principles, biblical in nature, which have been part of American governance and culture. Each citizen benefits from the biblical idea of freedom and the rule of law regardless of his religious persuasion.

God created this country so that people could govern themselves according to biblical ideas and not be forced to unrighteousness and strife from dictatorships. Democracy gives us the governmental vehicle to spread the Good News. Remember that pesky First Amendment I talked about earlier?

• It was under democracy based on biblical principles that the Indians were recompensed.
• It was under democracy based on biblical principles that slavery was abolished and condemned as an institution.
• It is under democracy based on biblical principles that immigrants can come here to worship God without fear of being tossed in jail or sent to forced labor camps.
• It is under democracy based on biblical principles that these same immigrants can come here and make better lives for themselves.

It is under this democracy based on Christian principles that the Church fights for the lives of the wounded and the helpless.

Christians are working to preserve this framework. In decrying Christian political activism, Boyd undermines the very vehicle that lets Christians practice their religion. If this is not true, then it makes no sense for the ACLU to be on a constant search and destroy mission to remove even the symbols of Christianity from the public place.

Are we a Christian nation? I see us as a nation of Christians living in a worldly culture that is not entirely devoid of Christian standards—due to democracy based on biblical principles.

This is LM.
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