Ever since the days when rock and roll music first made it onto vinyl records, certain fundamentalists have been holding record burning services for their teens. This tends to work out well for for the record companies since the teens who are burning their records (or eight-tracks or tapes or CDs) will be back at the store buying new copies in not too long.
Of course, it’s not just music that meets a fiery end at these meetings. Everything from mini-skirts to Cabbage Patch dolls are a potential target for immolation. Only the heat of a church bonfire can serve to scour the earth of evil as great as this. Not to mention that it’s fun to get a bunch of teens together and play with matches.
As time has passed, technology has made it harder to get in a good old-fashioned music burning. Getting a group of teens together to delete music off their iPods just lacks some of the visual effect.
On the upside, there’s a decline in youth groups that get carried away and think that burning their drugs in a public bonfire is a good idea as well…
Hi Darrell,
I found your website through the “Constructive Curmudgeon.” Good points about the fundies. While they may still burn non-Christian music, mini-skirts, non-Christian books, and maybe even drugs (you made this great comment!), it is interesting to note that this is nothing new for fundies. Burning “harmful” materials to protect their faith is not a far cry from their despicable behavior in history: burning witches and executing heretics (many of them had significant contributions to society, i.e. Socrates and Galileo). Christianity is based on a barbaric God, who commands senseless killing of various nations to merely extend his “anger” and “justice.” It’s also interesting to note that America with it’s mostly Christian worldview is one of the most unhalthy, prescription drug abusing, depressed, nations in existence today. Just some thoughts to ponder.
Cheers,
Sarah
Galileo was done in by the Catholic Church.
Socrates was killed by the Athenians-not fundies.
my youth group used to convince us all our cds were evil and we would get together and break them into peices, my boyfriend at the time becasme very irritated becuase every few months i would have to ask him to re-burn cds for me and then break them a few months later!!
Galileo was not executed by the Church; he lived and continued to work for another 12 years after his trial (only his poor health slowed him down). He also remained loyal to the Church, completing his prescribed pennance and continuing to support two daughters in a convent.
Galileo’s trial was motivated more by Church politics, the larger geopolitical picture posed by the Reformation, and Galileo’s personal conduct (he had a reputation even before publishing the Dialogue for pissing off highly-placed officials) than by what he actually taught. For the record, the Catholic Church removed all of Galileo’s writings from the Holy Index within 100 years of the trial, and formally accepted heliocentrism around 1800 (around the time direct experimental evidence was available; Galileo’s observations were indirect and could have been explained by other mechanisms accepted at the time).
Burning drugs in a public bonfire is good for building attendance figures.
It certainly makes for a memorable occasion (or not, depending upon which drugs are being burned
) Be sure to have an ice cream truck available for the occasion…
AND. be sure to stand in the line of smoke….
They burn stuff now because they can’t get away with burning people anymore, and they have to find someway of quenching that urge to destroy anyone who is “evil.”
I remember Bill Gothard telling us (at an IBYC conference, sometime in the 80s) about somebody burning their Cabbage Patch dolls after “strange goings-on” began happening in their daughter’s life shortly after receiving them as gifts.
As I recall, one of the dolls was infused with a spirit of Depression, and the other was saddled with something else (ennui?). Anyway… While burning the little totems, there were “screaming” noises coming from the pyre. Does anybody else remember hearing this?
This makes burning Cabbage Patch dolls sound rather fun! I hate those things anyway, as well as troll dolls, they’re stupid, ugly, and trying to be waaaay too cute not to mention far too overpriced pieces of plastic crap. 😡 Is there something wrong if you destroying stuff like that? I WANT to hear them scream! 😈
Just musing, as I have been getting rid of a lot of junk in my house. There’s something cathartic about clearing things away for good, and something cleansing about fire. 😎
Yep. Heard that growing up. Also had my my little ponies taken away from me as a kid.
When I see book burning I think of 1930’s Germany…