By The Associated Press
MONROE, Ohio – A six-story-tall statue of Jesus Christ with his arms raised along a highway was struck by lightning in a thunderstorm Monday night and burned to the ground, police said.
The “King of Kings” statue, one of southwest Ohio’s most familiar landmarks, had stood since 2004 at the evangelical Solid Rock Church along Interstate 75 in Monroe, just north of Cincinnati.
The sculpture, 62 feet (nearly 19 metres) tall and 40 feet (12 metres) wide at the base, showed Jesus from the torso up and was nicknamed Touchdown Jesus because of the way the arms were raised, similar to a referee signalling a touchdown in a game of football.
It was made of plastic foam and fiberglass over a steel frame, which is all that remained early Tuesday.
The fire spread from the statue to an adjacent amphitheatre but was confined to the attic area, and no one was injured, police Chief Mark Neu said.
Travellers on Interstate 75 often were startled to come upon the huge statue by the roadside, but many said America needs more symbols like it. So many people stopped at the church campus that church officials had to build a walkway to accommodate them.
The 4,000-member, nondenominational church was founded by former horse trader Lawrence Bishop and his wife. Bishop said in 2004 he was trying to help people, not impress them, with the statue. He said his wife proposed the Jesus figure as a beacon of hope and salvation and they spent about $250,000 to finance it.
How ironic…
I wonder how the members of this church felt. You would think someone in the church would say, I think this is some kind of a sign, maybe we should look for a new church. One where our $250,000 statues don’t get struck by lightning.
You know what is a better statue than the ‘Touchdown Jesus’? The charred remains of the statue with the two big skeletal arms raised in the air; kind of looks like tentacles. That thing actually looks quite interesting, Alien-ish.
It’s good! It would still be a waste of $250,000 even if that monstrosity had not burned down. I wonder how many houses that $$$ could have financed in the failures of the collapsing American market. But apparently this non-denominational church is not interested in that question, just grand displays of Jesus playing NFL referee. I sure hope they keep that skeleton up though.
I read this story about a month back and I was laughing the whole time, I couldn’t believe the irony of an icon of Jesus being burnt to the ground…now there’s sign!
I also laughed that it was called touchdown Jesus, since it does look that way.
Johnny is right, 250,000 can go to way better things if these people are really thinking about ‘helping’.