From his Statement in the Shreveport Times that "It is allowed for Harry Potter to be taught in our schools, but not the Bible," it is clear that Pastor James Crawford needs to go back to seminary school or at least drop out of the book burning game for good.
To think that a Pastor with as many as 30 utterly dedicated followers [that was how many were reported to be at the revival/book burning], and probably even more who just couldn't make it that night for whatever reason, doesn't know the difference between Harry Potter and the Bible is frightening. Here is a man who is revered and followed as an icon, as close to god as you can hope to get on this earth and he lumps a piece of popular pulp fiction like Harry Potter in with the enormity and breadth of the bible.
I am the first to admit that the bible is just a badly written piece of fiction that has remained a best seller for hundreds of years because of fear tactics, but how can a Pastor be so ignorant as to compare it to Harry Potter?
If Harry Potter is taught in schools it is taught as literary fiction. Children learn about metaphors, character development, and good plot structure. At the same time they passively pick up on paragraph construction, scentence construction and basic grammar. All these things are beneficial for their future.
Were the bible to be taught in schools it would be taught how, as the truth? In history class? In building moral prisons for yourself 101? I'm not sure, but certainly not as literary fiction, to call it that is surely blasphemy. Children can't learn all of those literary ideas from the bible because by today's standards it is just poorly written. Yes, there are metaphors there, even similies, and most of it is likely an allegory, but for a child learning grammar and the basic structure of the English language the bible is a minefield of sentence fragments, structural incongruities in language and many other confusing elements.
The bible should be taught to those who want to learn about it, by the church, not the school. The school is a place to expand your knowledge base to learn the basic tools that are used to learn and grow as an academic. The bible as it is seen, or should be seen, by people like the pastor is a sacred text with far reaching moral and philosophical ideals and ideas that young, uneducated minds are not properly equipped to handle.
In short. The bible is a dangerous book that leaves a wake of ignorance wherever it goes and that fact that the pastor would compare a work of fiction like Harry Potter to what he considers the very words of his god is proof of that.