Remember those controversies as some U.S. state officials installed Ten Commandments monuments in their courts and schools? Imagine the uproar if instead the government had ordered the Christian cross to be installed in all state buildings.
The conservative governor of Bavaria, in southern Germany, has done just that, ordering that crosses be displayed at the entrances to government buildings across his state.
The result, predictably, has been confusing and controversial.
Bavaria’s premier, Markus Söder, has presented the move not as a religious dictate, but merely a reflection of the values his fellow Bavarians share. The cross, he says, “has a defining effect on the identity of our society,” and hanging it in public offices shows “our Bavarian identity and way of life.”
Critics have denounced the order as a bald effort to woo Bavaria’s traditionally pious and heavily Catholic conservative voters away from the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, an anti-immigrant party that claimed 94 seats in the country’s Parliament in federal elections last year. AfD’s fortunes have risen on a backlash against the influx of over a million migrants since 2015, mostly Muslims fleeing the Middle East.
Unfortunately for Söder, even the national heads of Germany’s Roman Catholic and Protestant churches — who both live in the Bavarian capital,…
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