Ormiston said:
But why is it important that Jesus was crucified? Why is the sad part of the story the most important part? The resurrection is more like a sidenote to the crucifixion than the climax.
Two points:
1) I didn't say that the crucifixion was the important part of Jesus' story. I said the significance
of the cross was that Jesus was crucified on it. Otherwise, what's the point of wearing an image of an instrument of torture and death?
2) To many Christians, the crucifixion is indeed the most important part of Jesus' story. They believe that his crucifixion is what redeems them and makes it possible for them to be saved. It's the very reason he was born in the first place. The resurrection is a joyous event, and "proves" his triumph over the devil and death, but when it comes down to it, the crucifixion is really the most important part: the substitutionary atonement for the sins of humankind.
I don't believe in substitutionary atonement, and didn't believe in it when I was a Christian, either, but it's the normative belief in Western Christianity.
The Protestant preference for a cross without a corpus probably really has more to do with the general Protestant reaction against veneration of images in the Catholic Church than with the resurrection. But the cross is an image as surely as the corpus is, and can be venerated with or without the corpus.