Police officers and city officials in Tega Cay, South Carolina, face criticism after scrubbing the word “Lord” from a memorial honoring fallen police officers. The city received complaints, officials acquiesced, and now the memorial has been removed entirely. This small-town debate is a microcosm of the now-common controversy over whether references to religion should be included on public memorials: a healthy debate to engage in at the local level, if something this minor proves to be important to local residents.
The Tega Cay Police Department put up a memorial at the Tega Cay Women’s Club gifted to the city to honor fallen officers. It’s hardly an abnormal gesture among law enforcement nationwide. Local news station, Fox 46, reported it was “similar to other memorials around the country, including Washington, D.C.”
A scripture reference from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount was placed on the front of the memorial, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God,” and on the back was a law-enforcement version of the Serenity Prayer: “Lord, I ask for courage. Courage to face and conquer my own fears, courage to take me where others will not go … Give me Lord, concern for others who trust me and compassion for those who need me. And please Lord, through it all, be at my side.”
However, the city’s attorney cautioned that because it does not have the historical significance of some of the other national monuments that invoke God, it should be censored. The memorial immediately received complaints, the word “Lord” was removed, and now, the memorial has been officially removed altogether.
A local debate over memorials that reference God seems like an important one — if local constituents care to have it. (Other constituents might concern themselves with more pressing issues like an opioid crisis, but I digress.)
National monuments that invoke God retain incredible historical significance of our country’s founding, telling the story of the struggle, both in terms of religion and politics: that a free nation with no established religion was far superior to a tyrannical nation that forced everyone into one religious corner. In other words, at the federal level, the debate is not worth having, and the Supreme Court has consistently agreed.
However, that’s not often the same case with local memorials that invoke religion. Though I’m religious myself and it wouldn’t bother me, a debate over what “separation of church and state” means is a healthy one to have at the local level, particularly if it remains dialectic and doesn’t immediately result in a lawsuit demanding the attention of higher and higher courts. A government in the hands of local people, battling issues important to them, is the essence of a democratic republic — even when the argument is over a monument that invokes God.
Nicole Russell (@russell_nm) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota.
