(go ahead and say “awwww”)
All posts by Darrell
Thrones
Anti-Climaxes
Remember all the hype about the “Bible Burning” at Amazing Grace Baptist Church in Canton, NC?
Well, it didn’t exactly go as planned. In fact, there wasn’t any actual burning to speak of. In the first place it rained. Then it turns out that there’s a law against burning paper in North Carolina and the neighbors weren’t too keen on it either. To top it off, local law enforcement asked that that the whole thing be held inside. So what really happened at the “Bible Burning” was…this:
Thrilling stuff! Be sure to check out the videos of the singing and preaching before hand and all the rest of the 34 minutes of unremarkable footage of books being destroyed. You would think they would have at least splurged on a big black menacing-looking trashcan instead of just borrowing a little anemic one from the kitchen.
I think someone needs to come up with an official award for badly executed fundy publicity stunts. Any suggestions on a name for it?
Update 1: As of October, 2013 the links to amazinggracebaptistchurchkjv.com are all dead
Redrawing the Lines
A favorite fundy illustration is imagining that God’s laws are like a line drawn in the sand and that breaking a law is crossing that line. Not content to leave well enough alone, the fundamentalist then goes on to add this inevitable statement: “A lot of you like to stand with your toes right on the line when you should be as far away from the line as possible. Let me tell you where I think you should draw the line…”
But it does not end there. Not only must one re-draw the line, one must then build an impenetrable wall on the new line and shoot anyone who attempts to cross it. One must fortify this wall with obscure passages and long-winded preaching rants full of illustrations of those who crossed the line to their own doom. This is known as having “standards.”
In time, one may forget entirely that this line isn’t the one God drew at all. In fact, some may even decide to draw another even further afield, rejecting those who hold a different line as being too worldly.
Fundies aren’t the first ones to indulge in this kind of thing, however. Jesus even had a few things to say about some old-school line re-drawers. For details, check out Matthew 23.
Kleenex At The Altar
