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A BAPTIST CHURCH in South Carolina plans to remove a hand-carved statue of Jesus Christ because some congregants believe it’s too “Catholic” for their place of worship.
The hand-carved, 7-foot (2-meter) statue and accompanying reliefs depicting scenes from Christ’s life have been displayed outside Red Bank Baptist Church in Lexington for a decade.
But in a letter to the artist, Pastor Jeff Wright said the art would be removed this week.
“We have discovered that there are people that view the art as Catholic in nature,” Wright wrote in the letter to Delbert Baker Jr. A friend of Baker’s posted the letter on Facebook.
Wright wrote that the statue and reliefs bring into question “the theology and core values of Red Bank Baptist Church,” but he didn’t elaborate.
The pastor did not return telephone calls or respond to messages The Associated Press left in person with his staff at the church this week.
The letter said Baker had until Thursday to remove the art if he wanted to keep it. If not, it would be destroyed. Workers at the church refused to tell the AP if that deadline remained in place.
The dispute is a symptom of a larger “dysfunction” in the Southern Baptist Convention, said Bill Leonard, a professor of Baptist studies at Wake Forest University.
“Almost week to week there’s another incident in which southern Baptists portray themselves … having convictions that look like bias and prejudice in the larger culture,” Leonard said.
The bias is so deep that they even think they have the wrong Jesus is in front of their church.
In his own letter responding to Wright, Baker explained his vision of the art, saying it was meant to show Red Bank Baptist had a focus on Christian outreach.
“This is why Christ is represented as though he is stepping outside of the building, not just confined to the idleness of inner walls,” Baker wrote in the letter, which his friend also posted on Facebook.
Under each arm, the reliefs depict scriptural and historical events that we as Christians believe represent the life of Christ.
The reason that has been given for removing the art makes no sense, Baker added, because a large sign out front identifies the building as a Baptist church. Instead, the explanation makes it appear that congregants are disparaging Catholics, Baker wrote.
“I was obedient to my Lord in creating it and after much prayer I must respectfully decline to take part in its removal,” Baker wrote.
Baker did not respond to telephone messages from the AP.
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This was in The Guardian a few days ago too. I just can’t understand how this is making news. If it made the news in a small local newspaper, I’d be surprised in fact. But the fact that it’s appearing on the other side of the Atlantic is just weird.
@Donncha Ó Coileáin: it’s important because the Southern Baptists are one of the biggest “Christian” groups in the USA and there is a lot happening within it which is reflective of what is happening in that country, but on a deeper, more bitter level. Look there and you will see what’s coming down the road in the next decade or two.
@Brendan Cooney: Next few years me thinks but we won’t be able to show or talk about this lovely fella who is made up like them all without been labelled racist #iloveallah
@Brendan Cooney: probably has more to do with wanting to be distanced from the scandals but you could be right
@Donncha Ó Coileáin: it’s actually hilarious! We’ve nothing to do with THAT type of crazy religion! We have our OWN type of crazy religion!!!!
@Brendan Cooney: do you mean the morality the southern baptists espouse or the particular brand of christian fundamentalism which they represent as an institution is going to invade Ireland and Europe??? I cant see how either would be easily adopted over on this side of the water. We have just about rejected the institution of the Catholic Church and we are removing it bit by bit from the state…I cant really see us giving much shrift to a bunch of christians which are even more fundamentalist than the Catholic church. But then again who knows…but I would be skeptical of it happening. Either way I would hope you are wrong at it isnt on the way.
@Donncha Ó Coileáin:
Just a reminder that there are actually sectarian Americans, many descendants from British planters.
Irish media are terrified of criticising anti-Catholic bigotry.
Up there in cringiness with dubbing Gerry Adam’s voice.
What a great and newsworthy story!
I wonder has anything else happened in the world?
@Noel: loads of stuff.
@Noel: Same weird sectarian stuff is happening in Ireland. Media not promoting restraint in sexual behavior in case they might be “accused” of being Catholic, “Lets devastate our high quality schools because they are Catholic, etc.
@Tom Molloy: You think that the schools are ‘high level’ because they teach iron age mumbo jumbo alongside actual facts?
@Tom Molloy: How is a bigoted baptist church, sectarian pray tell ?
@Tom Molloy: What “media”? You know that by posting online that you are part of the media, right?
