{"id":20068,"date":"2012-11-07T01:00:30","date_gmt":"2012-11-07T04:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=20068"},"modified":"2015-06-27T19:12:55","modified_gmt":"2015-06-27T22:12:55","slug":"mojave-cross-dedication-this-weekend-stolen-one-found","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2012\/11\/07\/mojave-cross-dedication-this-weekend-stolen-one-found\/","title":{"rendered":"Mojave Cross Dedication this Weekend, Stolen One Found"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Mojave Cross on Sunrise Rock in the remote Mojave National Preserve will finally be <a href=\"http:\/\/www.stripes.com\/news\/veterans\/mojave-cross-to-be-re-erected-on-veterans-day-1.196064\">re-erected in a Veterans&#8217; Day ceremony<\/a> this weekend.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The cross had become the focus of a legal case brought by the American Civil Liberties Union in 2000. The ACLU sued the federal government, asking that the cross be removed because the Christian symbol <!--more-->on federal land violated the First Amendment, prohibiting the government from endorsing any religion&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>In 2002, the U.S. District Court Central District of California ruled in the ACLU&#8217;s favor and the cross was encased in wood until an agreement could be reached.<\/p>\n<p>In 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned previous the ruling calling for the cross to be removed and sent the case back down to the U.S. District Court level.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>After they won, the cross <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2010\/05\/13\/letter-claims-responsibility-for-mojave-cross-theft\/\">was suddenly stolen<\/a>.\u00a0 A temporary replacement was <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2010\/05\/21\/latest-mojave-cross-mysteries\/\">pulled down by authorities<\/a>, despite the fact it was technically legal.\u00a0 A California paper reports <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2012\/04\/26\/mojave-cross-case-settled-cross-will-stand\/\">the land-swap deal<\/a> that made much of the case moot (as the cross no longer sits on government land) was finalized just this week.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, in an interesting bit of timing, the original <a href=\"http:\/\/www.boston.com\/news\/nation\/2012\/11\/06\/stolen-mojave-desert-cross-turns-calif\/832c8W5XpWSYyW5lN5mQcO\/story.html\">stolen cross has been found<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The San Mateo County Sheriff\u2019s Department was notified Monday that a large cross was tied to a fence post in Half Moon Bay. An attached note asked finders to contact authorities.<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nKGO-TV says the National Park Service confirmed it\u2019s the same cross that vanished from Sunrise Rock in the Mojave Desert.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The long fight against this war memorial &#8212; a fight\u00a0led by the ACLU (and supported by Michael Weinstein and his MRFF) &#8212;\u00a0has finally ended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Mojave Cross on Sunrise Rock in the remote Mojave National Preserve will finally be re-erected in a Veterans&#8217; Day ceremony this weekend. The cross had become the focus of a legal case brought by the American Civil Liberties Union in 2000. The ACLU sued the federal government, asking that the cross be removed because the Christian symbol<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[12,162,85,2,5218,456,7,17,10,171],"class_list":["post-20068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government-and-religion","tag-aclu","tag-cross","tag-mikey-weinstein","tag-military","tag-military-religious-freedom-foundation","tag-mojave-cross","tag-mrff","tag-religious-expression","tag-religion","tag-religious-freedom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20068\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}