The church’s pastor, Marc Grizzard, had planned a fried chicken dinner to accompany the fiery celebration on Halloween night, but Mother Nature rained on his parade, as it were. Then, the local John Law informed Pastor Grizzard that state laws prohibit burning paper outdoors. Oh, and there were protesters, too.

So, the worshipers of the KJV took their party inside their meeting hall. No Bible bonfire. I know you are all disappointed.

Grizzard isn’t. His comments about the rainout are positively upbeat. And still crazy.

Not the books used by Satanists. No indeed, though I reckon you can bring them along. The Amazing Grace Baptist Church intends to toast such “perversions of God’s word” as

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.

For good measure, the church near Waynesville, NC, also plans to add “Satan’s music” to the pyre.

such as country , rap , rock , pop, heavy metal, western, soft and easy, southern gospel , contemporary Christian , jazz, soul, oldies but goldies, etc.

and non-Bible books, too :

We will also be burning Satan’s popular books written by heretics like Westcott & Hort , Bruce Metzger, 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.

It’s a veritable Hall of Fame of pentecostal/fundamentalist writers! Billy Graham? Oral Roberts? I mean, I don’t like any of these people, or subscribe to their beliefs (well, except for Mother Teresa, maybe), but seriously, aren’t we getting a little carried away here?

When I was reporter in western Kentucky, I covered a record-burning at a local church. This was around 1980, and the vinyl and CDs (I dunno, did they even have CDs then?) going to the fiery furnace were what you would expect — heavy metal, hard rock — and some you wouldn’t — pop schlock like Olivia Newton-John. (Apparently, they didn’t appreciate her hit single, “Let’s Get Physical.”)

Countless other churches have had book-burnings, but Pastor Marc Grizzard’s is the first I’ve heard where they intend to incinerate Bibles. Grizzard is one of those narrow-minded Christians who worships the King James version of 1611 as the only True Word of God™. Anything else more recent is heretical.

If you wade through the church’s poorly designed website (created by someone the pastor actually recommends, no less), you will find that Grizzard knows no ancient Greek, Aramaic or Hebrew, and is actually kind of proud of it. (Yet another example of the anti-intellectual strain of Bible-thumpers rife in the USA.)

I know very little, but that doesn't matter. God said in Psalms 12:6-7 "The words of the LORD are pure words: as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. Thou shalt keep them, O LORD, thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever."

One does not need to know Greek or Hebrew to understand God's Word. God has promised to preserve them, not man. If the preservation of God's Word was left up to man than we would mess it up. That's what we have with modern versions. But divine preservation is God's promise to give us his pure words and we have that in the KJV. God's Word is not lost or hidden somewhere. We have them today for the English Speaking people and that is through the KJV.

To say that one has to know Greek or Hebrew to have God's pure and perfect words is to say that God Almighty is not capable of preserving His Words in our English language. My God is capable of doing whatever he chooses to do, but it seems that many so called "scholars" today has a god that doesn't know any language other than Greek, Hebrew, and Latin. I can't speak for their puny little gods. My God created the languages, including English.

If I catch his meaning, the only true inspired word of God in English was the KJV. The other, later translations, based on a wider variety of original texts and archaeological evidence, are the spawn of Satan.

So what if people can understand them better.

THE GOSPEL OF MARK (draft #1,216,593A)
Chapter One
1. This is the beginning of the gospel of Jesus, as written by Mark, who believes Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God.

2. The prophets wrote, “Behold, I will send my messenger to scope things out for you, to lay the groundwork, as it were.

3. “Someone will be crying in the wilderness, ‘Make way for the Lord, because he’s coming through! (No autographs, please!)’”

4. John the Baptist got his name because he dunked people in the river, saying baptism signified repentence for one’s sins.

5. He had quite a following all over Judea, and even among city folk from Jerusalem, who all came to be dunked in the Jordan River and to confess their sins.

6. John was a back-to-lander kind of fellow, dressing in clothes made of camel’s hair and wearing a leather loincloth; he also ate only locusts and wild honey.

7. He was overly humble, too. He said, “Somebody is coming who is so much better than I that I am not even worthy to untie his shoes.

8. “I have only baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Spirit of God!” (John failed to mention the new guy was his cousin, so he might have been a little biased.)

9. And so, after a while, Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee, and let John dunk him in the Jordan. Jesus, however, had no sins to confess (being the Son of God and all), but something a lot more interesting happened.

