Faith Under Fire in the Desert

Story & Photos by Steve Brown, December 2006/January 2007 issue

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

– The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution

For thousands of years, mankind has searched for spiritual meaning in the desert.  The desert’s isolation, expanse, and extremes have honed the senses of those seeking a deeper understanding of man’s relationship with the creator. Monks and hermits, pilgrims and poets have all turned to the desert in their quests, and those quests continue.

California’s Mojave Desert may not possess the same well documented spiritual pedigree as the deserts of the Middle East, but it unarguably does have both a rich spiritual history and significance.  Native American cultures acknowledge sacred sites throughout the desert, while later immigrants to these lands brought their own faiths.  Many who journey through this desert find it a place of spiritual replenishment and are inspired by its distant mountainous horizons and places of defiant life and utter stillness and silence.

In recent times, legal conflicts have arisen across our nation concerning the relationship between religious faith and government, stemming from one sentence in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution—16 words that mean one thing to one person, and, often enough, entirely something else to another. Taken at face value, one might ascertain the core meaning of these words: the federal government cannot make laws to create a state religion, and at the same time, shall not prohibit you or I from worshipping—or not—as we please. But how far to go to prevent that state religion or to protect our personal freedom is not so easy to define. Here in the Mojave, there are two cases where the “Establishment Clause,” as this sentence is known, has been put to the legal, if not moral, test.

In Yucca Valley, there is the case of Desert Christ Park, a 3.5 acre garden of larger-than-life sized statues in biblical scenes, dating from 1951. Near Cima, in the area that has become the Mojave National Preserve, there is the Mojave Cross, first erected in 1934. In the case of Desert Christ Park, the legal battle is long over, and the question is only whether the community cares enough to act to restore and preserve this site, or let it go entirely.   But the battle still continues out at Sunrise Rock, where a six- or seven-foot welded pipe cross stands covered with a hefty box, created as an interim measure by the National Park Service, which itself stands caught between the Plaintiff Frank Buono, a former NPS employee whose case against the cross is brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, and Congressman Jerry Lewis, local residents, and many of the 2.7 million members of the American Legion, who support the preservation of the cross.

But are these straightforward cases of “separation of church and state”? Do these two sites possess only religious significance? Or is there more to the story? Should Desert Christ Park’s statues, created by an eccentric artist awed by the powerful dawning of the atomic age, be left forgotten and decaying, or is there something worth saving from Yucca Valley’s mid-20th Century history? Do the simple heartfelt intentions of World War I veterans to honor their fallen comrades carry any weight generations later, or are those intentions just plain offensive and a threat to religious freedom? Are ACLU lawyers tenaciously guarding our Constitution, or running roughshod over it, warping the meaning of this founding document in order to profit and further their own agenda?  When do the rights of one individual have the right to override those of the majority? When must the rights of one individual be protected at all costs?  And which individual’s rights will be protected in the end? And at what expense?

 These two cases, comprising less than five acres of land, a handful of statues, and a small metal cross, have cost taxpayers more than $200,000 in legal fees to date. Has it been worth it?  And how do you determine the intrinsic worth of what has been handed down to you from the past? Is that not the roots of populist culture; and when you sever the roots, what happens to all that which comes after?

 The desert has yet to answer all of humanity’s spiritual questions.

Desert Christ Park

“The great Prince of Peace: Is he coming this way?
A-riding a tanky or a jeep?
Is the atom’s death plume the far better way?
Must millions now die in their sleep?

– Antone Martin, Christmas 1950

The angel at the entrance to the empty tomb looks battered.  Long absent is any sense of triumph at Christ’s resurrection after three days inside. Instead, a used condom and trash lie on the floor of the tomb, the holiness of the scene giving way to more base and secular acts of humanity.

I walk the grounds where some statues stand handless and headless, damaged by earthquakes, vandalism, and that old companion of time—neglect. I can’t help but feel both sorrow—and a little anger—that a place so special has been so abused and forgotten. It is a garden of sorrows, no longer the garden of Gethsemane.

