This is when the statue meets the stand. The visual display of all Church statues must conform with established Church policies which will evolve over time and transition in order to meet member's expectations and ideals in statue representation.
Policies regarding physical placement and maintenance of statues will have to be established. More importantly, however, policies and doctrine regarding representationalism and spiritual symbolism of the statues will be expressed in an official Church Declaration describing the Savior's image being spiritually represented through illustration of art and stone.
The making of graving images of the Christus has already become widespread through sales of mostly smaller statuettes. But the industry is about to take off as individual members and families in the Church begin to explore their personal appreciation of the Christus graven image for home use -- adoration for Christ and a spiritual manifesting through a statue.
Will policy of placing of statues provide recommendations that offer options to suit the preferences of local leaders or will all placement and installation be mandated and predetermined? Sizing, location, and quantity are factors that will have to considered in order to control and organize the Statue Program of the Church.
It appears that the Christus statue used by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is similar to how traditional Christians use the CROSS -- a universal symbol of their faith.
Soon, the graven image of Christus, will be everywhere in the lives of members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Members of the Church may focus on the statue when they think of Jesus Christ or, focus on Jesus Christ as they look upon the statue. Christ is invisible and imagined through faith but the statue is a concrete object -- visible to the human eye and capable of being touched by the human hand. The connection of the statue with faith in the invisible can open doors to new spiritual understanding and acceptance.
Soon, every visitors' center and temple will have a fully functioning display that features a spectacular representation of the resurrected Jesus in graven image form.
It's coming to every temple, every stake center, and every chapel near you!
IMPROVEMENT ERA. March, 1898 wrote:
THE DOCTRINAL POSITION OF THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH.
BY REV. N. E. CLEMENSON, PASTOR OF THE PRESBY- TERIAN CHURCH AT LOGAN, UTAH.
Moreover, we are forbidden to place him in the same class with either man or angel. "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above" — angel, etc. — "or that is in the earth beneath," — man, beast, etc. — "or that is in the water under the earth." (Ex. XX: 4). Paul censures the heathen because they "changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man." (Rom. I: 23). We may make no image to represent God. We must not conceive of him as being like, in form, any thing in either heaven or earth. When we do so we fall down to the creature of our own ignorance, the image of our imagination, and so become idolatrous.
The Latter-day Saints were in full agreement with the Presbyterian doctrine of interpreting Moses' law that was upheld by St. Paul. Wilford Woodruff was Church President at the time and there were no statues of Christ set up for Mormons to admire. Raising up graven images to the glory of Christ in order to convince the world that Mormons were Christians was not on the agenda.
However, the long standing tradition of the Church keeping the Second Commandment was upheld faithfully until the elderly Church President David O. McKay, succumbed to the temptation of rearing up graven images in order to gain prestige and respect in the world.
You worship Christ through the statue. You see and view the statue as a representation of Christ, even though the actual Christ is not physically in the room. Your faith through imagination of an invisible Christ is heightened and stimulated by looking at the statue. It is the statue that is credited for the generation of those extra emotions you wouldn't experience if it wasn't in the room for you to adore.
The statue is responsible for helping your faith increase and your devotion to Christ is amplified and increased because of the presence of the statue. Hence, your spiritual beliefs in Christ are benefited by the statue and the spiritual feelings you get when you look at it. Thus, you worship Christ through the statue.
Thank you for this thread, Shulem. I think it illustrates nicely how austere, cold, and even dead this fixation on the lone Christus is. I used to be fascinated by this statue, but it always left me with a slightly uneasy feeling. There is something that is somewhat unforgiving about it. Stark. Bloodless.
I understand that others do not feel this way about it, but when I compare these Christus statues with the other great iconic image of the Restoration, the First Vision, I have to say that I am disturbed by the evolution. From a communion between the Divine and the human in the First Vision, we see a lone figure of God, in cold, starkly white, hard stone.
It also is, quite frankly, a terrifying re-envisioning of Jesus. If you look at images of Jesus in other sects of Christianity, Jesus is so often depicted as the infant, the suffering man, communing with his apostles, etc. But this image, which has now been elevated above every other image in Mormondom, takes almost all the humanity out of Jesus, the only remaining trace being the faint lines of the wounds.