10. As soon as he came up out of the water, Jesus saw the heavens open up and the Spirit of God like a dove made a beeline for his head,

11. And a voice from above said, “You are my beloved Son, whom I am really pleased with.” (It is not clear, however, whether anyone else saw or heard the same things.)

12. Then Jesus took off for the wilderness.

13. He lived in the bush for 40 days, tempted by the Devil, hanging with the wild beasts like Mowgli in the Jungle Books; but the angels took care of him. (Jesus being God’s Son and all)

14. Sometime afterward, John ended up in the slammer for not having a water use permit, or something. Meanwhile, Jesus came back to Galilee, preaching about the kingdom of God and forgetting to post bail for his cousin.

15. Jesus said, “The time the prophets talked about has come, the kingdom of God is right around the corner. Repent, and believe what I tell you.”

16. One day, while walking by the sea of Galilee, Jesus came across Simon and his brother, Andrew, who had made their names sound very Anglo to avoid being deported. They were casting nets into the sea, because oddly, they were fishermen.

17. Jesus told them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” (Jesus always had a way with words, being the Word of God and all.)

18. Without hesitation, they dropped their nets, and followed him.

19. A little bit further, he saw James, the son of Zebedee, and his brother, John, who were mending their nets.

20. So Jesus called to them, and they ditched the family business, and left their dad to fish with his servants instead.

21. The five of them went to Capernaum, where Jesus dropped by the synagogue to teach.

22. The people there were astonished, because Jesus taught like he really knew what he was talking about, and not like a graduate of Google University.

23. The congregation there included a troubled fellow, looking a lot like Glenn Beck, who cried out,

24 “Leave us alone! What do we have to do with you, Jesus of Nazareth? Where’s your birth certificate anyway? How do we know you’re really Galilean? You have come to destroy us! I know who you are, you so-called Holy One of God!”

25. Jesus told him off, saying, “Shut up, and leave him!”

26. The troubled fellow cried out with a loud voice, and the schizoid part of him left

27. And the people were all amazed, saying stuff like, “What is this thing? A new doctrine: ‘Yes, we can?’ This Jesus dude can even cure schizophrenia!”

28. Before long, everyone was talking about Jesus, even outside Galilee.

29. After leaving the synagogue, the boys were hungry, so they went to Simon and Andrew’s house

30. But Simon’s mother-in-law was sick in bed with a fever, so they mentioned it to Jesus.

31. And he took her hand, and lifted her up from her bed. She got better immediately, and then set about fixing them lunch. (It is not clear where Simon’s wife was during all this, however.)

32. By sunset, everyone who was sick or mentally disturbed was brought to Simon’s house,

33. The entire city was gathered outside his door. It got pretty noisy.

34. Despite their pre-existing conditions, Jesus healed many who were sick, and cured the mentally ill, and told the wackos not to speak, because they knew what he was — a public option.

35. Jesus got up really early next morning, and left for a solitary place to get some peace and quiet.

36. His four new buddies followed him there. It wasn’t solitary any more.

37. When they found him, they said, “Everybody’s looking for you.”

38. Exasperated, he replied, “Let’s visit some other towns, so I can preach there, too. Otherwise, I’ll never get out of this place.”

39. So, he taught at a lot of other synagogues around Galilee, and healed the sick and cured the schizos.

40. A leper came to him one day, and knelt down in front of him, saying “If you choose, can you heal me? I paid all my premiums.”

41. Moved with compassion (being the Son of God and all), Jesus stretched out his hand to touch the leper, and said, “You will be clean.”

42. And as soon as he was finished speaking, the man’s leprosy was cured.

43. And Jesus, “OK. That’s all. You can leave now.

44. “And please don’t tell anyone about this, or I’ll never have a moment alone. Go to your rabbi, show him your healed skin, and make some appropriate sacrifices, just like Moses told us to do, as a testimony for what happened.”

45. But the leper (who wasn’t a leper anymore, but we don’t know his name) left and blabbed about his cure all over town. So many people knew of the cure that Jesus could not walk the streets without being mobbed. So he gave up making housecalls, and set up a clinic in the suburbs for the people to visit.

The Conservative Bible will be a wiki, so it will be a group project, rather like giving a large group of monkeys enough time and equipment to recreate the works of William Shakespeare.

The rationale and methodology of this ill-conceived project piece of crap are so wrong on so many levels that’s it’s hard to know where to begin.

The King James Version (1611) was an English translation from the Hebrew, Latin and Greek texts then available, done entirely by members of the Church of England. It became the “standard Bible” among English-speaking Protestants, largely because of its poetic language and of the breadth of the British Empire.

