A legal gambit in the battles over the separation of Church and State has been that the Christian cross is a “secular” symbol, removed from its original religious meaning by time and history. This has resulted in some rather insulting assumptions by cross-defenders and involves a good bit of historical revisionism. Now with the Supreme Court of the United States hearing arguments in the case of Salazar v. Buono, we may finally see if there can truly be a “secular cross”.

Mr. Eliasberg said many Jewish war veterans would not wish to be honored by “the predominant symbol of Christianity,” one that “signifies that Jesus is the son of God and died to redeem mankind for our sins.” Justice Scalia disagreed, saying, “The cross is the most common symbol of the resting place of the dead.” “What would you have them erect?” Justice Scalia asked. “Some conglomerate of a cross, a Star of David and, you know, a Muslim half moon and star?” Mr. Eliasberg said he had visited Jewish cemeteries. “There is never a cross on the tombstone of a Jew,” he said, to laughter in the courtroom. Justice Scalia grew visibly angry. “I don’t think you can leap from that to the conclusion that the only war dead that that cross honors are the Christian war dead,” he said. “I think that’s an outrageous conclusion.”

Now the case could be decided narrowly, simply on the legality of the land-transfer that Congress approved to keep the cross standing, or, if Scalia gets his way, the court could decided that Christian crosses can be defined as a “common symbol” of the dead, ending several potential lawsuits over the issue. However, while Christians may welcome a sweeping victory here, Beliefnet founder Steven Waldman warns of the spiritually unwise slippery-slope implications of a “win”.

“…the more you want Christian symbols in the public square, the more you have to prove they’re lacking religious meaning. A question for devout Christians: Do you really want the cross and the creche to become akin to the Christmas tree — or the Easter Bunny? The “secular purpose” trap isn’t the only reason the “pro-religion” position can end up hurting Christianity. Legal cases pressing Christian symbols tend to argue that these efforts are acceptable as long as the government isn’t excluding other faiths. That’s how we’ve ended up with town squares with Menorahs alongside the creches. But this is the ultimate slippery slope. The Courts cannot and should not say that pluralism is limited only to Jews. Over time, Islam, Buddhism, Paganism will inevitably end up having greater public displays, too. That means conservative Christians need to ponder a more subtle theological point. If you believe visible public displays convey important social messages, doesn’t a pluralistic scene convey a second message: that all faiths are equal?“

In other words, a secular cross would create more theological problems for the Christians who desire such a decision than they would care to currently admit. Remember the Green Bay nativity case? You could expect a lot more like that, because other religious groups in America, as they grow in size and prominence, are going to want full inclusion as well. The legal loopholes that Christian advocacy groups are trying to create will eventually, no doubt to their dismay, benefit the Wiccans, Buddhists, and Hindus who won’t be contented to simply stand by and be represented by “secular” symbols of Christianity. They should be careful about how “secularized” they want their cross.

One of the more peculiar legal arguments I’ve heard is that the history of cultural Christian dominance in America makes public displays of the cross effectively “secular” and therefore exempt from Church-State concerns.That was the opinion of a judge in Utah last year concerning memorial road markers (currently being appealed), and it has emerged again over the issue of the Mt. Soledad cross in San Diego.

Litigation over the 43-foot-tall Mt. Soledad cross has been under way for nearly 20 years. Several federal courts have ruled against its display on city property. In an effort to save the cross, the federal government acquired the land underneath the cross in 2006. Legal action proceeded against the federal government’s ownership of the towering religious symbol. In July of 2008, U.S. District Judge Larry Alan Burns ruled that the cross “communicates the primarily non-religious messages of military service, death and sacrifice” and can remain on public property.

Unsurprisingly, Americans United (along with other groups) have asked the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn this decision. They claim, sensibly enough, that a multi-religious military and nation cannot be symbolized by a Christian cross.

“American service personnel come from many different faiths and some follow no spiritual path at all,” said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United. “It is disrespectful to our deceased veterans to use the symbol of only one faith to memorialize them all” … “That the cross is used in a veterans’ memorial here does not make it secular,” asserts the brief. “In fact, as a burial marker, the cross has been used almost exclusively for Christian burials in order to convey a sectarian message that the deceased lived and died as a member of a particular Christian community. And as a monument in a veterans’ memorial, the cross conveys a similar sectarian message: that only fallen Christian soldiers are being remembered. Given the ‘commanding presence’ of the Mt. Soledad cross in relation to the rest of the memorial, the primary message that this cross communicates is religious, not secular.”

Even if every body buried in that site were Christian (leaving aside the various doctrinal and denominational issues), do Christians really want their cross to become a secular communicator of “non-religious messages”? Further, this “secularization” is a rather recent invention. Until 1989 (when litigation started) it was known as the “Easter Cross” and it was dedicated to “Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ”, which seems to undermine the notion that this is everyone’s non-religious cross-shaped memorial. The “secular” cross is just the latest gambit to circumvent state and federal law. It no more represents and honors Jews, Hindus, Muslims and atheists than the Wiccan pentacle does. To say otherwise undermines the hard work minority religions have undertaken to have their own symbols and traditions properly honored and recognized.

Is the Christian cross a secular symbol? That is the current opinion of Utah state officials and U.S. District Judge David Sam. This peculiar notion was reached in 2007, after local atheists challenged the placement of metal crosses along the highway to honor state highway patrol officers who died in the line of duty. Now American’s United, along with the Anti-Defamation League, the Hindu American Foundation, The Interfaith Alliance, and the Union for Reform Judaism, are challenging this ruling.

I don’t know how anyone could think this was religious!

Officials contend that the cross is secular, not religious, and it is being used regardless of the personal religious persuasion of the fallen officer. So atheist, Mormon, Pagan, Jewish or Hindu cops would all get the giant “non-religious” cross as a memorial.

The idea that the cross is “secular” ties into the larger notion that Christian religious expression and tradition, due to its size and ubiquity, is “normal” and ultimately beneficial. The corollary is that non-Christian religious expressions or traditions are “abnormal” and considered suspect. But popularity and tradition doesn’t remove religious context from a religious symbol, instead it subtly reinforces that faith’s dominance and “right” to utter ubiquity. If the cross was truly secular, we wouldn’t have 39 different emblems of belief for military markers and headstones, nor would minority religions fight to have their own symbols added to that list.

There is no “secular symbol of death”, any more than there is a “secular symbol of life”, because a truly secular culture allows groups and individuals to choose and adapt their own symbols and instill them with meaning. When governments and judges start telling us which religious symbols are “secular”, we enter into a hierarchy of signs, where the faith(s) with the strongest cultural hold gains official sanction in all but name. Undermining the idea that government should make no law “respecting an establishment of religion”.