I love books. I have always loved books. Before I could read I loved them and I have loved them ever sense. Their contents, their construction, their smell. I love books and I have consumed a vast amount of them and a wide variety at that.
So one might see how I have a problems with book burning.
On the other hand, I am a pastor. I have a responsibility to help guide the spiritual development of my congregation and community. This is largely done by putting forth what I think is worthy of consideration and occasionally condemning things that I think are dangerous. However, I know that I try to do that in dialogue with whatever I am condemning. Giving it an accurate representation and then explaining why I think its bad but ultimately leaving it up to the individual to make up their own mind based on evidence and persuasion. I know that blanket condemnation without explanation only serves to highlight something and encourage interest in it. Deny something and you only serve to make it interesting, or as a character once said “What IS your fascination with my forbidden closet of mysteries?”
So one might see how I have a problems with book burning.
Intellectually, pedagogically, and spiritually book burning is a blight on human culture. It is, ultimately, only people shouting into an echo chamber to hear their own voice. The stated purpose of the book burning in Tennessee that has so recently made the news was a condemnation of witchcraft. The things they chose have as much to do with real witchcraft as Star Wars does with space travel. Destruction of opposed ideas, especially the most superficial pop culture versions of it, does nothing but get you a few inches of text in the local paper. If you cannot address an opposing idea with reason, feeling, and your own character then you deserved to be shut down.
Further, this kind of activity does harm to the church as a whole. Those unfamiliar with churches and their work might think that book burning is a regular weekly event. Making them less likely to entertain anything the church might have to say. So not only does the book burning does no good, it actively harms the work of the church.
I have a serious problem with any book burning.