In the 80s, Orson Scott Card would sometimes hold a Secular Humanist Revival at science fiction conventions he was a guest at. It was a send-up of religious revival meetings - a tent, funeral-parlor fans, the works. Card would act all preacher-man like, all theatrical and booming voice and so forth, getting "amens" and "halleluias" from the crowd... making fun of what was at the time a hot-button issue, namely that fundamentalists were railing against "secular humanism" being taught as a religion in schools.
Relevant point: at the one I went to, Card held up a textbook that some school board somewhere had added to the curriculum, one that the fundamentalists felt was more appropriate than the "secular humanist" books previously used. Someone in the crowd yelled "burn it!" That got some chuckles, but Card drew himself up in his most mock-officious stance and said "There will be no book burnings at *MY* revival, sir!"
That drew applause.
Then he said "No, I'm going to do much worse than burn it... I'm going to READ it!"
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In the 80s, Orson Scott Card would sometimes hold a Secular Humanist Revival at science fiction conventions he was a guest at. It was a send-up of religious revival meetings - a tent, funeral-parlor fans, the works. Card would act all preacher-man like, all theatrical and booming voice and so forth, getting "amens" and "halleluias" from the crowd... making fun of what was at the time a hot-button issue, namely that fundamentalists were railing against "secular humanism" being taught as a religion in schools.
Relevant point: at the one I went to, Card held up a textbook that some school board somewhere had added to the curriculum, one that the fundamentalists felt was more appropriate than the "secular humanist" books previously used. Someone in the crowd yelled "burn it!" That got some chuckles, but Card drew himself up in his most mock-officious stance and said "There will be no book burnings at *MY* revival, sir!"
That drew applause.
Then he said "No, I'm going to do much worse than burn it... I'm going to READ it!"
That brought the house down.