Nashville is a place where a Christian church is on almost every main crossroads. Yet, those same Christians have set up or allowed another temple in their midst and pay spiritually for the privilege every day. (2 Corinthians 10:3-5, 1 John 5:20) Most Christians have no idea concerning their plight. The temple they know is the idolatry that belies the very faith that they profess. As Christians fail to discern the strongholds of evil, they will surely end up compromising with them. One such example is the Parthenon at Nashville, the Temple of Athena in Centennial Park. The Parthenon is generally seen as the essence of human grandeur and a crowning achievement of humanity. Sacred marble columns rise to achieve an ‘axis of harmony’ that has affected architecture and human culture for centuries.

Humanism and American patriotism have adopted the form of the Parthenon and Greek culture as a pinnacle of democratic ideals and national pride. The United States has heartily embraced an idealistic understanding of the Athenians and elevated the same thinking into an attitude of what is believed to be a visionary superiority, cultural enlightenment and national stature. Around the turn of the 20^th century, replicas of the Parthenon became favored attractions for international cultural exhibitions throughout the American nation. These exhibitions represented the desire for enhanced learning and reputation. Western civilization worships the beauty, promise of excellence and democratic principles that the temple of worship held or has come to represent. Originally, the temple was built to contain a massive golden idol of Athena, goddess of wisdom and war. Post-Constantine Christianity saw the Parthenon as a converted Catholic Church, later as a supply fortress and as a mosque while the original structure lay in ruins.

Similar to the Roman Catholic Church adopting previous pagan ideals into a collective religious culture, America deems that the nation holds Christian values dear, originating with the nation’s founding fathers. In recent history, America is responsible for adopting the majestic look and design of these temples of worship for its’ own public edifices, political and financial building structures in an effort to build a perfect society. Through the ignorance of the founding fathers and a corrupted understanding of Christianity, the adoption of this demonic stronghold has subliminally tainted the nation. As a result, these demonic strongholds have been readily accepted and built into the American culture along with false religious cultures of the past. The nation’s culture and religious institutions have accepted the corruption of religious temples in the name of beauty and majesty in what have become cultural icons of humanistic thought. Man is considered to be the measure of all things, the victory of justice over injustice and beauty over chaos. This humanism envisions an enlightened society that seeks to preserve the finest artistic culture and refinement of mankind.

In the 1800’s, The City of Nashville proudly reveled in its reputation as an outpost of higher learning. Before Nashville became known as Music City, it was known as the Athens of the South. What better way to make Nashville a real Athens, a perceived center of learning and reputation, than by building an authentic replica from the height of the Athenian culture? Nashville, then a population center with lofty goals, undertook the construction of a full-scale replica of the Parthenon to house the art exhibition for 1897 Tennessee Centennial Exposition. The splendor of the Centennial Exposition lasted six months. All of the other buildings were removed or disassembled. The people of Nashville were so in love with the temple that they had carefully built from temporary materials, they turned the exposition site into a park with the Parthenon replica as the centerpiece of local pride.

The original temple of brick, wood and mortar was replaced in 1931 by a permanent concrete temple. The years saw a decline in the condition of the temple until the spark of humanistic fever lit the city. More than $12 million in private donations and taxpayer money have been poured into Nashville’s Temple of Athena since 1990, restoring the temple to its’ former glory with new polychrome accuracy of the old temple in Greece. It took eight years for sculptor Alan LeQuire to fashion the 42 foot idol of Athena from known details of the original temple, effectively making the Parthenon in Nashville a real temple in the eyes of many beginning in 1990. In 2002, Mr. LeQuire was commissioned to lead a team in assisting in the completion of the gilding and painting of the idol of Athena.

Nashville now boasts the largest indoor statue in the western hemisphere. Athena is now gilded in Italian gold leaf and carefully painted. The ideals of humanism don’t see the temple as a temple. Humanism sees beauty over chaos, achievement over injustice. The original temple in Nashville was constructed to serve as the fine arts pavilion and the permanent structure supplies the same function, as an art exhibition. The Parthenon and Centennial Park comprise a historic landmark district fully funded by taxpayers, whether the separation of church and state really exists or not. Many of the same elements on the Parthenon have been extended to other buildings in Nashville, like the Legislative Plaza, full of modest references to Nashville’s Temple of Athena.

The Parthenon at Nashville is not only a favorite haunt of tourists, but also of witches and less favored religious fringes of society. Some boast the Parthenon in Nashville as the Shrine of the Goddess Athena. A keen eye will spot curiously dressed and styled characters lingering among the columns of the building almost continually. The museum guards have become accustomed to seeing flowers and other offerings on the pedestal of the temple. Tossing barley at the feet of the idol is a favorite of some as they mutter invocations. Many tourists and locals alike sense a real presence at Nashville’s Temple of Athena, now bolstered to a new status as a real temple of false worship, both in the eyes of humanism and in the eyes of the less respected fringe religious groups that are often compared to the likes of ‘flat-earthers’.  Alan LeQuire’s artistic construct has become a pagan sensation.

Alan LeQuire also designed the sculpture 'Musica' on Music Row, a short distance from the Temple of Athena, which set the city’s religious conservatives on their ears with a group of joyous dancing nudes. Modern Nashville and the nation can’t seem to get enough of what seems good to a man at a given moment in time. Professed Christians in Nashville and beyond have lost the idea that the Temple of Athena at Nashville now exists as a publicly-endowed temple. That temple contains a gold encrusted idol. Humanism sees the temple as the height of majesty or at the least, a tourist trap with an art collection. The reality of discernment indicates a demonic stronghold of profound proportions.

What has been classically ignored by America over the centuries is the reality of the demonic in the spiritual world. Even wiccans and the practicing witches that adorn Centennial Park see this connection in their own understanding. Christians no longer see a connection with the demonic. As a result, they suffer for a lack of knowledge that reflects in their own lives. Most of America has become fixated on the physical world only and is chiefly concerned with what it can touch and see. Anything else is simply imaginary in the eyes of humanistic man. The Temple of Athena is simply an expression of fine art. The reality is that Christians have deceived themselves as they place myriads of idols in their own lives ahead of the God they profess to serve. The Temple of Athena has become a god that represents the public face of Nashville to the nation and the world, a model to humanism and to fringe religious thought that has roots in the paganism of centuries past.

Americans and much of the world have given demons double authority in their thinking (James 4:7-8) and as a result will continue to reap generational curses (Exodus 20:5-6; Romans 6:16) rather than the renewing the mind. (Romans 12:2) Lack of discernment and (1 Corinthians 12:1-12) knowledge abound. To discern the counterfeit, you must know what counterfeit is. (1 Corinthians 2:13; Hebrews 4:12-13) Instead of putting on the new man in Christ (1 Corinthians 2:15-16) and exercising discernment, (1 Thessalonians 5:21-22; 1 John 4:1; Ephesians 4:14) they have opted for a compromised gospel of demonic influence as they walk the wide road to destruction. (Matthew 7:13)