Don't get burned in the Bible bonfire

Or, former N.C. Biblical Recorder editor Tony Cartledge warns, disaffected by somehow hyper-visible, hyperventilating fringe views.

To help the dismayed, Cartledge first skillfully unpacks Baptist preacher in the Bible-burning celebration at the 14-member, Canton, N.C., Amazing Grace Baptist Church. Then with equal clarity, he deals with an anti-Obama video "which uses pseudo-scholarship and scare tactics to suggest that Jesus spoke the name of the antiChrist, and it would have sounded like 'Barack Obama.'" [We dealt with an earlier version of that video.]

The keystone passage on pastor Mark Grizzard's Bible burning:

Grizzard is welcome to believe the KJV is the preferable translation, but making a spectacle of burning other translations and books is an act of violence against hundreds of translators and authors who love God deeply.

As for the anti-Christ video:

Whoever did put that piece of digital garbage together ought to be ashamed to admit it, because it's filled with half-truths, mis-truths, and an obvious effort to bear false witness against another. The sad thing is that his fake scholarship sounds just convincing enough that many uniformed viewers will be gullible enough to believe it, or to wonder if it could be true.

Read the entire, scholarship-rich blog here.