Because if there's one thing the state needs, it's more Jesus.
Mar 29, 2024

You’ll all be thrilled to learn that Aberdeen, Mississippi is now home to a Giant Christian Cross.

It’s the 14th such cross in the state, according to the group behind this one, Cross of Christ—Monroe County.

And it cost a whopping $240,000.

(Follow above article link to view photos/PDFs that accompany this article.)

… Buzzy and Janice Cullum donated an acre of land for the project.

"This is not for Aberdeen. This is not for Monroe County. This is for everybody who travels this highway back and forth. They're going to see this cross and talk about it and say, 'I went through Aberdeen, Mississippi, and there's a 120-foot cross standing,'" Buzzy said.

Mike Rozier of Rozier Construction said the cross is the 14th in Mississippi and the 20th the company has installed overall.

20 crosses. $240,000 apiece. That’s $4.8 million spent on structures that are 120 feet tall, 64 feet wide, and 0% useful.

That said, the crosses also appear to be legal, with the money raised by a non-profit group specifically for this purpose. Doesn’t mean anyone has to take them seriously.

They do raise a number of questions, though.

Like why are these people deluded enough to think the one thing lacking in Mississippi is a symbol of Christianity? (It’s the most religious state in the country!)

How seriously should we take the faith of anyone who converts because they passed a giant cross on the side of a highway?

And why are elected officials involved in promoting Christianity? (In this case, the cross was allegedly a “dream” of the “Monroe County sheriff [Kevin Crook] and Mississippi Northern District Public Service Commissioner Bo Robinson.” A different cross was endorsed by a sheriff who was literally on the Cross Project Committee.)

A few years ago, Mike Rozier explained why he felt these crosses were worth the cost:

“I’ve had people ask me almost on every cross, ‘That’s a lot of money to spend on a cross just for people to drive by and look at, I tell them, yes it is, we need to spend that money on other things to further the Kingdom of God also, but if one person drives down Highway 45 and looks at this cross and thinks about what Jesus did for him, and he has a conversion moment, it’s worth every penny,” Rozier said.

Here’s a thought: More people would be drawn to Christianity if this kind of money was raised for, say, a children’s hospital instead of roadside monstrosities.

I thought Rozier’s comment back then was tone-deaf, but what he said about this most recent cross was even worse:

"Everywhere you look, people say Mississippi is #49 or #50 in this or that. We're #1 in the number of crosses in just one state," he said. 

Mississippi: Last in all the things that matter. #1 in massive idols representing a religion that actively makes people’s lives worse. It’s not something to be proud of.

In Aberdeen specifically, the median household income is just under $50,000 and about 21% of the people there live below the poverty line.

Some cities might invest in new businesses. Hell, some churches might use donations to help their communities. These people spend their money on a monument to a faith most of them already belong to. Just utterly pointless and a perfect encapsulation of what happens when your state suffers from brain drain.

Quick side note: In a local news report about the Giant Cross, I found it hilarious that there was a sign right next to it advertising a dispensary:

That dispensary seems to fully support the Cross. (Why not? Any tourist attraction means more business.) There’s no cognitive dissonance at all.

I do appreciate this commenter, though, who saw the dispensary’s videos of the Cross going up and is already making plans for next month: