THE MILLENNIUM DOME IDOL

A 170 foot tall silver human image, 20 feet longer than the Statue of Liberty, is now being designed to be housed in the Millennium Dome which is being built overlooking the Thames at Greenwich in south-east London. The "Dome" is set to open by December 31, 1999, in time for the scheduled celebrations of the new millennium.

The figure will be "sitting or reclining on the floor of the dome with its limbs spreading out for hundreds of feet," according to the Daily Telegraph, London’s foremost daily newspaper. The fiberglass body will house exhibits pertaining to medicine and health in the future. It is reported that the figure was originally male but had been changed to a female mother figure named "Britannia."

The elaborate London exhibition planned for the turn of the millennium is one of the biggest celebrations around the world. Estimated costs of the "Dome" have ranged from 400 million pounds to 800 million (English pounds are worth more than the American dollar).

All 185 United Nations world leaders are expected to send representatives to sign a "Greenwich Declaration" said to be the next century’s "Magna Carta." It will be a planetary pact to work for eliminating poverty and reducing pollution.

"The New Millennium Experience," as it is called, will be divided into nine zones, including one called "The Spirit." There is a committee with representatives from different religions, the Lambeth Group, that is calling for a Christian chapel and a second area for those of other faiths to worship in. Members of the Church of England are calling on the organizers to recognize the new Millennium as a Christian festival because the Millennium is a Christian anniversary but without offending other faiths.

One of the Dome’s creative consultants, Sir Terence Conran, said "The worst outcome would be a dome turned over to a ‘happy-clappy’ evangelistic approach from which a Billy Graham figure would emerge."

So the consensus of the organizers is that "the festivities should include aspects of all religions. They think this is in keeping with the belief of the Prince of Wales that his role as head of the Church of England would be to become a ‘defender of faiths’ rather than ‘defender of the faith’ of Christianity."