The Myth of Jesus at The Point

Also, another friendly reminder that Hung Cao is a damn weirdo

Listen up, people. I’ve made a command decision and I expect everyone to abide by it. And it is this: Lovers of Jesus Point is not a thing.

It’s Lovers Point. Period. 

What’s more, the term “Lovers of Jesus Point” should be immediately stricken from every account of the history of Monterey County. 

And I make this declaration not because the dark, sinister forces of Wiccan authority control the culture and politics of this county, but because the place was never called Lovers of Jesus Point. No matter what some weirdo from Virginia will tell you.

Confession: I’ve been on the wrong side of this controversy for a long time. This Lovers-of-Jesus fiction was jammed down my throat when I worked for the Monterey County Herald; the editors there sternly lectured every dumbass reporter who ever walked into the joint that it’s “Lovers,” without the apostrophe. And the reason it is Lovers (and not Lover’s) is because a bunch of early fundamentalists had named the place Lovers of Jesus Point. 

Or so we were told.

But we were told wrong. Stupid editors!

The proper name for Lovers Point has been contentious for decades. But the stupid controversy surfaced again this week when some stupid guy from Virginia was exposed for his supreme stupidity during a segment of John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight show on HBO on Sunday. In a nutshell — and I do mean “nut” — the stupid guy showed up on a weird talk show last year and told the host that Monterey is teeming with witchery and sorcery and Wiccan chicanery because people stopped calling Lovers Point “Lovers of Christ Point.” 

The stupid guy is named Hung Cao and he apparently hopes to someday lead the entire state of Virginia down the path of dipshittery as one of Virginia’s senators. Unfortunately, Cao is so comically stupid that he can’t even get what he thinks is wrong right. Lovers of Christ? Where did that come from?

No one in the entire history of the universe had ever declared that the place was called “Lovers of Christ Point” until Hung Cao flapped his jawbones and burped out weird heebie-jeebie nonsense when he appeared on some Jesus-y podcast-y thing hosted by another weirdo who thinks Disneyland is a den of iniquity. 

And who the hell does Hung Cao think he is, anyway, sticking his stupid ugly nose in our business and then blathering a bunch of demonstrably incorrect nonsense about us to the rest of the world?

But I digress. Sorry. Back to Lovers Point … 

Earlier this week I published a parochial set-the-record-straight response to Cao. My story attracted much attention from a legion of Lovers Point authorities who told me that Lovers Point was certainly never called Lovers of Jesus Point, much less Lovers of Christ.

Significant historical research has gone into this question over the years. And all of that research leads to the conclusion that it’s always been called Lovers Point. And it got that name because it was and is a famously popular smooching and hoochie-cooching location for young romantics.

A description of Lovers Point published in the American Guide Series’ Monterey Peninsula said the place was “named by legend and designed by nature as a trysting place for sentimental youth.”

The confusion comes, I guess, because some people mistakenly thought that a lot of religious services were conducted at Lovers Point, back in the day. But researchers say that, while some occasional services were held at Lovers Point, most of the religious stuff actually happened at Jewell Park, just down the road from Lovers Point. In fact, a “preacher’s stand” had been erected at Jewell Park for the convenience of pastors holding services there.

Jewell Park was a mystical place, according to Jeanne McCombs, a former Monterey librarian who wrote the definitive research essay about the Lovers Point name. With the sunlight filtering through the tall pine branches, Jewell Park “is said to have been compared to the symbolic effect of height, openness and light achieved in Gothic cathedral architecture,” McCombs wrote. “By comparison, Lovers Point was barren, rocky, windy and cold.”

A reliable reference book about Monterey place names, Monterey County Place Names: A Geographical Dictionary, by Donald Thomas Clark, cites several authoritative sources on the matter. As far back as 1885, the rocky outcrop was referred to simply as Lovers Point, according to Clark. 

Clark and McCombs also pointed out that the location had a bunch of other names over the years, including Point Aulon, Laboratory Point, Organ Point, Spooney’s Point and simply The Point. 

But it never went by Lovers of Jesus Point until suddenly, out of the blue, random weirdos started saying it was once its proper name.

Searching through local newspaper databases, I found hundreds of references to “Lovers Point.” But “Lovers of Jesus Point” never popped up until 1968. That reference was contained in a column published by the Santa Cruz Sentinel. Mysteriously, later that year a feature writer for the Cincinnati Enquirer also made reference to Pacific Grove’s Lovers of Jesus Point. 

Soon after, the name seemed to take hold, especially within evangelical elements of the community, though no action was ever taken to formally change the name. The Pacific Grove Tribune went through a period in the 70s and 80s when it exclusively referred to the place as Lovers of Jesus Point, but the Tribune was rarely a bastion of credibility.

So that’s it. It’s Lovers Point. Not Lovers of Jesus Point.

And certainly not Lovers of Christ Point.

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Sources:

Board and Batten: Newsletter of the Pacific Grove Heritage Society
Monterey County Place Names: A Geographic Dictionary
Monterey County Historical Society
Monterey County Herald
The Santa Cruz Sentinel
The Pacific Grove Tribune

Photos and story by Joe Livernois

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