@Tom Molloy: well responsibility is becoming a taboo…and so is religion. I dont agree at all with the institution of the church…im glad it is being pushed out of public life as it is very rigid and authoritarian. I would like to see us as a society take the religious narratives and remove them from the churches grasp and just teach them as the basis of our moral codes along with Greek and Roman philosophy down to the Enlightenment and beyond to today. They are fictional but valuable first step on the road to western civilisation and yes we have outgrown them but they were the first effort at moral codes for a civilized community. If you take out the references to God from the 10 commandments…as in remove the first 4…then 5 to 10 are pretty vital and we based western values on them
@Kevin Tyrrell: actually i maybe mistated that they were the first attempt…there were surely moral codes which preceded these that were borrowed from other religious texts…but morality was always religious to start with…so the christian myth of Jesus was an early and very influential narrative which influenced western culture and society greatly…and I for one would like to remove its interpretation and jurisdiction from the church…we dont need them anymore to tell us how to interpret these things and they are the reason its a taboo and dirty word now…and that is another failing of the institutional church.
Honestly, who cares……
Christians care, they don’t want to be confused with Catholics.
I wouldn’t want to be mistaken for a Catholic either.
@bopter: how very christen of you!
@bopter:
Christians don’t want to get associated with inbred sectarian bigots like yourself bopter.
You’re clearly an idiot.
Some thoughts for the day……
1. There are more sects of Christianity than there are sentences in the Bible.
2. Each thinks that it is the correct one, and ignores the contradictions in the bible which prove that the bible cannot be the inerrant word of God.
Enjoy mass everyone!
@Beyond Belief: In a nutshell. That’s the thing about organised religion in general. They can’t all be right, but they can all be wrong.
@Beyond Belief: Wow what a happy bunch you two are.
The statue is nothing like the one in the photo above. I agree that it’s an insignificant story.
https://nypost.com/2018/05/30/church-removes-jesus-statue-because-its-too-catholic/
@Brendan O’Brien: there is something seriously lacking in the journal recently with their lack of proper reporting, half stories and wrong photos as you easily discovered in this story.
What a coincidence! I also got rid of one cos it was too Catholic,,,
When I first brought the young lad to mass he looked up at the man in question, turned round to me and said ” who’s yer man in his jocks?”
@james lee: those “jocks” have a lot to answer for! Were they not there we would have a constant reminder that the man in question was actually a Jew (or possibly a Druze). How history would be different had the “jocks” been omitted.
Straight to the top of the list of things I don’t care about. I doubt half the people attending that church don’t even care. So why should we.
C’mon Jesus get your act together! ( and get him a cheese burger and I doctor he looks hungry and ill)
@David Edwards: well that Jesus looks like he should be in rehab. The one that they actually removed is different, just a white statue that funnily enough does look catholic. Either way I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Jesus that looked like a 1st century middle eastern guy. He has to be north European to get any real credibility.
Jesus Christ!
sad news
Christianity and Catholicism are separate entities
Exodus 20:4-5
Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth:Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;
@Ireland Needs God: @Ireland Needs God: your version of a deity is as f****d up as everyone else’s. You ought to go do something useful with your life instead of regurgitating garbage.
They’re just jealous because it doesn’t move or bleed
Time they took religous iconography out of religion!
Ohh wait, they tried that before!
Since Polaroids hadn’t yet been invented and nobody knows what Jesus looks like, statues seem like a particularly bad idea. I think we can all agree that he doesn’t look like the traditional “white” Jesus that is typically used for statues.
@Sean: I agree. Would love to see statues of him as a person from the middle east.
@Annie Citric: They actually have done computer reconstructions from Jewish 1st century skulls. I don’t think people could handle the real image. It certainly wasn’t Robert Powell or even the guy on the Turin Shroud.
wow
Something to get cross about!
Is that robert powell or jeffrey hunter?
These’s a much bigger church that any religious institutional church and that is the Universal Church of God, and you can believe what ever you wish as indeed God gave us the freedom to do just that. Morality is man made as are the institutional churches and what religion do you think God belongs to? Not everything is black and white and even Science and Faith can coexist http://www.scienceandfaith.org/
Here is an article from the compelling truth
https://www.compellingtruth.org/is-Jesus-a-myth.html
Good start.. progress At least:-)
Weird
As that not the beeb with the shite dubbing ? Never got that anyway, weird!
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