Crucifixes – Plus Other Religious Symbols – on Campus?

Cambridge, MA. You will have heard by now about how the European Court has decreed that crucifixes in Italian classrooms are illegal, a violation of the rights of those who wish not to be confronted with such religious symbols. The debate is a fascinating one: that the Court should interfere in local affairs, as it seems often to do; that some Italians at least argue that the crucifix, of all symbols, is cultural and not religious; and that many still think that it does Christianity a service to have on display only the symbols of the Christian faith; some Christians seem genuinely clueless as to why anyone would object to a crucifix in front of them. Jim Martin has already brought to your attention the Vatican reaction — or lack thereof — to the decision, though the sources indicate that there is real displeasure or at least regret in the Vatican at this development.
     The specific issue will take some time to resolve, surely, but it reminds me of debates we had at Boston College over the years, precisely on this issue, crucifixes and other Christian symbols in the classroom: I recall more or less heated debates on the matter in the 1980s, and 1990s, and early this year, long after I shifted from BC to Harvard, the matter arose again, this time by a determined effort to have crucifixes or other Catholic Christian symbols in every classroom.
     My own position, back to the 1980s, was that we should avoid, on Catholic university campuses, a bland secularism that erases all religious symbols or reduces them to cultural relics, but also an exclusively Christian set of symbols of religion that makes all else invisible. The faculty and student body on our campuses are religiously diverse; the curriculum includes courses on and references to many different religions; the library is full of books about different religions, including the sacred scriptures of different faiths; most Catholic campuses provide proper spaces for worship in accord with other traditions. That the visual art on campus should be only Christian, or indeed Catholic Christian (as a crucifix usually is), seems too narrow, a deficit of spiritual imagination. We do best, I suggest, when we make our religious diversity visible and more prominent as a real part of our lives. To see Hindu and Buddhist symbols on a Catholic campus, for instance, is not a doctrinal claim, but a reminder of the diversity that our universities have opted for, chosen, fostered, for decades, and a respectful recognition of the religious heritage of those we have welcomed into our midst. To have only Christian symbols might give the appearance of a uniform Catholicism that wants other religions to be privatized and invisible — and none of us profits from this “erasure” of the other. And would not fearing the visibility of other religions underestimate the ability of our faculty and students to notice differences – or the power of the crucified to make himself known even to those who have both eyes open?
     So it would be good in this country, and indeed in Italy, for religious communities to work together to make prominent the images and practices of the religions present in any given locale. Let there be more such symbols in educational institutions, so that having seen this diversity with our eyes open, we can meditate on what we see, and decide what it means for us.
     I cannot help but call your attention to a short reflection I wrote during one of those controversies at BC some decades ago, my little essay charmingly called “Goddess in the Classroom.” It in turn recalls a pivotal moment in my own formation, when I was teaching in Kathmandu in 1974. I’m not sure the issues, or the answers, have changed much in 35 years.