posted on April 10, 2004 10:16:40 PM new
Actors Whip Easter Bunny at Church Show
GLASSPORT, Pa. (AP)--First, the Passion of the Christ. Now, the torment of the Easter Bunny?
It may not have been as gruesome as Mel Gibson's movie, but many parents and children got upset when a church trying to teach about Jesus' crucifixion performed an Easter show with actors whipping the Easter bunny and breaking eggs.
People who attended Saturday's show at Glassport's memorial stadium quoted performers as saying, ``There is no Easter bunny,'' and described the show as being a demonstration of how Jesus was crucified.
Melissa Salzmann, who brought her 4-year-old son J.T., said the program was inappropriate for young children. ``He was crying and asking me why the bunny was being whipped,'' Salzmann said.
Patty Bickerton, the youth minister at Glassport Assembly of God, said the performance wasn't meant to be offensive. Bickerton portrayed the Easter rabbit and said she tried to act with a tone of irreverence.
``The program was for all ages, not just the kids. We wanted to convey that Easter is not just about the Easter bunny, it is about Jesus Christ,'' Bickerton said.
Performers broke eggs meant for an Easter egg hunt and also portrayed a drunken man and a self-mutilating woman, said Jennifer Norelli-Burke, another parent who saw the show in Glassport, a community about 10 miles southeast of Pittsburgh.
``It was very disturbing,'' Norelli-Burke said. ``I could not believe what I saw. It wasn't anything I was expecting.''
posted on April 10, 2004 10:41:08 PM new
Whoa! I thought, at first, that you had to be posting something from the Onion. But, no, this is for real. Talk about religious nuts!
If I were a believer and a member of that conregation, I'd be changing churches at the speed of light....
******
Censorship, like charity, should begin at home; but unlike charity, it should end there --Clare Booth Luce
posted on April 11, 2004 07:31:59 AM new
Nuts is right! Whack job sounds like a better term. No wonder I like being a pagan, more fun.
The future has taken root in the present.
posted on April 11, 2004 07:45:03 AM new
Sounds like a reflection of Bush religious fervor. Hell, if you can take a religious approach to war, does assaulting a bunny and Easter eggs seem so outrageous.
posted on April 11, 2004 10:18:33 AM new
I agree with gootie, Helen.
And I also think the AOG needs to be repermanded for doing this. It isn't in good taste at all, and does nothing but drive a wedge between the secular culture and Christianity. They need to explaine why Easter is so important, not beat up a person dressed up as a bunny......
Unless it was the energizer rabbit. Other battery companies have been trying to stop it for years.
Are you sure this wasn't posted on the duracell website, reamond??? LOL
In Christ,
Rick
Mark 16
"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: "I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I do not accept His claim to be God." That is one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic....or else he would be the devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."
C.S. Lewis: "Mere Christianity"
