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Facebook Rejects Ad Depicting Crucifixion of Christ

  • Amanda Casanova

    Amanda Casanova is a writer living in Dallas, Texas. She has covered news for ChristianHeadlines.com since 2014. She has also contributed to The Houston Chronicle, U.S. News and World Report and…

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  • Updated Apr 03, 2018

Facebook rejected an ad from the Franciscan University that included a depiction of the Crucifixion of Christ.

The Catholic university said it was posting a series of ads to promote its online theology programs and one of the ads showed the Crucifixion of Christ on the San Damiano Cross.

The ad was rejected for its “shocking, sensational and excessively violent” content, the Ohio college said on its Twitter account.

In a blog post, university officials said they agreed that the depiction is “sensational and excessively violent,” but that wasn’t means for rejection.

“And it was certainly excessively violent: a man scourged to within an inch of his life, nailed naked to a cross and left to die, all the hate of all the sin in the world poured out its wrath upon his humanity,” the post said.

“This is sensational, this is shocking. This is only possible because of the excessive violence that he endured for us.

“’He was despised and rejected of men.’ It was ever thus and will ever be, for those who do not see with the eyes of faith, and love with a love unquenchable.”

It’s possible that Facebook’s auto-content editor rejected the ad, but Rod Dreher, of the American Conservative, said “a Christian culture would know that for the people who revere this symbol, they are looking at an image of death’s defeat, and of eternal life.”

Dreher, however, says, a Christina culture is falling away.

“This incident is alarming because of what it reveals about the kind of world that Christians are going to live in,” he said. “Facebook is one of the most powerful media companies on the planet.

“If it decides that it will not approve Christian content because it finds that content violent, bigoted, or what have you, then that will have a tremendous potential effect, not only on the ability of Christians to communicate, but (more importantly) on shaping the way the Christian faith is regarded widely in this post-Christian culture.”

 

Photo courtesy: Wikimedia Commons

Publication date: April 3, 2018