Outchurched

The Peace Sign is Unpatiotic and Satanic, or so a few folks in Colorado seem to believe.

(AP) A homeowners association in southwestern Colorado has threatened to fine a resident $25 a day until she removes a Christmas wreath with a peace sign that some say is an anti-Iraq war protest or a symbol of Satan.

Some residents who have complained have children serving in Iraq, said Bob Kearns, president of the Loma Linda Homeowners Association in Pagosa Springs. He said some residents have also believed it was a symbol of Satan. Three or four residents complained, he said.

“Somebody could put up signs that say drop bombs on Iraq. If you let one go up you have to let them all go up,” he said in a telephone interview Sunday.

Lisa Jensen said she wasn’t thinking of the war when she hung the wreath. She said, “Peace is way bigger than not being at war. This is a spiritual thing.”

I suppose the idea of “Peace on Earth, Good Will Towards Men” is very alien to these folks, which is beyond sad.

Also interesting is the fact that the head of the homeowner’s association fired all five members of the Homeowner Association’s review board after he ordered them to make the wreath-hanging homeowner take it down and they refused, concluding that it was a seasonal symbol that didn’t say anything (paraphrase of the story’s last paragraph).

One of the comments on the ABC News site provides a concise, snarky reply:

Pray to God that he will protect us from peace. Christ came so that we could be free to wage perpetual war.
Posted by frankly6 at 10:50 AM : Nov 28, 2006

Does the Peace Symbol have “Satanic origins?” Christianists would probably say “yes,” as the symbol was created as a logo for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and nothing is more Un/anti-Christlike than wanting to abolish weapons of mass destruction:

One of the most widely known symbols in the world, in Britain it is recognised as standing for nuclear disarmament – and in particular as the logo of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND). In the United States and much of the rest of the world it is known more broadly as the peace symbol. It was designed in 1958 by Gerald Holtom, a professional designer and artist and a graduate of the Royal College of Arts. He showed his preliminary sketches to a small group of people in the Peace News office in North London and to the Direct Action Committee Against Nuclear War, one of several smaller organisations that came together to set up CND.
…

Gerald Holtom, a conscientious objector who had worked on a farm in Norfolk during the Second World War, explained that the symbol incorporated the semaphore letters N(uclear) and D(isarmament). He later wrote to Hugh Brock, editor of Peace News, explaining the genesis of his idea in greater, more personal depth:

I was in despair. Deep despair. I drew myself: the representative of an individual in despair, with hands palm outstretched outwards and downwards* in the manner of Goya’s peasant before the firing squad. I formalised the drawing into a line and put a circle round it.

Excuse me, I’m off to make “Christians for Nuclear Holocaust” t-shirts.

* (I’m pretty sure that the Goya painting I found is not the one that Holtrom is referring to. However, the painting I found is similar and makes essentially the same point. Holtrom mentions that the peasant’s hands were downturned, whereas the hands/arms in the represented image are quite obviously up. The fact that I’m too lazy to browse through a huge collection of paintings of the atrocities of war doesn’t negate Holtrom’s comments whatsoever.)

This entry was posted by Rev. Dan on Wednesday, January 10th, 2007 at 5:57 pm and is filed under Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.