Wacky Ohio Landmarks

Yesterday marked 13 years since the dramatic transformation of Ohio's "Big Butter Jesus" into "Charbroiled Jesus". Here's a letter I wrote to Mark Oppenheimer about it.

Dear Mark,

I enjoyed your Substack post about evangelical billboards! I love that you actually called the hotline. While we didn't have any Friar Ed's roaming the wilds of my home state, we did have something else of note. You may have heard of it over the years.

While one can find many Jesus billboards around Ohio, Big Butter Jesus stands alone when it comes to winning the Evangelical Award for Excellence (tm).  Constructed in Florida (of course it was!), this 62-foot sculpture, made of styrofoam and fiberglass, was then shipped and assembled in the front yard of Solid Rock Church near Lebanon,Ohio in 2004.

He goes by many names- Touchdown Jesus, Big J, and King of Kings among others. My personal favorite- WTF!- was uttered by many a tourist on their way to any of Cincinnati's amusement parks. (Not that Ohio has many tourists, but occasionally someone from Michigan gets bored.) 

In a move that Lindsey Graham typically reserves for others, Big Butter Jesus was !Holy Smokes! struck by lightning in 2010. A smiting from God himself? Maybe. (Reddit sure seemed to think so at the time.) Not to be deterred, a smaller 52-foot version ordained Lux Mundi (aka. Hug Me Jesus) was erected in 2012 but not before PETA tempted Solid Rock Church by offering to fund a bigger,better Jesus if he only would promote veganism. Sadly, we'll never know what that version of Jesus might have been called.

I leave you with this video of Heywood Banks reflecting on Big Butter Jesus's transformation into Charbroiled Jesus. 

Cheers!

~j.kinyon