#161: Marc Grizzard

Marc Grizzard’s Amazing Grace Baptist Church in Canton, North Carolina, is renowned for their Halloween celebrations. Grizzard and his charming fellows make a big fire and burn books for Halloween (and roast chicken, apparently). But not just any books. Evil books. So they are burning Darwin and Nietzsche and SciFi and Dawkins, then? No. Grizzard and co. are burning bibles. Evil bibles: “We are 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.” I am confident that Grizzard's mastery of Greek has been deployed to verify that the King James version is the most accurate translation.

But to create a really roaring flame they’ll not confine themselves to Bibles. They also burn “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.” Several familiar names there (the erratic punctuation is from the original).

Not content with that, they “will also be burning Satan's music such as country , pop, heavy metal, western, soft and easy, contemporary Christian, jazz, soul, oldies but goldies, etc.”

A good old-fashioned book-burning in other words. Charming. Grizzard is discussed here and here.

Diagnosis: Loon, but as long as he insists on shooting at the vanguard of his own lunacy movement, I won’t complain. He is completely without influence, unfortunately.