By Laura Bly, USA TODAY
A long-simmering controversy over the display of religious symbols on national park lands could be heating up again.
According to a watchdog group of public employees, the National Park Service has maintained a "don't ask, don't tell policy" concerning a 9-foot-high stupa, or Buddhist shrine, in New Mexico's Petroglyph National Monument and plaques with biblical verses on overlooks at Arizona's Grand Canyon National Park.
The Petroglyph stupa was built in the 1980s on land the park service later acquired, while the Grand Canyon plaques were erected about 50 years ago by an evangelical group. The bronze plaques were removed briefly in 2003 after a legal challenge, but were later returned.
"When it comes to religious displays, Park Service leadership reacts like a deer in the headlights - afraid to move but frozen in an indefensible position," the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) said in a statement issued last week.
"PEER has no hostility toward religion but we are concerned about the appropriate use of federal lands in the national park system," executive director Jeff Ruch added. "What will it take to get National Park Service officials to respect the U.S. Constitution?"
The group requested clarification from the park service last fall, says Ruch, and received a letter last month that both cases were still under review.
"These things go back a long way. They have become part of the visitor experience for many people," says National Park Service spokesman David Barna, who adds that resolving PEER's complaints "is not a high priority."
"Dealing with religious symbols and structures in national parks is not as easy as it may appear," says Barna, citing examples from the National Christmas Tree to some 140 churches on park property, including a chapel in Yosemite Valley and the San Antonio Missions in Texas.
The debate over religious symbols in the parks isn't new: Last year, a divided Supreme Court reversed a lower court ruling and gave its approval to display of a now-demolished cross honoring fallen soldiers at California's Mojave National Monument. And at the Grand Canyon, Canyon Ministries - which also offers "Christ-centered" rafting trips down the Colorado River - continues to sell books espousing a creationist view of the canyon in park service bookstores, despite complaints from PEER and others.
Posted Apr 5 2011 12:17PM
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