Concord, New Hampshire, December 31, 2024
Photo: gtv-cdn.com
The local Satanic Temple’s blasphemous display outside the State House in Concord, New Hampshire, has been attacked and destroyed several times by numerous people, including local Orthodox Christian Joshua Cummings.
Cummings was apprehended by police last week but says his conscience is clean.
“What does it say about us as a people if we allow such a filthy and hideous image to appear before God in our most basic societal representation?” he writes in a Facebook post acknowledging that he has destroyed the statue several times. “The spiritual principality is a higher order of reality than the legal municipality,” he told the police.
Cummings writes that this act of confession is one of the greatest things he’s ever done.
His statement reads:
I live in Concord, New Hampshire. It was I who destroyed the Satan statue in front of the State House. Other people have destroyed it on several occasions. It has basically become open season on the stupid thing at this point, but I (have lost count but) did at least five times bash it on the head with my medieval mace in the middle of the night, and I was finally apprehended by police for it a few nights ago. I wasn’t arrested, only asked some basic questions and read my Miranda Rights; and I don’t think charges will be pressed, and if they are I’m sure I can cover the lawfare with some kind of crowdfunding. It’d probably quickly go viral the same way the news articles have.
What I said to the cops is the same thing I’d say before the press: that the presence of the statue hurts everyone in the city and even the whole state—that the spiritual principality is a higher order reality than the legal municipality. The cops were surprised by my answers and didn’t really know how to respond.
Online, some Protestants and Catholics in the comment sections of the widespread news articles have even defended the statue, saying that the 1st Amendment protects its being in front of the State House. I maintain my stance that we ought to have anti-blasphemy laws, and that it is unChristian to not destroy idolatrous statues, a fact witnessed to by the countless saints who did not hesitate to topple monuments to falsehood.
I know the Satanic Temple wants to catch me on a “hate crime” charge. On the night I was apprehended, the officer, after spending a few minutes at his vehicle, came up to me and said “So you did this because you hate the Satanic Temple?” Paraphrasing, I responded “I don’t hate anyone. The Satanic Temple are a bunch of idiots, but I pray they repent. I hate Satan.”
Again, I maintain that Satan is not who the Satanic Temple says he is—he is who he is—he has no humility and no love, and hates everyone, seeking their destruction. The “Seven Tenets” of Satanism (which the Temple regularly cites as the reason for making their cause attractive) have nothing to do with the actual agenda of Satan. God forbid the members of the Satanic Temple die in their delusion and realize their eternal disappointment: Satan doesn’t like you as much as you liked him!
I don’t think anything will come of this legally, but if anything does I will be happy to state my case, and I pray it can provide a confession for Orthodoxy, which has the fullness of theology to explain why it is perfectly Christian to destroy an idol in front of the very State House. What does it say about us as a people if we allow such a filthy and hideous image to appear before God in our most basic societal representation?
It was impossible that I would not do everything in my power to destroy that horrific statue standing in the very city in which I live, this city that I so dearly love, and I am grateful to God for giving me the gumption to do it. I regard it as one of the greatest things I’ve ever done, dust that it is. My conscience is clear, and should I be charged unfairly, then the crisis of conscience shall move laterally to my interlocutors. I may stand trial tomorrow, but we will all stand trial before the only Righteous Judge. Please pray for me, I’m not sure what is about to happen, but I maintain: Glory be to God for all things.
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