Mr. Subliminal, call your office. Some Republican National Convention-goers are buzzing over the design of the podium at Madison Square Garden, which includes a pattern in the shape of a Christian cross.

Is it possible that organizers of the convention took their not-so-subtle image-making a bit too far? Or is this a paranoid delusion akin to those of the people who find ominous coded messages when they play Beatles records backward?

The cross, if it is one, appears on the front of a wooden box-shaped structure just to the left of the lectern, with a gavel resting on its top. The shape – in light wood against a darker background – is echoed less vividly on the lectern itself.

The cross touches a nerve with some observers, who see it as injecting Christian symbolism into an otherwise ecumenical event that has included Jewish and Muslim speakers. It provides potential fodder for Democrats, who are trying to paint President Bush and the Republican Party as captives of the religious right.

It also gave people something to talk about on the second day of a four-day convention with a foregone conclusion and little in the way of suspense.

Republican officials and some party regulars dismiss the speculation. Officials at Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, usually quick to protest, withheld criticism. But some found it hard to believe that such a thing would happen by accident on a custom-made podium that reportedly cost $2.5 million.

“The Republicans are very good at stagecraft,” said a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee, Matt Bennett. “My sense is that nothing goes on that podium that isn’t very, very carefully considered. It would be surprising to me, when they were putting it up, that nobody noticed.”

“I believe it is an image of two crosses,” said the Rev. James Forbes Jr. of the left-leaning Riverside Church in Manhattan, which hosted President Clinton on Sunday. “This is an unusual and inappropriate use of religious symbols in a political campaign,” he told the Associated Press.

“That’s very strange. That’s upsetting,” said the president of the Zionist Organization of America, Morton Klein, when shown a photograph of the podium.

A spokesman for the Bush campaign, Kevin Madden, dismissed the controversy. “What will they come up with next?” Mr. Madden said.

An official of an Orthodox Jewish group, David Zwiebel of Agudath Israel, said he had not noticed the cross while watching the convention on television.

“If it’s clearly designed overtly to represent a Christian symbol, or any religious symbol, it’s highly inappropriate,” Mr. Zwiebel said. “If it’s just that there’s something about the design of the podium which suggests in the abstract a cross, then it’s an overreaction.”

“I can’t believe there’s anything intentional,” he added. “I don’t think I’m going to lose too much sleep over it.”

The Washington representative of American Friends of Lubavitch, an Orthodox Jewish Organization, Levi Shemtov, said, “I’d be surprised, even disturbed, if it was intentional, be cause, if it was, it shouldn’t have been so subtle.”

A Jewish Republican fundraiser who held events this week for Rep. Tom De-Lay and Rep. John Sweeney, Michael Landau, attributed the fuss to “people just looking to cause trouble.”

“Every panel door looks like a Christian cross,” Mr. Landau said.

The founder of BestforIsrael.org, a Web site that argues President Bush is better for Israel than Senator Kerry, Jeff Stier, said, “If there are people who are making a big deal about this, those people are trying to distract us from President Bush’s record on Israel.”

Messrs. Klein, Shemtov, Landau and Stier were all interviewed at a Republican National Convention-related event at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York.