Religiousity versus Secular Majestry in the National Parks?

By Jane Holtz Kay

For those who care about the national parks, it seemed to be the winter of discontent. With stewardship for nature's spectacles already under siege, national and local budget cuts were afflicting America's "purple mountains majesty." Looking at the sunset hours in the nation's green legislation attacked by the administration, America's national parks and historic memorials are icons under siege, understaffed and poorly maintained, with mismanagement, low funding and still lower moral of its workforce, the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Even as overall stewardship suffers such assaults-- and the Bush efforts to undermine clean air and gut the mountaintop removal buffer zone-- undercut morale, a still more strange and appalling assault appeared. An attack on the integrity of the likes of Grand Canyon, California's Mojave National Preserve and other precious natural and historic monuments roused whistleblowers at the insider-activist National Park Service members of PEER (Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility) as the insider organization denounced a new, illegal and pernicious trend: the conversion of magnificent secular spaces into fundamentalist religious sites.

Reeling at the religious right's efforts to turn national wonders into faith-based parks, these Park Service employees decried several religious gestures on scenic preserves. These included the eight-foot cross atop a 30-foot high rock outcropping at the Mojave Preserve and evangelical intervention at Grand Canyon and elsewhere. Turning from employees to activists, the whistleblowers denounced the influx of fundamentalist doctrine and Christian symbols at their sites, calling them exclusionary, undemocratic and counter to both the spirit of the parks and the constitution's first amendment. Circulating their press releases and securing publicity for several months, the irate employees decried the National Park Service's blatant failure to protect their preserves and to separate church from state earned coverage across the country.

The conspicuous fracus began at the Grand Canyon where the Evangelical Sisterhood of Mary placed religious tracts on three bronze plagues along the Canyon's South Rim (after "God touched the hearts of officials to give permission," in their words). Seen as exclusionary, inappropriate and in violation of said rights, the local ranger ordered them out Šonly to be countermanded by his Washington boss, National Park Service Deputy Director Donald Murphy. Murphy canceled his staffer's removal of the psalms and nixed the ruling of the Washington legal eagles in the department of the interior who had agreed they violated first amendment rights.

More outrageous to park employees, the Washington chief packed the religious objects back to the viewing areas on the Canyon's South Rim, apologizing "obsequiously" to the nuns for "any intrusion resulting from" their peripatetic state, and offering up three psalms and a pledge to "further legal analysis and policy review" before any new action is taken. Within the blink of heaven's eye, the removed icons were back on the ground and Washington Park Service employees were steaming.

The idea of Murphy over-riding the ranger and offering acts of contrition for a takeover contrary to the law of the land alarmed outsiders, provoked PEER's in-house critics to issue a statement of indignation at how creationism and divine intervention, as defined by the Religious Right, had impacted the parks artifacts and natural inspirationŠ in conflict with President Bush's earlier stated support for policies based on "sound science."

Not only at Grand Canyon, but elsewhere, it seemed, National Park supporters were feeling like soldiers-of-misfortune in the eye of heaven (or perhaps mere acolytes to their fundamentalist president) as he began to endorse and infuse these and other natural wonders and historic memorials with a shot of literary religiosity and creationism.) For, unbelievable as the news sent over cyberspace appeared, there was more to come. The National Park Service had gone further at Grand Canyon endorsing the preaching of creationist ideas by permitting the distribution of a religious right tract describing the formulation of this geological wonder as an act of a single millennium by the Creator, rather than as the evolution of geological eons standing in the "Science" (not even "Inspiration") section of government-endorsed stores and information centers.

Chief among the public display of theology in the U.S. Park Service's supposed "science" section was the Bible Belt-esque tract: Grand Canyon, A Different View. Written by Tom Vail and his wife, the "founders of Canyon Ministries," offering "Christ-centered voyages through the canyon," noted Amazon-- "a creationist's delight, bearing the imprimatur of the federal government.

To be sure, this is an era when the public trend seems to favor politicians speaking of the spiritual and the Almighty. But it also remains a pluralistic era in a country whose religious and ethnic diversity go beyond one single god or government­endorsed religion. This American reality is a far cry from the political reality the Park Service's Bush-fed fundamentalist dogma ignoring everyone from atheists to non-Christians in a "sacred ground" for all visitors, from Native Americans given sacred, untouchable sites within the system to off-and-on again pantheists, tourists and agnostics enamored of the park for its own pride of place, critics observed.

