{"id":14213,"date":"2012-04-26T11:35:31","date_gmt":"2012-04-26T16:35:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=14213"},"modified":"2017-09-17T14:23:19","modified_gmt":"2017-09-17T19:23:19","slug":"christian-is-not-a-religion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2012\/04\/26\/christian-is-not-a-religion\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Christian a Religion?: The Cross on Sunrise Rock"},"content":{"rendered":"

A resolution to the matter described below was announced yesterday<\/a>. \u00a0In order to preserve the religious memorial without violating the separation of church and state, the Park Service has agree to give the land it sits on to two private citizens who take care of the monument. \u00a0Problem solved?<\/em><\/p>\n

———————<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court is in the process of deciding whether a cross erected 75 years ago as a memorial to war veterans violates the constitutional separation between church and state. The cross sits on the Mojave National Preserve and, therefore, is on public land. After lower court rulings, the cross was covered in plywood.<\/p>\n

In deliberations, Justice Scalia tried to argue that the cross is a neutral and universal symbol<\/a>. He said:<\/p>\n

It’s erected as a war memorial. I assume it is erected in honor of all of the war dead… What would you have them erect?… Some conglomerate of a cross, a Star of David, and you know, a Muslim half moon and star?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Faced with an argument that the cross is distinctly Christian, he said:<\/p>\n

I don’t think you can leap from that to the conclusion that the only war dead that that cross honors are the Christian war dead. I think that’s an outrageous conclusion.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Scalia’s comments reveal a common phenonemon that we’ve discussed in terms of race and gender, but not yet religion.\u00a0 As Jay Livingston\u00a0pointed out\u00a0at MontClair SocioBlog<\/a>, one can only think of Christian symbols as non-specific if one thinks of Christianity as somehow normal, neutral, and for everyone<\/em>.\u00a0 In the U.S., because Christianity is the dominant religion, many people simply see it as default.\u00a0 You’re Christian unless you’re something else.\u00a0 Something else that marks you as different and specific, Christianity does not.<\/p>\n

This is one way that dominance works.\u00a0 It makes itself invisible.<\/p>\n

UPDATE! <\/strong>Dmitriy T.M. pointed out that Steven Colbert addressed this issue on The Colbert Report back in 2009:<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

See our other posts on how whiteness and maleness are the characteristics we attribute to “person,” unless there are reasons to do otherwise, here<\/a>,\u00a0here<\/a>, here<\/a>, and here<\/a>.<\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A resolution to the matter described below was announced yesterday. \u00a0In order to preserve the religious memorial without violating the separation of church and state, the Park Service has agree to give the land it sits on to two private citizens who take care of the monument. \u00a0Problem solved? ——————— The Supreme Court is in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2056,304,283,42],"class_list":["post-14213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crimelaw","tag-the-state","tag-prejudicediscrimination","tag-religion"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14213"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14213\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71500,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14213\/revisions\/71500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}