Police in Mount Juliet, Tennessee, about 20 miles outside Nashville, are investigating a trailer full of Bibles that was set on fire in an intersection that blocked the entrance to the Global Vision Church on Easter Sunday morning.
Pastor Greg Locke said on Facebook that the church’s security cameras captured footage of a man dropping off the trailer and then setting it ablaze.
A woman who had driven through the night to get to the church for Easter Sunday services first saw the fire and alerted emergency services, Mr. Locke said.
Firefighters and police responded to the fire around 6 a.m. on Sunday and “promptly extinguished” the fire, a news release from the Wilson County Sheriff’s Office said.
“The trailer, containing bibles, had been dropped off in the middle of the intersection and then intentionally set on fire,” it said. Out of a need to “uphold the integrity of the ongoing investigation,” no further details were given at the time.
Mr. Locke said there were about 200 Bibles in the trailer. “It was quite the scene to wake up to on my first morning back from Israel,” he posted on Instagram.
The church was able to hold its services at the scheduled time in spite of the fire. No one was injured in the incident.
“It did not, nor will it stop us,” Mr. Locke said. “It was cleaned up in time for people to drive into the parking lot. We had a full house and a marvelous service.”
During a live-streamed service, Mr. Locke said the person responsible would be “getting in quite a deal of trouble” soon.
Mr. Locke also said he wanted to distribute the scorched Bible pages to service participants, but the police confiscated them as evidence. He said the FBI was involved in the investigation and that the fire was being investigated as a hate crime.
Sheriff Robert Bryan said he had “no doubt” the Bibles were intentionally burned. Mr. Locke agreed.
“We’ve had people do things to our building, we’ve been vandalized a number of times, hence why we have to have security, but never 200 Bibles being burned,” Mr. Locke said in a local news interview. “That’s a pretty rebellious statement towards the church.”
Mr. Locke openly supports former President Donald Trump and denounces President Joe Biden in his sermons. He has also spoken out frequently about the media and used terms like “crack-smoking, demon-possessed leftists.”
He has drawn national headlines in the past for vaccine skepticism, book burnings, and over-the-top stunts like destroying a Barbie dream house with a bat that had a Bible taped to it.
“What some of you need to understand is that you’ve been delivered from the demon, but you’ve not pulled down the stronghold yet,” he said before smashing the playset. “You’ve got to get rid of the triggers on that iPhone. You’ve got to get rid of the triggers on that Netflix. You got to lose her number. You got to lose his number.”
“The demon comes out when you expel it,” he shouted emphatically. “The stronghold comes down when you demolish it with the Bible!”
The church has also reportedly had conflicts with its close neighbors because of noisy evening services and construction projects.
As far back as 2016, he posted a Facebook video about Target’s transgender bathroom policy that went viral. In the video, he called the policy “stupid” and suggested that it could cause children to be harmed.
“What you are targeting are perverts, pedophiles, people that are going to harm our children,” Mr. Locke said at the time. “That has to be one of the most ridiculous moves I’ve ever heard of in my life. … At the end of the day, they’re being ignorantly, ignorantly naive.”
