Destroy completely all the places where the nations you are dispossessing have served their gods—atop the high mountains, on the hills, and under every green tree. Tear down their altars, smash their sacred pillars, burn up their Asherah poles, cut down the idols of their gods, and wipe out their names from every place.
-Deuteronomy 12: 2-3
If you've ever traveled in Europe, and have a weakness for old churches and cathedrals as I do, you've probably encountered a frieze or relief of a saint or martyr, but with the face scraped off.
By Arktos - Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1125776
This isn't simply poor maintenance; the literal defacing was the work of Protestant zealots during the Reformation, who saw the whole practice of depicting saints in art as idolatrous and distracting from the primary purpose of attending church: to sit there being miserable, listening to an extended bloviation from the pulpit in the center where the altar should be, peering nervously among those around you trying to decide which ones are the elect and which were born for eternal damnation by a colicky, vengeful God.
Or at least that's what I think Protestants do in church, or maybe just those of the Calvinist variety. I know what you're thinking--Anglicans are Protestants too, and so Mr. Used To Be A Priest But Not No Mo', you're a Protestant just like the dour crowd you're imaging squirming around on a hard-backed pew. My retort, as it always was when I was the darling of the Wednesday night church jug wine crowd, is that Anglicanism actually predates the Roman Catholic Church, and that the very first church councils in Western Europe included delegates from English congregations who had gone for centuries without giving Rome a thought. When St. Augustine (not the theologian) came to England in 597 to "Christianize" it, he found Christians already there. So yes, that puts me in the extreme wing of the church that sees Anglicanism as a third way, a coequal with Catholicism and the Orthodox Church that endured 900 years of occupation by Rome before returning to first principles with the publication of the Book of Common Prayer.
Wow, that was a digression.
What sent me down this tangent was the news this week that my former neighbors in the once great state of Georgia (the "Empire State of the South", you all!) blew up a monument they deemed "satanic" for no obvious reason.
Apparently the slabs of granite had been something of a cause celebre among the reactionary right. A losing Republican candidate for governor, Kandiss Taylor, had called for their destruction, and gave her angry Calvinist deity all the credit for the explosion that turned them into a pile of rubble. Said Ms. Taylor, “God is God all by Himself. He can do ANYTHING He wants to do. That includes striking down Satanic Guidestones.”
Her campaign slogan was "Jesus. Guns. Babies." I can't make this stuff up. But for that bubble of civilization around Atlanta, she'd probably be on the fast track to the Governor's Mansion right now.
So, what was the "satanic" message on these rather enigmatic rocks just down the road from Lake Hartwell? Well, here's the list of precepts chiseled into one of them:
Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.
Guide reproduction wisely – improving fitness and diversity.
Unite humanity with a living new language.
Rule passion – faith – tradition – and all things with tempered reason.
Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts.
Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court.
Avoid petty laws and useless officials.
Balance personal rights with social duties.
Prize truth – beauty – love – seeking harmony with the infinite.
Be not a cancer on the Earth – Leave room for nature – Leave room for nature.
Elsewhere the creator wrote, "Let these be guidestones to an Age of Reason."
Well, we can't have that, can we? And somehow "reason" has become a buzzword for "not a religious lunatic like most of my neighbors." Back when I lived in South Carolina, and the state joined the "In God We Trust" fad on its license plates, the Secular Humanist Society based in more progressive Charleston created its own plate you could buy at the DMV that read, "In Reason We Trust." I lacked the temerity to slap one on my SUV, lest on one of my trips into the hinterland a fundamentalist might key my door or worse.
This act of domestic terrorism is worrisome at a couple levels. The right is emboldened at this moment, and isn't on a campaign of creation, but destruction, destruction of the rights and norms we've developed as a society over the last century, destruction of companies and individuals who push back, destruction ultimately of this country, replacing it with a theocracy in which a minority of religious fanatics dictate life choices to a disenfranchised majority. Blowing up the Georgia Guidestones is a metaphor for what we are living right now, and a rather chilling reminder that the fact that they have not yet come for something you care about doesn't mean they won't, eventually.
I guess it's more chilling for me because of the geographic lesson. The Guidestones were located in Elberton, Georgia, a little town not far from my beloved Athens, home of the University of Georgia, REM, the B-52s, and some of the most liberal politics in the state. It is a little island of learning and diversity bobbing in a sea of, well, the exact opposite of those things. And as soon as one crosses the moat and goes outside the perimeter highway that rings the town, one enters a land where folks do things like deem an object they don't understand the devil's work, and brazenly blow it up with the means of attribution (there's security video) but zero retribution.
That's us here on Southside Hill. Let's face it, the percentage of voters in this county who voted for DJT is the same as that back in Bay County. We live on a hill covered in pride flags while all around us are crumbling farmhouses with Trump banners that now bear the menacing message, "The Rules Have Changed." They're not going to be happy until they've put all those pointy-headed liberals in their place. Imposed their dystopic vision. Scraped the faces off of our beautiful idols.
I guess there's always Canada.
Meanwhile at Tara, I creaked down the hall to look out the second floor window above the front door, and studied the old chain holding up our porch light.
The rust and corrosion are troublesome, and have me wondering if the day is fast approaching when the whole fixture comes crashing down on someone's head, maybe mine. But I lack a ladder that is long enough to take it down to inspect, scour, and repaint. It's always something with a 173 year old house.
"10 - Be not a cancer on the Earth – Leave room for nature – Leave room for nature"
I can see why Republicans wanted the moment taken down now.... 🤣