TruthBook Religious News Blog

Voters will get their say Nov. 6 on whether city should display manger scene on public ground.

Jennifer Chambers / The Detroit News

The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life conducted a poll in December 2005 that asked:

Should displays of Christmas symbols like nativity scenes and Christmas trees be allowed on government property, or not?

83 percent: Should be allowed
11 percent: Should not be allowed
4 percent: Doesn't matter/Don't care
2 percent: Don't know/refused

Of the 83 percent who supported the idea:
27 percent: Only if other symbols are displayed
44 percent: OK for Christmas symbols to be displayed alone.

The survey was conducted Dec. 7-11 and included 1,502 respondents.

Carlos Osorio / Associated Press

Because of the controversy and threats of lawsuits, the nativity scene shifted from city hall to area churches. This is at the Berkley First United Methodist Church in 2006. See full image

BERKLEY -- Christmas may be weeks away, but a quarrel that has become an annual holiday tradition across America is in full swing: heated disputes over religious displays on public property.

An infant Jesus, mother Mary and Joseph are again at the center of this long-brewing legal controversy, this time in the city of Berkley, where in an unprecedented election on Nov. 6, voters will decide whether the government should be required to display a nativity at City Hall.

Rulings from the highest court in the land have been anything but consistent on the issue of religious displays in the public square, U.S. Constitutional scholars agree. And so the debate rages on the meaning of the oft-cited but equally vague Establishment Clause -- one of two clauses of the First Amendment that govern the relationship of government to religion -- and Thomas Jefferson's call for a "wall of separation between church and state."

These highly emotional disputes -- where citizens embroil themselves in battles with their local governments and courts over the right to display and not to display -- have become so common nationwide they've been dubbed "The Christmas Wars."

Yet public opinion polls show a majority of Americans favor religious displays on public property.

In December 2005, a poll by the Pew Forum found 83 percent of Americans agreed that displays of Christmas symbols like nativity scenes and Christmas trees should be allowed on government property. Forty-four percent of those respondents said it was OK for Christmas symbols to be displayed alone.

For at least two decades -- some say longer -- Berkley has displayed the modest nativity scene on a small patch of grass behind City Hall on Coolidge Highway.

The figures, along with the three wise men, animals, an angel, a wooden manger and scattered piles of hay, stood quietly on the frozen patch of ground, fixtures in the predominantly Christian, Woodward Avenue suburb.

After the American Civil Liberties Union threatened the city with a lawsuit in 2005, it moved a Santa mailbox closer to the nativity scene. But the ACLU returned in 2006 and the council sent the figures packing after examining several options from its legal department and enduring lengthy public discussion.

The city's nativity tradition has bothered many around town, including resident Richard Scott, who calls a nativity scene, or creche, on government property inappropriate.

Scott, a self-described activist, is distributing a statement to his neighbors encouraging them to oppose the measure and support the compromise that allowed the creche to be displayed outside town churches. Scott said returning the nativity to City Hall grounds would convey an impression of a closed community, indifferent to those not among the Christian faith.

Both sides in the controversy can point to different rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court to strengthen their long-running argument.

The Supreme Court has found a nativity can be constitutional if it's part of a larger display of secular decorations...

Language in the proposed charter amendment, which must pass by 50.1 percent of the vote, says the city must display the nativity "in compliance with governing law" that includes -- at minimum -- an infant Jesus, Mary and Joseph.

Language in the proposed amendment says the display is to be modeled after one in nearby Clawson, which includes a nativity scene surrounded by numerous secular items and was ruled constitutional by the United States Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, the federal court that governs Michigan.

Berkley Mayor Marilyn Stephan said many residents don't think it makes any difference where the nativity ends up. Stephan supports allowing the clergy to rotate the city's nativity.

Stephan said the city is not in possession of numerous other secular items like snowmen and has no plans to buy them.

These "Christmas Wars" that emerge every December in towns across America are all part of a cultural war in the United States that spans several hot-button issues...

"It's a question of social conservatives and more secular, more liberal Americans over abortion, same-sex marriage, God in the public square," he said.

"This is a constant kind of struggle. Sometimes it becomes more."

Labels: Berkley, Carlos Osorio, Christmas, Jennifer Chambers, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, separation of church and state