But as a boy, it had been a garden of joy and wonder for me. No family camping trip or visit of any sort to the hi-desert was complete without a stop to Desert Christ Park.  Back before the Town of Yucca Valley grew into a bustling commercial strip mall stretching for miles down both sides of Highway 62, the stark white concrete statues of biblical scenes stood out in the emptiness of the desert, beckoning travelers to come and rest for a while.  It was as close to a church as my family ever got, and more in line with our beliefs—heartfelt creations of man set among natural beauty.

It all began back in the late 1940s when (Frank) Antone Martin, a former Douglas Aircraft worker in the Los Angeles area skilled at plaster casting who had made statues of dinosaurs for museum displays, created a larger-than-life-size statue of Christ beckoning across the distances. The statue, similar in style to Rio de Janiero’s mountaintop Christ the Redeemer, weighed several tons, and Martin’s plan was to install it dramatically overlooking the Grand Canyon. That, however, was not to be.

Finally, after earning a reputation of being “the Christ that wasn’t wanted,” Martin’s statue found a home in the more modest desert surroundings of Yucca Valley, thanks to the intervention of “Desert Pastor” Eddie Garver, who was a carpenter during the week, a pastor whenever needed and on weekends.

Martin and Garver’s relationship over the next decade was tumultuous, but by Easter Sunday of 1951, the first Easter sunrise service was held at the site.  TIME magazine covered the statue donation, possibly the highest profile press coverage that Yucca Valley has ever received—before or since.  With a population of only about 1,200, it was a public relations coup for the fledgling community, and by 1954, Easter sunrise services attracted “thousands of worshippers,” according to the Los Angeles Times.  Worshippers came to the park on horseback as part of Grubstake Days, the Times noted, and there were many more statues completed as well—those of the apostles, Jesus with small children, the Sermon on the Mount, and a beautiful little stone chapel designed by Frank Garske, made out of locally collected volcanic rock, with a revolutionary opening roof, so those who couldn’t fit inside the tiny building, could see and hear what was taking place inside.

By 1955, the park offered a special area for those on horseback during Easter sunrise services, and boasted 3,000 visitors monthly.  In one publication, it was referred to as the “Morongo Basin Lure,” a “must-see” attraction.

But what was the driving force behind Martin’s creation of this park full of biblical scenes? A devout Christian faith?  It appears that Martin was not raised in a religious family. During a written interview with Mrs. D.M. Lockette of Palm Springs, she asked the sculptor, “Does your family have a religious background?” Martin scrawled his answer, “None that I can remember.”

In a 1956 story in Desert magazine, Howard D. Clark, a friend of Martin’s, noted that Martin wanted the park dedicated to peace.  Martin, Clark said, was afraid of an atomic war.

“The only solution is in the hands of the people of the world’s greatest religions,” Clark quotes Martin. “I personally am not interested in what those creeds are—I am satisfied to know that none of them teach the killing of one’s fellow man... Too often, enemies will pray to the same god to destroy one another.”

Martin, it was said, chose to portray the Prince of Peace in his park because he considered Jesus Christ the greatest man of peace. Clark wrote that Martin’s “determined requirement” was that the park remained dedicated to all humanity without discrimination.  He wrote later of the park when it was called the Hi-Desert Shrine Park, that it had no affiliation with any church and was “a world peace shrine,” very similar to Martin’s earlier plans for the Grand Canyon location.  Martin, Clark said, was sick of designing weapons of death, and though Garver was both instrumental in the creation of the park and a pastor himself, the park operated independently of any church.

Martin died in 1961 at the age of 74.  He had lived a simple life in Yucca Valley for most of a decade, creating his shrine to peace.  He suffered a divorce for it, and even knocked the noses off many statues after being upset with Garver for showing up to Easter sunrise services in 1957 dressed in overalls. Garver had stayed up all night greeting the thousands of people arriving for the services, and didn’t have time to return home to change clothes, so he participated in his work clothes. Martin was livid, but eventually repaired the statues.

After Martin’s death, the park continued on with as many as 40,000 visitors per year coming from around the globe to walk among its statues. But at the time of his death, Martin didn’t consider the park he and Garver had created, a success.

“I wanted to make something of value!” he was quoted in a story Clark wrote for the 1962 Grubstake Days program. “I failed. It hasn’t accomplished a thing!”