Conservapedia’s head simians plan to retranslate the English in the KJV translation, which is a lot like playing “Telephone” with the Scriptures. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

There’s nothing wrong with retranslating the Bible. It’s been done dozens of times already. But the new versions start from the original texts, not the KJV. For example, the New International Version (which apparently is too liberal for the monkeys at Conservapedia) was a joint project of 100 scholars in several different countries and different churches, who referred to texts and archaelogical evidence that were unknown 400 years ago. The complete NIV Bible came out in 1978.

Basing a new version of the Bible on a 400-year-old English translation — and nothing else — is just a little sloppy. Organizing it as a wiki, and one with a pretty narrow user base at that, just guarantees the result will be utter garbage, just from the linguistic standpoint.

Then there’s this whole “liberal bias” shit. I mean, WTF? A good deal of what Jesus says in the NT was pretty liberal, after all. Didn’t he say something like, “you should follow the spirit of the Law, not the letter of it?” and “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone?”

Apparently, Conservapediapes do not intend to wipe out entire sections of the NT, but they do intend to rewrite and rephrase the KJV to fit their agenda.

As of 2009, there is no fully conservative translation of the Bible which satisfies the following ten guidelines:

1. Framework against Liberal Bias: providing a strong framework that enables a thought-for-thought translation without corruption by liberal bias
2. Not Emasculated: avoiding unisex, “gender inclusive” language, and other modern emasculation of Christianity
3. Not Dumbed Down: not dumbing down the reading level, or diluting the intellectual force and logic of Christianity; the NIV is written at only the 7th grade level[3]
4. Utilize Powerful Conservative Terms: using powerful new conservative terms as they develop;[4] defective translations use the word “comrade” three times as often as “volunteer”; similarly, updating words which have a change in meaning, such as “word”, “peace”, and “miracle”.
5. Combat Harmful Addiction: combating addiction by using modern terms for it, such as “gamble” rather than “cast lots”;[5] using modern political terms, such as “register” rather than “enroll” for the census
6. Accept the Logic of Hell: applying logic with its full force and effect, as in not denying or downplaying the very real existence of Hell or the Devil.
7. Express Free Market Parables; explaining the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning
8. Exclude Later-Inserted Liberal Passages: excluding the later-inserted liberal passages that are not authentic, such as the adulteress story
9. Credit Open-Mindedness of Disciples: crediting open-mindedness, often found in youngsters like the eyewitnesses Mark and John, the authors of two of the Gospels
10. Prefer Conciseness over Liberal Wordiness: preferring conciseness to the liberal style of high word-to-substance ratio; avoid compound negatives and unnecessary ambiguities; prefer concise, consistent use of the word “Lord” rather than “Jehovah” or “Yahweh” or “Lord God.”

So, essentially what they are saying is this: the Bible has to say what we want it to say, so we are going to publish our own version so that future generations can be as stupid and close-minded as we are. We reject any scholarly, intellectual input, because all that thinking just gets in the way of What We Know Is True™. All the people in the Bible, even Jesus himself, actually thought the same way as 21st century American conservatives wingnuts. Their original message just was corrupted by all those heathen liberals.

This is historical revisionism writ large.

You can see first drafts of the monkeys’ work at the Conservedia site. This is their version of the Gospel of Mark, Chapter 1.
It is not exactly a pageturner.

The Panda’s Thumb has two articles this week demonstrating the misuse of teacherly authority. One is an update on the ever-continuing John Freshwater saga; the other a report on one teacher’s attempt to haul students to the Creation Museum in Kentucky.

Freshwater is a seventh-grade science teacher in Mt. Vernon, Ohio, who has paraded his particular brand of Christianity — and anti-evolution propaganda — in front of his students for several years. His superiors looked the other way until Freshwater used a Tesla coil to burn a cross shape on the arm of a student. The student and his parents cried foul, and the parties involved are now in a legal thicket.

Freshwater has been the subject of hours of administrative hearings regarding his continued employment. The boy and his family have filed a civil liberties suit against Freshwater and the school system. Freshwater himself has filed his own civil liberties suit against his employers, and another civil suit against the family, alleging they have slandered him.

During the administrative hearings, witnesses reported that Freshwater always had a Bible on his desk (despite his superiors telling him to remove it), maintained a stock of Bibles in a bookcase for students to borrow, had Christian-oriented posters decorating his science classroom, and made a point of teaching students that the theories of evolution and the Big Bang were bogus.

