William & Mary vs. The Cross
By James Bowden (12/17/06)
The College of William & Mary* removed a Christian cross from a chapel. They had to do it. Only one person had written a letter complaining about a cross in a chapel built as a Christian house of worship. But, the second oldest college in the U.S., built, like Harvard, to train Christian ministers had much to fear from The Cross.
It doesn’t matter that the cross had adorned the Christian altar since the 1930s – well after William & Mary became a Virginia public university (1906). It doesn’t count that 20 out of 111 wedding parties were politely accommodated by temporarily removing the cross.
Removing it permanently, while allowing Christians to request it by exception for private ceremonies, keeps the icon personal and out of public sight. Which is precisely what the cultural cleansing of Christianity is all about. Make Christian religious faith a mute icon only to be displayed in the home, if at all.
Seeing The Cross at William & Mary creates a confrontation with its meaning. That confrontation between the official religion of the university, Liberal Human Secularism, and Christianity never goes well for the modern pagans who worship the small god of ‘Self’.
The Cross in a public place could remind someone that the Wren Chapel was built, and was used primarily, as Christian chapel since 1732.
The Cross, marking the Chapel as Christian, could remind someone that the majority of students and faculty, like Virginia’s and America’s majority, has been overwhelmingly Christian.
The Cross, representing the Christian majority in a public place, might indicate that Christianity can be out in the open and is part of the diversity, and inclusiveness, of the public university.
The Cross, symbolizing the key act, main character and fundamental truth in Christianity, might make someone consider the facts - supporting this symbol of the atoning death for everyone’s sins, Jesus as the deity of God-in-man, and physically rising from the dead - are the truth.
If Jesus walked out of his tomb and is alive today, then the truth may be established in orthodoxies that are heretical to Liberal Human Secularists. The Liberal trinity of race, class and gender(s), as well as their doctrines of multi-culturalism, situational ethics, group identity, economic and political socialism, are challenged.
Liberal Human Secularism, as a world view, fails when measured by the Rational Empiricism which is fueled by the genius of the English, Enlightenment, Protestantism – now morphed and called Judeo-Christian – worldview.
That was my experience in graduate schools at two of the most liberal Ivy League universities in the Nation. I went to the library and read the books. I had to know, cold, almost 300 books for my PhD orals. All of that reading transformed me to become a Conservative of conviction. More reading improved my Christian apologetics. Knowing knowledge, as in knowing ye the truth, converts individuals into Christian believers.
So, removing the Christian cross is vital to protect the state church of William & Mary. No one would fear symbols from any other religion, except Judaism. No other religion can compete with the Jews and Christians as well in the marketplace of ideas. No other religion shaped the culture that founded Western Civilization and its great universities that have uncovered, revealed – not invented, so much knowledge. (Many thanks to the Muslims for preserving Greek knowledge in libraries for Roman Catholic Scholasticism until their home grown Muslim fanatics culturally cleansed Islam by 1250.)
The majority might object to the symbols of a tiny minority religion like Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism or Amer-Indian paganism for desecrating a Christian chapel. But, there wouldn’t be any concern from the university’s Puritan Liberals that the religious ideas threaten Liberal Human Secularism. Liberals promote any non-Christian symbols as seriously as they can to diminish Christianity. The same people, who oppose a Christian lady, government employee, wearing a cross in public will champion Muslim women parading their religious costumes from the hijab, niqab, chador to the full body bag burqa.
Still, it’s best to make an obvious place of worship look non-faith specific, or faithless, and just ‘spiritual’. This is the comfort zone for Liberal Human Secularists and their Sissy Christian and Secular Jew lackeys. If all religion is personal and private then no religion can be spoken or shown in public to compete with Liberals.
Excluding Conservative Christian thought and speech from the college campus is vital. It’s the only way that Liberal Human Secularism, or Progressivism as Liberals call it, can win. The College of William & Mary had to hide the cross. William and Mary, as it is today, can’t stand up to The Cross of Jesus.
* Note. The author loved teaching one term as Adjunct Professor at William & Mary (1993 – upper level Government elective). He hopes to do so again, after retirement, if this op ed doesn’t prevent it!
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