By 1973 the park had become part of the Yucca Valley Park and Recreation District, and taxpayer funds were put to use caring for it.  It had been a boon to business and the community, and continued to draw visitors from afar.

In December 1981, Eddie Garver died. He had reportedly grown up a mean kid, and had reportedly even tried to knife a man in front of a church once (“And I meant to kill him too,” he is quoted as saying in TIME). Garver, according to TIME’s piece back in 1951, had been run over by a truck at the age of 14 though and spent the next 11 years in and out of hospitals.  During his lengthy recovery, he had found God and was ordained in 1944 at the age of 28.  Without his help, Martin’s vision for a garden of peace would never have transpired.

For many years, the park continued on, until an Establishment Clause lawsuit brought by five individuals through the ACLU finally prevailed on the basis of county ownership of the park (and later, when the Town of Yucca Valley incorporated and took over the park in 1990, the town’s ownership), being a violation of the separation of church and state.

Former plaintiff in the case against government ownership of Desert Christ Park, Jean Bertolette, a likeable local resident, commented recently that he hadn’t changed his mind about the park since the ACLU lawsuit.

“Just keep it out of the taxpayers’ money, that’s my only concern,” Bertolette noted in a telephone interview.  “No I haven’t [changed my position].  The religious connotation overweighs the rest of it considerably.  I’m not a devout Christian. I hate to see any taxpayer money used on this thing. If it’s so important for God to have this park, He ought to come down and take care of it.”

Bertolette did not seem to be well acquainted with Martin’s motivations for a garden of peace, but was supportive of the concept.

“Anything for peace, I’m all for,” he said, noting that in a world torn by violence, he wondered about God’s role.

At the end of the appeals process, the County of San Bernardino and the Town of Yucca Valley were reportedly left with about $180,000 in attorney’s fees owed to the ACLU, and were forced to sell the park, which they sold to the Hi-Desert Nature Museum Association.

The Association eventually decided to end its involvement with the park, and the nonprofit Desert Christ Park Foundation was formed, with successful local businessman Wolfgang Maschler as chairman. After an earthquake and the loss of public funding, there seemed to be a post-governmental future for the park.

But Maschler was killed in a tragic accident in January 2003, and with his death, volunteer momentum and community support seemed to wane. Mike Gillum is the current president of the Foundation, but the park’s future is rapidly coming to a pivotal point where it will either receive substantial support from the community—or cease to exist.

“I’ve been president for four years,” Gillum said, noting that his wife also serves on the board of directors. “Our initial intent was to help out, not be totally responsible. This is  something beyond us.  We don’t see decent support from the community, or churches.  We volunteer at the [California] Welcome Center, and we see interest [in the park] from all over the world, but not from this community. There are a lot who care, but more who don’t.  It’s too bad, it’s such a beautiful area.”

Gillum says monetary assistance for the park is helpful, but what is even more in need are volunteers to help oversee all aspects of operating the park and the nonprofit organization which supports it.

“We need people interested in being involved in making decisions,” Gillum explained. “We live near the park and have had to paint over red paint graffiti about ‘666’ and the devil. We spend hours cleaning that stuff up because we have an element who don’t respect property.  It becomes too much, having to undo vandalism.”

Gillum said that there is a woman from the Bay Area who is skilled in concrete restoration and that the Foundation has been attempting to get her to come and assess the state of the statues in the park and help restore them, but she hasn’t been able to get to this project yet.  He noted that the park had suffered another setback this past summer.

“We’ve been trying for the last three years to get the park registered with the state as a historical site,” he said.  “We finally got around to starting that process five to six months ago, then the Sawtooth Fire happened and the archaeologist working on that had all his files burned up. Now he’s got to start again from scratch. Who knows how long that’ll be?”

And while Gillum has a passion for the park, he is faced with hard decisions concerning its future. Ironically, the park has been granted tens of thousands of dollars in taxpayer money through Community Block Grant funds, but Gillum is reluctant, at this point, to spend it.

“If nothing’s going to happen, I can’t see investing there,” he explained. But he still is puzzled over the lack of local support for the park.  “It is so unique. My wife and I have seen other things [similar in nature] in other places in the country and this is a unique piece of art. In Arizona, they have religious statues supported and paid for by government agencies. But they’re not near the asset we have here.”

