I was intrigued by two recent controversies over religious symbols. Both involved the Christian symbol of the Cross. In Melbourne, a girl complained that her school had forbidden her to wear a cross. She saw the cross as a sign of her Christian conversion.
In Glasgow, the police gave a warning to the Celtic goalkeeper after an away game with their rivals, the Rangers. The goalie had made a sign of the cross, a normal thing for Polish players. The culturally Protestant crowd saw it as unnatural.
The two cases were interesting because in their defence, the girl and the goalie could invoke two principles that are normally kept quite separate: the right of individual self-expression, and the right of religious freedom.
Initially the girl’s case was presented as a straightforward infringement of self-expression. It was interchangeable with stories of long hair, wrong dress, or boycotting particular classes. The standard photographs of aggrieved yet determined mother and daughter accompanied the story.
This story, however, became a little edgy because it was religious faith that motivated the girl to wear the cross. The preferred form of stories of individual self-expression identify Christian symbols with authoritarian repression of the secular individual’s choice, not with self-expression. To have an apparently secular school council crushing Christian self-assertion is a bit awkward. There was some relief when the Council made clear that its opposition was not to crosses, but to jewellery. It was no longer a story about displaying faith but about flaunting wealth.
The story of the Glasgow goalie, Artur Boruc, little reported in Australia, stirred Britain. Catholic Church authorities, Labour Party ministers in England and the Scottish Nationalist party were all concerned that the sign of the cross was considered an inflammatory gesture. Ruth Kelly, the minister, saw it as an issue of self-expression.
The Scottish authorities then issued a clarification. It turned out that Boruc had an arsenal of signs to hand. In addition to the sign of the Cross, he had gestured to the crowd with a V for victory sign, and with an obscene gesture. It seemed a case of three signs and you are out.
They added that they would not countenance formal action against individuals for acts of religious observance, but had to be concerned about behaviour that would encourage civil disorder. This explanation satisfied the Catholic Bishops, and indeed Glaswegians generally. As this became a story of