"I'm glad they've taken it down. It gave me the creeps when I was going past it"Explaining the decision to remove the hideous thing, Reverend Ewen Souter told the BBC the sculpture was, "A horrifying depiction of pain and suffering."
Disagreeing with the church's decision, Reverend John Capron told the BBC:
"I think it's very difficult for us to sanitise the Christian faith and certainly to sanitise human suffering. The cross was a dreadful event; one of the cruellest events in the history of mankind. As we look at what is happening in the world around us, for example what is happening to the people of Gaza, I don't think it's entirely realistic to think that violence and horror don't happen to us. For Christians, the great comfort in the crucifix is the thought not that it represents simply, human pain but also the love of God. The God who created us is also the God who suffers with us."Designed in the 1960s by Edward Bainbridge Copnall, a former president of the Royal Society of British Sculptors, it's made from a mixture of coal dust and resin and will now be housed at a Horsham museum; presumably away from small children.
Reverend Souter thought the oversized idol was actually scaring people off and not communicating the "Christian" message. He wanted to portray, "an accurate biblical picture of the crucifixion as a moment of hopefulness for the world, and not one of despair".
Oh for fuck's sake.
Rewind that a moment. Did he just say, "an accurate biblical picture of the crucifixion... (in the negative)"
I've seen the statue and it's a pretty nasty looking thing and fairly accurate. The malnourished shadow of a man, face contorted into screaming agony with hands nailed to the wooden cross through the palms (which is a common mistake).
I'd say it was an fairly accurate depiction of pain and suffering the early Italian army forced on anyone who pissed them off.
Modern scholars (at least, ones who don't have a religious axe to grind) now think the resurrection that is a cornerstone of the Christian faith was only added by a scribe hundreds of years after the original text was laid down. The earliest text (that we have) stops where at the point where the cave is opened and Jesus's body is missing.
The empty stainless steel crucifix that will replace this hideous throwback only serves to feed the lie that professional Christians need to keep people believing in. Tell them the truth is what I say - even if it's nasty.
Tell them that your god was an evil, jealous, murdering bastard - just like it says in the bible. I know you won't because then they'll realise you're just a bunch of bigots feeding them a crock of shit: and you'll be out of a job.
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