How The Sunrise Rock Cross Controversy is about Semiotics

WHY WOULD SOMEONE WANT to take down a cross that has stood as a symbol for American soldiers who have died during combat?

Well, in part because it is a cross.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court heard an unusual case that pitted freedom of expression against freedom of (and from) religion. In the Mojave Desert, a large metal cross looms above a rock outcropping. The cross is not part of a church. It does not belong to a religious organization. It was erected by the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) to honor their fellow military men whose lives were lost during war. Now, some want to see the cross taken down, claiming that it privileges Christianity, when many soldiers were Jewish or Muslim or Buddhist or agnostic. And, since the cross stands on public land, there is a concern that it butts up against the Constitution's Establishment Clause--or what Thomas Jefferson called "the wall of separation between church and state."

At the crux (pardon the pun) of the argument is what the cross stands for.

Can a cross, for example, symbolize something more than Christianity? Or, more importantly, can a cross symbolize something that is not Christian? Is it even possible to see a cross and not associate it with religion? Judge Scalia argued in court that the cross is the default marker in the United States for the dead. Crosses in church might signify "Jesus" or "religion," but crosses on the side of the road, Scalia would say, signify "death" or "memorial."

Previous courts have held that the cross is a religious icon and breaks the law. In fact, it's been boarded up for two years now. The image of a boarded up cross raises its own issues, but the very notion that a cross could stand for many things but not one thing is a provocative notion.

Semiotics is the study of signs--what they mean, how we interpret them, and how they carry power and affect our lives. Every semiotic text has a signifier and a signified. The signifier is the object, the sign, the symbol; the signifier is what that symbol or sign means or stands for or evokes. In the United States, if we see a red octagonal sign with the markings S T O P on it, we know to stop moving. If we see an American flag, we don't think of Albania. In America, the signifer "flag" evokes many, many, signifiers.

In this case the signifier is the cross. What is at stake, though, and what remains the source of the lawsuit is what is being signified.

How can such a widely recognized and such a wholly sacred siginifier like a cross carry such different meanings? Well, in truth, loaded signifiers are the most likely to cause offense. Take the Confederate flag, for example. For some Southerners, the signifier of the flag signifies "heritage," "pride," "tradition," and "a way of life." For others, though, the very same object connotes "hatred," "slavery," and "racism."

The cross is no different. For Christians, it might signify "Jesus." For militant Muslims, the cross might carry connotations that are more about the West than about religion. The cross can also be a signifier for the Ku Klux Klan. And, if you are a vampire, the cross enjoys a whole different set of signifying powers--none of them good.

To be sure, Judge Scalia is correct that in the United States we tend to assume a cross in a graveyard signifies death. But, the setting of a cemetery helps you read the cross as a burial marker, not so much as a religious symbol. This is a good example of a signifier being contextual. A cross on fire in a front yard means one thing; a cross with a singular flame and a halo means something else. In the case of the Sunrise Rock Cross, there is no cemetery. There are no other markings to indicate that the space is a place of burial or mourning. It is public land and fairly vacant.

In this setting, a cross, in general, probably signifies a church is nearby or a Christian has simply erected a big cross on his land to show the world his level of religious commitment. The question is, does a big cross like this on public land with nothing else around it to signify "war dead," mean that the federal government is privileging Christianity and sanctioning one religion (and one religious symbol) over others.

The answer is yes.

Does that mean the cross should come down?

Well, that's complicated. And it shall, at this point, have to remain the subject of another post.

But, I'd love to hear what you have to say about this topic.

The Thomas Jefferson Bible

IF ONE WERE TO poll most Americans, asking them to name one person who embodies American values, it's rather startling to think--at any length--who people would pick: George Washington, Donald Trump, Oprah, Abraham Lincoln, John Wayne, even, perhaps, Barack Obama. Though all of these are good choices, none--at least in my mind--mirror the complexity, the ambition, and the contradictions of the United States like Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson stands as a model of dueling forces and desires; from his stance on Native American issues to his love of land and farming to his relationship(s) with African Americans (including his own slaves) to his puzzling religious beliefs. Of all of his complicated stances, the latter has undergone the least scrutiny but remains, on some levels, the most beguiling.

Indeed, during his lifetime, Jefferson was thought to be an atheist by some, but almost no former president was more obsessed with God, Jesus, and the Bible. In fact, in 1803, Jefferson literally invented a new New Testament that he thought Jesus would approve of. Convinced Jesus' real message had been obscured by the hocus-pocus of miracles, Jefferson's Bible 86's the Christmas story, the Easter story, and the miracles. Instead, he focuses on Jesus' moral teachings, which Jefferson believed was the spiritual core of the New Testament and Jesus' greatest asset. Now, thanks to the inventive folks at BeliefNet, one can get an interesting glimpse at the Jefferson Bible and its edits.

Icons of little scissors allow the reader to see what Jefferson cut, and a fascinating backstory by BeliefNet's editor, Steven Waldman, provides even more detail on the history of Jefferson's interest in the Bible, Jesus, and his enigmatic belief system.

Waldman correctly chronicles Jefferson's public statements of his Christianity, despite claims to the opposite. Here is Waldman quoting Jefferson: "'I am a real Christian, that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus, very different from the Platonists, who call me infidel and themselves Christians.'" And yet, Jefferson's multi-decade Bible project attempts to remove from Jesus' legacy the very details that, for most, make him divine.

This project proved to be consuming for Jefferson, who worked on his Bible off an on for the next 20-odd years. So determined was he to get at a true New Testament, he assembled a four-column text (pictured above) that included Greek, Latin, French, and English translations of the New Testament in hopes of liberating Jesus from what he thought was centuries of poor packaging and mis-labeling.

Since Jefferson is the ideological architect of some of this nation's most important documents about freedom, liberty, and rights (all of which enter public debate about the religious infrastructure of the Republic and its laws), it is useful to know what he was grappling with as he was trying to sculpt a new nation and a national discourse.

One of the great mistakes many Americans make is conflating the religious beliefs of the Pilgrims with the religious beliefs of what we have come to call "The Founding Fathers." In his new book, Founding Faith, Waldman addresses this issue, as does Garry Wills in his recent study, Head and Heart: America's Christianity. Both authors debunk the myth that the authors of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States sought to enact specifically "Christian" laws with a "Christian ideology."

Imagine Jefferson running for president today--trying to convince the American populace that even though he did not believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ or the virgin birth or any of the miracles, including the resurrection--that he was still a Christian. How odd that as our society and our world has become more progressive, our capabilities for tolerating and nuancing religious beliefs have narrowed.