Highway Jesus

Christian icon or kitschy eyesore? [Excerpts]
 
MIDDLETOWN, Ohio -- Shake every kudzu vine across America's southern Bible belt, and no glow-in-the-dark plastic Jesus quite like Ohio's mega-messiah will ever pop out.
 
Nicknamed "Super Savior," the 62-foot-tall statue of Christ looms over land reclaimed from a cornfield. It dominates a once-deadly stretch of Interstate 75 in southwestern Ohio that slices through some of the state's fastest-growing counties.
 
There is even a new urban legend being created: Not long after a church had the roadside statue erected last summer, the highway suddenly became safe.
 
"There were a whole lot of folks, when I was growing up, who used to have St. Christopher on the dashboard," said Butler County Commissioner Mike Fox. "Maybe having a large statue of Jesus kind of takes care of the whole flow of traffic as it goes through."
 
The safer-streets story is the latest twist involving the monolith whose upraised arms have been compared to a football referee signaling a score, earning it another nickname, "Touchdown Jesus." Those hands and arms, by the way, could hold a dump truck.
 
In Internet chat rooms, debate has been fierce between those with an affinity for the sculpted divinity and those who question its purpose. Some of the more orthodox have protested that it violates a commandment against graven images. Others say it promotes idolatry. There seems to be no middle ground, as this comment posted in the Google East community attests:
 
"As my wife said to me when we first drove by it, `Jesus would be rolling in his grave right now, if he were still in it.' "
 
Mike Rundle, who drives past the statue every workday, says he was initially fascinated but now is pretty much bored with the Lord.
 
"Only I still wonder," Rundle said, "why did that church spend the money that way?"
 
After 14 people were killed on that stretch of highway in 2000 and 2001, the state spent $1.1 million to install a cable that runs down the median. The cable barrier is designed to stop vehicles from crossing into oncoming traffic.
 
Jay Hamilton, the highway agency engineer who designed the barrier, is not willing to give the giant Jesus the credit for ending the carnage.
 
"I honestly think that Jesus can perform miracles, but I don't think the statue was the miracle out here," he said. "It was the barrier" (Sloat, "Cleveland Plain Dealer," September 24, 2005).