The Oshkosh Northwestern today charged Mayor Bill Castle with taking an "unnecessarily confrontational stand" in the Christmas Box Angel Statue controversy. The editorialists argue that Castle is setting the city up for a "long, expensive, and protracted legal fight" in which there exists "ample precedent" showing how federal courts lean. Attempts to place a Ten Commandments display in a LaCrosse Park and a Jesus Statue in Marshfield are probably most related to the Christmas Box Angel situation. Summaries from the Freedom From Religions Foundation:
In February 2004, the Freedom From Religion Foundation won its challenge of a Ten Commandments monument in a public park in La Crosse, Wisconsin, and the city's convoluted attempt to sell a small bite of the park to the Fraternal Order of Eagles in order to maintain the monument in the same park. Federal Judge Barbara Crabb of the Western District of Wisconsin noted: "It borders on preposterous to argue that the government can avoid an establishment clause violation by 'dedicating' a religious object to a nonreligious group. Adopting such a view would permit municipalities to erect crosses and build churches on public property throughout the city so long as it could think of a new group to which it could dedicate each one." The city and the Fraternal Order of Eagles, represented by television evangelist Pat Robertson's legal group, have appealed the ruling to the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation's two-and-a-half year court battle over a shrine to Jesus in a public park in Wisconsin concluded in November 2000 with the erection of a 4-foot, wrought-iron fence and two "private property" signs around the statue. The Foundation, with Clarence Reinders of Marshfield as plaintiff, filed suit in 1998 after receiving complaints by residents and motorists about a Jesus statue dominating a public wayside park, reading "Christ Guide Us On Our Way." The statue had been given to the town by the Knights of Columbus in the 1950s. The Foundation's lawsuit was initially dismissed by Shabaz after the city sold a prime parcel of the park to a group formed expressly to save the statue.
The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago agreed with the Foundation that the sale did not remedy the violation, because there was no wall or sign indicating the statue is now on private land. A three-judge panel ordered Shabaz to oversee the erection of a wall or fence with a visible disclaimer.
Mayor Castle, for his part, has labeled as a "bully tactic" the FFRF's sending to him a second letter warning of a court battle.
As I suggested in an earlier post, for me the issue is whether an angel statue is a religious symbol in the same way that Jesus statues or Ten Commandments displays clearly are. I'm not yet convinced that it is. City attorneys could make the argument that angels are now commercial, secular symbols as much as religious. The chances of winning such a case are not great, so the Northwestern editors are probably correct in urging Castle to remember that what's important is the purpose, not the place of the statue and try to facililate placement at one of the area hospitals.
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8 comments:
Nonsense.
You'd have to ask a non-christian about the effects on non-christians. How is a christian able to "objectively" evaluate symbols originating from his own faith? As a catholic these symbols are so embedded in your reality they seem innocuous and normal?
An American flag is certainly an object of commercialization - it is then robbed of patriotic meaning?
Does the fact that the "Chocolate Deities" people sell candies imprinted with images of Ganesha (as mentioned on Babblemur's site) divorce those gods/symbols from Hinduism?
Of course not.
As to Madonna or whoever singing about angels - if HER intent is secular that is a reflection of HER and Madonna Louise Ciccone or whatever her name is does not have the power to divest an entire religion of it's symbols and meanings via her attempts to make money. That is asigning an unbeleivable level of credibility and social significance to a silly pop diva.
The original meaning stands.
Did George Harrison's references to eastern religions dilute any religiousity there?
The litmus test for all of this is -
Imagine Mayor Castle erecting a statue of a Pagan God, or how about Mohammed, on public lands with public funds - would the "loving and compassionate" Christians fuss?
You bet yer buddha they would.
(That Mayor Castle would probably feel repulsed and disgusted at the thought of being involved in such a project - pagan deities and elephant-headed gods in HIS park?!No Way! - should also be indicative of the fact that these symbols are awash with religious meaning.)
I've got to get ready to go tape a few "Eye on Oshkosh" episodes with Cheryl Hentz, but I'll try and respond later on.
I wish Cheryl and I were interviewing Madonna tonight. I'd ask her what she meant in the song whne she sang "You're an angel." Imagine if she answered like this: "I meant you're a typically benevolent celestial being that acts as an intermediary between heaven and earth, especially in Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Zoroastrianism."
Okay, I'm back.
1. As has been established in the other thread related to this topic, angels are not uniquely Christian or Catholic. I went to 16 years of Catholic School and I honestly don't remember angels being talked about that much. Most of my understanding of angels over the years has come from popular culture--what little I have read about angels was provoked, in fact, by the television show "Touched by an Angel" in the 1990s.
2. Commercialization DOES rob symbols of their meaning. I think this is one of the major sources of misunderstanding between Christians and Muslims at this historical moment. Muslims live their religion in a way that most American Christians--raised in a culture that reduces Christmas to expensive gifts, for example, cannot understand.
