A federal appeals court in NYC heard arguments this week from atheists who don’t want the so-called Ground Zero cross to be featured in the 9/11 museum set to open this spring, according to the Religion News Service.
If it has to go there, they implied, they’d be satisfied with something that says “atheists died here, too.”
What do you think?
Should a cross be featured in this memorial?
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One of the wonderful things about our nation’s systems is the freedom we have to register, advocate, and defend our personal interests in matters such as these. We can do it, we often “ought” to do it, and as Americans we certainly make a point of doing it, doing it, doing it. I personally have no doubt that much energy and dollars will be spent advocating on both sides of this issue.
That said, I’ll state for the umpteenth** time that I think “should” is one of the most dangerous words in the English language. Anytime we allow ourselves to dictate what another “should” do, we trounce any pretensions of personal responsibility and societal “freedom.”
Was “9/11” about Christianity, cross-centered or otherwise? Was it about Islam? Was it about the ancient ouroboros that is the Religion-versus-Atheism dance? Was it only about dollars, about the tunnel-vision of violent cultures, about prejudice, imperialism, Fundamentalism, institutional avarice, fanaticism, emotional immaturity, hatred of self and others?
If we are to truly learn from the horrors of those events of September 11, 2001, we might choose to make compassion the centerpiece of our considerations. By choosing any narrower scope, do we not reduce the costly lessons of that day to yet another simplistic confirmation of our established beliefs and prejudices? Thus confirmed, do not those iron-clad prejudices demand that they first be defended, beyond all reason, all understanding – all compassion?
For starters, consider the implications of the statement attributed to New York construction worker Frank Silecchia, when asked about his opinion about that day:
“I never … said it’s about religion … I say it’s about faith – the faith that was crushed on 9/11.”
While gently allowing for the heat-of-the moment nature of such rhetoric, that statement still suggests that all of us might well examine what sort of “faith” any of us has if it can be “crushed” by any event – even one as apparently tragic as “9/11.”
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** [“umpteenth” – approximately 2.6 orders of magnitude greater than a simple “bazillion.”]
The title of this article asks “should “A” Cross be featured in the 911 museum”. It missed the fact that the argument is not about just any cross but rather a very specific artifact that will always be part of the whole recovery effort that was part of 911. When this particular piece of steel girder was dug up, it was erected by the recovery teams and served as a very visible encouragement to the workers. Yes, it absolutely should be there. Yes, if there was a piece of the ruins that an atheist found that spoke in a special way to them, it should be included also.
Thanks for the clarification Randy
I’d be fine with including that cross as an artifact, Randy, so long as an informational plaque adequately identified it as >one< person or group's response to dealing with that situation. At the end of the proverbial day, whatever Truth or Lie is ultimately displayed in that museum will reveal far more about our collective culture than it will about the events of 9/11.
The point I was trying to make was not so much about the museum piece itself. Our overall response as a nation certainly included a globally visible and tragically violent still-ongoing reaction to our propensity for acting on a scribbled-in-crayon sort of ethnic- and religious-demonization of much of the rest of the world. Such a polarizing reactivity has certainly been a dominant element of our American culture; it would be shortsightedly inaccurate to not display that element as a part of any museum that might claim to exhibit a balanced view of the United States’ 9/11 experience.
My own concern — again, perhaps I wasn't adequately clear — is that both the ongoing lawsuit and Polls such as the one by FAVS too often serve to keep us focused solely on the surface of such things. When we allow that to happen, we walk willingly into the space of "same-ol' same-ol'." We continue the "Groundhog Day" experience of pointing our collective national finger at "Them" so we can comfortably avoid any consideration of an "Us" that might include both We and They.
How many museums must we build before we choose to move beyond simple banter about Cross/no-cross worries?