In Idaho today, the Kootenai County Constitution Party held the most idiotic protest I’ve ever heard of. At 5:30 this afternoon, they held a rally demanding the removal of a statue of a religious figure from a temporary public installation of art organized by the Arts Commission of Coeur D’Alene, Idaho.
The Constitution Party activists denounced the statue as a violation of the separation of church and state. You can see the statue in the graphic to the right of this text. Now, guess which statue from the 2011-2012 Art Currents Coeur D’Alene Public Art installation the group claims is unconstitutional.
It’s not the statue of Rachel, a character from the Old Testament.
It’s not the statue of St. Francis of Assisi, a figure of Christian devotion.
No, the only religious statue that the Kootenai County Constitution Party rejects is the statue of Ganesha, a hindu deity. Isn’t that curious?
Regular readers of Irregular Times know that we take the separation of church and state very seriously. Why, just yesterday, we published an article objecting to a prayer rally Governor Rick Perry to which has granted the status of an official Texas state government event, a rally in which only Christians will be allowed to participate. Our article pointed out that this rally is a violation of the separation of church and state because the government-sponsored rally was created as an explicitly religious event, and because the rally is open only to members of one religion.
The Coeur D’Alene art installation is different. It is not a violation of the separation of church and state because, although it is sponsored through the local government, the art display is not itself religious in nature. If an artist submitted a piece of work that happened to be religious, that was okay, but it wasn’t the point. The art was judged on the basis of its aesthetic merit, not on the basis of its ideological content.
Furthermore, the Coeur D’Alene art installation was open to art of different religious traditions. That’s clearly shown by the fact that the subjects chosen for display included two from the Judeo-Christian tradition, but also one from the Hindu tradition.
What’s more, art with no religious connotations at all form the majority of the statues selected by the Art Commission. These include a statue of a moose, entitled “Moose”; a statue of a deer, entitled “High Tailin’ It”; and a blue-green abstract curve, entitled “Bud’s Ripple”.
The Kootenai County Constitution Party didn’t seem to stop and think about this. Though information about Art Currents is easily available online, the organization doesn’t seem to be aware that Judeo-Christian religious figures are included in the display. On the group’s web site, a representative of the Kootenai County Constitution Party wrote, “I’d be surprised if they have ever approved a symbol of Christian art.”
The Kootenai County Constitution Party also didn’t take the time to notice that the very same artist who created the Ganesha statue also created the Saint Francis of Assisi statue. If they had bothered to check, would it have occurred to them that the artist,Rick Davis, is choosing subjects that he regards as aesthetically interesting, rather than trying to use sculpture to spread a particular religion?
My guess is that it wouldn’t have occurred to them. The most frank assessment I can make of the people at the Kootenai County Constitution Party is that they’re rather dense. In their political party platform, they declare, “This great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ.” I’m scratching my head trying to decipher the logic behind that sentence, but one thing is clear to me: There is no mention of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the Constitution. Instead, the Constitution bans government establishment of religion and forbids religious tests for public office.
The Kootenai County Constitution Party seems less concerned with the Constitution than it is afraid of anything non-Christian. In its protest of the Ganesha statue this afternoon, the Kootenair County Constitution Party called the statue an “abomination” and an “idol”. They called Ganesha a “demon”.
Demon – now that’s an interesting choice of words. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word “demon” is an ancient Greek term that refers to a deity, a divine spirit, a guiding spirit, a source of fortune and destiny. Socrates considered his demon to be his “divine principle or inward oracle”, an aspect of himself, really. It was only ancient Jewish religious authorities, and after them Christians, that turned the positive term of inspiration into a name for something evil.
That twisting of creative inspiration into something dark and wicked is rather similar to what the Kootenai County Constitution Party has done to the Ganesha statue of Coeur D’Alene.
Can you provide a source for this claim?
Hope you don’t mind me stepping on your toes, J. Clifford, but:
http://m.spokesman.com/stories/2011/jun/10/hindu-god-sculpture-draws-critics-in-cda/
“Brannan said government officials nationwide have been hypocritical about the separation of church and state when it comes to artwork. He said when Christians want to place public artwork depicting, for example, the Ten Commandments, those monuments regularly are turned away, but symbols of other religions are accepted.”
– that’s Kootenai County Constitution Party Chairman Daniel Brannan, completely ignoring the two Christian statues in the set, as J. Clifford points out.
Oh, and KCP, I’ve posted two comments on the Kootenai County Constitution Party web site about this matter, but they haven’t been approved, although a subsequent comment has been approved.
Are you you guys afraid of letting your followers know the truth about this?
Update: The Kootenai Constitution Party still hasn’t published the comments I left on its article on this subject. I guess they don’t want their members to get acquainted with the facts in this case.