The idea of commercialism robbing Christianity of its religious meaning was made most eloquently a long time ago by Max Weber in _The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism_, a book which shows how the interaction of the capitalist economy and Christianity ended up turning the meaning of the latter on its head: whereas Jesus said "blessed are the poor," all of a sudden to be rich meant that you were blessed.
In Central and South America huge numbers of Christians have embraced "liberation theology," the idea that Christianity and struggles for social justice for the poor are consistent. Liberation theology is really an attempt to restore meaning to Christianity, to turn it back into a religion in the best sense of the term.
I think the same is true of secular symbols like the flag. In 1907 the Supreme Court ruled that it was proper for a state to prevent a business from using a flag image on a beer bottle. The court argued that "Such a use tends to degrade and cheapen the flag in the estimation of the people, as well as to defeat the object of maintaining it as an emblem of national power and national honor."
I think what the court was arguing there was that the commercializtion of the flag robs it of its patriotic meaning. What the court did not say in that decision--yet my hope is that sometime during this century a court WILL say this--is that corporate speech by its very nature degrades and cheapens virtually every symbol it comes in contact with, whether we are talking about flags or angels.
My point about Madonna was not that she had divested "angel" of religious meaning. What I am saying is that the religious meaning of "angel" has already been sufficiently divested so that when a person listens to Madonna's song they do not experience it as a Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or Zoroastrian work of art.
Contrast that with the song "Jesus is just alright with me" by the Doobie Brothers. That song has been a major hit with Christians for 30 years, even though the song writers have said repeatedly that they are not particularly religious and that the song for them has nothing to do with Christianity (apparently they just felt that the lyric fit well with the music they had composed). I think Christians respond positively to the song because Jesus, unlike angels, has not been as divested from religious meaning as they have--at least not yet.
I do realize that there are religious zealots out there who want to throw religion "in the face" of everyone. I applaud the FFRF for taking on the zealots. What we need in this country and do not have is an organization that works as hard as the FFRF to eliminate corporate propaganda from public space.
You're absolutely right about Castle probably rejecting pagan memorials, which is probably why the safest thing to do is reject all attempts to place private statues in the public park. As Common Council candidate Dennis McHugh told Cheryl Hentz and me tonight, if you say yes to the angel box group, how can you say no to anyone else who wants to place a statue in the park, especially if they are paying for it?
What I am saying is that the religious meaning of "angel" has already been sufficiently divested so that when a person listens to Madonna's song they do not experience it as a Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or Zoroastrian work of art.
When I look at that angel I see a christian religious symbol, you can say it is 'divested' until the cows come home - my perceptions do not change.
As to Madonna's alleged Powers of Divestment -
If you recall the Madonna video "Like a Prayer" and how it enraged christians with it's eroticized religious imagery and church setting (not to mention the interracial couple since the saint that comes to life at her touch is black - people are so high-minded)
it contradicts your above statement.
I really don't see how people can insist on having it both ways.
If the images and lyrics in the video are offensive to christians then they must be sacred and religious symbols. Otherwise where's the affrontery?
Let's review -
When you call my name it's like a little prayer
I'm down on my knees, I wanna take you there (I'm thinkin' "there" isn't mass, y'know?)
In the midnight hour I can feel your power
Just like a prayer you know I'll take you there
I hear your voice, it's like an angel sighing
I have no choice, I hear your voice
Feels like flying
I close my eyes, Oh God I think I'm falling
Out of the sky, I close my eyes
Heaven help me
Those lyrics pissed people off. And she made a lot of money doing that Bad Girl schtick. She couldn't so that unless she were intentionally incorporating religious imagery centuries old cultural symbols that instantly evoke...blah blah blah, while wearing a black teddy and stroking herself or whatever.
One man's cultural annihilation/military occupation is another man's "bringing democracy and freedom". It's all in the point of view - which end of the gun you're on. But I thought you knew that.
Holy tamale - and you said
"Author Richard Paul Evans, on whose work the statue is based, does not appear to shroud its meaning in Christian terms even though it is called the "Christmas Box" angel"
CHRIST-mas. See there? Subtle, I know. Kinda hard to see,
C-H-R-I-S-T
It ain't a Ganeshabox Angel. Or a Quanyinbox angel. So, that would be, like, a christian term.
Hmmm...I'm not sure I want to stick around to see anyone who is offended by this project labeled as being "against grieving parents" just like anyone who questions the Iraq war is "against patriotism and is aiding the terrorists". Or maybe I will - the folks who live there and are unhappy with this deal will be having a tough time. I feel bad for them, I really do.
I'm again with Jody on this one and again, I maintain that this is a "slippery slope" issue. Except that I don't think you have to be a non-christian to objectively evaluate the angel symbol.
