Church to Celebrate Halloween with Book Burning
Image by quinn.anya via Flickr
Amazing Grace Baptist Church will be foregoing the traditional trick-or-treating and costumes this Halloween. In their stead, the Canton, North Carolina church will host a ritual scarier than a kid dressed as Freddy Krueger—a Halloween book and music burning.
According to Amazing Grace Baptist Church’s Web site, attendees will be “burning perversions of God’s word,” including “Satan’s bibles” and “Satan’s popular books written by heretics” like Mother Theresa, Billy Graham, James Dobson, and the Pope. They’ll also burn “Satan’s music, such as country, rock, pop, heavy metal, western, soft and easy, southern gospel, contemporary Christian, jazz, soul, oldies but goldies.” (Any relation to oldies but goodies?)
Why the book bonfire, and why, in particular, books by Evangelicals like Billy Graham and James Dobson?
The AP reports that Marc Grizzard, the pastor at the the Canton, North Carolina church, wants “to light a fire under true believers” and that “the King James version of the Bible is the only one his small western North Carolina church follows. … [A]ll other versions, such as the Living Bible, are ’satanic’ and ‘perversions’ of God’s word.”
The church will gladly accept donations of books and music in need of burning. Appalled as I may be, I would be willing to sacrifice my old copy of Ace of Base’s Happy Nation CD since listening to songs from that album is its own kind of hell. I am pretty sure the folks at Amazing Grace Baptist Church would agree, though probably for very different reasons. Any books or music you’d like to donate (in jest, of course)?
UPDATE 10/15: The church’s Web hosting service has apparently shut down the Web site. (Thanks to read Brian in NYC for the heads up.) The reason might be traceable to some fundamentalist fighting. The host, Anchor Webhost, has a link to what it calls “Fundamental Christian Links” at the bottom of its homepage. It appears their brand of fundamentalism doesn’t jive with that of Amazing Grace Baptist Church.
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Appalled as I may be, I do have an ancient copy of the Baltimore Catechism that I would love to toss into the bonfire. Oh, and Mr. Nearing’s Lena Luvitch album, which makes my ears bleed.
Going Rogue
“by” Sarah Palin
Yes!
In response to another comment. See in context »It looks like the church’s web site has been closed by the web hosting service. Take a look.
Thanks, Brian. That was quick. (See my addendum to the post. It looks like there might be an evangelical war of sorts at play here.)
In response to another comment. See in context »[...] Mike Bryan hung out with Sarah’s birthday margarita Sarah at Bombers Burrito Bar to help her celebrate her big day. Happy birthday, [...]
My pleasure! Lets hope they claw and scratch at each other till the second coming!
[...] Yep, this still happens: Amazing Grace Baptist Church will be foregoing the traditional trick-or-treating and costumes this Halloween. In their stead, the Canton, North Carolina church will host a ritual scarier than a kid dressed as Freddy Krueger—a Halloween book and music burning. (more) [...]
What about books given to you by exes that you feel ashamed to sell, given the inscription?
Oh, definitely. I’ve considered doing that before, though only with the inscription page. (The book itself was too good to get rid of.)
In response to another comment. See in context »[...] One church in Canton, N.C., “celebrated” Halloween in a special way this past weekend. You might have seen the reports about it in the AP or in hundreds of blogs. [...]
It turns out that their burning fizzled when the rain and fire codes conspired to keep them from actually lighting anything on fire. So instead they did this