In the small town of Newaygo, Michigan, a “civil rights” group is demanding that a display of the Three Wise Men come down.
And the town’s citizens aren’t having it.
The display sits atop Newaygo Elementary School. The Michigan Association of Civil Rights Activists (MACRA) is saying the school must remove the Three Wise Men from the public building.
That’s wrong, says local Amy Postma: “It’s just a symbol of our community,” she said. “It’s always been there and we love it.”
Postma said removing the display would be as silly as objecting to Santa Claus in public places. “You can’t just take away something that we’ve always done,” Postma added. “It’s not harming anyone, it’s not hurting anyone, so live and let live.”
The Three Wise Men display, which was built by students, has been at the school since the 1940s. The son of one of the students who put them there has suggested a compromise.
“IMO [in my opinion], they should be allowed to remain,” wrote Lowell Godfrey about the controversy on the MACRA activists’ Facebook page, “so long as the schools add a wider variety of religious symbols.”
“My dad helped build those in shop class in the old school back in the 1940’s,” Godfrey added. “So….IMO, the school should have a class on world religions and as a project for the class have students create more artwork (like those 3 Wise Men), representative of other religious groups, and add them to the display.”
Newaygo Public Schools superintendent opposed removing the display, saying it wasn’t necessarily religious. According to LifeSite News, “On a now-deleted Facebook post, Dr. Peggy Mathis apparently wrote: ‘Newaygo Public Schools has a legitimate secular purpose for the display. We are both upholding the community’s tradition of celebrating a public holiday and attempting to point towards the importance of wisdom, knowledge, and open-mindedness.”
Activists Target Three Wise Men Display in Michigan Town https://t.co/bj7Ej3wsM4
— LockShields (@LockShields) December 8, 2018
Mathis is reported to have said that the wise men have been described by some experts as the “scientists of their time,” and that there is no evidence they were Jews or Christians.
Regardless, MARCA leader Mitch Kale told CNN that it was a religious symbol that should be removed. He said that it is “in essence” a nativity scene.
“We’ve asked the school to remove what is in essence a nativity scene, from the top of the school, and from school property,” he said. “If this were on private property it wouldn’t be an issue.”
“We understand that the situation sometimes will make people upset,” Kale told CNN. “But just like in Grand Haven, where their nativity scene has been up for 70 years, that’s now been gone for five years, the city council voted to remove it. And no one complains about it now.”
But does that make it right?
The Three Wise Men should stay. No one has complained about it since the 1940s, and there’s no reason for them to complain about it today.
The only people complaining about it today is this one group, not the citizens of Newaygo.