Stephen Colbert treats a controversy over the placement of a cross on public property with his typical playful comedy, but he touches on some matters of heavy hermeneutics, namely, questions about whether and how subjective interpretations of the cross contribute to its symbolic significance. Does the cross have an essentially religious meaning or is its religious significance merely historical? Is it possible to remove the Christian meaning from the cross and attach only a non-religious meaning to it? Colbert dances around these fascinating questions. Perhaps his jokes point us to some answers. (VN)
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
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25 profound comments:
This is yet one more example of the intolerance and attacks on Christianity today in America.
Are you referring to Colbert or someone he’s talking about?
I am referring to the ACLU, or the people wanting the cross removed.
I don't see the Cross as having any possible non-religious connotations, regardless of context. There is a distinction to be made between a Crucifix and a Cross, but that distinction occurs only within a specifically Christian context. But a Cross, especially an erected, physical Cross, is always the Cross of Christ. And this is true today anywhere on the globe.
That said, religious symbols on public property are problematic in this multicultural society and the intelligent thing to do is simply not to place them there.
Btw, in addition to being the "intelligent" thing to do, it is also the charitable thing to do. Or NOT do.
First, I would like to note that this cross wasn't erected just recently, but in fact around WWII. The constitution even though it states seperation from Church and State it didn't mean for their to be absolutely no religious symbols on public property, but rather that there would be no state sponsored religion by our goverment. The cross does not imply that the government is promoting one religion over the other. This cross was set up in that location about 70 yrs ago and was to honor soldiers. One last thought; freedom of religion doesn't mean freedom FROM religion as many people perceive it today. The founders left Britain because of religious persecution, which unfortunately the United States in recent years has started to go down that same path, by attacking Christianity in any way possible. Would this really happen if this was a wooden Menorah, or a wooden or a Cresent Moon?
But the persecution that the Founders fled was Christian-on-Christian persecution.
The Cross is, most unfortunately, not necessarily a welcome sight to, for instance, Jews, who also may have fled Europe due to persecution. I don't think that I need to specify by whom.
The Founders were also careful nowhere to mention Christ. The Cross refers to Christ. It does, in fact, promote the Christian religion by being a symbol of it.
I will admit that suddenly insisting that a Cross that has stood for decades be pulled down seems petty. But insisting that it stay up, despite the objection to it being there does not seem charitable, either.
And, btw, freedom of religion does mean freedom from religion as interpreted by the courts. If it did not, our kids would still be singing Christian carols at Christmas assemblies in the public schools: they're not.
I think it is uncharitable for people to want a cross to be removed that is meant to honor the dead soldiers. Plus, as I said before, this is yet one more example of the blatant attack against Christianity by the ACLU and the Left. The cross is not hurting anyone or anything. A cross is not offensive either. It is not implying that other religions are not welcome to worship anywhere near the cross, or anywhere else for that fact. But, if the cross is taken down that would be an offense against Christianity. That would in effect show how the attitudes of anti-Christianity have infected today's society. It would also show a lack of respect for Christianity if the cross would be removed. This would also violate freedom of religion, afforded to is in the constitution. And, I believe by attempting to remove a cross placed there by soldiers to honor other soldiers, that this illustrates how some on the left have such disrespect for soldiers who have died in the line of duty. To think that people who are fighting to keep a cross in its proper place, where soldiers placed it to honor others', are uncharitable is absurd in my opinion.
It is up to Christians to be charitable. One can't ask secularists and atheists to practice charity where their only consideration is how to manipulate statute law to achieve the ends they want to achieve.
Christians have to be better than they are.
If Christians are being attacked and persecuted today in this country, is this not as the Lord predicted it would be? Frankly, Christians should be worried to the extent that they are NOT being persecuted. How is a Christian not being persecuted unless it is because he has made his peace with the world and the flesh? To expect "the world" to be nice to you because you're a Christian (or even despite the fact that you're a Christian) is, in my opinion, a plea for cheap grace. And that ain't good.
I would say this country has been hijacked by the left. EVERYONE has an obligation to be charitable. I think your wish about Christians, or people in general being fed up with the direction America's headed, and standing up for it might be answered. I believe that this country is headed for a 2nd Revolution, and it may not be as peaceful as some think because of tyranny being at our forefront due to the Obama administration. I will be a part of any movement that stands up for and defends the principles that our founders fought for many years ago. I am more than willing to get down and dirty to save this country from tyranny.
Plus, standing up for your religoius rights is much different than charity. There is no charity involved there. There is only the evidence of religious rights' being attacked by the ACLU and people of the Left. This is a constitutional right. And, yes the founders were religious. They did not espouse one particular religion but did hold God close in their hearts. In George Washington's first speech he references God in it.
Well, I guesss that, in the final analysis, we can agree that "Christian" and "Conservative" both start with "C." Some of us, however, don't seem to get beyond that point in drawing distinctions.
