Does Puerto Rico have ceremonial deism established through case law? Separation of Church and State appears to be explicitly enshrined in their constitution, yet the commonwealth’s motto is His name is John and the coat of arms has a lamb with a cross on a bible. How does that work if not through ceremonial deism (which in this case would seem to be really stretching it)?
Why would the symbols on the coat of arms have anything to do with the establishment of religion? A number of states incorporate crosses in their coats of arms or state flags, especially as part of the British flag (which includes the crosses of St. George, St. Andrew, and St. Patrick). The New Mexico flag incorporates a sacred Zia sun symbol; this does not mean the state has established the Zia religion.
The name of their capital is San Juan de Puerto Rico, after St John the Baptist. The symbols merely reflect that, and they are a lot older than any explicit formulation of the separation of church and state.
I’m reasonably sure that Scandinavian countries aren’t planning on taking their crosses off their flags any more than my home town is, or any more than my family plans on taking the crescent moon off our coat of arms (no, we’re not Muslim).
Does the crescent moon imply that you once were? Up until the 1400s or sometime in that timeframe?
As far as mottos go, five states and territories mention God in their mottos:
Arizona: Ditat Deus (God Enriches)
Florida: In God We Trust.
Ohio: With God, All Things Are Possible.
South Dakota: Under God, the People Rule.
American Samoa: Samoa, Muamua Le Atua (Samoa, Let God Be First)
And one of the Kentucky state mottoes is Deo gratiam habeamus (Let us be grateful to God).
No, that we kicked their asses periodically: it’s face-down. (And thanks for taking the opening)
Lots of coats of arms from (current and previous) Spain include moor’s heads, crosses, face-down crescents, mitres, keychains (St Peter), St Jameses… some people would like to take them all out, but then, they’re the same people who think you can understand Spanish history and Spanish current events “without bringing religion into it.”
Symbols in heraldry don’t necessarily mean anything at all. They may have been adopted simply because someone found them aesthetically pleasing, or functional – a clear, bold shape, easily distinguished at a distance. The more abstract the symbol is, the more likely that this is the reason for choosing it.
Or, they may originally have had (often quite trivial) meanings now lost – e.g. somebody used an acorn symbol because oak trees had a particular significance or particular association for him, but the memory of that has long been lost.
A heraldic crescent does not necessarily have any meaning and, if it does have a meaning, it may have nothing to do with Islam. The crescent is most commonly a “mark of cadence”, used to indicate the arms of a second son. It is also, of course, suggestive of the moon.
Precisely because of the crescent is so widespread in heraldic use, anybody looking for a symbol which actually pointed to Islam, and especially to conflict with Islam, would normally choose something less ambiguous, such as the head of a Turk.
UDS, my family is from Northern Spain and our location meant that we spent a couple centuries fighting the Muslims every other summer, with occasional upgrades to every summer. In our case it is meant to represent defense from the Muslim neighbors, promise. There’s written records of when we got the crescent and when we got the damero (checkerboard) around it. Before adding the crescent to them, we had only the two wolves common to our lastname’s precedent (which means wolf).
Didn’t mean to question your own family history, Nava, or the significance of your own arms, points on which you will obviously know a great deal more than me. I was more responding to Frank’s assumption that the crescent featuring in your arms indicated a connection with Islam. As it happens, he was correct (although it wasn’t the connection he assumed), but nine times out of ten he’d be wrong.
Sorry I jumped on you.
There’s other symbols which could also be religious but which normally aren’t, like suns. Some crosses are decoration; those with specific symbolism often have specific shapes (a Maltese Cross or a Cross of Santiago would mean ancestors in those orders).
Addressing the OP and bypassing the Nava family arms (save one side comment), this is precisely what the legal fiction of “ceremonial deism” was erected to encompass: Casual usage of religious symbols and customs that do not oblige a behavior of anyone and which in general pass the Lemon test. For example, suppose a white X (saltire) on a blue field is a part of the symbols associated with the San Andres Central School Warriors high school athletic teams. The saltire is taken from the “arms” (local symbology) of the City of San Andres, where the school is located, which in turn derives its name from the Mision de San Andres de Fonseca, the old Franciscan mission founded there on Nov. 30 (St. Andrew’s Day) at a dry spring (fonseca), using the symbol for St. Andrew which in turn commemorates his legendary crucifixion on an X-shaped cross. By the time you’ve got to the varsity team, you have any religious symbolism at a greater degree of separation than a newborn Kyrgyz girl is from Kevin Bacon. Further, there is a secular purpose – to tie team to school and thence to city, and there is neither compulsion nor ‘excessive entanglement with a religious group’.
