Elephant Puppets

Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus is shutting down after May 2017 due to a sharp decline in ticket sales.  It, of course, is not the only reason, but the decline corresponded with the removal of live elephants from the shows.  The elephants had become increasingly controversial due to animal rights groups allegations that the animals were mistreated by the circus workers.

The latest version of the show features life-sized elephant puppets named Queenie and Peanut. While the puppets look to be real it is obvious that they are puppets because the human operators are clearly visible. The audiences love them!

As ringmaster David Williamson says, "You can't tell the story of the circus in America without elephants."

Much the same thing is happening in many of America's churches. The true Gospel of Jesus Christ has been replaced by other emphases because some see the Gospel message as imperialistic, ethnocentric, depressing, at odds with their belief in the essential goodness of Man, or exclusivist.  On the contrary, there are strong reasons to believe that a Gospel-less Christianity is not Christian.

Bible Trivia: Thumb Bibles

Thumb Bibles usually have to be read with a magnifying glass. The first Thumb Bible, printed for children and containing illustrations, was printed by John Weever in London in 1601. It was 3.3 by 2.7 cm (1.3 by 1.1 inches) and consisted of 128 pages.  It was abridged and did not contain the full biblical text.  Because of its size, it could only be read with a magnifying glass.

The term "Thumb Bible" was not actually used in reference to these tiny Bibles until 1849 and probably was a reference to General Tom Thumb, a circus little person who visited London in 1844 with the P.T. Barnum Circus.

There are surviving copies of over 300 different editions of the Thumb Bibles dating from the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries.