Re-Post:
REVIEW & OUTLOOK
Washington's Commandments
The capital is rife with religious symbols. Shh! Don't tell the ACLU!
Sunday, November 30, 2003 12:01 a.m. EST
When this nation's citizens sat down Thursday for their Thanksgiving turkey, most began their meal with another traditional American custom: grace. These days grace increasingly is held to be one of those things that should remain purely private. But from the Mayflower Compact through George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, public acknowledgment of Providence as the source of both our law and our blessings has long been a prominent feature of American civic life too.
That's easy to lose sight of amid the turmoil over the recent removal of Judge Roy Moore's Ten Commandments display from the Alabama Supreme Court or the seasonal wrangling over how just how many snowmen it takes for a crèche on public property to pass legal muster. But when Human Events intern Carrie Devorah took her camera around the nation's capital, she found that our federal buildings and monuments are filled with religious imagery. The result is a striking photo essay called "God in the Temples of Government," available at the conservative weekly's Web site (HumanEventsOnline.com).
Not surprisingly, the Ten Commandments and Moses--the law and the lawgiver--feature prominently. Start with the large seal of the Commandments on the floor of the National Archives. Then move to the bronze statue of Moses in the Library of Congress. And let's not forget the Supreme Court, which features Moses both at the center on the East Portico as well as on a frieze inside the courtroom (less well known is that the prophet Mohammed appears on another frieze).
Miss Devorah also captures the stained glass window of a kneeling George Washington, hands clasped as he recites the King James version of the 16th Psalm. She includes too a quotation from Lord Tennyson hanging in the Library of Congress rotunda: "One God. One Law. One Element. And One Far-Off Divine Event To Which The Whole Creation Moves."
We could add the carving of the Ten Commandments on the wooden doors to the Supreme Court. The marble relief of the face of Moses that faces directly opposite the Speaker's chair in the House of Representatives. Or the depiction in the Capitol rotunda of the sister ship of the Mayflower, the Speedwell, where the Bible is open on the chaplain's lap and the Pilgrim motto, "In God We Trust, God With Us," plainly visible on the ship sails.
Miss Devorah's photos only scratch the surface of America's religious heritage. But they help remind us of the link between the faith of our forefathers and the freedoms that all Americans--believers and nonbelievers--give thanks for today. |