Testimony also revealed that other teachers in the same middle school had similar proclivities, but were somewhat less resistant to correction by their superiors than Freshwater was.

Meanwhile, in the Garden State of New Jersey, a history teacher was planning on hauling students to the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky (near Cincinnati), until a former student blew the whistle on him.

A couple of years ago, David Paszkiewicz ended up in the news after declaring to his students that dinosaurs were on Noah’s Ark, and that students who “reject the Lord’s salvation … belong in hell.” Now, as advisor to the Christian Alpha & Omega Club, Paszkiewicz planned to take club members during the school year to the Creation Museum.

A former student heard of the plan, and convinced the local school board to postpone the trip until after the school year ended.

Teachers are of course free to believe whatever religion they like. They can mention their religion to their students if they like, much as a teacher might mention his or her hometown or family members. But it is entirely inappropriate to use the classroom to inculcate a teacher’s particular religious beliefs.

[I am setting aside the obvious exceptions of teachers in religious schools, although even in those situations a teacher can cross the line of appropriateness.]

My argument goes beyond the Constitutional requirement that the government (public schools) not impose or favor a particular religion. Rather, preaching in the classroom is an abuse of power, much as molesting students is, especially when the teacher makes it clear that his or her beliefs are the only correct ones.

For example, Teacher A might be a born-again Christian. His students might be aware that he attends church every Sunday. They may see him reading the Bible on his off-time in school. That’s OK. It’s non-threatening behavior, and if he keeps discussion of his beliefs outside the classroom, perfectly appropriate. One might say Teacher A professes his belief by example.

Teacher B, on the other hand, may also be born-again, but more aggressive in her Christian outreach. In her classes, she might tell students that abortion is a sin, and that abortion doctors and patients are doomed to eternity in Hell. Her classroom might be covered with flagrantly religious posters and literature, and her lecture peppered with Christian messages and Biblical references.

Teacher A is operating within the best practices of a professional educator. Teacher B is not.

Freshwater and Paszkiewicz are confusing teaching with preaching. Schools are not churches. Students and parents expect that a public school or classroom is a religiously neutral zone. Religious beliefs of teachers and students might be acknowledged, but they should not become the focus of the business of teaching.

Here’s an excerpt. Adam an Eve (bad kittehs) meet teh snake.

GENESIS 3: Bad Kittehs

1 Nao teh snakez wuz mor shneakay than any beest ov teh field which Ceiling Cat had made. An he meowed unto teh woah man kitteh, liek I herd that Ceiling Cat said, u shall not eated frum any tree ov teh garden? Even dem trees on dat plate?

2 An teh woman said unto teh snakez, i can haz froot ov teh garden!3 but ov teh fruit ov teh tree which iz in teh midel ov teh garden, Ceiling Cat sez, dun eatz it cuz if u eatz it he mek u ded.

4 An teh snakez sed unto teh womenz, he no mek u ded:5 4 Ceiling Cat noes dat, teh dai u eat dat froot, den u gon b able to c, An u be liek Ceiling Cat, knowin gud An evil. An dis froot, it has a flavr, srsly, liek cheezburgerz!

6 An when teh woman saw dat teh tree wuz gud 4 fud with flavr an everything, An dat it wuz cool 2 teh eyez, An dat teh tree wuz 2 b desird 2 make man wise, she nom nom nom its froot; An she gaev sum 2 Adam, An he eated da froot (An srsly it was teh best).7 An teh eyez ov them both were opend, An they knew dat theyz were showin teh nakedz An stuff cuz Ceiling Cat didnt gaev dem no furz liek teh aminals; An they sewd sum fig-leavez togethr, An made themselvez clofs. Eve even maed firs thong but was vry vry itchy. srsly.

8 An they heard teh meowz ov Ceiling Cat walkin throu teh garden in teh kewl ov teh dai: An teh man An his wife hided themselvez fum Ceiling Cat amongst teh treez ov teh garden.9 An Ceiling Cat calld unto teh man, An meowed unto him, “wuzzat? wut u just NOM NOM NOMd? It srsly gud?”

10 An he said, i heard yo voice in teh garden, An i wuz scareded, because i wuz NOMin An stuff; An i hided and did not want 4 u to see meh NOMin kthx.

11 An he said, hoo told u dat u was ta NOM teh holy fud? I waz injoyin watchin you be not NOMin. Did youz eated ov teh tree, dat I told u dat iz not ok u eatz ov?

