Ten Commandments versus Seven Aphorisms -- Sightings
What to do? What to do when the privilege of having one's monument stand alone in the park is threatened by another group that wants theirs in the park too? The reason why the Founders sought to put in a line/wall/fence of separation between church and state is that ultimately someone has to decide on the borders. Well, the Supreme Court, which is charged with legal not theological issues has been given a most interesting case. In the town of Pleasant Grove, Utah the primacy of the Ten Commandments is being threatened by the Seven Aphorisms of the Church of Summum. Now, you may never have heard of this group. If you haven't, you're not alone. Until I last week I'd never heard about them either -- I learned about this group from an NPR report on this Supreme Court Trial. So, what do we do with religiously oriented monuments? How do we decide which ones get to stay and which don't? Or should we just ban all of them? How will the Court decide?
Martin Marty tackles this question today with his usual wit!
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Sightings 11/17/08
Ten Commandments versus Seven Aphorisms
-- Martin E. Marty
After the year of campaign-bred obsession with the Executive and Legislative branches of the federal government, the Judicial bade for attention this week in ways that Sightings cannot fail to see or choose to neglect. "Justices Grapple..," began a New York Times headline above an article by Adam Liptak (November 13). The Wall Street Journal the same day published Jess Gravin on "10 Commandments vs. 7 Aphorisms: A New Religion Covets Legitimacy." USA Today and all the rest also covered the first and certain to be among the biggest religion cases this cycle. Oh, back to the Liptak piece, the headline ended: "…with Question of Church Monument as Free Speech Issue." All reports on the controversy, which reached the Supreme Court, included comment on how complex and emotion-inducing this case and such cases are.
When young, and before I learned of the security provided by academic tenure, I think I thought that a chair at the Supreme Court would be the best furniture from which to view the world and enjoy life for years. The more I got into studies of the history of the judiciary, the more clear it became that judging "religion" cases would always be an occasion for taking risks, experiencing teeterings, and living with ambiguities. At least the justices I admire live with ambiguities and are not too sure of themselves and their decisions. The current case is illustrative. The Eagles, Fraternal Order of this species, decades ago donated an ugly stone sculpture of one version of the Ten Commandments to Pleasant Grove Park in Pleasant Grove, Utah. The city fathers accepted it.
So far so good. Now a group named the Church of Summum wants to challenge the monopoly of that religious symbol on public prophecy, and to erect also its "Seven Aphorisms." Given space and time and reader curiosity, we could entertain or inform by describing the history, beliefs, and practices of the group. Let others do that. Suffice it to say that Pleasant Grovers find them and the religion for which the sculpture stands to be bizarre and offensive. They may well be, but the Court will not engage in text-criticism or in becoming phenomenologists of religion in this exotic case. Its members are not credentialed as scholars of religion but as interpreters of the Constitution.
What to do? How to decide? Both "sides" have good and bad cases. Will the Ten Commandments people win over the Seven Aphorisms folk by squatters' rights, with "We were here first!" and "We belong and you don't!" claims? Whether either or both of these sides should have the show to themselves will be debated by legal experts and the judges until the ruling comes, most likely in June, and probably to the satisfaction of few. James Madison & Co., the original drafters of the Constitution, did not oppose religion or irreligiosity, but Madison especially wanted to make sure that no religious group was given privilege. Having park employees mow grass around your donated art shows preference and endows privilege, the Madisonian no-no.
The choices? a) Removing privilege and Constitutional brinkmanship by asking the Eagles to go fly; or b) purifying and extending the reaches of religious displays until the park has no grass to walk on; or c) reaching to extend privileges in order to honor the Eagles, the military veterans being celebrated, and the bragging rights of those who say "We were here first, and we're bigger than you are:" or d) hoping it will all go away until next month's crisis comes. You can decode them while the justices grapple.
Martin E. Marty's biography, current projects, upcoming events, publications, and contact information can be found at www.illuminos.com.
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This month in the Marty Center's Religion and Culture Web Forum, philosopher Jean-Luc Marion examines the concept of sacrifice. Drawing on conceptions of gift-giving and the relationships involved in such exchange, Marion formulates a framework for understanding sacrifice within modern philosophical discourse, but then seeks to apply this theory to a Biblical example, the account of Abraham's (incomplete but still effective) sacrifice of Isaac. His nuanced reading of this scriptural passage seeks to explain the seeming paradox of a sacrifice that eventually does not take place. Formal responses will be posted November 10 and 17 by Slavoj Zizek (The European Graduate School), Christian Gschwandtner (University of Scranton) and Jeremy Biles (Chicago, Illinois).
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Sightings comes from the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.
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