Perhaps in your Catholic church, Tony, angels weren't talked about much but I can tell you in my experiences in Protestant religions, there's an angel involved,somehow, in A LOT of Judeo-Christian Biblical stories. The Old Testament has several references to how its God created angels and the New Testament stories of the birth of Christ involve angels at every turn. An angel talked to Joseph, an angel talked to Mary, the angel Gabriel foretold the birth of John the Baptist to the elderly couple Necharia and Elizabeth, etc, etc. Then, as evidenced in "Charlie Brown's Christmas", an angel told the shepherds not to be afraid and go find the baby Jesus wrapped in swadling clothes. Two angels started that whole Sodom and Gomarrah thing where a woman ended up being turned into a pillar of salt, Lot offered his daughters to be raped by the townsmen, and homosexuality started to destroy Western civilization. Well.. ok, I think you get my point.
In my childhood church we were taught that Satan, himself, started out as one of God's angels, but was cast out, into hell, with some of his angel friends. For $20,000, would they let us put THAT angel in a park?
Honestly, I don't believe that we can actually have this discussion without recognizing that angels are indeed Christian Biblical creatures. They don't seem to have wings, of course, and they usually look like adults, but they're there, written about hundreds of times in the Bible.
Jody and Kay,
I don't think I'm making myself clear. Let me take another stab at it, using an analogy with Native American spirituality.
Dreamcatchers are a central symbol of Native American spirituality, especially for the Ojibway and Lakota people I am told. My guess is that millions of dollars worth of dreamcatchers are sold every year to people who have no idea of the religious symbolism behind them.
If a family paid for a dreamcatcher exhibit and wanted to place it in a public park, would we object on the grounds that the dreamcatcher is an Ojibway religious symbol? The Freedom From Religion Foundation would most certainly object to the exhibit, using the same rationale offered for rejecting the angel statue.
My argument would be that when dreamcatchers became mass produced objects of Western consumer culture, they were divested of their religious meaning. Most Americans experience dreamcatchers as a thing you see in a new age store or catalogue, at your hippy friend's house, or in grade school show and tell.
From that perspective, a dreamcatcher display in a public park would be a very valuable thing. Perhaps it would provoke some good dialogue and discussion about the native experience in America, about how symbols get exploited for profit and political agendas, or maybe it might actually provoke some to go out and learn about native spirituality. The key point here is that having the symbol out in public display allows for a struggle to give it meaning.
Preventing the angel statue from being placed in the park may be the best policy for a variety of reasons, but I think the opponents of placing the statue in the park mistakenly assume that such prevention represents a defeat for the religious right who want to force religion on us. I would argue that keeping the angel out of the park actually hands the religious right a victory in one major way: it reinforces the idea that THEIR meaning of "angel" is the correct one (a narrow "Christianist"--to use Lake Winneblogo's term--meaning).
I'll tell you what I would do if the angel statue went up in Menominee Park. I would bring my students there and engage them in a conversation about it. For those who see the angel as a Christian symbol, I would ask them what Christianity they are talking about. Are they talking about the Christianity that gave us the abolitionist movement, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Jesse Jackson (the angel has "hope" inscribed on the right wing and we all know that Jess stands for keeping "hope" alive)? Or are they talking about the Christianity they learning in the suburbs? Or from Pat Robertson and other tv hucksters? Put another way, just as the Winnebago Peace and Justice Center has successfully (in my opinion) redefined Opera House Square Park as "Peace Park," the angel could become a symbol of HOPE in the best sense--perhaps as a universal symbol of KINDNESS as Wendy suggested in the other thread. But no statue = no meaning struggle = wingnuts get to define meaning.
I'm obviously working though a lot of these ideas so please be kind if you choose to respond.
Tony,
I am holding the pamphlet form The Compassionate Friends of Oshkosh and this is the information in it as to the meaning of the statue. It goes along with your comments about "hope."
"Though it rises above tombstones, it marks no burial. Thou it claims no body, it itself is claimed by thousands. The angels face is that of a child's, its arms raised as a child to be lifted, and in its wings are HOPE.
"The Christmas Box Angel is based on the best selling book, and made for TV movie, The Christmas Box written by Richard Paul Evans.
This "Angel of Hope" is dedicated to all parents who have lost a child. The Compassionate Friends of Oshkosh would like to bring a Christmas Box Angel to Oshkosh in the hope that parents, grandparents, siblings, and anyone else who have lost a loved one, will have a solitude place to go and maybe find some peace.
The Compassionate Friends of Oshkosh has set up the Angel of Hope Foundation and is excepting donations in an effort to bring an Angel of Hope to Oshkosh.
Engraved bricks will surround the statue in memory of a loved one who has gone before us, or to honor someone who is still with us. The donation/order forms will be placed in the Oshkosh Northwestern and in businesses throughout the Oshkosh area."
I do not see where public funds are being used. They are asking for private donations. In addition, no religion is being forced on anyone nor is a place of worship being created. The statue is representative of children and the lifting of spirits, as in making happier not souls. It is symbolizing hope.
Michelle Monte
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