Once again, the religious wars have made the news.  On May 31st a federal judge ruled that Enfield High School in Connecticut cannot hold its graduation ceremony in the sanctuary of First Cathedral, a 11,000 member church in the town, as there was a “likelihood of irreparable harm” if the non-Christian student of the high school were “subjected to religious symbols as a price of graduation.”  I don’t suppose I need to tell you that secular anti-religious groups are thrilled while a number of conservative Christian groups are expressing open outrage.  There is talk of an appeal in the name of religious freedom.

 Sigh.  OK, let’s start by admitting that it is beyond ludicrous to think that seeing a “religious symbol” is going to cause life-long emotional damage to a young adult.  (I have this image in my head of a disheveled old man in tattered clothes lying in a gutter saying “I was fine until I was eighteen and I accidentally spotted a cross at high school graduation.”)  But these are the times we live in and such hyperbole is typical in public discussion.

 Let’s dig a little deeper though.  We can start by saying that for the past two years the graduation ceremony was held in this sanctuary as the school athletic facilities were under construction and there was no reasonably priced alternative.  This year the school board, citing the completion of their own facilities, voted to move the ceremony back home.  Clearly they were ready to resume normal ceremonies that had been standard for generations.

 However, the Family Institute of Connecticut and others lobbied to “stand up for religious rights” and pressured successfully to have the ruling overturned as the board voted to move the service back to the church.  The FIC called the decision “a victory for religious rights.” 

 Put another way, our side fired the first shots in this battle.  Is it all that shocking when the ACLU and others fired back?  In any event, a lawsuit was filed in federal court and the recent ruling is the result.  So now the other guys are crowing and our side is sulking.

 But let’s keep digging a bit more.  It seems that, in order to hold the ceremony at all, the church had to “remove religious symbols” from their sanctuary, which they apparently made a heartfelt attempt to do; so much so that the process came to be called in some quarters “deJesusification.”  Sadly, the judge ruled that their efforts were not enough, you could still tell this was a church.

 And the news spread around the world.  A search of the subject on Google yielded 326,000 results.  Now, I am trying to think of just what “religious right” would have been protected if our side had won and a church so stripped or religious symbols that you could no longer tell it was a church had hosted the service.  None come to mind.  I am equally clueless as to what Kingdom breakthrough would have occurred if we had succeeded in slipping a Christian image in front of a graduating Jew or agnostic. 

 Here is the way I see it.  We picked a fight and lost.  Had we won we would have accomplished nothing.  That we fought at all polarized the high school and cast a pall over the graduation.  In losing we cemented another decision into legal restrictions on freedom of faith.  I read an article on this controversy to my friends at work last night.  One guy responded in a way that I think is most likely typical of many in our country – “They are all a bunch of idiots.”

 I don’t know the slightest thing about First Cathedral.  I presume it is a fine church and I am sorry that it got caught up in this mess.  Indeed, it seems from what I read that the well-meaning church has simply got caught up in larger agendas on both sides.  But they do have 11,000 members.  Wouldn’t it have been great if, instead of fighting to host the service, each family in the church made it their purpose to reach out to one senior from the school, congratulate them on their graduation, and wish them well in the name of Jesus?