Nigerian Baptist Convention logo

Nigerian Baptist Convention logo
(Click image to enlarge)
Three triangles were used for the decal of Massey Ferguson and also printed on a 1971 Led Zeppelin album. So what are they doing on the logo of a major denomination, the Nigerian Baptist Convention?

The Nigerian Baptist Convention logo features a Latin Cross superimposed over an outline of Nigeria, West Africa. At the base of the logo is "ESTABLISHED 1914", marking its independence from the mission started by the American Southern Baptist Convention in 1860.

More noticeable in the logo, however, are the three triangles bearing the initials "N B C".

Fallout shelter symbol
Nuclear fallout shelter symbol

This is not an acronym for "Nuclear, Biological, Chemical" but the triangles do resemble the symbol marking a nuclear fallout shelter. The points of the three triangles in the Cold War symbol point to a safe place to shelter from nuclear fallout. From the early 1950s, the US propaganda machine spent a huge amount of effort on building and signposting these shelters. 

Yet another insensitive gaff by the US government was to choose a symbol used since 1893 by an institution so close to Hiroshima. Doshisha University was founded by Niijima Jo, a former samurai and the first ordained Japanese Protestant minister. The origin of the university's logo is described as: "a stylized Assyrian letter, meaning a nation or a land." (doshisha.ed.jp/...) and also reflects the Trinitarian beliefs of its founder.

Shield of the Trinity

Similarly, the three triangles in the logo of the Nigerian Baptist Convention match an old Christian symbol of the Godhead, the Shield of the Holy Trinity.

On the logo's outline map of Nigeria, the three triangles happen to focus on the city of Minna, the capital of Niger State, and more noted for its mosques than churches. But whether Muslim or Christian, African, American or Japanese, nuclear propagator or victim, we can find shelter in the love of God.

Our safety is not in the walls of a fallout shelter, but in our communion with God. 

This did not mean, of course, that the US government realised its error in being the developers of the bomb and testing it by dropping it (twice) on civilians in 1945.

Even today, the US has more nuclear weapons than anybody else. Ten times more nuclear warheads than China, but only 25% of the population of China, and responsible for other countries' eagerness to acquire the weapons for themselves.

This is the nuclear fallout the whole world suffers, and shows the absurdity of needing bunkers.

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