The 62-foot King of Kings statue has been a lightning rod long before it was destroyed by a thunderbolt.

From Heywood Banks’ “Big Butter Jesus” ditty to front-page New York Times stories, the statue served as a national icon to some, a national laughingstock to others.

But it seemed surprising that the snarkiness and cynicism only ratcheted up after such a major loss for the congregation. Typically, a church fire draws out only sympathy and support, so why the mean-spirited, even gleeful response from some quarters?

Solid Rock co-pastor Lawrence Bishop explains it simply: “Because that’s the way people are.”

But theologians, political scientists and religious history scholars find far more complicated explanations, and they have followed the unfolding story with fascination.

The statue’s unavoidable, unapologetic, in-your-face presence has made it symbolic, for some, of American evangelical Christianity. Many believe the caustic comments reveal a growing schism between evangelicals and mainstream Christians.

“If you take the statue as a symbol of American evangelism, and then the lightning bolt as a traditional way of talking about God’s judgment, you can see how easy it is for people to read something into it,” observed Ava Chamberlain, an associate professor of religion at Wright State University. “The statue displays how evangelical Christianity has become more and more powerful in American life and more and more powerful in American politics. It’s not just atheists and people of other faiths who are uncomfortable with that, but non-evangelical Christians.”

Vincent Miller, a Catholic theology professor at the University of Dayton, said that a congregation’s grief warrants more compassion, but in the public’s eye “the event itself just cries out for a humorous response, which can be mocking or a way of dealing with the striking nature of what happened.”

Many mainstream Christians feel profound ambivalence about the megachurches sprouting up in the suburbs, Miller noted: “It’s about styles of Christianity. There’s a longstanding discomfort with extravagant expressions of faith, and concerns about whether the money would be better spent on the poor. That’s not a new question.”

What is new, he said, is the viral culture of the Internet “and the new kind of media where everybody puts their spin on it. It encourages people with the sharp takes to say something witty or snarky. The moderate responses don’t get shared.”

John Feldmeier, an associate professor of political science at WSU, said that the reaction would have been far different if anyone had been injured or killed or the church more substantially damaged: “Given that context, it falls into the longstanding tradition of satire in the U.S., in which people take aim at or poke fun at large blocks of power.”

The practical explanation for the statue’s destruction was summed up in a Dayton Daily News Speak Up comment on the Opinion page: “I’m an engineer. They built a lightning rod that was covered with a flammable material. This had nothing to do with a sign from above.”

Still, many seem irresistibly drawn to finding other meanings — including Bishop himself, who said the firestorm of publicity has spread the name of Jesus around the world.

Chamberlain isn’t surprised that Bishop reacted that way to such a significant event in the life of his congregation: “There’s a very old tradition in American Christianity that God has a plan for everything, that God’s providence lies behind everything, that God directs all events. This is deeply rooted in American religious culture, going back to the Puritans who saw a big storm or tornado or earthquake or fire as particular acts of God’s judgment. That carries on even to this day, when there’s a tendency to interpret events as having divine significance.”

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2209 or mmccarty@Dayton DailyNews.com.