The Christian publishing house Thomas Nelson Publishers has decided how it’s going to help Katrina victims. First, it’s going to match employee contributions, up to $50,000. Second, they’re going to donate 100,000 Bibles. They’re a Bible pubisher, they have Bibles, they’re going to send them to people who need them.
Some people find this objectionable. That’s putting it mildly based on the venom spewed at Nelson CEO Michael Hyatt.
100,000 Bibles. That is the most asinine thing I have heard in years (and I’ve heard a few) You are fool of the first order. You sending bibles to people who need food, water, medicine, blankets, clothes and shelter. I shake my head in wonder and dismay.
Bibles !!!! Unbelievable…... In my eyes you are a moron! Unbelievable…. there are people DYING and babies and old people suffering indignities beyond any comprehension and you send them BIBLES - aaaaggggghhhhh - America IS nuts - no doubt about it.
If I were starving, thirsty, homeless, and in need of medicine, and someone handed me a bible, I would spit in their face. This is the most ridiculous, useless, self-serving thing I’ve ever heard, and anyone who gives money to this cause is going to hell.
Okay, that’s their opinion. But perhaps these people should consider that people who have lost everything may have different priorities in life. This is the South and it’s a fact that people in the South are more religious in general than those elsewhere. Many of the worst-hit refugees from New Orleans are black and black people are also overwhelmingly more likely to be religious than say your average white guy from Manhattan or Cambridge. So if the refugees don’t want the Bibles, they can just not take one.
I wonder what those folks would think of this:
As a courtesy to women fleeing Hurricane Katrina, this week Planned Parenthood of Houston and Southeast Texas (PPHSET) health centers will offer one free month of birth control or one free emergency contraception (EC) kit to women with a valid Louisiana or Mississippi driver’s license.
“There have been a huge number of evacuees who have come to Texas, especially from Louisiana,” says Peter Durkin president and CEO, PPHSET. “Motels are sold out going all the way to San Antonio. We’re offering a free month’s supply of birth control pills and/or emergency contraception if they have either a Mississippi or Louisiana driver’s license. During these calamities, sometimes you don’t bring your pills with you, because you’re trying to get out of there in one piece.”
http://www.plannedparenthood.org/pp2/portal/files/portal/webzine/insidepp/ipp-050826-hurricane.xml
I’d want a Bible if I’d been in the hurricane and lost mine…. And I REALLY hate the idea of contraceptives etc as emergency equipment and think it is an insult.
I guess they wouldn’t like Fr. Peyton’s Family Rosary group either. I got word that they are asking rosary makers from all over the country to send them rosaries to distribute to the Catholic victims of Katrina. They have received thousands so far and have shipped them all out. More are needed! Our rural MN parish sent 200.
If anyone here is interested, their address is:
The Family Rosary
Attn: Hurricane Katrina Victims
518 Washington Street
North Easton, MA 02356
As to the Bibles, I would assume that American Bible Society is also present and handing out Bibles. They have become increasingly sensitive to Catholic needs in recent years, so maybe they are giving out Catholic Bibles in Catholic Southern Louisiana.
Some people aren’t taking much out of their houses but the dog and the Bible.
And a question to the person who found sending Bibles so objectionable—Have *you* sent $50K to the relief effort? And—how can you damn anyone to a hell you quite certainly do not believe in?
little gidding is correct in her statement above. Here in San Antonio TX we’ve received a large number of New Orleans folks displaced by the hurricane. When they first started arriving, one of the very first things many of them asked for was Bibles.
This really is part of the class distinction, call it snobbery, which the atheist elites have for people in flyover country.
Just as they can’t imagine why anyone would vote for Reagan or either Bush, they can’t imagine why people would appreciate the gift of a bible.
If I were doing transport prioritization, I wouldn’t put bibles at the head of the list for scarce space in a truck, but I wouldn’t deny the providers access.
New Orleans needs Bibles more than it needs food. Maybe, just maybe, if they read a Bible once in a while, they’d put their pants ON during Mardi Gras.
The problem is, that’s exactly what these guys hear anytime someone reaches out with christian charity. Bibles are important. We must and need to feed people’s souls. But you have to take care of their physical needs first, or do both physical and spiritual together. To care for either without the other is remiss. Too many people think that Christians only want to help with the spiritual, to the neglect of the physical.
If they don’t have food they could die, and this is a bad thing sure enough, but they could also die from disease, shock, lack of water, getting run over by a bus, etc. Death is part of the human experience, a part that scares the hell out of self-professed athiests (who damn others to hell??). Pain, suffering, death, it is all bad to them a part of the human condition that they want to illiminate. So of course they are enraged when they hear that people are asking for and getting Bibles in the disaster area. And who do they take all of this rage out on, of course the donors of the bibles, because it would seem heartless to attack the (poor, stupid, dumb, in need of my wisdom) victims. Someone who gives out a bible is questioning the athiests most fundamental notions of how the world works. The bible is not an inclusive document, it either is or is not true, and for people to hand it out, and for others who are suffering and dying to want it, makes a radical statement about the athiestic humanist worldview.
Sometimes all people have to live on is The Word of God , so in that case what a great gift to give .