So.. what do a Baptist church in Pollock, La., and the Washington
Monument have in common?
No idea?
The Baptist church in Pollock sits on the west side of Highway 165. You
pass it every time you go to Camp Hardtner. Like most Baptist churches, it has
a steeple. But unlike most churches with steeples, it does NOT have a cross on
top.
Anyone happen to know what is on top of the steeple? It’s a hand with
one finger pointing heavenward.
Now the Washington Monument does not have a hand on the top! It has a
4-sided aluminum cap, each side containing an inscription. Three of the
inscriptions have to do entirely with the building of the monument: names,
dates, etc.
The fourth inscription says what? It says, “LAUS DEO,” which
is Latin for “Praise be to God.”
Now, a quick side story. The inscriptions on the cap of the Washington
Monument are not visible from inside the monument. They are visible only to
those who might be hovering in mid-air over the peak of the monument, in other
words, people in helicopters and, presumably, God.
So the National Park Service created a replica of the cap that is on
display inside the museum at the base of the monument. A few years ago, in the
mid-2000s, the replica cap was moved to a tent on the grounds while the museum
was renovated. When it was moved back indoors, instead of being placed
catty-corner to the wall so that all four sides could be read, as it had been
before, it was placed with the LAUS DEO side against the wall, which prevented
visitors from seeing it.
An uproar ensued. The Park Service was accused of being ashamed of the
Christian foundations of our nation. On snopes.com you can find a letter from
the head of the Park Service stating that it was an accident, they had meant no
offense and that it would be fixed. Since the letter is dated 2007, I assume
the problem has long been corrected.
One interesting thing to me about that story, however, is that no one
seems to notice or mention that “Praise be to God” is much more common as an
expression of Muslim piety than it is as an expression of Christian piety.
Of course, Muslims typically say “Praise be to Allah,” and they
routinely say it often: in times of gratitude and in times of distress, before
beginning an important task and at the end, and on and on.
But if you accept that the God of all three of the Abrahamic
faiths—Judaism, Islam and Christianity—is one and the same God, then “Praise be
to God” sounds much more Islamic than Christian. Christians are more likely to
be heard saying, “Praise the Lord,” or “Thank you, Jesus!”
But whatever the builders of the Washington Monument had in mind when
they inscribed “LAUS DEO” on the top of the monument, they, like the builders
of a Baptist church in Pollock, La., were looking for God in all the wrong
places.
