George Washington. Thomas Jefferson. Theodore Roosevelt. Abraham Lincoln. Those are the great Americans whose likenesses are carved in granite on Mount Rushmore, in South Dakota. This symbol of freedom, democracy, and the American dream draws more than three million visitors a year. Now, this colossal sculpture is in danger of being blown up. Because two of these presidents were slave holders, some activists want it dynamited to smithereens. The most prominent backer of this scheme is none other than Kimberly Ford, the great-granddaughter of Gutzon Borglum, who carved Mt. Rushmore.
Why? She argues that the monument violates “sacred Native American Land.” And, according to Ford, the faces look out upon the location where Native Americans believe that Mother Earth is believed to breathe. She condemns her great-grandfather for carving a monument that is “symbolic of white, male leaders who have utterly, aggressively failed enormous swans of people who lived on this continent before them.”
I don’t know whether to laugh or feel disgust at this politically correct, “woke” agenda. New Age and occult believes obviously motivate her conclusions. Her idea of sacralizing “Mother Earth” is witchcraft. This thinking is part of the New Age Gaia (Earth worship) movement which believes that the Earth is a living goddess. In Romans 1:25, the Apostle Paul speaks of those who “exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshipped and served created things rather than the Creator.”
Mt. Rushmore is a national treasure remembering men who sacrificed much for our freedoms. Its rejection is based on idolatrous ideas rooted in paganism. Ford’s plea that land is sacred is pantheism, the belief that God and the universe are one and that deity dwells in all living things, even the inanimate. My advice to Ford is, “Go hug a tree, but don’t mess with the rights of patriotic Americans who revere real heroes, even flawed ones.” Mother Earth, the goddess of dirt under our feet, is a demonic concept of witchcraft, not a reason to blow up Mt. Rushmore.