Jesus statue on Big Mountain vandalized

Whitefish Mountain Resort and the Flathead National Forest are looking for the people responsible for vandalizing the Jesus statue on Chair 2.

The statue was found Monday morning with brown painted skin tones and holding flags that read “Rise Up” and “#BLM,” according to a photo posted to Facebook.

By Monday afternoon the flags were gone but the paint remained.

The resort on Monday released a statement confirming the vandalization, adding that the resort “strongly disapproves of vandalism.”

WMR Spokesperson Riley Polumbus said she’s guessing the incident took place sometime over the weekend, and that resort employees driving by over the last few work days hadn’t noticed a change.

“We certainly have some work where you’re driving up the mountain and you see it, but no one had seen anything,” she said.

Polumbus added that the Knights of Columbus organization originally installed the statue and takes annual care to clean it will be assessing the damage soon.

This isn’t the first time the statue has been part of controversy.

The statue took its spot on the hill in 1954 to honor World War II veterans and members of the U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division and is included in the National Register of Historic Places.

In 2015 the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the statue was not conceived or funded by the government or government officials, despite being located on public land. That decision upheld a 2013 decision that dismissed a lawsuit by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, which objected to the statue on the basis that its presence on public land violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution.