In August 2003, two Michigan pastors, T.D. Turner Sr. and son
T.D. Turner Jr., took a stand against sorcery by burning a Harry
Potter book outside their Jesus Non-Denominational Church. The
younger Turner, Tommy, says 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. The last
straw came when a local girl tried to perform a magic spell. (She
was unable, as far as we can tell, to turn anybody into a
newt.)
"Parents [have to] realize this is more than a fictional book,"
says Turner. "It's attached to the occult."
The fire so inflamed parishioners' passions that, according to the
Detroit Free Press, some of the 50 spectators proceeded to burn the
Book of Mormon, a non-King James edition of the Bible, and even the
Dan Aykroyd movie Coneheads. Turner regrets that things got out of
control, but adds, "Since the burning, our ministry is growing and
can seat another 400 members," he says. "God has been blessing
us."
In their disdain for Harry Potter, the Turners are not alone. The
boy wizard has inspired fundamentalists all over the U.S. to
destroy his books. There have been half a dozen Potter book
burnings in the past five years.
In some cases, though, the books weren't actually burned. In two
towns, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and Lewiston, Maine, local fire stations
denied book-burning permits. One pastor, Douglas Taylor of the
Jesus Party in Lewiston, undeterred, slashed and destroyed 12
Potter books instead.
"The city warned me they would intervene if I burned [the Potter
books]," says Taylor, who held the cuttings in 2001 and 2002,
"because of the toxic emissions used by the ink." Taylor points out
that he only burns books he purchases. Also, he, like the Turners,
is against the government censoring of the books; but unlike the
Turners, he read most of one. He takes pride that at both book
"cuttings," he allowed his opponents to speak at his microphone and
question him. Some protesters even destroyed Bibles. "It didn't
bother me at all," he says. "It's the message, not the print on the
page."
As to why Taylor chose J.K. Rowling's books instead of something
more sinister, the reason is clear: publicity. "Rowling has a world
platform. I though I'd step up and share it with her," Taylor
says.
Ray Bradbury, however, thinks that Taylor is deluded. The
86-year-old author of the anti-censorship novel Fahrenheit 451 is a
passionate advocate of free speech and believes Taylor and his ilk
are at best clueless about their actions.
"He [Taylor] doesn't know what witchcraft is," says Bradbury. "It's
about wits. There's nothing wrong with the Potter books, because
they're not promoting witchcraft. They're promoting being
wise."
Regarding Taylor himself, Bradbury is succinct: "He sounds like a
stupid man. He just shoots off his mouth, and he should just go
somewhere, sit down and shut up."
It's hard to know exactly how many books are burned in the U.S.
each year. The group that keeps the best tabs on this, the American
Library Association, updates an anti-book burning Web site with
links from around the country, but it resists a hard count of books
burned. Indeed, Third Reich-style bonfires have never been popular
in the U.S., says Judith Krug, director of the Office for
Intellectual Freedom of the ALA. "Setting bonfires is either viewed
as just stupid or amusing," says Krug. "It's amusing, because [book
burners] are too dumb to find other outlets. We get hysterical
about sex, yet the general feeling is, 'I won't let some yahoo tell
me what to read.'"
However, that is exactly what Americans did through most of late
1800s and early 1900s, when Anthony Comstock reigned supreme as the
nation's self-appointed censor. In 1866, Comstock started the New
York Society for the Suppression of Vice, which had as its seal a
picture of a top-hatted man burning a pile of books. Incensed by
"lewdness," Comstock worked the halls of Congress and in 1873 got
passed the "Act of the Suppression of Trade in, and Circulation of,
Obscene Literature and Articles of Immoral Use," otherwise known as
the Comstock Act. Soon thereafter, Congress made Comstock a special
agent of the Post Office, giving him the power to arrest
distributors of lewd or unwholesome materials, as judged by
him.
Comstock--in a career that didn't end until his death in
1915--claimed he'd destroyed 160 tons of obscene literature and
arrested some 3,600 purveyors of prurient material.
Though Comstock's influence has waned, outside the U.S., book
burning is still in fashion. In May of this year, protesters in the
Philippines and Italy burned copies of The Da Vinci Code to
coincide with the release of the film version. In a tragicomic
note, the Philippine Daily Inquirer pointed out that due to the
high cost of the book, protesters likely only burned three copies
of it, adding photocopies to make the pyre higher. In Ceccano,
Italy, only one copy of the book was burned, even as protesters
hurled tomatoes at the burners.
Perhaps the most famous burning of all time occurred at the Royal
Library at Alexandria, Egypt, one of the great repositories of
learning in the ancient world, which held 40,000 manuscripts, many
irreplaceable. Accounts differ about who ultimately burned the
library; some say it was Julius Caesar in 47 or 48 B.C., who
torched it inadvertently during battle with his arch-enemy Pompey.
Others say the decisive burning occurred in A.D. 642, overseen by
Omar, Caliph of Baghdad.
What is not in dispute is that the library burned, taking many of
the great works of the ancient world with it. In particular, the
playwright Aeschylus' work suffered when the great storehouse
burned. Today, just seven of his plays survive, though he wrote 90.
The reason? Just one copy of his completed texts existed--they were
never reproduced--and they were housed at Alexandria.
But even Aeschylus is lucky compared to the Greek poet Sappho, who
lived circa 600 B.C. Famed for her revolutionary approach that
expressed feelings of romantic longing, her work was destroyed
first by early Christians around the year 400 and later by Pope
Gregory VII in 1073, leaving just one complete poem existent.
Of course, the Bible has offended those in power for centuries, and
it has been frequently burned. William Tyndale is perhaps little
remembered today, but in 1526, he printed the first-ever New
Testament in English. The Bishop of London, not happy to see the
Word so easily put in the hands of the laity, hunted Tyndale and
his books down, burning them where he could. The plot almost
worked, as just two copies of the book survived. But survive, and
eventually thrive, the books did, even though Tyndale himself did
not. He was burned at the stake in 1536. His last words: "Lord,
open the eyes of the King of England." But perhaps a more fitting
epitaph could be his most famous turn of phrase: "Let there be
light." - Forbes