Currently in Culture:
Battle over a fish

Martin E. Marty

"We live by symbols." Justice Felix Frankfurter borrowed this epigram from Oliver Wendell Holmes in the 1940s, when he and the United States Supreme Court were ruling on compulsory saluting of the US flag. The victims of the ruling were Jehovah's Witnesses children, who were being compelled to `worship' the flag. In 1943, the Court reversed its earlier ruling, and the Jehovah's Witnesses could go to school safely.

Three things about symbols: 1. You cannot impose your own on others. 2. When you make attempts to impose them, they lose their value. 3. You cannot interpret symbols for others and make them buy into them. I relearned that at Auschwitz recently, when I visited the sites where well-intentioned Catholics used the cross of Jesus to inspire repentance and reconciliation with Jews. However, Jews found the symbol abhorrent in that context. (Jews are not disturbed by crosses on Catholic churches in the nearby town).

Many religious signs in American public life are tucked away on seals, insignia, banners and flags inherited from previous generations when the United States seemed a more uniform place. Laurie Goldstein, in the June 23, 1998 New York Times, reports that the American Civil Liberties Union sighted a fish on Republic, Missouri's town seal and flag. The ACLU began to take action, recognizing rightly that the fish is an ancient secret symbol of Jesus, based on the Greek word for fish, IXTHUS. As such, it offends non-Christians when used in a space that belongs to all.

Naturally, Christian citizens of Republic, who never cared about the fish before, suddenly got their backs up and threw the first thing to go in religious controversy—civility—out the window. Once a beautiful, innocent Christian symbol, the fish at Republic now signals another division in North American life between us and them.

The designer of the Republic insignia was innocent enough; she thought the fish was a universal symbol. She is almost right. The fish turns up as a goddess symbol of fertility in the ancient Near East and the Mediterranean world and as a phallic symbol among Sumero-Semitic peoples. It means other things in other religions. But in Republic it stands for Jesus Christ, not now the object of worship but a sign of who belongs in Republic and who doesn't.

We live by symbols. We divide by symbols. We may die by symbols.

This article is distributed by the Public Religion Project, funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts and headed by University of Chicago professor Martin E. Marty. Anyone wishing to enjoy receive regular commentaries by PRP should send an e-mail message to prp-info@publicreligionproj.org. Previous commentaries are available at www.publicreligionproj.org/services/sightings/archive/.

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