As a Roman historian, I also cannot help but note that the statue is called the Christus. On the one hand, we know that Christus Consolator was a statue that was carved by Bertel Thorvaldsen for the new Church of Our Lady in Copenhagen, which replaced the cathedral that was destroyed by a British naval bombardment during the Napoleonic Wars. In its original context, and in the company of the apostolic statues Thorvaldsen also made, the Christus means something quite different than it does in and LDS context.
So, we need, on the other hand, to keep in mind that this image entered the LDS canon of iconography in 1950, when apostle Stephen Richards purchased an 11-foot copy and presented it to David O. McKay. At that point the statue must be treated in part as an image of post-WWII American might and imperialism. Its appropriation by the Church speaks to the new wealth and global power of America. A similar thing happened with Greek statues in Ancient Rome. Romans like Cicero write about how they would shop for statues in Greece, and then bring what was once a sacred image in a temple home to Italy and set it up in the corner of a room in a villa, where the master of the place would walk around attired like a Greek philosopher and sporting a beard he could stroke pensively--a regular Roman Socrates.
We also need to keep in mind that this statue was brought to Salt Lake City when the LDS Church was still an overtly racist and segregationist organization, and some of its powerful apostles were wringing their hands over the "negro" (their ugly term, cited for historical accuracy) and the communists. It was not uncommon in that day for Mormons to entertain British Israelism and theories about the Nordic retreat of the Lost Tribes through which early Mormon converts came to represent the calling out of the Blood of Israel--the whites of northwestern Europe. It is thus no surprise that some Mormons were Nazi sympathizers and believed the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. We are talking about a full immersion in the nastiest and most conspiratorial racial theories of the day.
So when a perfectly blanched and bloodless Jesus with a Latin title (Christus) is brought to America from Scandinavia by a racist Christian sect and set up in the monumental complex of their global capital (think about the Egyptian obelisk Augustus set up in Rome next to his Altar of Peace), we ought not to glide blithely past the details and forget the historical context. For Mormons, the Christus is a symbol of power and aspirations to global dominance (in the spiritual sense) by a Church filled with folks who believed that they were White Ephraim triumphant over Germany's vision of non-Christian Aryan dominance. Obviously those two visions differ in many ways. Where they do not differ is in the belief that white men who constitute a superior race will assert their global dominance. The "right" version, however, prevailed in WWII over the non-Christian version.
We should not ever forget American Christianity in its many forms, including its LDS form, shows us just how malleable belief systems are. We used to lament Protestants accusing Mormons of worshipping "another Jesus," and we thought that was a totally absurd thing for them to say. What we ought to have learned, however, is that in a sense a vision of Jesus that differs so radically from another vision of Jesus might understandably cross from descriptive deviance to perceived existential deviance. That point has been brought powerfully home by today's Republican-Trumpist Jesus, who, for all intents and purposes, bears almost no resemblance to the mainstream Jesus of past generations. Rather, Republican-Trumpist Jesus is more the Jesus of Constantine than the Jesus of Galilee. But, then, so is the LDS Christus statue, and I hope we do not see these two new Jesuses merge irrevocably.
“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don’t have to worry about the answers.”~Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow
And thank you -- I will read and digest your post later as it looks wonderful and full of insight and wisdom.
I'm off to the Kimbell Art Museum to attend the Queen Nefertari’s Egypt exhibit, a world class exhibit on par with anything I could possibly expect.
There will be lots of statues there.
Oh, and I really have nothing against Mormons using the Christus for whatever reason. I personally don't object as they have every right to live their religion how they like. The point I'm expressing in this thread is that the logo and fixation of the statue is rather odd (peculiar) and is a break with former tradition and views held by Mormonism regarding the use of graven images of Jesus. Also, it shows that Mormons have joined the rest of Christianity in breaking with Moses and the direct commandment he gave about making images of Deity because it leads to a form of idolatry that he was absolutely against.
Off to see Nefertari! (I won't bow down to her though)
