Joel Osteen's Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas is arguable the biggest congregation in the nation. The church is housed in the old Compaq Center which used to be the home of the Houston Rockets basketball team. On any given Sunday 40,000 people pack the church to listen to Osteen spew his version of the gospel.With a following like that one would expect Osteen to earn a hefty paycheck from the church but not a single penny of the church's money goes to Osteen. All his money comes from his books. His Wikipedia entry lists him as a best-selling author first...
About That Halloween Book Burning
Well now that Halloween has come and gone Book Patrol wanted to follow up on our previous post regarding the planned Halloween book burning at the The Amazing Grace Baptist Church in Canton, North Carolina.The good news is that book burning never took place. It rained and the police were present. Interestingly enough, as you'll see below, the congregation actually prayed for the rain to come. They also declared that the "Book Burning was a great success." The bad news is that they claim to have destroyed the books anyway.Here is a version of the evening's festivities from someone who...
A Halloween Book Burning: Only God’s Word Will Survive
Pastor Marc GrizzardThe Amazing Grace Baptist Church in Canton, North Carolina is on the loose.Here is what they got planned for Halloween.In an effort to save you from the torture of reading this on their website via the link above, which is destined to get them into design hell, I reproduce their invitation (misspellings and all) for a night of God, barbecue and good ol' fashion biblioclasm.**********************************Halloween Book BurningBurning Perversions of God's WordOct. 31, 20097pm - UntilGreat Preaching and SingingCome to our Halloween book burning. We are burning Satan's bibles like the NIV, RSV, NKJV, TLB, NASB, NEV, NRSV, ASV,...
Religious and Spiritual Books Bring Zing Back to Delhi Book Fair
The woes of the recession have turned into wows at this year’s Delhi Book Fair.Attendees are grabbing religious and spiritually-themed books off the shelves as if they were Kali, the multi-armed Hindu goddess of time and change, and redeemer of the universe, who has, apparently, redeemed an Indian book market hit hard by the global recession.Books on the philosophies and meditation techniques of spiritual gurus, general religion, self-help guides and Indian mythology are leading sales at the Delhi Book Fair, now in its fifteenth year.Just Say No To Crime and FictionThe boom in religious books trade at the fair, say...
New Book on Prepuce at the Precipice
The details of the mysteries of the carne vera sacra have now been unsheathed.Those expecting cooking news about a nuova cucina Italian delicacy will be disappointed. We’re talking foreskin here, and not just any foreskin but THE foreskin of the ages – the “miraculous membrane” of Jesus Christ.As discussed in a piece in The New Yorker, travel writer David Farley has published his first book, An Irreverent Curiosity: In Search of the Church’s Strangest Relic in Italy’s Oddest Town. Within, he relates that the foreskin of Jesus Christ went missing from a church in the village of Calcata, a medieval...