I base these posts on Fandango’s Who Won the Week posts, and I use the opportunity just to look at my own newsfeeds.

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My story this week is small but left me a little incredulous. The statue you see above is an 11m (36 ft) sculpture in ceramic, commissioned by the council in St. Austell, Cornwall. The council has a mission to regenerate the town and at a cost of £80k commissioned sculptor Sandi Brown to create the piece. The area has long traditions of clay mining, hence the ceramic link.

Ms Brown is not religious in any way, but to celebrate that the clay was mined from the ground, she named it Goddess Earth. So what, right?

Well, seven local (christian) churches have clubbed together and complained, denouncing the statue as “offensive to God”.

Their objection appears to be this name. Because they see it as promoting the idea that there might be gods other than the one they worship.

I am the lord, and there is no other; apart from me there is no God. I will strengthen you, though you have not acknowledged me,

Isiah 45

But in a twist of common sense, the council has responded saying that it doesn’t plan to change anything.

And you people in the States worry about christian fundamentalism…

We are absolutely right to stand up to these people. There’s a perfectly serious point here. This is not the reinvented, warm, welcoming church that they’d have us believe, but the authoritarian institution that we’ve known for hundreds of years. An intolerant organisation where dissent was not permitted, and which people turned away from in their droves. That they are wanting not just to constrain themselves, but everybody else, to view the world through their narrow field of vision. Even our heritage.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cornwall-62623953