Nativity dispute divides Berkley

Voters will get their say Nov. 6 on whether city should display manger scene on public ground.

Jennifer Chambers / The Detroit News

BERKLEY -- Christmas may be weeks away, but a quarrel that has become an annual holiday tradition across America is in full swing: heated disputes over religious displays on public property.

An infant Jesus, mother Mary and Joseph are again at the center of this long-brewing legal controversy, this time in the city of Berkley, where in an unprecedented election on Nov. 6, voters will decide whether the government should be required to display a nativity at City Hall.

"People feel very strongly about these things on both sides. Some say there is no role for government in the religion game," said David Masci, a senior research fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life in Washington, D.C. "The American people are a very religious people and to say religion must be completely wiped away from all public events and space is absurd, some say."

Rulings from the highest court in the land have been anything but consistent on the issue of religious displays in the public square, U.S. Constitutional scholars agree. And so the debate rages on the meaning of the oft-cited but equally vague Establishment Clause -- one of two clauses of the First Amendment that govern the relationship of government to religion -- and Thomas Jefferson's call for a "wall of separation between church and state."

These highly emotional disputes -- where citizens embroil themselves in battles with their local governments and courts over the right to display and not to display -- have become so common nationwide they've been dubbed "The Christmas Wars."

Yet public opinion polls show a majority of Americans favor religious displays on public property.

In December 2005, a poll by the Pew Forum found 83 percent of Americans agreed that displays of Christmas symbols like nativity scenes and Christmas trees should be allowed on government property. Forty-four percent of those respondents said it was OK for Christmas symbols to be displayed alone.

Leading the charge for a civic display in Berkley is Georgia Halloran, a 37-year resident angered by last year's decision by the Berkley City Council to remove the figures from City Hall property and turn them over to the Berkley Clergy Association to display at local churches around the town of 15,500 residents.

Halloran and other residents collected 952 signatures to force the question to a vote on Nov. 6. She sees passage of the initiative -- which would amend the city's charter -- as Berkley's chance to stand up to the American Civil Liberties Union, which told the city the display violated the law.

"I'm tired of these organizations coming into a small-town community and threatening us with lawsuits and the city rolling over," Halloran said. "We are celebrating a national holiday. We are not promoting a religion. The government isn't supposed to be hostile toward religion."

For at least two decades -- some say longer -- Berkley has displayed the modest nativity scene on a small patch of grass behind City Hall on Coolidge Highway.

The figures, along with the three wise men, animals, an angel, a wooden manger and scattered piles of hay, stood quietly on the frozen patch of ground, fixtures in the predominantly Christian, Woodward Avenue suburb.

After the American Civil Liberties Union threatened the city with a lawsuit in 2005, it moved a Santa mailbox closer to the nativity scene. But the ACLU returned in 2006 and the council sent the figures packing after examining several options from its legal department and enduring lengthy public discussion.

The city's nativity tradition has bothered many around town, including resident Richard Scott, who calls a nativity scene, or creche, on government property inappropriate.

Scott, a self-described activist, is distributing a statement to his neighbors encouraging them to oppose the measure and support the compromise that allowed the creche to be displayed outside town churches. Scott said returning the nativity to City Hall grounds would convey an impression of a closed community, indifferent to those not among the Christian faith.

"There is nothing sacrosanct about municipal land," Scott said. "The municipality shovels snow and rakes leaves for us. It's appropriate for Christian churches to display the nativity."

Both sides in the controversy can point to different rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court to strengthen their long-running argument.

"Different members of the Supreme Court have different views of the establishment clause," constitutional expert Lawrence Dubin said. "Some say the nativity is supportive of religion and violates the First Amendment. Some say it has historical significance and may be appropriate."

The Supreme Court has found a nativity can be constitutional if it's part of a larger display of secular decorations, Masci said.

Language in the proposed charter amendment, which must pass by 50.1 percent of the vote, says the city must display the nativity "in compliance with governing law" that includes -- at minimum -- an infant Jesus, Mary and Joseph.

Language in the proposed amendment says the display is to be modeled after one in nearby Clawson, which includes a nativity scene surrounded by numerous secular items and was ruled constitutional by the United States Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, the federal court that governs Michigan.

Berkley Mayor Marilyn Stephan said many residents don't think it makes any difference where the nativity ends up. Stephan supports allowing the clergy to rotate the city's nativity.

"Will it bother them when the nativity is surrounded by holiday carolers, candy canes, gift boxes and holiday trees? It really troubles me. I do not believe the most central symbol of Christmas should be diminished," Stephan said.

Stephan said the city is not in possession of numerous other secular items like snowmen and has no plans to buy them.

These "Christmas Wars" that emerge every December in towns across America are all part of a cultural war in the United States that spans several hot-button issues, Masci said.

"It's a question of social conservatives and more secular, more liberal Americans over abortion, same-sex marriage, God in the public square," he said.

"This is a constant kind of struggle. Sometimes it becomes more."

You can reach Jennifer Chambers at (248) 647-7402 or jchambers@detnews.com.