As for the lawsuit that ended public ownership of the park, Gillum simply noted, “The ACLU needs to get on to things that are more important.”

And so, Gillum said, does he.  His wife and himself have other plans for retirement and at the moment, there doesn’t appear to be many candidates willing to step forward to take his place. And time is running out for Desert Christ Park.

“If nobody is willing to take it over, I don’t know [what will happen],” Gillum noted. “By February, we hope to be away.  Either somebody takes over, or it gets closed down.”

To contact the Desert Christ Park Foundation
for information on becoming a member or volunteering, please contact:
Mike Gillum
(760)365-3697,
or visit
www.desertchristpark.org
for more information.

The Mojave Cross

For God and country.
–The creed of the American Legion

It was supposed to be a memorial to war dead, this inconspicuous cross on top of Sunrise Rock in the Mojave National Preserve. Instead, it has become the front lines of a battle of wills between rural desert residents, the American Legion, and a powerful Congressman vs. a former National Park Service employee and the ACLU. But it all began simply when returning veterans of World War I emigrated to the desert for their health, and possibly for some solitude after the trials of war.  A group of these veterans erected a cross and a sign that read “The Cross. Erected in memory of the dead of all wars.”  The cross was erected by the Veterans of Foreign Wars Death Valley Chapter, the year was 1934, and the land it was set on was managed by the Bureau of Land Management.

Being close to the Cima Road, the cross began to be a meeting place, and, at some point, Easter sunrise services began to be held there.  Since that time, it has become a special place for the people who live in that area, and recently a wedding was conducted at Sunrise Rock. Henry and Wanda Sandoz became unofficial caretakers of the cross out of loyalty to a dying friend’s wishes.

“We were living in Mountain Pass and we were friends of [J.] Riley Bembrey,” Wanda noted. “Riley was a veteran of World War I and he was there when the cross was erected in 1934.”

Riley, she noted, was born in 1899, and had lived at his home, Riley’s Camp, near where the cross is located, since the 1920s.

“You’d think it’d be scuzzy,” said Henry about this old prospector’s home. “But the windows would shine.  He had no electricity—he lived six miles off Cima Road.”

The Sandoz family got to be close friends with Riley, who dressed for social occasions, wore red suspenders, and was, as Wanda noted, “a real gentleman” who liked his tea in a cup—with saucer.  Though Riley wasn’t a very social person, Henry and Riley hit it off and Riley was treated like family.  Though the original cross and sign were eventually vandalized and torn down, the cross would be replaced and repaired from time to time.  Every Easter, Henry noted, the cattlemen of that part of the Mojave, would provide a beef feast at the VFW hall in Mountain Pass after sunrise services were held at the Cross.

Wanda, a schoolbus driver, passed by the cross every day on her route, and kept an eye on it. It had been knocked down and chopped up, and not replaced yet, when Riley got sick. His daughter who lived in the city, brought him to her home.

“Riley got sick and he would call us and cry,” Wanda said. “He was so homesick.  He’d cry and just hang up.  One morning, his daughter called to tell us that he had passed away.  We were devastated.”

It was 1984. Riley had wanted to return home to Riley’s Camp to die, but never got the chance.  He made a last request. He told Henry he wanted somebody to look after the cross.

Posters were put up to let locals know Riley’s funeral would be held at the little cemetery at Riley’s Camp, a cemetery the Sandoz family still takes care of.  Counting Riley, five are buried there, including two miners poisoned by bad whisky and one killed in a mining accident.  More than 100 showed up for Riley’s funeral. Wanda wondered how they would feed such a crowd, but an Arby’s truck had an accident on the freeway, providing roast beef enough for the occasion.

Henry decided to make a metal cross out of welded pipe, and to prevent it from being easily vandalized, bolted it and cemented it into the rock, with the help of more than a few neighbors. They held a picnic to celebrate, and though they’ve had to repaint it several times, the cross still stands.

According to the National Park Service’s administrative history of the Mojave National Preserve, wherein the cross now stands, the BLM “paid little attention to the cross, which was only one of several on BLM desert lands, and the Park Service took a similarly laissez-faire attitude toward the memorial after the park was established.”