Finding ethereal or spiritual values in, say, the splendid environs of architect Fay Jones' gem of a chapel in the woods of Arkansas for a public prayer-in, is a proper place for such sentiments. And, indeed, the vintage 19th century inculcations of the might of god at, say, the Old Man of the Mountains in New Hampshire may have a period quaintness, especially with its demise in last summer's earthquake. But the Park Service fundamentalist policies demanding that an ever more secular and diverse nation of Muslim, Christian, Jewish, and Kwanzaa (not to mention, non-believing) Americans have their public space contoured to a monolithic god was offensive to those who honor the inviolable principles and declarations of the founding fathers and the laws of the nation. And the news of this Beltway barrage of religiosity on public space spread in the media.

To be sure, the invocation and infusion of God in the Great Outdoors has entered the lexicon of nature writers for eons and finds its way into the vocabulary of nature writers today in their more playful moments. "The ancients believed the forest was populated with spirits---maybe they were right," writes conservationist John H. Mitchell, editor of Audubon's Sanctuary magazine giving an nod to druids and "the old demigods of trees and springs and groves" in his article on "The Forest Primeval".

"When Jesus comes again, and he asks, 'Where are the desert tortoises that I left on the northern edge of Mojave Desert' we may not be so quick to say, 'Well, we needed an extra 18 holes of golf,'" High Country News, the secular guardian of the western landscape, has also invoked the Almighty with humor, quoting Paul Cox, "ethnobotanist and Mormon environmentalist." But the sculptural and ecumenical infusions of religious artifacts and ideas across the country has civil libertarians and everyday citizens angry at the branding of their natural preserves by the religious right.

Specifically, California's Mojave National Preserve surmounted by its crucifix has become the subject of a lawsuit for corrupting and converting this natural treasure with a Christian branding. Meanwhile, another clamor has arisen as fundamentalist groups alter historic built monuments interpreting American history. Under the sway of conservative religious groups, the Lincoln Memorial's display of video tapes highlighting the many public marches since 1995 has edited the past, excluding any images or accounts of gatherings to support gay rights or reproductive rights.

Civil libertarians have found some relief in the legal arena. In a lawsuit against the National Park Service, brought by the ACLU at the behest of Frank Buono, former park service management employee, on behalf of PEER the eight-foot high Latin Cross atop the high rocky mound in California's Mojave National Preserve is being contested. The suit claims that the cross is "a sectarian symbol on government owned land" not allowed just as Yellowstone and other parks and individuals are not open to erect "freestanding, permanent, political billboards or advertisements." The lawsuit also challenges the encroachment of the religious icons as a form of prohibited commercial speech, parallel to erecting freestanding permanent billboards or advertisements" in a national park.

The Mojave Cross Case suit launched by the ACLU, still pending before the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, argues that "the placement of the cross on federally owned land has the purpose and effect of promoting religions and constitutes an endorsement of religion as well as one particular faith to the exclusion of others" as protected by the 14th amendment. And, troubles notwithstanding, communication outreach officer Charles Offutt says that the response, deploring the fact that it's become a regular practice to open doors to the Christian fundamentalist groups "has become incredible." Expanding beyond the power of the religious right wing, he condemns the fact that the Grand Canyon ranger was overruled and forced to apologize "the triumph of science by politics."

Surely, if all this weren't so outrageous, it would be surreal. Picture a faith-based tribute to Niagara Falls with a statue of Noah who built an arc to escape the Almighty's watery wrath. Imagine a memorial at a Native American site, with a statue to a god-fearing Custer on his last stand. Bring Mel Gibson's "The Passion of Jesus Christ" into grammar schools. Stewards are not amused. "The Park Service leadership now caters exclusively to conservative Christian fundamentalist groups," says Jeff Ruch, PEER Executive Director, multiplying "fundamentalist access to the decision makers in the White House forcing the re-writing of history."

The irony, of course, is that these places of spectacular beauty should inspire admiration and reflection in their own right. America's natural and historic memorials are, or should be, testaments to the unity of nationhood and the omnipresence of awe, or even pantheism, that invites us to respect the planet and the splendors of this continent without creating the authorship of some creator. By sharing the sacredness of nature, the wonder and biodiversity of earth and the beauty of these rare places, our sacred sites could offer unity amidst diversity and a reverence common to all in this polyglot, poly-ecclesiastical, largely secular America under siege.

A condensed version of the above appeared in the May 2004 Landscape Architecture critic at large column.

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