A controversial 28-foot Christian cross perched atop Albany Hill Park for more than five decades is officially gone.
Well, at least for now.
Early on June 8, the city quietly removed the electrically illuminated steel and plexiglass cross, which the Albany Lions Club installed in 1971 on then-private land. The hushed removal was Albany’s attempt to finally allay accusations of constitutional violation, address residents’ resentment about one religion being given preference over others, and free up more space on the 1.1-acre plot of what is now public park space.
But the cross’ ouster is only the latest chapter in a contentious years-long fight between the city and the Lions Club, a community service group, which has traditionally lit up the cross every Easter Sunday and Christmas week. The city is now “preserving” the cross in storage, but city officials did not respond to repeated requests for clarification on its current location, citing pending litigation.
“The city has actually put its money where its mouth is, and our city looks a little bit more accepting now in a way that we think is consistent with our values,” Mayor Aaron Tiedemann said in an interview. “For the small local group of people that really want to see the cross stay, when you’ve had such privilege for so long, losing it feels like being oppressed. That’s going to be an adjustment for folks, but I think we will all get used to it, and I think it’s a real benefit.”
In 2015, groups including the East Bay Atheists and the Freedom From Religion Foundation sent letters to the city demanding its removal. Besides invoking the separation of church and state, they also said the power line that runs up the hill to light the cross posed a fire danger. When PG&E cut off electricity to the line at Albany’s request in 2017, the Lions Club sued, claiming the shutdown was “part of a harassment campaign to force the cross off the hill.” According to court documents, PG&E replaced the line before restoring power.
A federal judge then ruled in June 2018 that the cross violates the establishment clause of the First Amendment because governments are forbidden from promoting one religion over another. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that decision in December of 2019.
Hubert “Red” Call, a Lions Club member and councilman who had the cross installed in 1971, set up an easement to ensure its preservation before selling his land to a developer, who later gave the property to the city in 1973 to use as a park.
But by April 2022, the Albany City Council unanimously decided to acquire the land hosting the cross by eminent domain. As required through the lawsuit process, the city plans to compensate the Lions Club for taking over the easement.
A trial set for July 17 will officially rule if the city is legally allowed to do this and how much Albany must pay, but in January the court granted the city’s request for “prejudgment possession” of the easement where the cross was erected, which green-lit the structure’s removal before a final decision is reached next month.
The Lions Club unsuccessfully tried to appeal the decision in March.
While Albany could technically skirt the constitutional problem by simply selling the land to the Lions Club, Tiedemann, the mayor, said the decision to get rid of the Christian symbol altogether was more aligned with the current community’s values.
Tiedemann, who grew up in Albany, said people have long complained about the cross for a litany of reasons: it symbolizes a preference of one religion over others, offends some members of the city’s diverse communities, is reminiscent of KKK cross-burnings in the East Bay hills in the 1920s, and is an eyesore.
But the Lions Club has continued to argue in court that the cross’ ouster is tantamount to “desecration of (a) sacred symbol.”
Robert Nichols, the Lions Club’s attorney, argues that Albany created this problem in the first place. He said the city made a commitment to the Lions Club roughly 52 years ago that the cross would be preserved for all, including “one believer who literally hugs the cross every day.”
The debate is especially personal for Dorena Osborn, Hubert Call’s granddaughter, who said her family never would have sold the land without expecting the cross to be protected.
“My grandparents wanted to preserve the heritage of the community, who already had a tradition of having services on the hill with the cross but didn’t have a permanent place for it,” Osborn said Friday. “It breaks my heart that people distorted the history of the cross, saying it was a KKK cross, and that’s so not true. … What’s ironic about Albany is that their platform is ‘diversity and tolerance.’ This is completely against diversity and tolerance.”
Kevin Pope, president of the Albany Lions Club, agreed. Rather than spend potentially up to $1 million in public money for the land, he said people who don’t like the cross should simply not look at it.
The city’s “excuse for using eminent domain is they want an unencumbered park, which to me is ridiculous. I think they’re wasting the city’s money, and I think they just gave the city of Albany a black eye,” Pope said. “There’s a lot of people who love it being up there — a lot of people go up there and pray and have church services. It’s sacred ground to us, and taking it down shows their intolerance toward Christian values.”
While somewhat unlikely, the court could disagree that the city is within its rights to claim the land, and a judge could order that the cross be resurrected back atop Albany Hill — at the city’s expense.
Elected officials have long been divided about what to do with crosses erected in public. In 1997, for example, San Francisco resolved a lawsuit against it over a 103-foot-tall cross on Mount Davidson by selling the land under it to a local nonprofit organization that planned to maintain it as a memorial for Armenians who died during the Turkish Ottoman Empire.
In 2006, thousands of white, wooden crosses were erected along a private hillside property near the Lafayette BART station, creating a memorial of U.S. soldiers killed in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars that was visible from Highway 24. But the cross’ fate remains uncertain after the family of the couple that had owned the land appeared prepared to sell the property.
Albany’s decision to remove the cross delighted Annie Laurie Gaylor, who co-founded the Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation in 1976 to push back against religious symbols, teachings and worldviews from creeping into public entities. The foundation fields thousands of complaints each year about everything from publicly funded Bible studies and book bans in schools.
In a time that sees Christian nationalism on the rise, she said, she’s pleased that the city didn’t opt to resolve the issue with a “sweetheart” deal to sell the land and keep the cross.
“It’s very gratifying and satisfying news to see the city do the right thing, even in a political climate that isn’t very supportive of separation of church and state,” Gaylor said. “We do tend to hear more problems in the Bible Belt, but sometimes I think the Bible Belt is everywhere.
“Kudos to Albany and their governance for fighting this and being so adamant.”
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June 28, 2023 at 08:00PM
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A Christian cross on a Bay Area hilltop was removed. The fight to resurrect it is heading to court. - East Bay Times
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