Tonight I spent some time on the website of  the Amazing Grace Baptist Church in Canton, NC. The pastor of this church gained a little notoriety last October by  sponsoring a Bible Burning  (because there are just too many perversions of the King James Bible loose in the world). His bonfire plans became a minor cause celebre for the burgeoning Birther/T-Bigot movement.

 

This is classic stuff; you couldn’t make it up:

 

Come celebrate Halloween by burning Satan’s bibles like the NIV, RSV, NKJV, TLB, NASB, NEV, NRSV, ASV, NWT, Good News for Modern Man, The Evidence Bible, The Message Bible, The Green Bible, ect. These are perversions of God’s Word the King James Bible.

 

We will also be burning Satan’s music such as country, rap, rock, pop, heavy metal, western, soft and easy, southern gospel, contempory Christian, jazz, soul, oldies but goldies, etc.

 

We will also be burning Satan’s popular books written by heretics like Billy Graham, Rick Warren, Bill Hybels, John McArthur, James Dobson, Charles Swindoll, John Piper, Chuck Colson, Tony Evans, Oral Roberts, Jimmy Swagart, Mark Driskol, Franklin Graham, Bill Bright, Tim Lahaye, Paula White, T.D. Jakes, Benny Hinn, Joyce Myers, Brian McLaren, Robert Schuller, Mother Teresa, The Pope, Rob Bell, Erwin McManus, Donald Miller, Shane Claiborne, Brennan Manning, William Young, etc.

 

God must not have liked the idea of the good Pastor burning all His Good Books, though, because He caused it to rain for 40 hours and 40 minutes and the burning never occured. According to the church, the event was still a great success for the Lord.

 

Amazing Grace Baptist Church’s website is full of mundane ugliness. Obama Hussein, death-to-homos, abortion = murder, music is sin kind of stuff. More interesting is the long legacy of barn-burner, old-timey preachin’ that this church celebrates. Turns out that behind the delusional religious messaging is a rich tradition–of con men, mostly. I listened to bits of  sermons and song by long-ago masters of religious oratory, men who knew how to squeeze a buck out of an empty wallet. Grace church especially likes this preacher–the Lord’s first real kung fu guy:

 

 

The website has dozens, maybe hundreds, of sermon sound files; the preacher rants often include bluegrassy tunes with cute lyrics about Satan and the Bible. There’s a handbook on how to get to hell (spoiler: do nothing, and trust yourself). Scattered across the site are little doctrinal gems like this one: “We believe that the Bible (KJV) is inspired by God. If it wasn’t inspired, it wouldn’t be God’s Word.”  Or my personal favorite: “A true scholar is one who believes the Bible (King James Version only) whether he understands it or not.”

 

In spite of myself, however, I can’t help feeling an affinity with this little fundamentalist church. We’re doing the Lord’s work by condemning so many of the same things:

• * all the goddamned bibles in the world
• * country music
• * Billy Graham
• * the Pope
• * soft and easy music
• * Tim LaHaye (Left Behind author)
• * James Dobson
• * pop music
• * southern gospel (I’m sorry, it depresses me)
• * Rick Warren
• * contempory Christian music
• * and most of all, that poison-spewing, monster-from-hell idiot box: