It strikes me that this tempest over the Wren Chapel cross is yet another example of the kind of emotional, hot-button issue that conservatives love, that makes great editorial fodder, and that makes for a catchy bumpersticker, but as usual wilts under reasonable scrutiny. Why does the fact that the cross has been there for a "some time" mean that it must stay there? Tradition? If tradition is a valid argument, let's restore the ducking stool at Witch Duck and ban celebrations of Christmas. If religious tradition is immutable, why are we discussing the removal of a cross and not a statue of the Virgin Mary? Come to think of it, why don't we return the chaple to it's rightful owner - the Church of England? I believe Madison had it right in his "Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments" that religion's dabbling in the state and vice versa serves neither one well. My support of church/state separartion is grounded in that treatise. I do have an additional guide: those red words in my NIV New Testament which strongly suggest that the divine and the profane state should remain seperate realms. Jesus rebelled against an established religious authority which was entwined with the state; one wonders why so many modern evangelicals and fundamentalists seek exaclty the opposite. Is the Gospel so weak that it needs the crutch of government endorsement? I think not. The Diety who created all reality is not going to wither away and die if a nineteenth century cross is removed from a many-times-over "restored" Wren Chapel. ________________________________ Dr. David S. Hardin Assistant Professor of Geography Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences Longwood University Farmville, Virginia 23909 Phone: (434) 395-2581 e-mail: [log in to unmask] ******************** "For as Geography without History seemeth a carkasse without motion, so History without Geography wandreth as a Vagrant without a certaine habitation." John Smith, 1627 To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe, please see the instructions at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html