Now, how this connects to Puerto Rico (and to Nava’s family arms): Many European countries, Spain being one of the foremost, use quasi-religious symbology to represent things not religious in nature. An embellishment of keys, for example, may not specifically symbolize St. Peter, but an ancestor’s bravery at the Battle of Fuerte San Pedro, or some similar symbolism having nothing to do with religion.
Puerto Rico’s motto and arms are of this sort – they maintain historical connection with the arms and motto granted by the Spanish Crown, and symbolize, not a specifically religious connection, but one with San Juan as capital and original settlement, etc.
The connection to anything specifically religious is so attenuated as to be effectively nonexistent.
(Note that there are instances of supposed ‘ceremonial deism’ in public ceremony, wtc./. that I believe are in fact violations of the Establishment Clause – but that cavil does not apply here.)
Thanks all for the replies, but I don’t think I made myself clear. I always thought the reason that all those state mottoes and flags were cool was because of ceremonial deism.
Of course, those symbols aren’t directly related to “establishing a church” per se, but “under god” in the in pledge was tried in that respect in Newdow, so it is never clear what exactly falls into that category.
All those Scandinavian countries aren’t going to change their flags, but they also don’t have ceremonial deism established in their countries and all have national churches.
I guess what I am actually asking is what relationship do Supreme Court ruling have on Puerto Rico? If the Supreme Court establishes ceremonial deism as legit in the States proper does that trickle down to Puerto Rico or would it have to be tried separately in their courts? If it doesn’t trickle down, has something similar been established?
Finally, all the references to God in the other states and territories are to a generic God thereby allowing all religious people to feel included. Unfortunately, atheists and agnostics are left out of that. If a state when it was founded had as its motto “Jesus Saves” would that really cut it in present day? That starts to move away from the deism of ceremonial deism towards ceremonial Christianity.
Puerto Rico is part of the United States, and the decisions of the Supreme Court are binding on Puerto Rico as they are in the rest of the US, and the people of Puerto Rico have the protections of the first amendment. So, were the Supreme Court to hypothetically rule that the coat of arms violated the first amendment, then Puerto Rico would have to change it.
And implicit in that last answer is, the PR CoA would probably have to be specifically challenged (by someone with standing before the court) to have it expunged of religious allegory.
ISTM the elements of so-called “ceremonial deism”, when you look close, are largely symbols, styles, rites and affectations that were originally outright Christian, but that by their use in a nondevotional role as heraldic symbols that are referential to past history (the PR CoA), or rote, ritualistic phrasings ("…and nothing but the Truth, so help me God") are deemed to have lost in everyday usage any true witnessing effect. The Commonwealth could argue that the symbols of the PR CoA that are not directly representative of Spain, are referential to the historic founding of the original settlement of San Juan Bautista, and that therefore heraldics allusive to John the Baptist and his preachings are mere allegories to the founding of San Juan, not devotional icons. And a court in PR would buy it (besides, the likelihood of a local court taking the case, and of any PRican citizen or lawyer taking it to Federal Court for the District of San Juan, both asymptotically approach zero.)
Would be an interesting case!
It so happened, that shortly after the USA took over PR, they*** tried ***providing their new subjects with a proper “American” style arms and seal. Epic fail, hated by everyone… Was yanked before 4 years passed – Treasury kept it for themselves until mid-century, though – for a seal based on the now-current *re-creation *of the ancient arms (there’s actually an issue that the original blazon description is incomplete and makes reference to an illustration that is missing, and the surviving pre-20th century illustrations we DO have are widely conflictive as to what it really used to look like).
There WERE alternate locally-drawn arms of Puerto Rico, proposed in 1895 together with what is now our official flag by the political groups advocating separation from Spain. However unlike the flag, that alternate CoA never became adopted by the populace as “theirs” and instead it was the use of the Royal Arms of 1511 that was seen as affirming of our identity (So, we got a Cuban-designed flag and a Spanish-designed coat of arms to affirm “our” identity. Irony line forms at the left. My hypothesis is that the only people caring about heraldry in 1905 Puerto Rico were hispanophile upper-crusters. )
The failed temporary coat of arms is here.
Thanks, **Captain Amazing **-- BTW in that FOTW page, the posts by “Blas Delgado” are the ones best supported by historic documentation. Scroll up and down to see the other historic variations on the arms and seal. I need to see where I can find an image of the 1895 proposed “native” Arms …