Religious Liberty in Fiction

Religion Clause has an interesting post about a recent children's Christmas book. Here is a link about the book.

Here is the story from the Arlington Heights, Illinois Daily Herald:

Fictional book retells Wauconda water tower cross controversy

By Madhu Krishnamurthy | Daily Herald Staff

Published: 12/21/2008 12:02 AM

A roughly 20-year-old controversy over two crosses that once graced Wauconda's water towers hasn't yet made history books, but it's now immortalized in a fictional children's Christmas tale produced by area teenagers.

The book, aptly named "The Cross and the Water Tower," retells the 1989 story of how Wauconda officials were forced to remove the illuminated crosses from the towers under threat of a lawsuit by prominent Buffalo Grove atheist Robert Sherman.

Sherman backed some area residents who objected to the village displaying a religious symbol on a public structure. It stirred a debate that made national headlines.

The village ultimately replaced the roughly 10-foot-high crosses with a star.

Yet, in protest of the village's move, crosses started cropping up everywhere in town, on residents' front yards and in shop windows, many of which exist to this day.

"It was a fun memory growing up," said 17-year-old Rita Weiss of Lake Zurich, who helped research the book. "I always thought it was a beautiful story, and I always wanted to go look for the crosses in Wauconda. We would take special trips to see them."

Weiss and her cousins decided their favorite bedtime story made the perfect Christmas fable to pass on to future generations.

Researched, written and illustrated by the children of Wauconda area residents who lived through the episode, the book is being distributed through Amazon.com and several area churches. Soon, it is expected to be available in area book stores. It also can be ordered through the Web site thecrossandthewatertower.com.

"We interviewed dozens of residents," Weiss said. "We went to a lot of local shops and asked them what they thought about it, talked to a lot of local churches and pastors. It was just neat to hear their different memories and what they thought about it and stuff. I'm really happy about how it turned out."

The book is dedicated to the 1989 residents of Wauconda for being an example.

Longtime Wauconda resident Rosemary Mers, formerly the owner of Mers Restaurant now called Docks Bar & Grill off Route 176, is acknowledged in the book's foreword. One of the original lighted crosses removed from the tower was placed on the roof of the family's restaurant.

Mers said the replacement star is a victory for the town's Christians.

"The star is a symbol of Christ's birth and that's what Christmas is all about," said Mers, 76. "It was a hard thing for all of us to take. But we didn't feel we lost any battle. We really felt like in the long run Wauconda won."

Sherman, now 55, sees the star on Wauconda's water towers as a triumph for atheists, too. The five-pointed star to atheists and other secular groups represents the birth of the sun, he said.

Sherman said the residents' protest with crosses was "a festival of religious freedom."

"By me forcing the government to stop doing religion for the Christians, the Christians did it by themselves," he said. "That's the way it's supposed to be in the United States."

Yet, Sherman doesn't agree with the children's book's depiction of what happened.

"The reason that it is a book of utter fiction is that it does a complete role reversal because at that time it was the atheists and our supporters who were polite, courteous, pleasant but firm," he said. "And it was the Christians who were rude, arrogant, nasty and hostile. It completely reverses the behavior and character of the key players, and of the debate. It's a good piece of reverse psychology."