In May, 1999, however, a Buddhist monk (or perhaps not a real Buddhist monk—another story lies there), attempted to get permission to build a stupa at the site. The Park Service noted that citing their eventual intention to remove the cross, they denied the request.

Also in 1999, Frank Buono, a former employee of the National Park Service at the Mojave National Preserve, began working with the ACLU on efforts to have the cross removed.  The ACLU threatened to sue if their request to have it removed was not met.  According to the NPS account, Park Service Historian Mark Luellen spent several days researching the history of the cross and deemed it would not likely be eligible for the National Register of Historic Places due to its “dual purpose, both religious and as a memorial, plus the fact that it had been reconstructed several times.”

With local residents supportive of the cross, NPS staff didn’t move to immediately remove the cross, and according to the NPS account, word spread of the tiny memorial’s plight.

By 2000, Mojave National Preserve Superintendent Mary Martin called Henry to ask him to take the cross down, which he refused to do. When the Park Service covered the cross with a tarp and it was removed, Wanda noted that Martin would call and say that the couple had done it, or if they didn’t, they knew who had.  They denied ever having a hand in these acts of protest against covering the cross, or knowing who performed them, and noted that they believed such acts might provoke the Park Service into taking action on removing the cross.

When the ACLU contacted the Department of the Interior to ask if the Park Service had initiated compliance with their demands, the organization was informed that Preserve officials had decided to not take action. The ACLU repeated their threat of court action, noting that the court “would probably assess damages against government employees who knew about the cross but did nothing about it,” adding a personal level of legal threats to their argument, according to the Preserve’s NPS history.

This threat to personally seek damages from individual employees appeared to force the Preserve staff into action.  But Congressman Jerry Lewis added a rider to an appropriations bill prohibiting federal money being used to remove the cross. In March 2001, the ACLU filed suit and began to attract national media attention. In late 2001, Lewis added a rider to the Fiscal Year 2002 Defense Appropriations Bill to make the cross a national WWI veteran’s memorial and allocated $10,000 for a plaque. The ACLU continued with their lawsuit.

In 2002, U.S. District Court Judge Robert Timlin ruled in favor of the ACLU, that the cross constituted an “endorsement” of a particular religion by the federal government, and ordered it removed (though without specifying a particular date for the removal).  A land swap was then arranged—the one acre of land with Sunrise Rock on it would be trasnfered to the Barstow VFW post, in exchange for five acres of land that Henry and Wanda Sandoz owned inside the Preserve.

Timlin ruled that the land exchange, which had been approved by Congress in 2003 when Lewis inserted it into the FY 2004 Defense Appropriations Act, was “a sham,” and an “attempt by the government to evade the permanent injunction enjoining the display of the Latin cross” on land owned by the federal government.  This ruling has been appealed by the Department of Justice, and should be heard by the Ninth Circuit Court sometime in 2007. Other organizations opposed the land exchange, not necessarily because of the cross, but because of the possibility of setting a problematic precedent.

Hysterical hyperbole surrounding the controversy over the cross can get quite thick sometimes. Commentator Jane Holtz Kay wrote that the attempt to keep the cross is part of a “new, illegal and pernicious trend: the conversion of magnificent secular spaces into fundamentalist religious sites,” and includes it in a movement by the religious right to “turn natural wonders into faith-based parks.”  She rants, apparently ignorant of its origins, or at least omitting them from her argument, that the “crucifix” has become the subject of a lawsuit for “corrupting and converting this natural treasure with a Christian branding.”

A condensed version of her story appeared in a 2004 column in Landscape Architecture.  Her story does not appear to make any reference to the history or origins of the cross, or the fact that there is no right-wing fundamentalist campaign to keep it.

If there is a campaign, could it be one of secularists?  Rees Lloyd is an attorney and Commander of the American Legion District 21, Dept. of California.  Lloyd was an ACLU staff attorney for a couple of years, and noted in an interview that he is “not an inveterate ACLU hater.” A civil rights lawyer who cites a personal inspiration from working with Cesar Chavez, Lloyd noted that the ACLU’s focus has changed.

