Hard to believe? Doesn’t pass the laugh test? Have faith. Really. There’s an official opinion that it’s not a shrine. Just try not to spit out your coffee when you read it.
In one sense, the story starts a few years after World War II when skiers visiting Big Mountain convinced the local Knights of Columbus that planting a religious shrine atop the ski hill was a good idea. But the seeds of the current conflict were planted in 2000 when Flathead National Forest Tally Lake District Ranger Jane Kollmeyer made a mistake that took the Flathead National Forest 11 years and an opinion from the Montana Historical Society to discover.
Her mistake? Signing a special use permit for using national forest land for the purpose of “Continuing to provide a site for a religious shrine.” The site, of course, is the 25-foot-square parcel of land on which a little statue of Jesus Christ the Redeemer stands on Big Mountain, bestowing His silent blessing on all who schuss the slopes.
Thanks to the historical society’s reviewing officer, Josef J. Warhank, we now know that Kollmeyer got it wrong:
The BMJ is not like Lourdes or Fatima: no one goes to Big Mountain to pray (just how does Warhank know that?). Therefore, the BMJ is not a religious shrine (given that logic, Lourdes ceases to be a shrine when visitors come to look but not to pray). But the BMJ has been there a few decades, so it might qualify for protection of its historical properties, whatever those properties might be.
Yeah. Right.
I think it’s a safe bet that over the years more than one skier of limited ability, and aware of it, faced the BMJ, touched a knee to the snow, and prayed for a little help.
Warhank’s preposterous opinion is the FNF’s excuse for deciding to renew the special use permit allowing the Catholic associated Knights of Columbus to keep their Christ the Redeemer on public land on Big Mountain. As fig leafs go, it’s one of the smallest you’ll ever encounter, and there are some mighty small ones out there.
Kollmeyer, of course, has a plea in mitigation; a weak plea, but still a plea. The original permit for the BMJ, issued in 1953, was granted for the purpose of “Erecting a religious shrine overlooking the Big Mountain ski run.”
Moreover, she might have read the Whitefish Pilot’s 10 September 1954 report on the BMJ’s dedication. J.L. Reed, chairman of the site selection committee, had no doubt there was divine involvement in the project:
Still, by 2000, even a lowly district ranger ought to have known that perching the BMJ on public land was a prima facie violation of the separation of church and state. Kollmeyer’s plea in mitigation has to be that she lacked the clairvoyance to know that in 2012 the Forest Service would finally come to its senses and realize that a statue of Jesus that confers blessings on, but allegedly is not prayed to, or before, is not a religious shrine, the fact that it’s a statue of Jesus notwithstanding.
Nevertheless, it was a close run thing for the FNF. The Freedom from Religion Foundation challenged the permit on church-state grounds, the FNF initially denied the permit because of the church-state conflict, and was saved from going to sectarian and political hell only through a public outcry, Congressional pressure, a fortuitous opinion from the historical society, and a genuine change of heart. It took a while, but the FNF finally came to Jesus and realized his statue was not a religious shrine. Whew. They must be still wiping their brows in the FNF supervisor’s office.
And they have reason to keep sweating. The FNF’s decision to renew the BMJ permit doesn’t have an ice cube’s chance in a blast furnace of surviving a legal challenge. The FNF’s decision is nothing more than pandering to the religious right and a Republican Congressman, Rep. Denny Rehberg, who wants to exploit the situation to drive a wedge between veterans and Democratic Senator Jon Tester. Rehberg, you see, wants to replace Tester in the Senate.
But the FNF does not expect to lose in court. It expects Rehberg’s land swap bill to pass, thereby making the land under the BMJ private and mooting the issue.
Will the land swap pass? Most likely. The Democratic Party, seldom a bastion of support for civil liberties, wants this issue to go away before Tester loses support from veterans who, thanks to Rehberg and the Christian right, have been bamboozled into believing that the Jesus is a war memorial. It isn’t, but Democrats believe the war over whether it is hurts Tester, a senator who has worked hard for Veterans and should have earned their support.
So the BMJ is likely to stay exactly where it is, its sad face looking down on skiers having fun on Sunday, but resting on land transferred to private ownership by an act of Congress. I just hope that in the process of saving the BMJ the truth about the real reason for the statue doesn’t get lost.
Editor’s note. Ian Cameron and the Flathead Secular Humanist Society did their homework on this issue, and their website is an excellent source of information. I've added www.flatheadsecular.com to Flathead Memo’s blogroll.
