MONROE, Ohio – An artist who designed an Ohio church’s giant statue of Jesus that was destroyed by lightning this week says he’s willing to help replace it.

Brad Coriell of Nashville, Tenn., says he has not been in contact with the Solid Rock Church but would be honored to be involved.

Co-pastor Darlene Bishop at the church along an interstate north of Cincinnati says Coriell could be among the artists who will submit designs and cost estimates for a new statue. Church officials say it’s likely to look different from the original six-story “King of Kings.”

A lightning strike Monday sparked a fire that burned down the plastic foam and fiberglass statue that was nicknamed Touchdown Jesus because of the way the arms were raised.

This can’t be good.




  1. DaveO says:

    Poor Jesucks

  2. Father says:

    Thou shall not make make graven images.

    Duh!

  3. denacron says:

    Holy flaming Jesus!
    The artist offering to restore it ought to use ingenuity in its replacement. Remove the previous idols remains, then call the new blank spot the “Holy spirit.” it could even be 10 stories tall!

  4. yankinwaoz says:

    This time, install a lightning rod, and make it fire retardant.

  5. admfubar says:

    #4 what good will that do? when god doesnt want you to infringe copyright, no little lighting rod is gonna protect you..

    amazing these ding a lings dont get it that god is pissed about this unlicensed reproduction.

  6. Derek says:

    His local nickname was Touchdown Jesus. I used to see him every day going between Cincinnati and Dayton. I always liked the name Zombie Jesus as it looked like he was coming up from underground.

    I think it was originally supposed to be a full statue, but the bottom torso was not made to the same scale as the upper torso, so he would have looked like a dwarf. Since they had already spent the money, the just used the top half.

  7. pcsmith says:

    #2 Got to go with you.

    Football Jesus is mixing Church and State of Football too closely.

  8. bobbo, to the left of Obama says:

    Artist would be “honored to be involved” as in gets paid again to create another fire hazard. I don’t think art is exempt from other building codes?

    Good to see though that our Heavenly Father does have good taste in art and will still muster the interest to zap the blasphemers.

    Yea – – ah – – GOD!!!!!

  9. Buzz says:

    Idol rumor.

  10. Mike Strong says:

    LOL moment – Amazing this didn’t go up in flames before. Essentially they built a big lighting rod and covered it in fuel – foam plastic is pretty much gasoline in a non-liquid form.

  11. chuck says:

    Praise Zeus.

  12. Cap'nKangaroo says:

    This statue inspired Heywood Banks to write “Big Butter Jesus”. As in it reminded him of those butter statues they make at the Iowa state fair.

  13. Paul says:

    The statue is called Big Butter Jeseus, too. There’s a song and a blog dedicated to it.

    Here are the links to a YouTube video of the song and the blog, respectively:
    http://youtube.com/v/_-ksuOaI61g&hl=en_US&fs=1& (song by Heywood Banks)
    http://jeeebus.wordpress.com/ (blog)

  14. Meatball says:

    On the BBC news the announcer said this in all seriousness: “Insurance companies are calling it an Act of God.”

    Hilarious but true!!!!

  15. The Ox says:

    Behold, he is resin.

  16. Breetai says:

    Tie in to the new Thor Movie?

  17. Adam Carolla says:

    God is great
    God is good
    And we thank Dvorak for this food
    Amen!

    Adam Curry is right…Dvorak is a big baby!

  18. Lou says:

    It must have been the work of BP.

  19. shaunvis says:

    Now if lightning had struck the neighbor’s place & burned it down the religious nuts would be “It’s a miracle, the statue survived…”.

    They’re always conspicuously silent when lightning DOES hit them, or a tornado blows down a church. Another great example of how the religious attribute the positives to the devine while dismissing the negatives. You can’t have it both ways! If a god is going to save one church/religious object, then another getting destroyed is either A: Caused by the god or B: Ignored by the god.

    Yet they will never say “Our Jesus got hit by lightning because god didn’t care or hates us”.

  20. Improbus says:

    Raze Jesus!

  21. jccalhoun says:

    I used to pass by this eyesore fairly regularly. It is just off the interstate just north of Cincinnati. The church is one of those huge megachurches. They also have a huge electronic sign that flashes messages. If I went to this church I think I’d be rethinking how much I donated to them…

    I love that the frame that is left looks kind of like the Wicker Man.

    No graven images…?

  22. Benjamin says:

    How did they know what Jesus looked like to make a statue of him? There are no surviving photographs from the time He walked on Earth. I’d kind of wonder if people are worshiping the statue instead of Jesus. Just saying that is the reason it got struck by lightning.

  23. tnp says:

    This is Mother Nature’s way of telling us to stop worshiping false gods and we should all be Druids, taking care of the plants, trees, oceans and earth in general.

  24. Mr Anderson says:

    Zeus shoots,
    he scores, GOOOOOOOOAL!!!

  25. Glass Half Full says:

    Marvel Comics needs to jump on this immediately and use this as marketing for their upcoming Thor movie. Obviously the God of Thunder and struck back and is reclaiming his place. ROTFLMAO

  26. geneb2450 says:

    Did it come back? It’s been three days …

  27. Rich says:

    BBJ in happier times- caught a glimpse of him on vacation in September 2009-

    http://lettucebelt.com/images/BBJ.jpg

  28. ashes2ashes says:

    The artist must think he was a cyborg. You
    burn away the flesh and you are left with
    a robotic skeleton.

  29. bobbo, the evangelical anti-theist and film critic says:

    On an almost related note, the Vatican has approved The Blues Brothers movie for viewing.

    I liked the movie because it had a lot of good lines, riffs, and actually the singing too. Could have been better, but I think that about everything.

    http://theregister.co.uk/2010/06/18/blues_brothers/

  30. Dirk Thundernuts says:

    Apparently now they are going to replace the touchdown Jesus with the offsides Jesus.


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