12 An teh man said, teh woman u gave me saw teh tree An told ’bout it to me. At first I was liek “Noes!” but then, I was layk NOM NOM NOM. srsly.

13 An Ceiling Cat said unto teh woman, wat did u dun? An teh woman said, teh snakez playdid dirty trick on me, An i eated it.
No srsly.
No srsly.

14 An Ceiling Cat sed unto teh snakez, “cuz u did dis,

cursd u aboov all teh moocows,
An aboov every one of those 4 leggd things that sumwun maked round here;
upon ur belly u gun walk An I gun take ur legs
An geev them to teh French 2 eatz An this is wut they gun eatz An they gun call it “Frawgs leegz”,
An dust shalt u NOMin. srsly
all teh dais ov ur life
An u no getz no cookies to eated. An no cheezburgers neither. Srsly.

15 An im gonna put liek badnis An stuff

tween u An teh woman,
An tween thy seedz An her seedz;
he shall broose ur head,
An u gun broose his heel.

16 Unto teh woman he said,

“im gun make ure babiez hurt alot An cause pain An stuff;
in pain u gun brin forth childrenz.
An ur badnes shall b 2 ur husband,
An he gun pwn u and ask for beers and sammiches.”

17 An unto adam he said, because u hast listend to her An hast eated teh tree wut i tellz u U NO NOMZ!

“cursd iz teh grownd cuz of u
An u is b wrkin ur buttz off ur hol life
An makin cheezburgers will be vry hard now
srsly.

18 thorns also An thistlez gun it brin forth 2 u;

An u gun eat teh herb ov teh field dat u wrkd ure butt off fur. (but all teh good weedz dat iz liek catnipz 4 peepz is b illegalz An stuff lol);

19 in teh sweatz ov ur face

u gun eat bread An u no can has cheezburgerz n Gatorade,
till u return unto teh ground like when poopz r buried in litterz,
4 out ov it wast thou taken;
4 dust u r,
An dust u gun return.”

20 An teh man calld his womenz name eve; cuz she was teh mothr of all livn’ and cuz if he nameded her bertha he woulda benn lold at all da tyme

21 An Ceiling Cat maded 4 adam An 4 his wife coats ov skeens, An clothid ‘em.22 An Ceiling Cat said, behold, teh man iz become as 1 ov us , 2 knoe gud An evil; An nao, lest he put forth his hand, An taek teh cheezburgerz ov teh tree ov life, An eat, An liv 4 evr mor.23 Ther4 Ceiling Cat sent him forth fum teh garden ov eden, 2 till teh grawnd fum where he wuz took. An it suxxd cuz ther wasnt no uniteded farmwrkar union.24 So he pwnzordz teh man; An he placeded at teh east ov teh garden ov eden teh cherubim An stuff, An teh flaming (lol) sword which turned everywherez (an if yu evar caem up 2 teh sword den it wuld flaem u on teh intarwebs an u wuldnt git no cookies or cheezburgerz eithr, srsly).

The same group apparently will translate the Koran, too. Srsly.

Kacy Stuart, 14, plays for the New Creation Center Crusaders outside Atlanta, Georgia. Initially, league officials had denied her permission to play, but then relented. Her team’s first opponent after her reinstatement were the East Atlanta Mustangs.

The Mustangs played the Crusaders, but under protest, because Stuart was on the team. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

The first team Kacy faced relied on the Bible to express its beliefs about female football players in a pre-game statement, said New Creation athletic director Coach Ken Townley.

“The East Atlanta Mustangs didn’t play us under protest but they were allowed to read a statement on their beliefs about female football players,” Townley said. “They used biblical verses from the book of Romans. I was very stunned by that.”

The Mustangs coach offered no explanation to the AJC reporter, perhaps because the Crusaders whupped his team’s ass, 39-8, with Stuart doing all the kicking.

The teams comprise private-school and homeschooled students, which I take to mean Christian students, given the location. So, using Scripture to justify just about any wacko idea should not come as a surprise. During my own study of the Bible, however, I never came across any references to football, or any sport for that matter. So, just to make sure, I read the book of Romans over again.

Discernment, alas, eluded me. I could find not one verse that could be construed to bar women from playing football.

I’m glad that Stuart was able to play for her team. Someone there must have some common sense. Using the Bible to question the appropriateness of her playing, however, is just plain wrong on so many levels that one wonders what the coach’s real motivation was.

The full story is here.