“What has happened is, I believe, over the years, the ACLU’s focus went from defending freedom of speech to denying freedom of religious speech and collecting millions of dollars in taxpayer attorney fees, and also using threat of imposition of court-ordered taxpayer fees as a club to compel local governmental bodies to comply with ACLU demands,” Lloyd noted. “Suits have been enormously profitable, and have allowed the ACLU to carry out their agenda to secularly cleanse the public square of our American history and heritage, if the symbols of that heritage have a religious aspect. This has happened because the ACLU has become the Taliban of American liberal secularism, and it has a political and ideological agenda. It wants a secular U.S., much as Europe has become so secular as to walk away from its own heritage.

“I think the Mojave Desert veteran’s memorial case is an example of the ACLU’s descent into secular fanaticism,” Lloyd continued.  “A solitary cross on a rock outcrop 11 miles off the highway in the desert, and you have to drive to it to be offended by it?  It stood since 1934 for six decades without a complaint until [President] Clinton incorporated it into the Preserve; then the ACLU, typical of its tactics, brought suit for Frank Buono who was once the assistant superintendent.”

Government efforts to fight the ACLU lawsuit so far have reportedly cost about $63,000, a low amount considering other similar lawsuits nationwide brought by the ACLU have neared or even broached the million dollar mark in attorney fees, paid by taxpayers.  And tactics such as making individuals potentially liable for court costs has, Lloyd noted, a “chilling effect on a citizen’s First Amendment rights to parcitipate in litigation.”

But while Lloyd claims the ACLU has become “nothing more than another gaggle of pinstriped pimps of the law,” getting attorney fees awarded though using staff and pro bono attorneys, and profiteering by filing Establishment Clause lawsuits forcing cities to break contracts allowing Boy Scout troops to camp in a public park; removing the Ten Commandments from courthouses, to halting sponsorship of Boy Scout troops by government, removing miniscule cross images from city seals and more, the ACLU, oddly enough, doesn’t see it that way.

“Rees has been spouting this malarkey for some time, and it’s simply untrue,” said Peter Eliasberg, managing attorney for the Southern California chapter of the ACLU.  “The way the law works is that certain kinds of suits, if they prevail, the law is that the lawyers are entitled to get reasonable attorneys fees... [in cases against the federal government] the rates are capped by the federal government, and in cases vs. the U.S. government, you have to prove their position is not substantially justified—that it’s a clear loser for them.”

Eliasberg noted that the capped fees, with an adjustment for inflation, stand currently at about $177 an hour, a reasonable hourly rate in a market where attorneys may charge upwards of $500 per hour.

“If we cherry picked our cases [just to make a profit], we would never sue the federal government to make money, we’d sue state and local governments [who lack fee caps],” Eliasberg explained.

He noted that the case of the Mojave Cross is, in his view, an “unmistakable endorsement of Christianity,” and added, “Ask my Dad who is a World War II veteran. He’s insulted by a memorial with the principal symbol of a religion that is not his.”

As for fears that the ACLU will eventually demand the removal of crosses from national military cemeteries, Eliasberg said that is a different case entirely.

“The answer is that is the individual choice of the soldier or family, not, in effect, the government,” he explained. “The government doesn’t bury Jewish soldiers with crosses unless they want it.”

And Eliasberg noted that had the National Park Service pursued having the Mojave Cross placed on the National Register of Historic Places, that would have caused him to reconsider a lawsuit for its removal.

“It’s now two pieces of pipe stuck together, not the original cross, and the person hired by the Park Service said it wasn’t suitable for inclusion,” he said.  “That would have been a factor I would have evaluated.”

Eliasberg had a novel take on the Congressionally approved land transfer to save the cross as well.

“The land the cross is on is quite valuable,” he noted.  “It overlooks one of the best Joshua tree forests, it’s near a  hiking trail... that piece is quite nice. Their land (the Sandoz’s), is inaccessible.  It’s clear the government is going to have to be given money. It states an appraiser will evaluate the properties, and the Sandoz’s will pay the difference.”

But with Timlin’s ruling, the swap is moot, and all parties await the outcome of the appeal.