I agree. I believe that not every conservative is a Christian, or vise versa. For Example, I have a person who is a wiccan, a lesbian, and is a conservative following my blog. She is wonderful!
So the discussion has moved from the topic of religious symbolism to the ACLU to the requirements of charity to an ominous warning of impending revolution to the distinction between conservative and Christian to a lesbian Wiccan. Quite a thread we have here.
I may be a Johnny-come-lately to this debate, but it seems to me one point that *I* find important is worth stating on the issue of the cross on that federal land. If it has been mentioned heretofore in this blog and discussion, I am sorry for missing it. If it hasn't, I think it should be, so here it is:
A neighboring landowner offered to trade some of his land (a greater quantity and market value) for that one acre in order to honor the soldiers and keep the cross up. The cross wouldn't be on federal land anymore, so the constitutional question (possible establishment clause violation) would be moot - the cross wouldn't be on federal land anymore. Congress was going to accept this and was going to do the deal. The ACLU action stopped that, which shows that they are not actually interested in solving the problem of the presence of religious symbols on public land in a way that respects soldiers or people's religious beliefs and traditions (they are obviously not too enamoured of soldiers, nor are they very fond of traditional religious expression).
It goes to show what they are really after. What they want to do is tear down crosses wherever they have a legal excuse to do it.
The cross wouldn't be on federal land anymore, so the constitutional question (possible establishment clause violation) would be moot
So what we are presented with here is the use of a technicality to thwart a core principle. Gates of that kind often swing back to hit one in the keister.
I fail to see how you thwart a core principle by conforming to it. If the principle is that the religious symbol on federal land violates the establishment clause, that principle can be obeyed in one of two possible ways - a removal of the symbol or a change of ownership of the land. If the people objecting to the violation of the principle were only interested in having that principle obeyed, one way should have been just as good as another in achieving that end. That fact that they insist on the cross being removed shows their true intentions. If they were interested in the first amendment as such, they would have embraced the land deal as a solution that would have enforced the establishment clause while doing no violence to the free exercise clause. They are tipping their hand here - the freedom of religion, as such, means nothing to them.
The objection is apparently to a Christian symbol overlooking a cemetary in which non-Christian soldiers may be buried. The soldiers (none of them) died for Christ. They died for Wall Street and American might in the world. The appropriate symbol to fly over the cemetary is not the Cross of the Prince of Peace, but the American flag, and/or the Dollar $ign. I don't see why this is so hard to understand.
As to why it's a "technicality"--if the above does not make that plain enough: it's because the objection has not been charitably addressed. By means of the technicality of having a parcel of land change ownership, it has been made possible for the Cross to not be removed, so that it still overlooks federal land, and the graves, perhaps, of Jews to whom the Cross is a symbol of persecution and genocide, and/or secularists, to whom the Cross is the symbol of the esstentially infernal hypocrisy of war-mongering, material-goods-hoarding, idol-worshipping "Christian" conservatives.
Again, the charitable thing to do is remove it, not to find legalistic maneuvers which allow for the maintenance of the status quo.
Rodak,
Thank You for proving my thoughts about liberals...
Here's a website that everyone might want to take a look at.
http://www.donttearmedown.com/
You're welcome. But I was speaking not as a "liberal," but as a disciple of Christ.
Somehow this discussion has shifted from the real world to Rodak World, a Bizarro-world dark fantasy realm where World War I soldiers who wish to spontaneously honor their fallen fellows would normatively do so by erecting a dollar sign, where the state of being a cross is a crime and leaving one up legally means letting a criminal off on a "technicality", where anti-Christian iconoclasm is an exercise in Christian charity, where the world's hatred of Christ should be respected and indulged by Christians as a means of fulfilling the Great Commisison, and where Mojave desert land preserves are graveyards for "Jews" who, quite unlike real Jews, would be disturbed to have a cross in visible proximity of their "graves". That is potentially the darkest thing that has been revealed about this distorted realm. I am tempted to wonder just how radically different Rodak World is from reality on this particular point. Are we are to also imagine that these "Jews" Rodak has conjured up and brought into this debate, the ones in the non-existent "graves", have a problem with garlic and sunlight, too?
Rodak,
Thank You for further proving my thoughts regarding liberals....
Okay, I couldn't get the video clip to play on this old computer (running Windows ME), but I assumed from the caption under the "screen" ("The cross has nothing to do with Christianity -- it's just the normal symbol of the resting place of the dead. (04:47)" that there were graves of the war dead in the vicinity of the Cross in question. If not, why was the Cross ever located on federal land in the first place?
In any event, my point remains the same: "resist not evil" and "love your enemy." If somebody wants to make a big point of having a Cross removed, don't fight him, just do it. And thank him for pointing out your error in placing the Cross where it doesn't belong.
If there are no graves involved, then the offer of the landowner to swap land so as to have the Cross on private property seems(without knowing the details of the two pieces of land involved) like a plausible solution. One wonders what the ACLU's (apparently successful) argument was in that case? Does anybody know the legal grounds upon which that swap was blocked?
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