Christmas Gift: Mich. Voters Reject City Hall Nativity Scene

Religious liberty fared well in two referenda across the country yesterday. Voters in Utah easily rejected the first statewide voucher scheme, keeping tax dollars from paying for school children’s religious education. It was a fantastic win for church-state separation.

Voters in a less closely watched election also rallied around religious freedom, rejecting a proposal that would have required their city to display a nativity scene on city hall property each holiday season from the Monday after Thanksgiving until Jan. 6.

Controversy broke out over the proper place of religious symbols on public property last year when the Berkley, Mich., City Council voted 6-1 to move a crèche from city hall to houses of worship in the community. The Council was concerned the city-sponsored display of Jesus’s birth would attract unnecessary and costly litigation.

Some residents of the Detroit suburb rejected the compromise, promising to amend the city’s charter to require a “nativity scene, which at a minimum includes proportionally-sized figures of the infant Jesus, Mary, and Joseph…[and is not] smaller than 4 feet by 4 feet” be displayed in front of city hall.

Others formed a group called Citizens for Religious Freedom to derail the amendment. Local clergy, government leaders, business owners and other residents came together not only to avert an expensive lawsuit, but to preserve their religious liberty, the holiday’s sanctity and the community’s interfaith harmony.

They were rightly concerned that the trinkets necessary to sufficiently secularize a government-sponsored display would denigrate Christmas’s religious significance. Displaying a crèche on church property, however, would allow it to be arranged without government interference.

Members of the interfaith Berkley Clergy Association took issue with the idea that “the government should direct or decide where and when we mark our respective religious celebrations, and what should be displayed, and how our various religious symbols are to be used.…” The group urged voters to remember that “the responsibility to teach religion and to display religious items rests with families and churches, not the government.”

The Detroit News reported that CRF succeeded yesterday when the amendment was rejected 55 percent to 45 percent. Congratulations, to all Berkley’s citizens for religious freedom! This is an important win.

By Lauren Smith