The Deacon's Bench
Well, this is different. From The State in South Carolina:
Jesus Christ is being removed from a South Carolina church.
A statue of Jesus Christ and accompanying artwork that has been displayed at Red Bank Baptist Church for more than a decade will be taken down by Thursday, according to church officials.
The art will be removed because a majority of the congregation voted that the 7-foot-tall statue and sculpted reliefs were “causing come confusion.”
According to the church, many people think the sculptures are Catholic and not representative of a Baptist church.
“We have discovered that there are people that view the art as Catholic in nature. We understand that this is not a Catholic icon, however, people perceive it in these terms,” said a letter that was signed by Dr. Jeff Wright, Red Bank’s senior pastor, and Mike Dennis, the church’s Chairman of Deacons.
The letter was sent to Bert Baker Jr., the Midlands artist who hand carved the statue for the church in 2007. Baker is a former member of the Red Bank Baptist Church congregation.
“I’m not interested in stirring the pot, but people not liking it because it looked too Catholic is crazy, man. It’s been up there for 11 years,” Baker told The State on Tuesday. “I don’t agree with the letter, it bothers me.”
Both the church’s letter and a two-page response from Baker were shared on Facebook by Rhonda Davis. Like Baker, Davis is unhappy with the church’s decision to remove the art.
In her Facebook post, Baker called the art “a wordless story of Christ’s life, death and resurrection.” She said its removal is sad and regretful because it “insults and prejudices” another denomination, which she described as “totally unbecoming of anyone who calls themselves a representative of Christ.”
“It is both disturbing and sad that in a time when we are all needing to come together as brothers and sisters in Christ to project and reflect His love to a lost and dying world, Red Bank has decided to single out another denomination as the reason behind the decision to avoid any real or imagined fear that they would somehow be associated with them,” Davis wrote in her Facebook post.
And check out the video below.
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