A controversial Tennessee pastor led a book burning on Wednesday night to fight “demonic influences”, with a crowd incinerating copies of books including Harry Potter and Twilight.
The burning, which was livestreamed on Facebook, followed last month’s decision by a Tennessee school district to ban the Holocaust-based graphic novel Maus.
“We are well aware what we are stepping into. Bring it all. Stop allowing demonic influences into your home,” pastor and pro-Trump conspiracy theorist Greg Locke wrote in a Facebook post that has since been removed.
“We will be in our continued series on Deliverance from Demons. We have stuff coming in from all over that we will be burning. We’re not playing games. Witchcraft and accursed things must go,” wrote Locke.
Locke’s event in the Nashville suburb of Mt. Juliet drew large crowds as participants threw in copies of the Harry Potter and Twilight series , among other books.
Prior to the burning, Locke said in a sermon that he was fighting the “Free Mason devils” and that “I ain’t gonna be suiciding myself no time soon”.
“I ain’t messing with witches no more, I ain’t messing with witchcraft…I ain’t messing with demons… I’ll call all of them out in the name of Jesus Christ,” said Locke, as crowds of attendees cheered and applauded in response.
According to Tyler Salinas, a photographer who was present at the bonfire, there was one counter-protester, who held up copies of Fahrenheit 451 and On the Origin of Species, and threw a book into the fire that he said was the Bible.
The American Library Association said it has recently seen an “unprecedented” rise in book ban requests: it counted 330 books that were challenged as objectionable in the fall of 2021 compared to 156 in all of 2020.
“In my twenty years with ALA, I can’t recall a time when we had multiple challenges coming in on a daily basis,” said Deborah Caldwell-Stone, the director of ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom.