William & Mary vs. The CrossThe
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!
James Atticus Bowden