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  • The Atlantic

    Religious Monuments Are Fine Now—If They’re Old

    The Supreme Court’s Peace Cross decision is very messy.
    by Garrett Epps Jun 21, 2019 4 minutes
    Source: Kevin Wolf / AP

    “A government that roams the land, tearing down monuments with religious symbolism and scrubbing away any reference to the divine,” Justice Samuel Alito warned the nation yesterday, “will strike many as aggressively hostile to religion.” Luckily, he wrote, the Supreme Court will spare the nation the spectacle of such a secular juggernaut by allowing the state of Maryland to maintain the 94-year-old, 32-foot-high “Peace Cross” on a pedestal high atop a busy intersection near Bladensburg, Maryland.

    The case—American Legion v. Americanproduced a five-justice plurality for what appears to be a rather thin rule. What the Court decided is hard to discern. To understand why, read this portion of the syllabus:

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