The new millennium and the future of book burning?

The beginning of a new millennium has not slowed instances of book burning. Book burning has continued through the 2000s and will probably continue into the future, but in what form is still uncertain. Following are some examples of book burnings, which have occurred over the last ten years.

Harry Potter book burning

Since 2001, there have been several incidents of Harry Potter books being burned, including those directed by churches in Pennsylvania and New Mexico.

In March 2001, members of the Harvest Assembly of God Church in Butler County, Pennsylvania held a book burning at their church. Thirty-five people brought items that they felt were not in keeping with their faith, including Harry Potter novels, videos such as Pinnochio and Hercules, and CDs by Pearl Jam and Black Sabbath.

Rev. George Bender particularly objected to the Harry Potter novels: "We believe that Harry Potter promotes sorcery, witchcraft-type things, the paranormal, things that are against God...That is really bad."

In December 2001, Christ Community Church of Alamogordo, New Mexico, held a bonfire event to burn Harry Potter books, along with other “offensive” works including Lord of the Rings novels. Pastor, Jack Brock, described Harry Potter books as masterpieces of "satanic deception", which taught children "how they can get into witchcraft".

"Behind that innocent face is the power of satanic darkness," he said. "Harry Potter is the devil and he is destroying people."

Interestingly, Pastor Brock said he had never read any of the Harry Potter novels - but had researched their contents!


In 2002, a group of Christians in Lewiston, Maine planned to hold a book burning in a local park. They proposed to burn JK Rowling's books for 'encouraging witchcraft, occult practices, and even rebelliousness among children', but the fire department refused them a permit on the grounds that public book burning constituted a fire hazard. So rather than giving up, they held a 'book cutting' ceremony! Church leader Doug Taylor said: "Everybody’s going to have scissors and we’re going to cut those books up right into the trash. We’re Bible believers. We’re Christians. We think these books are dangerous."


In August 2003, two Michigan pastors, T.D. Turner Sr. and son T.D. Turner Jr., burnt Harry Potter books outside their Jesus Non-Denominational Church. The younger Turner, Tommy, said that while he hadn't read the book, the cover alone showed him it promoted wizardry, adding that Potter-related Web sites were gateways to harder stuff.

Other books, magazines, posters, compact discs and movies that members believed did not promote God were also burnt, including Shania Twain & NSync CDs – so maybe they are doing the world some good!


Qur’an book burning controversy

The 2010 Quran-burning controversy began, when pastor Terry Jones of the small, non-denominational Christian Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida, declared he would conduct book burnings of the Quran on the anniversary of the September 11, attacks. The planned event, which he called ‘International Burn a Quran Day’, received world-wide media attention, sparking international outrage and violent protests, which resulted in the deaths of approximately 20 people throughout the Middle East and Asia. Only after pleas from religious leaders and pressure from President Obama, did pastor Jones decide to call off the event, stating "We will definitely not burn the Quran... Not today, not ever."

However, on March 20, 2011, Pastor Terry Jones went back on his word, and oversaw the burning of a Quran, within his church. Upon hearing the news, protestors in Afghanistan, attacked the United Nations Assistance Mission killing at least seven U.N. workers.

 

The Future of Book Burning

In my introduction blog I talked about the irony of censoring the novel, Fahrenheit 451, and I thought it would be interesting to finish on another, this time the George Orwell novel, Nineteen-Eighty Four. In the novel, the main characters job is to revise historical records by incinerating documents in a “memory-hole”.

In 2009, Amazon deleted recently purchased copies of Nineteen-Eighty Four, along with Animal Farm, from privately owned Kindle (another irony, with Kindle meaning to catch fire) e-readers. Amazon explained that the books had been mistakenly published and it gave customers a full refund, but this was not the first time this had happened. Earlier, in the same year, copies of Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged were also deleted from Kindles, with Amazon explaining it had discovered a problem with the title. The sad thing is Amazon have every legal right to do so, because when you buy an ebook, you are only really “borrowing” it at a set price and don’t have full ownership. This is the same when buying from Itunes.
At the moment this does not seem like a big deal, because we still have these books available in print, but with the future becoming digital and more works being digital-only, works could be completely eradicated from existence!

Notes:



I thought it would be interesting to finish on some more current book burning incidents and found the above while researching on the internet. I started by looking at different websites and then found some newspaper articles in Gale database through the Swinburne library.


References

Banks, A 2011, Florida pastor oversees Quran burning, USA Today, viewed 25 May, 2011

<http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/2011-03-21-quran-burning-florida_N.htm>

Daniels, A 2011, 'Trial by fire: the world reacts to a Koran-burning', National Review, General OneFile, Gale, viewed 4 May, 2011.

Goldberg, B 2002, 'Pastor's Potter book fire inflames N. Mex. Town', American Libraries, General OneFile, Gale, viewed 4 May, 2011.

J1u9l8i4a 2009, kindle 1984, 9 August, viewed 27 May 2011,

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeHonKO9qZw>

Manjoo, F 2009, Why 2024 Will Be Like Nineteen Eighty-Four, Slate, viewed 25 May, 2011
<http://www.slate.com/id/2223214>

Marking, S 2002, 'The House of Burned Books', Index on Censorship, vol. 31, no. 4, General OneFile, Gale, viewed 4 May, 2011.

Moshirnia, A 2009, The Future of Digital Book Burning: Why Remote Line-Item Retraction is Scarier than Remote Volume Deletion, Citizen Media Law Project, viewed 25 May, 2011
<http://www.citmedialaw.org/blog/2009/future-digital-book-burning-why-remote-line-item-retraction-scarier-remote-volume-deletion>

'New Mexico Church burns books' 2002, CNN.com, General OneFile, Gale, viewed 4 May, 2011.

'Satanic' Harry Potter books burnt 2001, BBC News, viewed 25 May 2011,
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/1735623.stm>

Serchuk, D 2006, Harry Potter and the Ministry of Fire, Forbes.com, viewed 25 May 2011,
<http://www.forbes.com/2006/11/30/book-burnings-potter-tech-media_cz_ds_books06_1201burn.html>

TheAlyonaShow 2009, kindle 1984, 9 August, viewed 27 May 2011,

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeHonKO9qZw>