The Strangest Thing You've Ever Gotten While Trick-or-Treating: and the Scariest

Kaitlyn DeShon

Article #3

North County Times

"Ohio pastor apologizes for Halloween pamphlets"

http://www.nctimes.com/news/national/article_fa97c2da-c027-5a9b-b08e-ec79d158d233.html

Ohio pastor scars children with religious pamphlet

At several houses in Ohio, trick-or-treaters were given not candy, but a religious pamphlet about fearing God. This comic-style pamphlet was given to all children that stopped by Reverend Kenny Cousar's house, and all children who stopped by anyone's house who went to the Northview Baptist Church. In this comic, three children die and one child hangs himself. When parents found out about what had been given to their children, they were horrified, and complained to the authorities. The pastor had to apologize and still encouraged them that his church was, in fact, very good and usually handed out religion related pamphlets for Halloween, which usually got very good responses.

This connects to what we are studying in class because it involves the Bill of Right's First Amendment: Freedom of religion as well as expression. This pastor as well as many others had the freedom to express whatever they wanted through what they handed out. It was perfectly within their rights to give these stories, no matter how gruesome, to the children. However, the children and the parents have freedom of religion, and some parents might say that giving the children a pamphlet that scares them into becoming Baptist would compromise their freedom of religion. Both of these rights are stated in the First Amendment.

This connects to my life as a citizen because I trick-or-treat every Halloween and Halloween is definitely involved in my life, as well as religion. Just like my church is free to advertise Christianity, this church is free to advertise Baptism. Also, I have been given pamphlets about religion before (maybe not trick-or-treating) and some of them have been very, very forceful.

I believe that this pastor should have looked at the pamphlet before handing them out to every child that stood on his porch step. You can tell that he did not, in fact, even look at the pamphlet when he said his "church was careless". This displays that he did not even read the pamphlet himself because he blames it on the church and not on himself. Therefore, he believed he had no part in it, but simply distributed them. If he did have the knowledge of what was contained in the pamphlets he was handing out, then he would probably have taken some of the blame or felt responsible for it. Now, as you can see, I do in fact believe that he should have known what he was handing out to the children.