Interview with the Buckham Center Director of the Faribault Parks and Recreation Department

On the other hand, another community member, Paul J. Peanasky, the Buckham Center Director of the Faribault Parks and Recreation Department (the complex in front of which the monument stands), reacted thus:

In a city with 95% Christians, I don’t see anything wrong with having a monument that expresses Christian values.

He cited its general inoffensiveness to the public due to a lack of community complaints. Peanasky also mentioned that the monument it is mostly Christians that take issue with the monument:

The only people who complain are not those of a minority religious background in our community. Usually it’s people from a Christian background who want their separation of Church and State that they were raised on.

And yet he, too noted its desired interfaith inclusivity. In speaking about the Ten Commandments, he articulated a sentiment that has been expressed by those who have rallied around such monuments in Minnesota and elsewhere in the United States:

I think that it represents many different religious backgrounds because it’s got all the different religious symbols all over it, so it doesn’t just represent the Christian religion. I don’t know who thought of that, but they really thought ahead. Some lawyer, probably.

Peanasky was a good resource in that he got most of the phone calls either complaining about the monuments or their removal. He commented:

In the late fall, we usually put up a Nativity scene right behind the Ten Commandments monument. We get a number of complaints about that, and it’s a bit of a hot topic, so I don’t really want to talk about it, but the Ten Commandments is more of a historical monument and we don’t have any complaints about it, basically.

He was also the person contacted by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, the only major source of complaints about the monolith. He stated:

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is the name of the organization that is complaining, and they brag about having 10,000 members nationwide, but if you think about it, Northfield has about 20,000 people. And they’re not from here; they’re from Madison, Wisconsin.

The general sentiment communicated by Peanasky, as well as the other community members, is that the monolith is generally either treasured or happily tolerated. For example, he recalled:

Back when there was all that controversy about the Ten Commandments in Duluth, a news group came out here to interview people about it and they couldn’t find a single person who objected, who didn’t want the Ten Commandments to be there.