Tag: Religion

Lilburn, GA: Henderson Family Cemetery & Beautiful Stone Temple

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Two places in Lilburn, GA that find spirituality and commercialism in the same spaces.

The Henderson Family Cemetery is a small burial plot with nothing but traffic, parking lots and stripmalls surrounding it. Casting its shadow over the graves, a large billboard.

Near the intersection of Lawrenceville Highway and Rockbridge RD, NW this stunning temple is being built. There was no signage to denote what religious group is building this, I would assume one orginating from India. I hope it would be open to anyone to visit, the outside is beautifuly ornate and I expect the interior to be much the same.

The gantry crane looks much like the one at the Alabama Shipyard. I’m assuming it is being used for accurate placement of the temple stones, this style of crane allowing for more accurate placement than more common construction cranes.

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Lilburn, GA Temple, originally uploaded by Mr. Kimberly.

This area is being heavily commercially developed and the temple’s neighbor is a Walgreen’s.

Note the unenforceable “photography prohibited” sign. If that’s what they wanted they should have built higher fence.

Jesus Loves Me This I Know, A Jack Chick Tract Told Me So…


I LOVE Jack Chick Tracts, and today I got one! I was working on campus at Georgia Tech. While on my lunch break, a nice woman handed me a little book, about twice the size of a matchbook. It was crazy Jack Chick and his gospel comic books. When last I visited Mr. Chick’s website, he had only been doing the miniature comic books, but now he has branched out into film with The Light of the World. The movie is a perfect example of his world view, where Christians can still go to hell and the Catholic Church is the devil’s doing. The movie has online clips, including this one with the following quote.

“Satan has multitudes following the teachings of Buddha, but Buddha is dead… … one of Satan’s masterpiece’s is Islam…”

While Chick writes all the text, he hires Fred Carter for the illustration. The color stills in the movie are great and have a wonderful garish quality that compliments the overboard narration. Carter’s black and white images add a true heft to the books, and have alway reminded me of the works of 19th century illustrator Gustav Dore (see below).

Chick is extremely private, and believes that the Catholic Church is both out to “get him” and collecting all of his works. So it is ironic that Jimmy Akin of Catholic Answers got an invitation to the premier of the movie, and managed to post a short interview with the reclusive Mr. Chick.

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Also see Gustave Dore Art Images for more great images.

Deep Thoughts Wednesday: Marriage and Religion

This isn’t going to be my soapbox on marriage and religion, so you don’t have to worry about that. It’s just that Scrivener posted a big quote from William Cronon that got me thinking about things in new ways. This is my attempt to do the same.

One… Does the religious strength of a country make it socially strong and sound? A study from the Journal of Religion and Society tries to tackle that subject. I got a headache from reading it and the graphs were a little confusing, so it must be smart.

Two… Does marriage instill loyalty? The main topic of James Q. Wilson’s article, “The Decline of Marriage and Loyalty “ sees looks at the institutions of marriage and cohabitation and sees something very specific…

“In a marriage, we merge not only our feelings but our wealth. We know that we not only share our love, we share our dependency. Cohabitation merely means living together; marriage means making an investment in one another…

…Cohabitation merely means shacking up. Of course, many marriages end in an easily arranged divorce, but even in this new era of no-fault divorces, they still must be done before a magistrate and be accompanied by a careful allocation of property and children. “

In this case, it sounds like loyalty is instilled as a result of not wanting to incure some sort of penalty, in this case financial. I haven’t fully processed his arguments but a conservative world-view flavors the whole article, and leaves it wide open to criticism.

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Next post, I’ll illustrate one of the main ways my wife instills loyalty in me and respond to Shooby’s “Kosher Gunplay post by showing my sweetie with a large handgun.