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Saturday, June 22, 2019

The Bladensburg Cross Decision Is Nothing to Be Elated about


It is being hailed as a ‘major ruling’ and a ‘sea change’:


But it is not quite so.  Why is that?  We will answer this in a moment, but first let us go over some of the good parts of the opinion: 

-It does not require that the memorial cross to be removed, modified, etc.;

-It all but scraps the convoluted Lemon test in Establishment Clause cases;

-It severely criticizes the ‘offended observer’ theory of gaining standing in the courts.

The major problem with the ruling, however, and the reason why we say celebrations should be largely muted, is that the majority based the constitutionality of the display of this cross on the fact that it is a secular and not a religious symbol.  Over and over again, Justice Alito writes in this vein:

The existence of multiple purposes is not exclusive to longstanding monuments, symbols, or practices, but this phenomenon is more likely to occur in such cases. Even if the original purpose of a monument was infused with religion, the passage of time may obscure that sentiment. As our society becomes more and more religiously diverse, a community may preserve such monuments, symbols, and practices for the sake of their historical significance or their place in a common cultural heritage. Cf. Schempp, 374 U. S., at 264–265 (Brennan, J., concurring) (“[The] government may originally have decreed a Sunday day of rest for the impermissible purpose of supporting religion but abandoned that purpose and retained the laws for the permissible purpose of furthering overwhelmingly secular ends”).

--pgs. 18-9

With sufficient time, religiously expressive monuments, symbols, and practices can become embedded features of a community’s landscape and identity. The community may come to value them without necessarily embracing their religious roots. The recent tragic fire at Notre Dame in Paris provides a striking example. Although the French Republic rigorously enforces a secular public square,19 the cathedral remains a symbol of national importance to the religious and nonreligious alike. Notre Dame is funda-mentally a place of worship and retains great religious importance, but its meaning has broadened. For many, it is inextricably linked with the very idea of Paris and France.20 Speaking to the nation shortly after the fire, President Macron said that Notre Dame “ ‘is our history, our literature, our imagination. The place where we sur-vived epidemics, wars, liberation. It has been the epicen-ter of our lives.’ ”

--p. 26

That the cross originated as a Christian symbol and retains that meaning in many contexts does not change the fact that the symbol took on an added secular meaning when used in World War I memorials.

--p. 28

The cross is undoubtedly a Christian symbol, but that fact should not blind us to everything else that the Bladensburg Cross has come to represent. For some, that monument is a symbolic resting place for ancestors who never returned home. For others, it is a place for the community to gather and honor all veterans and their sacrifices for our Nation. For others still, it is a historical landmark. For many of these people, destroying or defac-ing the Cross that has stood undisturbed for nearly a century would not be neutral and would not further the ideals of respect and tolerance embodied in the First Amendment. For all these reasons, the Cross does not offend the Constitution.

--p. 31


It appears that the only reason the Bladensburg cross survived this examination by the majority is because of a dishonest sleight of hand:  They have emptied this cross of all Christian significance; they have made it a secular monument - there is no longer any way it can ‘offend the Constitution’ or anybody else from a religious point of view.

We appreciate much more the honesty of Justices Thomas, Ginsburg, and Sotomayor in their separate opinions because they recognize the inherently religious nature in choosing a cross as the design for this WWI memorial, though they take different views on what this entails.  We agree with Justice Thomas that this is wholly a concern for Maryland, that the 1st Amendment is addressed to Congress alone, that a State may have an established religion if it so wishes.  Justices Ginsburg and Sotomayor take the usual Leftist line of separation of church and state.

***

The majority in this ruling, and many Evangelical leaders in the States, dwell a lot on religious freedom, tolerance, and inclusivity as benefits for the States, as conferring peace, harmony, and contentment upon all.  However, this is flawed reasoning.  A couple of analogies:

First, since a country is a large family, let us look at this from the vantage point of a single nuclear family.  Suppose it is made up of members of different sects:  The father is an Episcopalian, the mother a Southern Baptist, one child is Mormon, another is Pentecostal, another Roman Catholic, another a Seventh Day Adventist, and so on.  In all honesty, would this family be able to live and work together in harmony?  Of course not!  They would not even be able to agree on basic things, like what day of the week it is appropriate to worship on.  The only way they could get along with one another is if their religious beliefs were shoved into the background and other more secular concerns became the sole focus of their communal life together.

That is precisely the problem with the focus on religious freedom as a great social virtue in the States.  It leads to exactly this sort of secularization of public life in its attempts to deal with all the different religious sects that the people adhere to (or else to the equalization of all faiths, the relativization of all ‘truth claims’; e.g., https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/449660-hail-satan-opening-prayer-at-alaska-government-meeting-prompts-walkouts).

This leads us to the next analogy.  Consider a factory.  It has one goal:  to manufacture an automobile.  The foreman of the factory has given the workers the plan for piecing it together.  As long as the workers follow his blueprint, the factory functions well.  But then, one by one, the workers decide to deviate from the plan because of a secret enlightenment each believes he has received that he thinks will make the vehicle better.  Will that factory in the end produce anything valuable?  No!  It will end up making a completely useless jalopy!  Will the foreman be pleased with their work at all?  No!  He will chastise them for their presumption, howsoever hard they may plead with him for the authority they claim is theirs by virtue of the priesthood of the assembly line worker to interpret the blueprint according to his own inner convictions.

It is the same with the people of a country.  It has one main goal:  The salvation of the people.  There is one way to accomplish their salvation:  Follow the Orthodox Faith given to the Holy Apostles by the Lord Jesus Christ.  When a hundred different sects arise, then the faith of the people is shipwrecked.  Nothing of permanent value is made, and the Lord Jesus will say to them, ‘Depart from me.’

Nothing good comes from making religious freedom the highest value of a society.  It leads to a secular public square (as the Bladensburg case demonstrates once again) and apathy toward truth in general and the Christian faith in particular.

Hear well the Holy Apostle Paul:

[4] There is one body, and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling;
[5] One Lord, one faith, one baptism,
[6] One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.


One faith, not dozens.  One body, not hundreds.  Unity is paramount in Christianity.  To rip the seamless robe of the Orthodox Church into a hundred different fragments only serves the devil’s interests.  But the States have rejected those truths for the idol of religious freedom, and they will suffer the consequences of ongoing spiritual confusion and death until they repent.

--

Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!

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