… so long as they’re only wrong versions of the Bible.
The “War on Christmas” rhetoric starts heating up every year right around the time the department stores start making room on their shelves for holiday-themed items (i.e. as soon as the “Back to School” sales are over), but the WoC is really only a seasonal manifestation of the all-year background whine that I’ve dubbed Christian Persecution Syndrome. “Christianity is under attack!” they say, because the public schools won’t force my children to read the Bible. “I’m offended!” they cry at the sight of a sign that says merely that you’re not alone if you don’t believe in God.
When I hear Christians bemoaning how downtrodden they’ve allegedly become, I often try to point out to them that, historically, the most successful and sometimes brutal persecutions of Christians have most often been at the hands of other Christians. I mention that their imagined modern anti-Christmas crusaders have nothing on puritanical Christian Oliver Cromwell’s ban on Christmas, and when they pull out the “this is a Christian nation” card I tend to respond that’s no, it isn’t, and one of the main reasons it isn’t is because when it came time to ratify the Constitution, the Methodists looked across the tables at the Baptists looking at the Unitarians looking at… etc, with each one thinking, “if that guy’s version of my beliefs become the official state religion, I’m totally screwed!”
Well, now the Amazing Grace Baptist Church in Canton, NC has given me a new, more recent example of the Holy turning on themselves. They’ve scheduled a Halloween Book Burning to rid the world of a variety of satanic works:
Church leaders deem Good News for Modern Man, the Evidence Bible, the New International Version Bible, the Green Bible and the Message Bible, as well as at least seven other versions of the Bible as “Satan’s Bibles,” according to the website. Attendees will also set fire to “Satan’s popular books” such as the work of “heretics” including the Pope, Mother Teresa, Billy Graham and Rick Warren.
“I believe the King James version is God’s preserved, inspired, inerrant and infallible word of God,” Pastor Marc Grizzard told a local news station of his 14-member parish.
One would assume Mr. Grizzard also plans a denial-of-service attack against the machines that house the Conservapedia Bible Project.