February 22, 2017

Dutchman houses Bible museum at home

Filed under: Literature,Religion by Orangemaster @ 9:32 am

Erik de Kuijper from Breukelen has collected some 600 bibles of all kinds and has decided to start a museum. However, his idea of a starting a museum is just come on over and check them out, although you’ll have to find out where he lives.

De Kuijper apparently has bibles that are very tiny, written in Braille and really old ones. He explained that his wife bought a stack of bibles from the charity shop one day and that’s how he started his collection.

The photo above is my Metal Bible, handed out at the entrance of the Into The Grave metal festival in a few years’ back.

(Link: rtvutrecht)

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August 12, 2013

There’s a Metal Bible for lost Frisian metal fans

Filed under: Music,Religion by Orangemaster @ 8:00 am

Here I thought fighting music containing satanic messages had long been given up as a futile pastime back in the late 1980s, but that was before I went to my first Frisian metal festival and found out that Bible thumpers still want to convert metal lovers. In all fairness, the guy running the stand looked pretty normal with a black t-shirt and shorts (and is apparently a metal fan), with the exception of his stand full of bibles and using God as an excuse or explanation for his life choices.

The Metal Bible was being handed out right at the entrance of the Into The Grave metal festival, a small one-day event in downtown Leeuwarden, fantastically located at the foot of the leaning Oldehove tower and on an actual burial ground. It featured eight bands, local, European and American ones of different styles and was quite cheap (6,66 euro early bird price, 10 euro afterwards).

The Metal Bible started in 1996, with a ‘metalhead’ who wanted to share his love of God with metal fans, but finally kicked off in 2002 when said guy realised that the Bible was being used to approach other notoriously God-hating groups, such as bikers and footballers. The first edition of the Metal Bible was published in Swedish in June 2005, then a Dutch version was published in 2007. In 2011 it was published in English and German and 2012 in Spanish and Polish.

Regardless of its content, which reads like brainwashing to me, it is nicely made, with testimonials from metal bands and other people whose lives were turned around by reading the Bible.

If the good book was such a good read (I was forced to read a lot of it back in Catholic school), then you shouldn’t have to ‘metal it up’ to get your target group to read it. Sexing something up must have some connection to the Devil, but then every good book needs an antagonist.

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July 11, 2009

Calvin’s 500th birthday luxuries sell briskly

Filed under: History,Religion by Branko Collin @ 11:27 am

The granddaddy of the War on Fun must surely be Jean Cauvin (1509 – 1564), the French protestant priest who is seen around these parts as more influential than Luther himself. The man was a big believer in hard work and no (earthly) reward, so it is perhaps odd that the trinkets that are being sold in honour of his 500th anniversary are selling like hot cakes.

Brabants Dagblad reports (Dutch) that a small lake of Calvijn jenever has already been sold (500+ bottles), and that the 25,000 print run of the Calvijn glossy has completely sold out. The exhibition about his life in Dordrecht has so far attracted more than 60,000 visitors. It is unknown if all these people gorged themselves on nectar and ambrosia right after, but there are ten restaurants in Dordrecht that offer special Calvin meals. Perhaps just a pea on a plate, who knows?

Novelist Maarten ‘t Hart points out delicately in NRC Handelsblad (Dutch) that some of the rules of sobriety of Calvin derive from Roman stoic philosopher Seneca the Younger, who did not like music and dancing (“[there is] a time to dance”, Ecc. 3:4) and other exuberances, such as wearing anything other than dark clothes (“Let thy garments be always white”, Ecc. 9:8).

Meanwhile, in the same paper (Dutch) liberal politician Boris van der Ham points out that the celebration of 500 years sobriety is also the celebration of 400 years resistance against the Calvinist philosophy. The States of Holland had a session in 1608 in which theologian Arminius pleaded for the free will of people: “And so I think that man tries to think well, want well and act well.” But Van der Ham also points out that the Dutch reputation as being straight-shooters to the point of being rude is firmly rooted in Calvinism. “In other countries ‘sins’ were often allowed in a don’t-ask,-don’t-tell way, here the curtains were drawn wide open. […] If other countries sometimes look with bewilderment at our freedoms, it’s not because of the freedoms themselves, but because we are so open and honest about them, in what is essentially a Calvinist way.”

(Photo: Calvijn Dordrecht.)

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