I just thought about this today as i was leaving one of the high schools in my city after a football game. The school is the oldest still in use in the city, and was founded in 1913. The building project itself was started (and almost finished) by the catholics or lutherans, i forget which. They ran out of money about 3/4s of the way through, and were stuck with an incomplete building. The city just happened to need a new, larger building for a highschool at the time. Good deal, instead of having a useless building, the church sold it to the city. However, all around the outside of the building (and maybe on the inside too…i don’t go to school there) are crosses, a fwe bible verses and some depictions of biblica events. Personally, i don’t think it’s that big a deal. I’m atheist, and don’t want religion in my school, but i can’t justify spending money (and i’m guessing quite a bit of it to boot) to get rid of this sort of passive ‘support’ of a religion in schools. what do you guys think?
I don’t think it’s a problem. As long as the kids understand that these are all just remnants of when this building used to be (or was going to be) a church, and not an indorsement on the part of the state, it’s fine.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or restricting the free exercise thereof.
IMHO, spending tax dollars to REMOVE religious images would, in effect, respect atheists and non-Christians. It would be taxpayer support of non traditional religions.
I believe that choosing not to change a situation is ethically the same as deciding to bring that situation into being. Thus, if the religious paraphernalia is not removed, the state is making the same decision as they would be if they had decided to put said paraphernalia on an existing school building. Tough call, though.
In a perfect scenario, the city would have taken the cost of removing the religious icons and verses into account when they made a bid to purchase the building. That (apparently) didn’t happen, but the city should still remove them. In the long run, it would probably be cheaper to hire a contractor to sandblast Jesus off of the building than it would be to pay damages out to a Muslim/Atheist/Jew/Buddhist/Agnostic/Hindu/Scientologist/etc. who sues the city because their kids have to attend school in a “religiously oppressive” environment.
My opinion is that removing the images wouldn’t show a preference to atheists or non-Christians. In order to show preference to an atheist, you would have to replace the bible verses with arguments against the existence of God or any higher power. In order to show preference to other religions, you would have to put quotes from their scriptures and their religious symbols all over the building. By not removing the Christian theme, the city is by default supporting Christianity (unless this building has historical significance and needs to be preserved as is).