This week in Christian history: Mojave Cross, Presbyterian university chartered, Augustine baptized

By Michael Gryboski, Mainline Church Editor Sunday, April 24, 2022

U.S. Supreme Court sides with Mojave Cross – April 28, 2010

This undated photo shows the Mojave War Memorial cross on an outcrop known as Sunrise Rock in the Mojave National Preserve. | AP/Liberty Legal Institute, Henry and Wanda Sandoz

This week marks the anniversary of when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that a land exchange allowing a cross to remain on a memorial in the Mojave Desert was legal.

The case stemmed from the Veterans of Foreign Wars placing a memorial with a Latin cross in 1934 on public land to honor American soldiers killed in World War I. The memorial eventually served as a location for Easter services.

In 2001, a state employee took issue with the Christian imagery of the memorial and filed suit, with the government transferring the land to a private group in 2004 in a failed attempt to end the litigation.

“The goal of avoiding governmental endorsement does not require eradication of all religious symbols in the public realm,” concluded Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority.

“Here, one Latin cross in the desert evokes far more than religion. It evokes thousands of small crosses in foreign fields marking the graves of Americans who fell in battles, battles whose tragedies are compounded if the fallen are forgotten.”