In July, 4,500 crosses, created to illustrate the global problem of childhood poverty, were planted at Chapman Hill before mysteriously disappearing a few days later.
Now, the First Baptist Church of Bayfield, through a partnership with a Fort Lewis College student organization, Master Plan Ministries, is giving it another try.
On Tuesday, church members and students planted 4,000 crosses around the clocktower at the college. Those 4,000 crosses represent only about 20 percent of the 19,000 children who die each day around the world because of hunger and other poverty issues.
“I want you to picture a face on every one of those crosses,” organizer Gordie Herrick told the students at their Connect service Tuesday evening. “Then picture another face tomorrow.”
The crosses, which are arranged in concentric circles around the clocktower, come with a sign asking passers-by to stop and think about the children who died around the world today.
Most students seemed to be in too much of a hurry to get to their next class to take the time to ponder the tragic loss of life.
But they made FLC senior Josh Benjamin, who spoke at the service, make a bigger commitment to being of service.
“It’s really easy to not get involved in issues of social justice,” he said. “Your involvement in school takes all your time, you don’t have enough money because you’re a student. You think, ‘I need the rest, I don’t want to get up at 5 a.m. for a project.’ I don’t think those excuses have any justification.”
Herrick believes childhood poverty is a problem that can be solved.
“Thirty years ago, 43,000 children died each day from hunger and poverty,” he said, quoting statistics from the relief organization Compassion to the students. “Now we have it down to 19,000. This can be solved, maybe in my lifetime, but certainly in yours.”
‘Like Arlington Cemetery’
After the crosses went up on Chapman Hill, the city received complaints from several people about religious icons on public property and concerns about the separation between church and state.
John Krieger, director of communications and outreach for the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado, could not speak to the constitutionality of this particular instance – the crosses at a public school. But he said there are several indicators the ACLU looks for to see if a religious statement has crossed the line of the First Amendment, which reads “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”
Two of the questions they ask are: “Is it a statement by the government or its agents, which would include FLC? And do other groups have the same opportunities for displays of their beliefs and causes?”
“This is not a college event,” Mitch Davis, spokesman for FLC, said, answering the first question. “We have a large number of student clubs and a wide variety of opinions and beliefs on campus. We’re here to facilitate discussion and offer a forum.”
All of those groups, which include religious and political organizations, must apply for a permit for public assembly or displays.
“Our student organizations hold events and do displays all the time,” he said.
Just as they had with the city, organizers applied for and received a permit for the Crosses Project. Church members and students were out in the dark and cold early Tuesday morning to stake the crosses, made with paint stir sticks, into the ground.
“I look at this as being somewhere like Arlington Cemetery, with all those crosses going over the hills,” Herrick said, “It’s a way to remember and honor the dead.”
Deb Renfrow, a fellow member of First Baptist Church of Bayfield, agrees that this is about dying children around the world.
“We’re not telling people to join this or do this or do this,” she said. “We want to make people aware that this is a solvable problem. This supersedes all religious ideas.”
‘Quite a mystery’
The crosses are scheduled to be taken down early Thursday morning.
“But after Chapman Hill, we’ve learned they may not be there (Wednesday),” Herrick said wryly. “We’re in the process of trying to make 19,000 crosses, and you can’t imagine how hard that is.”
A group of 10 people can make 700 to 800 crosses in a 1½-hour work session, he said. Members of the church, including youths, have participated in the process, but they have many more to make.
Meanwhile, the disappearance of the crosses from Chapman Hill remains unsolved.
“None were ever found in the trash or stashed anywhere,” said Sgt. Rita Warfield with the Durango Police Department. “Quite the mystery.”
abutler@durangoherald.com
