Supreme Court to Rule in Mojave Cross Case

Posted by Gordon on October 2, 2009 at 9:39am

Written by James Heiser
Tuesday, 29 September 2009 15:00

Undeniably, the cross is among the most powerful symbols of the Christian faith; as St. Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 1: “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” (v. 25 NKJV) Now, at a time when a bishop may be sent to jail for ringing the church bell, the U.S. Supreme Court may soon make a ruling on whether a cross honoring the dead of World War I will be allowed to remain standing.

The cross at the center of the controversy is, frankly, pretty much in the middle of nowhere, in the Mojave National Preserve in California. As the Washington Post reports,

It would be easy to miss among the yucca and Joshua trees of this vast place — a small plywood box, set back from a gentle curve in a lonesome desert road. It looks like nothing so much as a miniature billboard without a message.

But inside the box is a 6 1/2-foot white cross, built to honor the war dead of World War I. And because its perch on a prominent outcropping of rock is on federal land, it has been judged to be an unconstitutional display of government favoritism of one religion over another.

Whether the Mojave cross is ever unveiled again — or taken down for good — is up to the Supreme Court led by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. Next week, it will get its first major chance to divine the meaning of the First Amendment command that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion."

The Mojave cross has stood since 1934 when it was raised by local veterans of the First World War; as the Washington Post observes, “It is unlikely the veterans who erected the cross knew or cared that Sunrise Rock was on federal land. World War I vets had flocked to the desert, either for mining opportunities or because doctors had suggested the climate for those with "shell shock" or respiratory problems from the war.” The nearest road — unpaved, at that — is a hundred yards away, and so one wonders how many Americans would even know the cross was there, if not for a lawsuit brought by Frank Buono (a former assistant superintendent at the reserve) and, of course, the American Civil Liberties Union.

Again, according to the Washington Post,

Park officials agreed to take down the cross, but before they could act, Congress and the courts got involved. Congress forbade the Park Service from using any funds to remove the display. A district judge agreed with Buono that he had standing to bring his complaint and that the cross violated constitutional standards. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit affirmed the decision.

Then Congress declared the site a national memorial, and proposed to cure any constitutional problems by transferring one acre on which the cross stands to the VFW in exchange for five acres owned elsewhere in the preserve by the Sandozes [the unofficial custodians of the Mojave cross].

But Buono and the ACLU went to court again, and the courts agreed that such a plan would not resolve the constitutionality question. The deal "would leave a little donut hole of land with a cross in the midst of a vast federal preserve," the appeals court said.

According to the National Park Service, the whole preserve encompasses 1.6 million acres; what is at stake in this supposed "constitutional crisis" is the disposition of one acre, and with the promise of an exchange of five acres for that one (arguably a tidy profit for the government), the proposed solution would avoid even the appearance of a constitutional “issue” since the cross would then stand on private land. Such inholdings are common throughout the United States. Will the courts now begin to tell residents of such inholdings — or even those who live adjacent to federal or state-owned lands — whether they may place religious symbols on their land? Or, to take it a step further, may one build a church within sight of a county courthouse or military base? Is such a notion really any more improbable than that a little cross hidden away in the middle of the Mojave desert is somehow an unconstitutional "favoritism" of one religion over another?

Meanwhile, crosses are readily visible on federal lands — Arlington National Cemetery provides many ready examples of future targets for the litigiously-oriented. The battle for the Mojave cross may be seen as simply one of the latest fronts in an ongoing war against any and all public expressions of the Christian faith within the United States of America. For 75 years a cross has stood on Sunrise Rock, erected by men who risked their lives in the service of their nation, and that cross has stood in the desert without posing a threat to the liberties of a single citizen.

Yes, the cross is a powerful symbol, and for those veterans who built the Mojave cross and dedicated it to the memory of those who gave their lives in the defense of these United States, it was deemed to be a fitting memorial of the sacrifice of those who were never able to return home.

Rt. Rev. James Heiser has served as Pastor of Salem Lutheran Church in Malone, Texas, while maintaining his responsibilities as publisher of Repristination Press, which he established in 1993 to publish academic and popular theological books to serve the Lutheran Church. Heiser has also served since 2005 as the Dean of Missions for The Augustana Ministerium and in 2006 was called to serve as Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Diocese of North America (ELDoNA). An advocate of manned space exploration, Heiser serves on the Steering Committee of the Mars Society. His publications include two books; The Office of the Ministry in N. Hunnius' Epitome Credendorum (1996) and A Shining City on a Higher Hill: Christianity and the Next New World (2006), as well as dozens of journal articles and book reviews.