That isn’t to say that nothing is happening though.  Recently, PERA, the Public Expression of Religion Act (H.R. 2679), legislation that would amend the Civil Rights Attorney Fees Act of 1976, so that judges would no longer be able to award attorney fees for Establishment Clause lawsuits, passed the House of Representatives. And while it may well bog down in the Senate, part of that victory in the House is due to the American Legion’s full support for PERA.  The Legion passed Resolution 326, Preservation of the Mojave Desert World War I Memorial, which calls on Congress to do what PERA legislates.

Ironically, if the nearly three million members of the American Legion, an organization founded by World War I veterans, have their way, the ACLU may win the legal battle of the Mojave Cross.  But in pushing for a fight to remove a small unobtrusive cross out in the desert, meant to remember comrades fallen in battle long ago, they may lose the war.

From the Other Desk
Editorial
by Steve Brown

Call me strange, but I love the unique things that, to me, help keep the desert interesting. Oh, I know, things change, but sometimes the more things change, the more important it becomes to preserve a little of the past, so a connection between what has gone before and what is yet to come, remains.

That’s why, in this issue, I chose to take a look at two instances where unique, yet perhaps unimportant, desert creations face an uncertain future after a clash with our modern day legalistic culture, where everything and everyone eventually seems to wind up in court.

The stories I’ve written about Desert Christ Park and the Mojave Cross are not meant to be the last word on these two places, but rather a jumping off point for some lively discussion.

I did my best to remain impartial in my reporting on these two cases, however I will confess my personal bias. I began visiting Desert Christ Park at a very early age, and my parents had been going there while Antone Martin was in the process of working on the park.  Perhaps I, too, had met Antone, however if I did, I was not old enough to remember it the way I do recall my brief introduction to George Van Tassel.

A journey to the desert in those days was an adventure.  Riverside was a pit, even back then, but after it passed, and you began to ascend the pass, you breathed freer.  Driving alongside the massive steep slopes of Mt. San Jacinto brought a sense of drama to any trip, and then turning up through the mountains and finally to the modest town of Yucca Valley, helped heighten anticipation.

Once up and over the Yucca Grade, it was but a short jaunt to Desert Christ Park.  It became a mandatory stop for our family, a place to get out of the car, stretch our legs, and wander among the large white statues while gazing out over the nearly empty surroundings.

Not brought up in a church-going household, my parents were still able to properly introduce me to the various biblical scenes portrayed throughout the park.  I am now an Orthodox Christian, but the wonder I experienced as a child in that garden of statues had nothing to do with any religious belief. I may have felt God’s presence there, but not because I was told to.

Later, I studied history, and found the art of history much to my liking.  Yes, history has art to it, as well as much science, but then, science seems like art to me, too, when it gets right down to it.

So, if you’re looking for bias in my story that leans toward preserving these two places, you might think it will lie in my Christian faith, and you could be partially correct, though I don’t personally think so. Or you could say I am sentimental about a place I have fond memories of from my childhood, and while that has something to do with me being inclined toward one location, it says nothing about the other.

So, I will tell you what my bias toward preserving these locations is: Both Desert Christ Park and the Mojave Cross were not originally and primarily conceived as places of religious endorsement for Christianity. Both were not an act of government, but rather of individuals—American citizens and desert dwellers.

I will argue that both Desert Christ Park and the Mojave Cross have direct intrinsic cultural value for the areas in which they reside. Both tell a story of our desert, and neither deserves to be lost because a lawyer elsewhere says so.

If you feel threatened or insulted by a six foot high cross erected on a rock generations ago on a lonely desert road by veterans of the Great War, honoring their young friends who died tragically in that war, then I suggest counseling for lack of compassion. Were I to pass a Star of David on a similar rock, I would be interested in its story, not in tearing it down.  I would want to learn how it came to pass, who built it, what motivated them, and what significance it had to them.

I think the American Civil Liberties Union does a lot of good work in protecting the Constitution and Constitutional rights. But sometimes, the rights of others are violated by their legalistic fervor. In short: sometimes they’re not fair.  We all pay taxes. Where are the rights of those whose families were raised around Cima and shared many memorable times with neighbors and friends at the Mojave Cross? Because a tiny handful of people decide to take offense to something like the cross, is that just cause to forcibly take it from the many in the community who cherish it?

This is cultural cleansing.  Remove the cross and park, and their stories will fade.  It will be easier to forget our history then. But is that really what we want?

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