William
& Mary vs the Cross
Multi-cultural
expression is great for everyone -- except
Christians. The removal of the cross from William
& Mary's Wrenn Chapel is just one more
reminder of academe's hostility to Christianity.
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, 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 into 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, speech and
expression from the college campus is vital.
It’s the only way that Liberal Human Secularism,
or Progressivism as Liberals call it, can win
intellectually. 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.
--
December 4, 2006
*
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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